Man Descends into mine shaft. Photo Dustin Gil
Above me my friend yells down, calling for me to grab the rope and pull myself up to the ledge he rests on, below me a seemingly bottomless void waits patiently for one misstep on my behalf, eager to claim my life for the mountain I’m currently two miles underneath. Nothing but my hand’s grip of the rope, holds me in place. No harnesses, no respirators, just a hardware store rope and a flashlight held between my teeth assist me in the juvenile days of my abandoned mine exploring career.
Man stands at the bottom of a mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
There’s really nothing safe about it; you’re miles into a tunnel below the earth’s surface, constructed over a hundred years ago that’s been decaying away since its abandonment. There’s cave in’s, pit falls, toxic gasses, bats, undetonated dynamite, and the occasional wildlife lost along with you in the pitch-black labyrinth of tunnels.
Every year people are injured or killed in and around abandoned mines. Based on the Abandoned Mine Incident Log, the majority of accidents are the result of one being unaware of a mines presence, or going in unprepared. To mitigate one’s odds of tragedy, knowledge of mine safety, and compliance with local jurisdiction’s rules regarding said mine is imperative. The internet is full of resources to facilitate the understanding of what to watch out for in an abandoned mine, with groups like undergroundexplorers.com putting out content on mine safety. There is an entire community of people who are passionate about exploring the underground, documenting the mining industry’s history, and further archiving our country’s past. Similarly to cave exploring, with every death or accident, the community is negatively affected with city officials sealing off more and more mines in response, further tightening the already difficult mean’s in which this niche community operates.
Decaying support beams in mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
Now 25 years old, studying journalism and doing photography professionally, I look back on the adventures of my youth that most likely set in motion the interests and passions that have led me to my current academic pursuit. I don’t know how one gets into an activity like this. I couldn’t tell you how the teenage me did, but if I had to guess I would attribute it to the lingering childhood wonder of what’s beyond that persisted into my young adult years. I had always been one of those kids that spent their time exploring canyons, climbing trees, and descending down into the local drainage system to see where it went. As I got older the missions and the means to execute them just became more complex and convoluted.
Men descend into mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
Google Earth satellites, public records, historic mine claim documents, repelling gear, head lights, respirators, and carbon monoxide monitors, all slowly became staples in the grown up and extreme equivalent to exploring my childhood backyard.
Man peers into drop off in a mercury mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
The act of abandoned mine exploration is fairly straightforward. Put simply, one tracks down the location of a past mining operation and descends into it. Being in California, the destination for many in the 1800s gold rush, these locations are of fair excess. The use of public records, historic documents, google earth satellites, and random history buff blog posts, assist in the facilitation of pinning down the potential location of a mine portal.
Support beams in abandoned mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
It was back when I was 18 and living down in southern California. I had a year and some change of mine exploration under my belt. Having traversed mercury, arsenic, and gold mines, I was a fairly competent explorer, but at the same time still very green. I got a call from my adventure buddy out of the blue one Friday morning as I regularly did those days. He quickly informed me of the site of a potential mine just an hour or so outside of his college town. The mine in question was the abandoned Big Horn Mine Operation.
Located in the San Gabriel Mountain Range, the Big Horn Mine was staked in 1891 by Charles Vincent according to Westernmininghistory.com. Allegedly Vincent was hunting bighorn sheep at the time of discovery, inspiring the name of the mining claim. The operation proved to produce gold for many years following its creation. The mine was sold and resold many times through the years with interest eventually tapering off resulting in its abandonment. According to Thehikersway.com the property was eventually transferred from its last owners, the Wilderness Land Trust, to the United States Forest Service.
Sunday morning rolled around, I linked up with my buddy and his friends then we took off in his truck toward the mountains. The first hurdle we faced was the supposed road closures that followed a series of bad storms that had hit the mountain range the weeks prior. Being young and hard headed, we made an effort to circumvent these closures by opting to traverse the service roads that ran separate to the paved roads working their way up the mountain.
We tracked down an internet map of the service roads in the area and bumbled our way to the proper route. As we ascended the mountain the road got narrower and narrower. Based on my memory of the event, there was a point where the rocky trail was just barely wider than my friend’s truck with a cliff face to our left and a drop hundreds of feet down to our right. With the seeming death drop looming below us, someone in the group proposed we unbuckle our seatbelts, as our odds of survival seemed to be higher jumping from the car as opposed to being strapped in and committed to the certain death that waited for us at the valley floor below, in the event we lost traction and began the plummet. A second look down the cliff bought our support of this plan and we obliged, unbuckling our seat belts.
After 45 minutes of white knuckling, we arrived at the trailhead of the Big Horn Mine. Confused by the prevalence of other cars, we quickly discovered the information of road closures we had gotten was false and there was in fact a normal road up the mountain. Baffled by the unnecessary offroading and content to be out of the car, we began up the trail. I remember it was winter when we embarked on this trip with the air still cold, and I could feel the burn as it filled my lungs. The path wound steadily through the mountainside at a slight incline as we worked our way toward our destination.
Mine structure. Photo by Dustin Gil
Not so far down the trail we rounded a bin and saw the steel skeleton remains of the once operational mine sitting vacant on the distant cliffside. Rejuvenated by sight of the finish line, we picked up our pace and made our way toward the building.
Mine structure. Photo by Dustin Gil
Upon arrival the dilapidated structure stood roughly two stories tall; a steel frame with decayed wood beams intermixed in its ruins. A set of steel tracks, presumably used to cart ore out of the mine in its hay day, lead us to the mine’s portal. Clicking our headlights on we made our way into the void, preparing our descent into its darkness.
Men traverse flooded mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
The first thing I remember noticing is the massive amount of water running through the tunnel. Our headlights skipped along the stream’s surface that occupied the majority of the mine’s floor as we made our way deeper into the bowels of the mountain. Doing our best to remain relatively dry, we stepped on wood beams and rocks sticking out of the stream’s surface as we passed decaying machinery, ragged shards of steel, and piles of discarded rail tracks that littered the tunnel.
Man passes abandoned machinery. Photo by Dustin Gil
As minutes turned to hours, the mine’s novelty all but faded on us, still eager to see what resides further and further in the mine. Its trains of thought like this that remind me how easy it would be for one to wind themselves into circles getting lost completely in the crumbling maze of tunnels.
Wood supports in a mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
Around the two and a half hour mark, and substantially into the depths of the mine, we passed an opening that dropped several stories deeper into the mountain. Lacking the proper repelling gear on this specific trip, we made a mental note, and verbally began the preliminary stages of planning for a second trip back out in the future.
Man investigates opening in mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
Still aware of the drive down the mountain that was waiting for us, and knowing our hours of daylight outside the mine were dwindling, we decided to begin our way back towards the surface, content we had explored the majority of what was accessible with the gear we had brought.
Men explore a mine shaft. Photo by Dustin Gil
In what seemed like an instant we were back in fresh air, sitting amongst the mine’s ruins that populated the mountain side. We took a second, and sat to absorb the setting sun and appreciate what we had just experienced. With a feeling of fulfillment we descended the trail towards our car.
Man sits on the ruins of a mine. Photo by Dustin Gil
My time in the Big Horn Mine is just a fraction of the time I’ve spent in pursuit of exploring the unknown to me that resides underground. This desire has driven me all over the west coast, down to the middle of nowhere between the United States-Mexico border hunting for abandoned gold mine camps, and up random mountain roads in the central coast searching for forgotten mineshafts.
They’re really not meant to be traversed anymore. This activity isn’t for the faint of heart or the reckless minded, and I’m lucky enough to say I made it through my trial and error years. Without a doubt there’s a right and wrong way to go about this kind of hobby. If I can leave a lasting impression on those who read this, it would be to take care when entering a tunnel built over 100 years ago. Wear proper safety equipment, take preventative measures to mitigate the odds of tragedy before you descend, and if possible learn directly from someone who’s gone before you and has the experience and knowledge to guide you through.
Steel hangs from the ceiling in a mine. Photo by Dustin Gil