Extremely Tight Squeeze Into An Abandoned Mine

I’ve squeezed into some tight mine openings before, but never into a portal as tight as this! I really had to work to get into this one… It required me to strip off all of my gear and to push it into the abandoned mine ahead of me, while stretching my arms over my head in order to be able to fight my way in. Getting out required the assistance of my two friends with me on this day who had to pull me out because I couldn’t even move my arms enough to make an inch of progress on my own.

The tight squeeze into the mine and the number of historical artifacts still present inside indicates that this is a mine that has seen few visitors since it was abandoned. Regrettably, the mines that are easier to access have either had most – or all – of their historical mining equipment stripped away or they have been destroyed by the Forest Service/BLM/Abandoned Mine Lands crews, etc.

That crumbly, gravel-like material around the portal of this mine, reminiscent of an underground placer mine, doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence. However, as you saw, the mine soon transitioned to a fairly solid rock as evidenced by the few sections with any groundfall (rocks that had caved).

The homemade ventilation system near the portal is a creation that I have only seen at one other mine where an old washing machine was connected to a crude windmill and some ventilation pipe. I’ve been to a lot of mines now and having only seen this twice, I can say with some accuracy that it is a rare thing to encounter. The other mine with the homemade ventilation system is this one:

   • Exploring The Vulture Mine: Part 1 of...  

The ingenuity of miners coupled with a tight budget can really create wonders…

I am not certain of the identity of the abandoned mine in this video. It is an unexpected one we spotted while on the way to another mine… It is near the other, larger mine that was our original destination, but it seems distinct from that mine as the mining style, equipment and such is very different.

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All of these videos are uploaded in HD, so adjust those settings to ramp up the quality! It really makes a difference.

You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD

And here: https://bit.ly/2p6Jip6

You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

Thanks for watching!

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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.

These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.

So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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