An Unexpectedly Rich Mine Exploring Area
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- Опубликовано: 19 мар 2024
- When we’re driven out of the highest reaches of the Sierra Nevadas by snow, we must normally content ourselves with international trips or desert trips (the odd winter trip to Alaska notwithstanding)… However, we recently started looking into an area in the lower parts of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Feather River Canyon. We have flirted with the Feather River Canyon in the past (and actually had our worst mine exploring experience to date on one fateful evening there several years ago when visiting the Five Bears Mine). However, I had discounted the potential around Forbestown and other parts of the lower Feather River Canyon.
Sure, the area has a rich history of gold mining. However, this was so long ago that maps with accurate locations for historical mines and other sites are nonexistent or very rare. Furthermore, this area does not have the hard rock characteristics that keep the mines in the high country open more often. Instead, this area has thick layers of dirt that are created by the organic material of the dense forests. The dirt caves in and erodes old mines shut very quickly.
The southern reaches of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (the southern region of the Mother Lode) are far more developed though and so, despite also harboring an extensive period of activity during the Gold Rush, all too often, one will simply find houses or a fuel station where historical mines and other sites used to be. To thrive as a mine explorer in this type of environment, one must possess local connections and that crucial local knowledge. I do not. So, aside from a handful of successful trips to this region, I have generally left it alone.
The Feather River Canyon is not developed and, especially for California, is actually surprisingly remote and unpopulated. So, we have braved the numerous grow ops, thick brush and steep canyons to run down some great sites. It takes more work to find the mines given vague location information in most cases, but it has proved fulfilling to do so as these sites are simply not picked over like those in a place such as southern Nevada that are visited by hordes of people.
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You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: goo.gl/TEKq9L
You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: bit.ly/2p6Jip6
Several kind viewers have asked about donating to help cover some of the many expenses associated with exploring these abandoned mines. Inspired by their generosity, I set up a Patreon account. So, if anyone would care to chip in, I’m under TVR Exploring on Patreon.
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.
I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!
#ExploringAbandonedMines
#MineExploring
#AbandonedMines
#UndergroundMineExploring
I love this channel. I just lost my mom yesterday to a long struggle with dementia. To be able to come home after a long drive and a horrible day and lay back to watch some racked up TVR vids + a brand new one? To get me out of my own head for a few hours and see places and history like this? It’s a Godsend. Thank you Justin. Relief comes in small doses these days and it’s been a spiritually and emotionally draining 2 years, but she has now found peace.
Sorry about your mom RIP.
Sorry for your loss 😪 Hugs
I'm sorry for your loss, I know the feeling all too well. May you find peace in knowing that she's in a better place than we are and no longer suffering in any way.
My condolences, tvr fans are here for you
Sorry for your loss
Thanks!
Thx Bryan!
Thank you very much, Bryan.
You found a Ford Model T firewall, looks like 1923-1925. The two rods are for the throttle and the spark advance, and the two rows of holes are for the coil wires and spark plug wires. Cool find!
Raining and crazy lightning here in the Ozarks came in out of the wx. Always good to see your uploads
Ha, that's probably our weather that we sent on to you! Sorry.
I absolutely LOVE your channel! Best mine exploring on You Tube EVER! There are other good ones, but yours is by far the BEST, most informative, most detailed, and most thoughtful mine exploring channel! I love how you leave no ladder, raise, adit, stope unexplored! I can't get enough and have watched many of your videos multiple times! I really hope you keep doing this for years until there are no mines you haven't seen! Thank you for what you do!!!
There's a timber cutter up around Mt. Shasta that has a small channel.
He cuts for a company that does cutting in the areas that were burnt in forest fires up around that area.
He has some very interesting, as well stunning views of that part of the country, both of the burned out forest, and some of the areas untouched by the fires taken from his drones he's had over the years.
Odiehorse1 is his channel, might be something some will find interesting, as he has some of his falling timber, he also goes to different places where they have to hike in to see whatever is there.
All of which he flies his drone around for a different perspective of where he's at, and has a look around as far as the drones can still stay under his control.
Thanks again for your efforts, and some the places where it's a tight squeeze.
Honestly makes my skin crawl, and kicks in my fear of tight places.
As I've been stuck more than once.
Even writing this makes me get freaked out to a degree, and it's been 40 plus years ago, but to this day it still has that effect on me.
At the time it wasn't that big of deal, but few years afterward it started getting as it is now.
Just seeing something likely to get tight, and I have even fast forward past it, are if it was on a TV show changed the channel to get away from it.
Yeah I know people don't understand something like that, but I have never been a small person, that's not saying I was over weight.
But big boned thick chest, shoulders, and legs makes it difficult to go some places that smaller average sized people can go easily, but can be not so for those of larger frames.
Only when you have a job to do, and you have to do it.
Sometimes it isn't the best thing to do, and others have to.
All I can say about it, but yeah it does get to be a little bit of a problem when you can't handle watching something that you know is on video or TV, but it still makes your insides twitch and you get goose bumps.
Thanks Tim. I just sub'd his channel, looks like another good one
Good friend of mine owned a cabin in Sequoia National monument - two giant Sequoias in the yard, Tule River running past - in a big drainage with the least visited grove of Sequoias anywhere. The big fire went through and burned it all out - it looks exactly as you described, like a nuke or two went off - it's heartbreaking given how beautiful it was & all the time I'd spent on the trails there. His cabin survived; its next door to the local fire-chief's - but I can't stand the devastation. And it won't regrow - too dry now & not as much snow, so the big trees aren't coming back.
Cool area you explored. I get the feeling every inch of the Western slope of the Sierras was mined in the past.
Cute that dog likes a ride and is sensiblle enough to sit in the backpack, I had one when I was a teen that ran easily 3 times the distance we walked , she needed a shoulder ride off the Snowdon horseshoe in north wales just after we hit the top...She decided shoulder rides were worth a lot after that.
That looked like a potentially still profitable mine, I wonder if the US government will ever allow any prospecting in them
that at 25.00 is a cast iron agricultural chain so they must have been using off the shelf parts to power something "home made" to do who knows what..they run large cogs and transfer wheels such as you see on potato planters and traction engines...given that it was attached to some sort of bucket it could have been a slusher or for lifting ore up a shaft
thats a lot of infrastucture for what must have been a huge amount of workings underground
The 4 years after view looks a lot like Mount St Helens or Tunguska
Another great video!
Cool stuff thanks for sharing your time
Great video! It's wild how different the mines are. Seeing the whirlpool "endlessly" draining water through the mud was sketching me out. Almost as much as the inclined adit with all the ground fall.
Always first class!!! Been watching for years and you keep getting better.
Big thanks for sharing your passion and skills
The bits and pieces tell a story of their own of what was. Beautiful! Thanks Justin and Crew.
Thanks for all the hard work! and then on top of all that mountain goatting then filming & editing…. uploading all amazing feats all connected together here there & everywhere!!!
Very much appreciate the team effort and the thorough documentation.
Really impressed with the quality of the video.
Hi Justin & crew, Wow that 1st mine was really colourful, a shame that one was just filled with as it would have made for a cool explore.
Thank you for sharing, much love. xx
Love tour videos
Great job guys.👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Lots of mining in the Sierras, most of it quite some time ago. Thanks for the video.
Awesome vid!!😮😊
Mr Nibbles sure looks different from what I remember !
I enjoyed the video 👍
Good stuff, Justin. You are right...the aftermath of major fires does look like hell on earth.
I bet the dogs are thinking "These humans sure are nice to take us out to these cool places!"
Very cool!
Nice to you in my neck of the wood we have a lot of old mines I come across a lot of them all the time when out prospecting most usually don't have good access but some do and some are flooded
Nice find, that muddy part needs too dry out completely first i guess if that ever happens, bit off a mess out there Justin, but a nice explore again thanks.
that mud tunnel is why you guys should bring things you find in the mines, out of the mines. they are going to be lost to everyone when they collapse. i do understand when you bring it out to share others will just take advantage, easy pickins.
a lot of that stuff is meaningless out of context and or will not survive outside of the environment. if its a damp mine, the objects will just fall apart as they dry out from being fully saturated for example
25:00 thought that was just a drive chain at first, but looking closer, I see eyelets to install pads as though that is for a dozer or something like that with propper tracks. although I think they would not be that tightly spaced as It seems. maybe for a paddle system like a scooper dredge
Looked like some good adventure. Heck of an operation to have full scale rail. The forest service must be using that trail as a fire road to have still be cleared.That metal chain looked like that of a conveyor belt. Wonder where that water was draining to.
Good evening from Southeast South Dakota
Great explore , curious - do you ever take samples when you find good leftovers ??? 🤔
Pretty sure Justin follows the "take only pictures, leave only footprints" motto when he does his explores. I know he's said he will not take artifacts as they belong in the mine. And he's never been interested in sampling.
They do have their own mine as well. So I doubt they are interested in finding another one.
I live in Reno. It took me a minute but I know where you are. The ground gave it away. Take care.
Greetings from Washington!!!
Love these really out of the way old mines!
When you punched a hole in the root mat and the water started draining, my first thought was ... Where is it coming out down the hill? At 27:36 it looked like a serious pin embedded in the top of a big Boulder .. maybe tram to the valley floor?
Thanks for sharing 🇨🇦
i think that pin is his flashlight next to his gloves?
Man this one had me cluster phobic
Claustrophobic is the word your going for...
Me too. Even more than the granddaddy placer one he did. White knuckle exploration, although he didn’t sound as spooked as I’d be
30:00 That mud is new mineral seeping up out of the depths of the mountain.
While its probably too fine to recover by any normal methods, its likely packed with nano-fine ['colloidal'] sized particles of gold.
What flashlights/headlamp are you using? You're getting some awesome lighting and I could use some better ones 😂
You go in some dodgy looking places.. Great video!
Hey dude. I’ve been subscribed for at least 5 years and you are mostly in areas where Poison Oak lives…
I’m fortunate because it never affects me… but just can’t be crawling in it and go home and throw your jacket on the back of a chair.
Tehachapi, Ca.
Only in the winter. We don't get it in the deserts or high in the Sierras... Fortunately, it doesn't affect me much. My poor mother practically had to be hospitalized because of it.
What are the illuminated white things flying towards you at 28:35. Bugs.But why do they leave trails. Weird.
those short cuts of rail looked about anvil sized :)
That quartz may have been an ornamental piece but then came the fire.
Reminds me of what some rocks become like when fired red hot, I think it is like a „lime-quarz“ afterwards.
Interesting area, now that the nuclear war is over can we please get that train back up and operating?
I‘d love to take a trip out on that branch!
Yep model t firewall , they probably had the whole front-end for a PowerPoint for a winch
Keep looking youl find another mine there it has a ore cart out side lots of goodies in side
12:00 I found myself tipping my head as if I could lower my point of view.
It is strange.
I finally caught myself about 12:25 but even then it was hard to not keep tipping my head, even though intellectually I know I can't change the point of view on a flat monitor.
There was a garbage job back before the industrial revolution, tunnel kickers or some such. They laid on their backs with mere inches to spare on the roof of a canal boat and propelled it through the tunnel.
You could do that.
Would the drill steel without a hole be for an air drill or for double jacking?
i wonder if they set up a sawmill to provide all that milled lumber used for the ore bin?
Concrete pillar mount for hoist 👍🏻
25:15 That is conveyor chain.
sometimes you get the Bear, others the bear gets you.
32:40 If I got that far, it would be with equipment to be sucking up all that mud to refine out the gold in it.
I don't think that's a collar, I think it's a tipped over head frame for the incline shaft.
Are you using a different camera it seems like its 2 foot tall everywhere
Heyy, im in new zealand now, and im looking for a cool mine explore but its quite hard to find, do you know any mines in the area or do you have any tips or tricks?
I'm afraid that is an area that I am entirely unfamiliar with. I'm not even sure of how to track down mines there...
💥❤
I wonder if they ran into foolsgold i read someone along time ago that if you find iron its also a teletel sigb it means fool gold
Well.....pyrite is also known as IRON pyrite so......
Sorry I would of watched earlier but I had to click on Marla .
LOL!
👍
That a coast flashlight? If so please upgrade. Streamlight, fenix , olight real flashlight open up the world.
Feel free to send them money or flashlights! Do not feel free to tell someone how they should spend THEIR money when they provide YOU with free content.
Upper Yuba County?
Mostly in Butte County with the recent activity...
Man that place needs to be mined. Are you ever able to get info to someone that is interested in filling a claim?
I love the dogs, but hate to see them unleashed in the backcountry. Here in Arizona, the last you'd see of them would be in a coyote's jaws.
Cool story. I think it's awesome that you passively aggressively share the fears that control you in hopes that the same fear infects others to in turn will control them. You must be the life of the party🎉🎉🎉🎉
Would it not be so nice to be already too wealthy to care about the gold left in there and drive a couple of trackhoes back up in there and go downtown? lol
How do you not die?
Thanks!
Thank you very much for your extraordinary generosity - especially when you're grinding through a tough time... I promise that we'll put it to good use!
@@TVRExploring it’s small compared to the content already available that I’ve watched…but…if you should happen across another lost placer mine….? It’s well spent