Lost and abandoned mines

[KFhunter]

I like to check out old mines.

[KFhunter]

Old cable system ran ore carts way way  down to the bottom, I remember when the towers were still standing, cables still in the air.

I know one guy who rode the ore cart down on a dare, said it nearly killed him they jerked the cable and got the cart to bouncing, but too much and he had to hold on for dear life, nearly killed him. He's long since gone but I remember his stories of working this mine.

[Rob]

I love old mines!

Caving is a fun side-hobby. 

I visited a slate mine in Wales last year.

[Rob]

Being this was slate, they were able to use the slate to construct entire housing complexes for the workers.  They also built stairs, buildings, roads, and shore up hillsides.

[KFhunter]

Wow!  Thanks for sharing!

[Rob]

Thanks and likewise.

That slate mine was massive.  we spent 8-10 hours in it and saw about 30-40% of it.

Love your photo of the rail line inside the cave.  The timber used to shore up the sides is cool.  looks like it was collapsed further in.

[Rob]

Stumbled across the Whitehorse mine up in your neck of the woods last month.  would love to explore that one!

[trophyhunt]

I love finding them, but scare the hell out of me when I go in a little ways, not a cool way to die!!  There is an old silver mine up by crystal mnt that I went into about 20 yards, I'm surprised they aren't sealed up?

[Rob]

Mines scare me more than natural caves as I think God is a better cave architect than humans...

I have done many caves - mostly in Puerto Rico.  I did a cave diving class in Mexico a (long) while back.  We went a good 1/2 mile into some amazing caves.   not my photos, but this is one of the caves I did and I did see these specific formations.

[KFhunter]

Stumbled across the Whitehorse mine up in your neck of the woods last month.  would love to explore that one!

There used to be a huge fir tree with a virgin mary shrine in it near there, carved right into the tree.

[Rob]

Stumbled across the Whitehorse mine up in your neck of the woods last month.  would love to explore that one!

There used to be a huge fir tree with a virgin mary shrine in it near there, carved right into the tree.

Wow, that would be cool to see.

We explored one down in NM when I was in school back in the early 90s.  had to belly crawl to get in, then drop down a manhole sized hole to the main mine. 

From there it was pretty open.  Old rail line, wooden bridges going over massive natural clefts in the rocks that dropped 100's of feet, boiler foundations, etc.  Really very cool.  Probably also really very stupid of us to have gone in!

[Rob]

We saw two openings to that Whitehorse mine.  one was a vertical pit near a log-cabin style foundation, and the other was a traditional "hole in the rock" horizontal entrance. The horizontal entrance was down the road a short distance.

[greenhead_killer]

pretty cool finds! you wont see me step foot in one though

[kellama2001]

Very cool mines! Thanks for sharing 

[Jingles]

Started to explore one on Blewett but got back couple hundred feet and air was bad. Would like  to ventilate for 48 hrs and try again