[Rockhounds] Abandoned mine exploration

[Paul van den Bergen]

I am perhaps my own worst enemy when it comes to 'stupid things' like old
mines and natural hazzards.

I have to remind myself that I'm not the only one at risk - inevitably
someone will insist on putting themselves at risk to attempt to recover my
body - my wishes in that regard are moot since i'll be dead, but  that's
not what I want...

so...

always let someone know where you are going.

The rule of three is very sensible - two friends were on a hike when one of
them crushed his ankle - his friend had to abandon him for a 30km jog back
to a phone then helicopter trip back to the slope where he was left alone
waiting...


On Tue, 9 Mar 2021 at 10:01, J. R. Hodel <jr50wv at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I watched a couple more of his videos, it's pretty interesting to an old
> rock-hound. My late rock-hounding buddy Danny Kebles would have loved it,
> would have wanted to do it so bad!
> But the second video I watched he was solo, in a mine by himself, going
> across 50-90 year old wooden floors around ore chutes, etc. So very
> dangerous, if you hurt yourself, you're probably dead before they find you.
> Because no one appears to know in advance where he's going underground.
> First thing they teach cavers is "never go underground alone!"
>
> The people I went caving with had a 3-person team rule, that way an
> injured person would have someone with them while the third person went for
> help. Maybe the tradition with abandoned mines is "you're on your own?"
>
> Otherwise he seems like a guy who enjoys going into abandoned mines more
> than he's a mineral collector. A collector would have a rock pick with (and
> probably other rock-hounding tools like chisels etc), and containers for
> any specimens they wanted to bring out, as opposed to his hip pocket.
>
> The one time Danny and I went out west to spend 3 weeks rock-hounding in
> Colorado and Wyoming, we found our way to an abandoned mine, about half-way
> up a mountain side north of Bonanza CO, with a talus slope to climb up to
> get to the adit. There was an old cable hanging that they had used to
> man-trip up and down, and for ore.
> But once we were up there and knew there was a mine, we had no lights, and
> no helmets. So we dug through the tailings around the mine face, I still
> have a couple of nice rocks from there. Finally I looked up from the rocks
> at the sky, which was suddenly dark gray billowing clouds, soon in late May
> it started snowing hard before we got off the mountain. "Uh, Danny, maybe
> we need to get down off this mountain now?"
>
> My little Ford Ranger had a lot of tools and supplies under the topper, so
> we had pretty good traction, and made it to our friend's mountain cabin
> where we were staying between rock-hounding trips. Built a fire in the
> stove late in the evening. Stopped in Salida for dinner on the way home. I
> will always wonder what if we had lights and helmets, what would it have
> been like in the mine? What kind of rocks would we have found? What would
> the weather have been like when we got back out?
> I miss Danny, he was struck with Pick's Disease, which is a hereditary
> dementia, and died relative young in a VA nursing home. I don't go out
> collecting much any more, partly because I'm 70 now... & partly because
> Danny isn't here to poke me awake. Also Covid, of course.
> You all take care, best of luck with finding great rocks!
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-- 
Dr Paul van den Bergen