An Insider’s Look At Active Placer & Lode Gold Mine
An Insider’s Look At Active Placer & Lode Gold Mine
One advantage of exploring a lot of abandoned mines, and sharing those explorations publicly, is that it gets the attention of miners and the owners of active mines… As such, I have received invitations to visit some extraordinary mines that are not normally accessible to the public (such as the 16-to-1 Mine). The visit to the underground gold mine you will see profiled in this series is the result of another of those generous invitations.
I am exceedingly grateful to Aaron (the miner acting as our guide) for putting this visit together and for securing permission for us (Thank you again, Aaron). Aaron often reads and responds to the comments on videos if you have any questions for him about this mine. He has a LOT of experience working here and knows quite a lot about this mine. I can’t guarantee that he’ll respond, but given that he has a particular interest in this gold mine, I’d be surprised if he didn’t.
This mine has quite a history, which I’ll expand upon in the descriptions of the remaining videos in this series. For now, suffice it to say, the mine is quite old by the standards of California and it has been worked by many different miners over the decades that saw great potential in it. As you can see in this video – and will also see in the remaining videos – it’s a difficult mine to operate, but the gold is undoubtedly there…
Somewhat unusually, this is both a placer and lode gold mine. For those of you that don’t know, a mine is typically one or the other. Rarely, do you have both in the same small area encompassed by one mine. Underground placer gold workings in this area take the form of gold-rich ancient river channels buried underground for countless millions of years. That is why the adit has to be run through solid rock to reach the placer material. Lode mines are the typical mine that most people think of when they think of underground mines where the gold is embedded in the rock itself and has to be crushed to be extracted.
As I briefly touched on in the introduction, I will show the equipment and buildings on the surface, but thought I would start underground as I know most viewers would be itching with curiosity about what was there. Hopefully, after seeing the underground workings, the mining equipment on the surface will make more sense to you and can be appreciated more.
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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 a small gear update 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!
#ExploringAbandonedMines
#MineExploring
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Those bolts he’s talking about are called split sets, and your supposed to install the spit end facing down so water doesn’t sit inside the rock bolt and rot it out faster. The square dome plates are called, push plates.
I just finished all 4 parts to this video series…very interesting! Aaron reminds me a lot of Ted Nugent!
The serpentine boulders in my tailings carry visible gold, au-sulfides and multi-ounce per ton PT.
One of the best tours I’ve ever seen 👏.
It does not come across as very convincing.. if it weren’t for that ventilator running you’d not know it was still being worked today. Nearly everything is old and rusty and done long ago. The (partly heavy, partly ridiculously futile) timber he points out in part 2 are all blackened by time, the ore carts that in themselves aren’t in bad condition but stand there filled up all the way with leakage water, with a great part of the rails leading up to them seemingly missing (also in part 2), dus) details like those don’t do much to change that feeling
Where’s the gold?!?!?
I’ve got to say that this is absolutely fascinating. I’m a "university trained geologist" and you taught me a lode of information 😉
Where’s the 🚽
All these young guys with their modern technology. Computer operated gas/oxygen detectors etc. I liked how that older guy just used lighter to check for explosive gases.
Great upload hello from Lightning Ridge Australia we mine opal here the level that I am working at the moment is about 110 millions years old makes for some interesting fossil finds and we have an ash layer also volcanic maybe not sure as we are in the flat lands this far north west in NSW 🙂
That tour guide sure has a good name
Isn’t that white sticky stuff asbestos?
ah! wish i could do that! get stuck in with a pickaxe.
unfortunately it is much to noisy… what are those people running the mine thinking?! can’t work like that!
This is one of the most informative and interesting videos to date, I am really impressed. When I was 18, (I am 63 now) I worked in a copper mine, although not underground. I worked in the mill refining the ore into a fine flour like concentrate. Very cool YouTube channel you have created.
innovation! love it
Thanks for bringing this footage
Some people have old cars that they can talk about and some have old mine shafts.
Thank you for the tour. Where the miners getting gold as they were digging the tunnel?
Excellent video! Loving the running commentary. More please.
I take it dude in the overalls is his son
Why hell you has vacuum on in mine person man
Fascinating tour. No ummm’s and uhhhh’s, nice constant dialog. Very lucky to get such a tour and we are lucky you took us along. Thanks.
Exquisitely complicated geologic history. I love it.
Turn on CC go to 7:15 and enjoy!
Ironworkers stickers on the hard hat! Fukn rad!
That guy has the strong square jaw of a giant dwarf. Some people just fit the part.
I wish more people would stop every once in a while and talk about the different kinds of rock we are looking at. This guy does a very good job of touching on that subject.
1.5kth like
So very interesting. Thanks for keeping my mind busy and interested for days.
Cool video 👍
That Pyroclastic flow tuff layer blew my mind. God I love seeing that kind of stuff. That little hole from a tree 300+ million years old is so fkn cool and is why I love Geology.
@10:20 his comment "Co’mon back" and "Hody dor" is an inside joke.
Great vid learned alot thanks
Show the gold!
Where is your self rescuer??? Bubba damn!!!
👍👍👍👍👍👍
I’ve had a beer with Aaron, good dude
In man’s relentless Search for gold are they destroying the planet and certain areas around the world
Person man I work at active copper mine an I can give tour
far out! loving the first hand tour. thank you. i need to find a gemologist, please tell me u know of one trustworthy, and appreciates a learning self taught geology archaeology, biology scientist sort of person. thank you for all you guys do. inspired by your explorations for 3 years now! Cheers!
Oh this is just going to be awesome
Thank you and thanks to these guys for teaching us all about mining (and old mines). Amazing stuff.
Pyroclastic flow and wood that’s HOW OLD? Nice! Oh my god I’m envious haha. Srsly thanks again for sharing. To me this stuff is gold too.
3:30 "The smaller your hole the more structurally sound it’ll be" Note to self, keep your hole small.
In Ontario Canada underground mines your not a loud to use those split set bolt on the back. Only on the walls. Rebar bolts, and mechanical bolts with resin on the back. Red cartridge resin is fast setting and the gray is a slower setting. Example; on a 6 foot hole you use one red resin cartridge and 2 gray slow cartridges. Red first then 2 gray resin followed right after. Split set on the walls only.
My hats off to you buddy, the first word of fractured this crappy material that total collapse this, my ass is outa there.
Be nice if I had a guy like him giving me a hand with my gold mines pickaxgold.com
Curiosity kills tvr, did you ever taste the water running by you in a mine ? I know that sounds stupid , mines are toxic etc. But the toxic chemicals are filtered down to the bottom of the stream and kept there by the flow of the water. So the water above was as pure as nature made it. I think it’s quite tasty .
Its really hard to get a perspective on height of open areas in mine. That first big area you went to, it looked small..but the beam of the light made it look huge. lol Awesome videos!
Is that white mold dangerous?
Thank you for this informative episode. Very interesting. I always say that but it’s TRUE. Cant wait to watch 2 &3. Thanks so much.
I might want an R-95 with all of that fungus/mold.
Fabulous video and Aaron was an excellent guide.very informative and interesting to watch…thanks for sharing