Bringing An Abandoned Gold Mine Back To Life: Part 20 of ?

Описание: You often hear me say that exploring abandoned mines is really hard on gear. Well, guess what? Mining – gold or anything else - is really hard on gear as well… And, to be fair, a loader or an excavator is more expensive than any camera that I have ended up destroying underground. Combine the inevitable abuse that mining heaps on equipment with a slow day when we were on hold while waiting for multiple deliveries and you get us taking on the distinctive boulder in front of the mine.

I’ll show you more on the slusher in upcoming videos as all of us have ended up preferring it to the mucker, but, rest assured, it is not without its downsides and problems as well. The biggest problem we have had is that ice builds up inside of the slusher through frequent use and slowly bogs it down until it becomes unusable. Then, there is a long wait for the slusher to thaw out (thawing out underground is a slow process). Of course, it also needs to be fed lots of vegetable oil every day. Given that the compressed air the mining equipment runs off of aerosolizes the oil in our rock drill, slusher, etc., we use vegetable oil for lubrication rather than petroleum-based oil.

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You can see the full TVR Exploring playlist of abandoned mines here: https://goo.gl/TEKq9L

You can see the gear that I use for mine exploring here: https://bit.ly/2wqcBDD and here: https://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!

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