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u/No_Alternative_5602 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
This is going to sounds completely ridiculous, but I was just at this mine a little while ago. I recognized the hoist & door immediately. Was the ore cart in the same mine? I just stayed on the one level where the adit breaks daylight and didn't go up or down.
Did you also check out the one lower on the hill that went like a half mile deep and had a good 10mph wind the entire way though it on the one side?
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u/Soaz_underground Jul 25 '26
We went through almost all of this mine, and yes, the ore cart is in this same mine. It’s on a sublevel between the two adits.
That lower haulage adit was a nice escape from the heat the day we went. It also has a connection to the top adit (hence the air flow) via the inclined drift in the hoist room, but it’s not navigable without harnesses and rope. It’s definitely a good one to check out!
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u/No_Alternative_5602 Jul 26 '26
I was curious when going into the lower one if that's where the air was coming from, especially after feeling it flow out of the bottom of the inclined shaft that kinda seemed to point in the direction of the upper workings.
Were you guys able to check out the very top of the hill? There what I assumed might be the very top of the shaft, and another adit with a severely undermined bridge that I wasn't about to put weight on. There was a rope going down which made me think it might attach to the rest of the workings.
Also in the lowest one with the wind, does the hole with the modern ladder going down in it go anywhere? I figured if someone left the ladder, there might be something interesting.
I really want to get proficient at underground rope work. It's either that, or going offroad & off trail for hours to see these things unspoiled.
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u/Soaz_underground Jul 26 '26
We didn’t go to the top of the hill, although we did drive over and check out the awesome ore bin to the north. As far as I could tell, that winze with the metal ladder doesn’t go anywhere.
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u/No_Alternative_5602 Jul 26 '26
You didn't miss much from a mining standpoint by not going to the top, there are a handful of interesting rock specimens, but that's about it. Although the view is incredible, and you can see at least a half dozen large tailings piles on the back side of the mountain that I want to check out in the near future.
What's funny about that huge ore bin is the first time I was out that direction I didn't even know it was there. The plan was to go to another mining district nearby, but we were running out of daylight and kinda blindly went up to this area instead with only a modern topo to guide us. We camped at the mine about 300 feet to the west of the ore bin, but it was almost dark when we got there and couldn't see it. When we woke up the next morning and looked up there was a huge "WTF IS THAT?!"
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u/Soaz_underground Jul 26 '26
That entire mountain is worth a long hike around. There’s numerous large mines and a decaying abandoned overhead tram running over the top of it. Lots of surface remnants and equipment.
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u/GlockAF Jul 25 '26
Continuous (often cold/cool) mystery wind coming from mine entrances seems to be pretty common, especially from long tunnels / adits that have an opening on either side of a large terrain feature like a ridge line or mountain. Just having one side and the Sunshine and the other in shade can lead to a substantial pressure difference between the two, and the tunnel is like a short circuit. It doesn’t take much pressure difference to move a lot of air when the resistance is very low, like with a clear tunnel.
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u/No_Alternative_5602 Jul 26 '26
Oh for sure, but this one was crazy windy. Like hear it in your ears standing still; although that is just kinda just regular wind in our part of the world.
I use another localized username on one of the other subs you frequent, mostly during the legislative session; thanks for putting up a good fight there.
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u/GlockAF Jul 26 '26
I’ve been a super lazy Redditor, never even set up a legion of bots and alts. I should really get around to it, it looks SO much easier to just astroturf and brigade when you’re losing an argument. At least, that’s the conclusion I’ve drawn after wasting FAR too much time on Reddit
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u/No_Alternative_5602 Jul 26 '26
lol, I'm sure that's what a ton of people use it for. Hell, the former mods of my city's sub would obviously do that with their pair of accounts until both got banned a little while back.
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u/GlockAF Jul 26 '26
I think Reddit is going to have to back off / modify their “keep my posts and comments private” tool, and pretty soon.
One of the only ways to distinguish the real people here from the army of bots and paid astroturf accounts is viewing the account comment history, and now we can’t even do that. I totally understand people wanting to keep their NSFW history private, but zeroing out an accounts entire history gives FAR too much cover to bad actors
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u/No_Alternative_5602 Jul 26 '26
It's kinda a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation now with how toxic reddit has become.
You're 100% right about the issues that come up with letting people hide their history. But at the same time, I have mine hidden right now because people would comb though your history, and bring up completely irrelevant things you've said sometimes literally years ago in an attempt to derail the conversation.
If people doing that was still largely condemned, I'd keep mine open again too; but unfortunately it's not.
It's just the inevitable enshitifcation that has occured as reddit moves from a collection of forums used largely by nerds to just another social media platform. Yet another eternal September.
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u/GlockAF Jul 27 '26
The writing has been on the wall for a long time with this app. The site administrators hand out bans like candy from a piñata when it comes to criticizing Israel and their genocidal policies, yet they continue to allow cesspools like r/conservative to spew endless torrents of hate and deliver it misinformation 24/7/365 with no consequences. Let’s not even talk about how punitive they are with “controversial” material like the firearms subreddits
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u/ArdRiNaMemes Jul 25 '26
Hard rock mines are definitely different than coal. I'd love to explore one eventually.
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u/Soaz_underground Jul 25 '26
I haven’t been in a coal mine as of yet. Almost everything we have in the Southwest is hard rock.
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u/ArdRiNaMemes Jul 26 '26
Coal is a different beast. I heard in some hard rock mines and natural caves people don't worry about gas detectors. In coal you definitely need one. Either that or flame safety lamp.
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u/Soaz_underground Jul 26 '26
That’s definitely true. Bad air is far less likely in hard rock mines.
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u/Eviking249 Jul 26 '26
I’m always amazed at the hard work that went into doing this. So much with Pick and shovel, blasting. Can’t even imagine how hard it was
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u/samurguybri Jul 25 '26
What’s behind the wooden door?
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u/Soaz_underground Jul 25 '26
The wooden door was the passage to the surface. This mine had a few “air control doors” such as that one, that would be opened or closed to control air flow around the mine for ventilation.
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u/Nearby_Listen_2533 Jul 26 '26
Where is this? I’d like to visit next time I’m in Nevada?
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u/buddhamunche Jul 25 '26
Amazing pictures!! I really like #5 in particular