Fools Gold Follies

Yesterday, our neighbors Jon and Lori, invited us to go on a Jeep ride back to a mine in the hills east of Quartzsite. They are prospectors, and they have a group of prospector friends that occasionally go out and search for gold with them. Willa and I decided to go with them, as they were going to do something that we felt was insane, and we were compelled to witness the activities first hand.

The "insane" part was lowering miners down into an abondoned verticle mine shaft with gear that was jury rigged, in the least. Mines are inherently dangerous, including mines that follow strict safety guidelines. In the days of mining before the turn of the century, it was much more dangerous. Men built mines with little regard to the geology of the area, digging in areas that are loose gravel without using adequate shoring to hold back the inevitible slides and cave-ins. When a mine became too risky to continue mining it, or if the treasure found didn't make it worth the effort and risk to mine it, the mine was abandoned.

The area around Quartzsite is riddled with abandoned mineshafts. Almost everywhere we go around here there are verticle and horizontal shafts in the hills. Almost all the abandoned mine shafts are open and unprotected. Many of these abandoned mines are caving in on a regular basis. Still, there are prospectors that constantly take the risk of going into these mines, risking cave-ins, explosions, toxic fumes, and snake dens. So, when we heard that this group of prospectors was going to go out to a "secret" mine that had not been entered for many years, we decided to join the group and see the action ourselves.

The day started off on a dubious note, we hurried through getting ready in order to make sure we were at the meeting place a few minutes before the 9:30 agreed upon time. We were supposed to meet about 5 prospectors and then jump into 4x4's and head out to the mine. Jon had warned us that these guys were usually late or missing for these work parties. Sure enough, at 9:30 there were only two prospectors, James and Jim there with Jon, Lori, Willa, and I. We were really a bit short to have enough people to do the job at hand. Jon and James decided to wait until 10 and if noone else showed up, we would drive out to the mine and see if any of those missing would be already on their way. At 10:00, we left for the mine, with just the six of us. Since I had two empty seats, Jim and James rode with us in the Trail Limo.

The road to the mine was a well travelled bumpy dirt road most of the way, with some challenging 4x4 in a couple of spots. There was a particularly exciting off camber rock decent that tipped us up to about 35 degrees at one point. We had no problems though.


We arrived to the mine, and then set up the "elevator" at the top of the verticle shaft. Jon had an A frame that bolted to the front bumper of his Jeep. Then, he uses some click straps to hold it up at an angle. The winch cable runs through a pulley at the top of the A frame. There is a safety rope that also runs throught the top of the A frame. I hooked a strap from the back of Jon's Jeep to the back of Trail Limo to be an anchor incase of a cave in. Then a miner puts on a harness, clicks into the winch line, then ties the safety rope. Then, he swings out above the shaft and the winch lowers them down into the hole.

Jim went first. This was his first time ever being lowered into a mine, and he was extremely nervous. As he was lowered down, he was visibly shaking. I didn't have time to even take a picture before Jim was yelling "Get me out of here!" Within seconds, he was up out of the hole, and was visibly shaken. He told us that while he was going down, he reache a point where he was against some very week shoring in the shaft. He asked Jon to raise him, and when Jon did that, the harness snagged on a board. When Jim asked Jon to lower him, the board pulled out, and a huge amount of loose dirt poured into the hole around Jim. Even after Jim was up out of the hole, you could here the rock falling into the deep shaft below us.

Jim was obviously very traumatized. James was not very comforting to Jim. He mocked him for not continueing down the shaft. However, James seemed to be getting nervous himself when he was the next to go down the shaft. He went down about 20 feet, a little higher than Jim was when he reversed, and James said it was not going to be safe to continue any further into the shaft. Jon raised James up out of the shaft, and we all packed up and left for home.

On the way back home, Jim was still very shaken, and James continued to give him a hard time. At one point, Jim said he would like to get out of the Jeep, as he was getting sick. After walking for a short ways, he felt a little better, and we continued on back.

My feelings are the people who go into abandoned mines are more foolhardy than brave. They allow their greed for instant wealth to overcome good judgement. If a mine is abandoned, the odds are it will not be safe or profitable to enter the mine again and look for treasures. Obviously, others opinions differ from mine. I'll just stay poor and pass on the fool's gold.