JeepAndrew’s Abandoned Mines Thread

DELAMAR UNDERGROUND PICTURES

The first night we arrived, it was too late for extensive exploration, so we went underground in the main haulage (level 10) for an hour or so to test out some new photography lights I had built.

As I’m sure you can see, this mine was extensively timbered. This is a red flag for how unstable the mine itself is. Most, if not all, drifts were supported by 8”-12” square timbers.


The next day, the real work began. Back in the main haulage. We began surveying and selecting winzes to drop for advanced exploration.

Contestant #1; 2 compartment boxed winze, laser-measured at 275 feet deep. We have no idea what’s at the bottom.

Rigged up and ready, we headed down. Devin in the lead, with me above following. Since the winze was inclined, and ladders were really good, we didn’t immediately use the rope.

I let devin get ahead by 50 feet or so. Once he got to what *seemed* to be the bottom, he called for me to stop and lock my hand ascender onto the line for safety and stay put. He then attached his descender, and literally dropped out of sight at the bottom of the timbers. About a minute later he called up on the radio to come on down. Keep in mind I had no idea what was down there yet...

At the bottom of the box winze, the last 50 feet of timber lining had fallen away, ladder, cribbing, everything. It was all free-hang rappel 50 feet to the bottom

This was me starting over the transition onto full-rope!! The shaft dropped into a massive ballroom stope. Holy fuck...


Coming down...


Me trying not to shit myself (not afraid to admit that).


Alright... almost there... Devin is running around during this time “okay hold it right there, let me run back up here and snap a pic”... “Okay wow that’s a good one. Okay keep going”... “Hold that give a second, wow that’s awesome”


Finally down.


Look at the size of this stope..

 

I agree, it’s too bad I can’t reveal more of these places, as putting up histories would give away locations.

 

Thanks for sharing the history, its cool to learn about stuff that's not really in the history books. Maybe for future history classes (mines that you explore) you could make up fake names to keep people out of the mines?

 

I could do that, but unfortunately I would also have to change things like production values, years of operation, what was produced etc. At that point it’s no longer history, it becomes fiction. It won’t be accurate enough to be considered historical information.

 

More from Delamar!

This stope was huge, hundreds of feet across and 75 feet high in places. Long ago, it was fully timbers, but over the years all that has since collapsed. In the end, only Devin and I dropped this winze, due to the difficulty and it being a dead-end.

Okay, time to get out of this death trap and back on solid ground,

Almost up to the timber box and a sigh of relief..


Goodbye, death trap winze!


Jim sits in a timbered and partially collapsed section of drift next to an ore chute.


Alright, time to rig for our next drop! Still below the 10th level, this one goes down 35 feet to the infamous “zig-zag ladder of death”.


Frederik, and experienced caver, heads down to check out the ladder.


And out of sight he goes.


Gary checks his gear.


Me editing footage on the iPad in the meantime and saying something to Jim.


And of course recording..


Devin heads down..


I’m finally down in the stope. Check out this ladder...


Jim posing for scale!


1100 level stope with the zig-zag ladder of death.. This is definitely a big one! Check out all the collapsed timbers!

 

More Delamar pictures coming soon!!

 

Glad to stumble into your thread! Just when I thought trying to find old Rocky Mountain and Great Basin Bristlecone Pines was difficult!!!

 

@dumontrider

 

Now look at that good looking gentleman right there ! Damn I need to get back out with you. Miss this stuff!

 

Hey everybody! Just got back from an awesome 2300 mile road trip through Colorado and Utah! Pics soon to come!

In the meantime, I’m taking donations for the Boy Scout troop my kiddos are in. If any of you could donate it would be awesome!

Here’s a link to the fundraiser:

 

More from Delamar!

Prepped and ready to go underground! Left to right, Frederik, Devin, Jim, myself, Dani and Gary

The temperature was a reasonable 85 degrees and breezy. This is looking west out into Delamar Valley. Way out there on the horizon is a mountain range near the infamous “Area 51”.

Here, you can see some of the townsite. A few brick and adobe walls still stand along the old mainstreet.

Frederik prepares to drop a 100ft vertical shaft to check access to other areas underground. Unfortunately this shaft did not connect to anything.


We then hiked further up and entered the 650 level adit, which connected to huge stopes and extensive workings!

This was a massive stope on the 650 level, over 1000 feet into the mountain, and over 200 feet high.


Posing in this massive stope


Continuing on deeper, things were getting a little tight. Here, my legs and feet disappear through an almost totally collapsed area.


Frederik emerging through the crawl..


Yep, that would be old dynamite. The darker tan looking piles are dynamite filler that still contains nitro glycerin, very dangerous.


Myself climbing a ladder in a raise..




Further into the 650 level, was this awesome headframe with the sheave wheel still attached!

Jim poses for scale..


A very narrow stope, this tracks clearly visible leading though the center.

 

Alright, now onto my week long Colorado/Utah trip!! I’ll post the Utah pictures first.

First site in Utah was in one of my favorite towns; Eureka. Just like my trip back in June, we obtained legal access to these mines.

Access was through a 750ft adit, that ended in this huge stope. Notice the tracks on the lower left?

We began our long hike down through the stopes, with Dan taking video along the way for his YouTube channel.

More stopes. Not the biggest I’ve seen but certainly not the smallest!

Ore car! This one had fallen through a rotted false floor platform into a drift below.

Further down the drift, another car!

Wow, two more ore cars! This was on a lower haulage level that led to a collapsed shaft. That’s 4 so far!

Two more!!! Not even 50ft further down the haulage drift.

 

Great pics and stories.

A few thoughts.

1. Please don’t die. If you get hurt or
trapped, be ready to self-sustain for at
least 72 hours. Assuming you don’t
have a hypotensive episode, massive
trauma, bleed out, or run out of air,
you have a good chance of being down
there at least that long. This also
assumes your team is unable to make a
recovery.

2. I’m part of one of those SAR teams that
will get paged at 2AM to come rescue
folks. Depending on the situation, I’m
either rappelling down solo to assess you,
and then calling for the litter, or doing a
pick-off and calling for a raise. If you’re
dead, I don’t make the recovery decision -
that’s usually going to be LE’s call, with
our team having veto over whether to take
the risk.

3. I have the same hobby, focus mostly on
N. Nevada, and have done body recovery
in recent memory as part of SAR.
Stuffing a corpse into a body bag is
a surefire way to take the glamour out
of this hobby in a heartbeat. Families are
glad to have the remains, though. Let’s
them give you a decent burial and have a
more convenient place to leave flowers.

4. Relic hunters piss me off to no end. One
mine I can think of used to have an
elevator at the top of a shaft. Somehow,
idiots managed to steal it. It was on my
list of things to see, finally got there, and
it was gone. Rappelled down 250’ to see
if maybe the cable gave out and the car
was at the bottom. It wasn’t.

5. Despite all the danger and unpleasantness
involved in mine exploration, and despite
the fact I may get woken up some night
to go help rescue someone, I don’t care
what adults do with their free time. If
you, like me, want to go explore old mines
and sites, cool. Have fun and try not to
die or get hurt. Our biggest enemies are
BLM, USFS, state agencies, and the Nanny
State generally. Non-disclosure is
essential to keeping those bastards away
from our hobby.

6. BTW, the big fallout shelter mine sounds
interesting and it wasn’t on my radar
before. Gypsum mines are a step above
talc mines, in terms of being sketchy. But
it seems worth it!

 

Thanks for the comment and thoughts! We do our best to be as safe and as vigilant as possible in our explores, in regards to hazards, and we even have a couple members that are SAR out of California. It’s a great hobby, and not for the careless, as you’ve very much aware. That Fallout Supply Mine was one of the most interesting I’ve ever been in. Believe it or not, it was surprisingly stable considering what was mined there. And talc mines are in their own realm of sketchy, definitely don’t like entering those.

 

https://ux.azcentral.com/story/news...rizona-mine-shaft-maricopa-county/1801198002/

My first thoughts when I saw this story on the news was of this thread and how @JeepAndrew has always and continually emphasized the inherent dangers and necessary precautions that must be taken when persueing this endeavor as a hobby.
Sounds like this guy did not have the same perspective when it comes to his approach to entering his last mine: He was by himself (@JeepAndrew never appears to do this by himself), he had an equipment failure of some sort (I interpret this as a negligence to prioritize safety by ensuring his equipment's condition or perhaps his anchor prior to his descent), and he did not have extra water or food (again, not prioritizing safety through preparedness).

I'm glad he is Ok, and now has an incredible story of survival to tell, but I can't help but think that his predicament could have been avoided with a different approach to preparedness and safety.

 

That guy did so many things wrong from the start, I don't know where to begin. The pics of the SAR unit are great, though. We don't carry all that shit on our racks and harnesses because it makes us happy - each piece is a tool, usually with multiple uses, to pair up with our skills and training to unFUBAR the Mother of All Clusterfucks. And, you go in as a team, you operate with redundancy, understand acceptable risk, and undertake reasonable hazard mitigation.

And you can still get killed doing it. But shit, it sure is fun.

 

Supposedly, this gentleman was an experienced prospector that had the claim the shaft was on, and experienced either a rope, anchor or carabiner failure. He’s honestly lucky to be alive. If it wasn’t for a friend of his that came looking for him he would’ve been down there long enough to die of thirst.

This is the primary reason I emphasize safety during these explores and trips over and over and over again on this thread. This instance proved to have a much more positive outcome than some others I’ve seen. This very well could’ve been a recovery, and not a rescue.

 

More from my recent trip! I revisited a mine that I had seen back during my June trip (here’s the post from the first visit- https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/jeepandrew’s-abandoned-mines-thread.545953/page-5#post-18319250)

I gained access again to take several other explorers from Utah and a photographer to do some professional photos for the mine owner!

Making our way down thru the stopes.


The fellas posing in a huge stope!


Just like back in June, I was again amazed by the size of the stopes here....

 

Hey everybody, been on hiatus from TW lately handling some life changes, but it’s about time to fire this thread back up with some new mine pics!