Mr. Charlie

Some lovely pics in this thread.

I live in a pretty area so don't need to go far. I walk the dogs here almost every day:


Around 3 miles from my house is this ridge which I've scrambed a few times, never fails to scare the hell out of me, the video doesn't really capture the sense of exposure you feel up there (skip to around 31 mins for the best bit):

Frownland

Wow that's amazing, super jealous. I plan on living in a mountainous region in the future.

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EPOCH6

Beautiful area, that video nearly gave me vertigo, crazy.

Tomorrow morning I'm planning on heading about 45 minutes out of town to explore Carolin Gold Mine, a massive series of mine shafts that went out of service in 1984. Looks absolutely terrifying.

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Mr. Charlie

Mines are wicked. But they do scare me. Tight spaces freak me out.

DwnWthVwls

Finally took some pictures from research last week.. Measuring sediment and water flow in and out of campus lake, Lake Fred.

Stockton University - NJ Pine Barrens territory.

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...

Ashwell John

I have gone through many of the gorgeous places to visit. But out of them the natural beauty of Cox's Bazar surprised me a lot. Last month I had that experience. Had gone there with all of my family members. Really amazing!

EPOCH6

Ended up spending two mornings in a row exploring the abandoned gold mine, about 5 hours total inside the mountain.

Incredible.

I had a hard time convincing the crew to join me on this one, there was a high possibility that we'd be driving 45 minutes out of town only to find a locked gate and security patrol, but my buddy Dawson was eager to come along anyway. We leave early Saturday morning, 7:30 AM. The Coquihalla is one of the most beautiful highways in the world, as well as one of the most dangerous, fortunately for us the highway was nearly deserted that morning. 45 minutes later, 77 kilometers into the mountains, we arrive at our exit which doubles back and swings underneath the highway, spitting us out at the entrance to an unmarked dirt road winding up the mountain side. The road conditions were quite poor, no possibility for anything less than a 4x4 or RWD truck making it up, Hershel took it quite well but I did bump one of my rear tailpipes on a rock, once again knocking it loose from the muffler, but it's an easy fix.

6 kilometers of deer sightings, cliffside driving, waterfalls, and pot holes later we finally come to the fork in the road, going right based on what I believe I saw in some guys YouTube video from 2011. Sure enough the road winds down into a small valley and from behind the tree line emerges a city block long rusty conveyor belt, leading out from hole in the mountain up to a sickly green hut perched atop a massive rusty gravel silo. The tension starts building in my gut in anticipation of a work force ready to tell us to turn around and go home.

It's completely abandoned, not a soul in sight.



We pull up to the base of the silo, a large metal building, the jagged walls ripped apart by years of shotgun blasts and collapsing machinery. Bright orange spray paint invites us in at each entrance, "DANGER KEEP OUT / NO TRESPASSING". Inside the walls are all long collapsed, each room held up only by bare steel. The ground is littered with rusty fasteners, bolts, nails, ore samples, and beer cans. All of the copper has been ripped from every breaker box, the walls have been tagged many times over, and nothing seems to be where it originally belonged.





We follow a conveyor upstairs into a series of pitch black hallways, lit only by our headlamps and the occasional ray of sunlight peaking through a bullet hole. It's silent for the most part, both of us seem to have our ears perked up listening for the distant hum of an approaching dirtbike or pickup. Every foot step on the rusty steel floor sends a metallic echo throughout the building, every once in a while a crow flies out of a corner and scares us ****less. A bridge leads across to another building and we follow the stairwell back down to the exit.

Following the conveyor in the sky we find ourselves at the entrance to the lowest level of the mine, almost completely buried in rubble, permanently flooded and inaccessible. The walls are lined with scaffolding hanging from chains anchored in the solid rock above, a dead bird floats by in the polluted colorful cave water.



We follow a dirt road up the side of the mountain to the level two entrance and are immediately startled by a massive plume of ice cold air rushing out of the mine shaft.



We climb over the rubble surrounding the entrance and start following the tracks into the mountain. By the time you're barely 30 ft into the shaft you can already see your breath in the air. It's pitch black, even with the entrance of the mine still in sight the light only makes it about 50 ft in. The air is moist and chilling, water flows down through holes in the ceiling and pipes sticking out of the walls, the ground is muddy and soft but the mine cart tracks offer a dry walkway. We find a pipe with a valve that still works, shooting pressurized water across the mine shaft. The tracks fork left and right occasionally, leading you into rooms full of rusty mining equipment, machinery, and tool shelves. Every once in a while you come across a long ladder leading up through a tunnel in the ceiling or down into the ground, risers that take you to the upper and lower levels from inside. The ladders are wooden and long rotted, clearly not worth the risk of climbing.





After about half an hour of walking we eventually reach a dead end, turning around to hike up to level 3 outside. The entrance is much larger and the ice wind even more intense. Some years ago the company that currently owns the property hauled a few concrete blocks up there to keep the Jeeps and Hummers out, people seem to have successfully winched one out of the way, leaving enough room for dirtbikes and ATVs to squeeze by. This mine shaft is a lot larger than the level below, there are many videos on YouTube of people driving full sized 4x4 vehicles inside of the mine.



We head inside, exploring each fork to the left and right, we find what seems almost like a break room, a fridge has been knocked over onto the ground, it's filled with brazing rods for welding and somebody has written on the freezer door in permanent marker "DON'T PUT BRAZING RODS IN THE FRIDGE". Dawson gets a chuckle out of this as he recalls a similar story from when he was working in the labor camps up North earlier this year. We remember that we're a kilometer inside of a pitch black abandoned mine shaft 6 kilometers off the highway and the laughter fades, we continue on...





Eventually we reach a blown out section, the shaft is blocked by a section of large boulders stacked halfway to the ceiling. It's unclear whether they were put there or if they fell from the ceiling. I climb up one of the boulders and can barely make out a wooden wall at the end of the rubble and a small passageway along the wall. I tell Dawson to wait and that I'll let him know if it's a dead end. I climb over the rubble to the wall and work my way through the passageway, the shaft opens up again into a full sized tunnel, I yell back to Dawson letting him know the coast is clear. This section of the mine is much scarier, some of the forks lead to tunnels which have very clearly collapsed in on themselves. We eventually end up in a room with a big wooden shelf and a wooden wall with a short ladder leading up to a body sized opening.

I climb up the wall and into the opening, following a tunnel barely large enough to crouch through. The tunnel opens up and comes to a ledge, I look up, left, right, and down, pure darkness far beyond the limits of my headlamp. My stomach flips and I immediately get vertigo. I'm speechless, Dawson calls out to me asking if it's a dead end, I stutter and tell him to get up here quick. He crawls up and shines his more focused flashlight beam around the cavern. It's literally hundreds of feet wide and hundreds of feet tall, like a small airplane hanger underground. I throw a rock over the ledge, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 seconds before it hits the ground and echoes up loudly filling the cavern with sound. It's far too dark to take pictures in here, unfortunately I have none, even with our flashlights the walls are far too distant to be picked up by a ****ty cellphone lens. We just kind of stand there silently for a couple of minutes, listening to the distant trickle of water at the bottom of the pit.

We eventually muster up the words to agree on moving on, both of us now utterly terrified, shaking, overwhelmed with awe. We climb back through the hole in the wall and work our way backwards through the tunnels to the last fork in the shaft, this time heading the other way. More forks in the shaft, each one leading to another massive hanger sized cavern, painted signs at each tunnel entrance warning "DANGER KEEP OUT", we came across 5 more before reaching a dead end forcing us to turn around, one of them was sloped gradually enough that I managed to climb down, discovering a graveyard of beer cans that must have been tossed down from above.

Sufficiently spooked and rapidly approaching the limits of our balls, we decide that we had seen enough for the day and start heading back to the entrance. We were inside this level for at least an hour, on the way back we discovered a shaft branching off and spiraling downward that I'll have to explore next time.

The drive back to the Homeland was quiet, the mines had rendered us damn near speechless. It was so much more than I expected and possibly the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life.

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Mr. Charlie

^ Cool pics. Cooler story.

Ashwell John

Last week I made a visit on Sundarbans. Amazing and historical place in Bangladesh. Really enjoyable.

Mr. Charlie

Same place I posted previously, but from ground level under a brooding sky. Nice old castle in the right in both images.