Hi everyone,

I think I already mentioned that I semi-recently moved to Southeastern California (Twentynine Palms to be exact) and have since been enjoying the plentiful off-roading and abandoned mine exploring. Pretty much every weekend I have to opportunity to go out and climb or explore so I thought I’d most up a mishmash of pictures and video from my trips. Some of it is all over the board but much of it pertains to ropework.

To begin I’d first like to say that none of the mines pictured are in Joshua Tree proper, and are thus not protected by the park service. The park has taken great steps in closing off mines in their jurisdiction. Rather the areas pictured are considered in the Old Dale Mining District (BLM land). While I am aware that I am naming locations per se, they really aren't accessible to the average Joe anyways and I am not going to post intricate maps or anything.

When I first got out here I stuck primarily with off-roading and surface exploration with the rig and occasionally some other friends who wanted to “rough it” for a day or two.

18Jan2014
1. On the trail up to Carlysle Mine. Climbed about 1kft to get up to it.


2. Spent a bit of time looking for shafts. Here is a picture of an exploratory adit, looking out.


3. Coming down from a nature call to fine a fellow Jeeper who was wondering where he was wandering. Thankfully a NatGeo map comes in handy. Despite the desolate looking landscape out here, the area is always packed on the weekends with 4x4 vehicles, dirtbikes, and shooters.


20Jan2014
4. Went out again to try and drive to some less traveled mines. Unfortunately we had to turn around and un-stuck some people, hence the tools being unloaded. With all the rappelling and camping gear, plus all the water and extra gas, space is at a premium in the Jeep.


5. Ended up finding an unnamed exploratory adit driven about 100ft into the side of a small mountain down in the valley. Seemed to be used more for campfires and drinking than it ever saw of mining.



01Feb2014
Finally found a mine that actually had vertical character. We entered through a adit and ventured down a remarkably well repaired shaft to one of the lower levels. Definitely marked this one down for further exploration via rope.

6. Coming up with a good plan... "good" always being somewhat relative.


7. The shaft and floorboards. Some of the mines have nice metal grating over manways and ladders, others are just open holes in the ground you have to wall-hug to get around.


8. Climbing back up


10Feb2014
Today was a busy day. I was planning to meet some friends down in the valley a bit after noon, but reluctant to waste a perfectly good morning I decided to head up to Lorman to do a quick survey rappel. Other than practice rappels in shallow shafts in the previous weeks this was my first mine rappel. Needless to say I learned a great deal.

Firstly, a little video survey was conducted of the surface:

9. An up-hill building. Not sure of its use. Perhaps it was for the hoist?


10. The quickly deteriorating collar. I would soon find out how little force it takes to dislodge rocks from the collar area.


11. A relatively downhill building. I'd like to believe it was the mill.


12. Finding my footing over the lip with the iconic death grip. FYI although not the best anchor, at least I chocked the wheels


13. A quick glance back up to the top. Had a fair share of rocks from the collar meet me half way down the shaft. Good to have a helmet. Also considered dropping in over the opposite wall instead of the ground portion of the collar to avoid more debris.


14. The rest of 200ft of rope lying at the bottom of the shaft. I believe Therrin posted a video (https://www.youtub...atch?v=NXPFeUo03X0) of the same shaft in 2012 and recorded its depth at close to 300ft. Even the collar profile has changed significantly in just two years. Amazing how fast the depth will change in such a short amount of time.


A video of the SLOOOOOOOW rappel down the Lorman shaft



After putting a check in thrill box for the day, I ascended and drove back down into the valley to meet my other fellow explorers. I found them talking to a group of people conducting a target shoot. Apparently There was a walk-in entrance to Supply Mine that I had missed on an earlier scouting trip so we decided to check it out.



15. Upon entering the mine I realized that some people misconstrue "primary light source" as party glow sticks. I couldn't make this shit up. Luckily I had enough headlamps to make up in part for the deficiency and we continued on.



16. Crossing the shaft. This area was also super deteriorated



17. Somewhere abouts in the original adit.


09Mar2014
Paid another visit to Supply and Lorman Mines.

18. Ended up just camping at Lorman because it was out of the way and mostly out of earshot of gunfire.


19. Got a good shot of the side of the mountain that Lorman sits on while following an overlook trail opposite the site.


20. A strange artifact left at one of the building foundations. I have no idea what it is or why it wasn't taken by the miners upon leaving or by the scrappers who seem to rove the wilderness.


On the way back to Supply I found a rather tempting shaft and decided to hop down. There wasn't much in the way of waste rock or tailings so I didn't hope for it to really go anywhere. The opening was immediately inaccessible unless you had rope, but just within view from the edge was a rickety looking ladder. Didn't even bother using it for fear of disturbing the landing that was holding some rockfall. Also got to try out my new PMI velcro rope protectors.


21. A picture of the shorings after walking through a bit of the mine. The drift I had rappelled to lead to a massive stope that came in part to a gloryhole. Not sure exactly how far I had walked underground but I think the gloryhole my be one of the openings on the main side of Supply Mine.



Another video of me walking around, pardon the video editing.




And finally, ascending out of the same shaft.



22. The road junction between Supply and Lorman mostly facing the direction of the shaft I had just explored being off to the left.


That's about all for now (plus, I'm about to kicked out of the library yet again for exceeding closing time). If you can identify any of the artifacts or buildings please let me know, as they interest me a lot. And I promise, I'll work on the video editing.

15 Mar 2014

Well, I know there doesn't seem to be too much activity here but since I have nothing better to do I will post updates! I also finally got internets in my humble abode so no more library bandwidth sharing and I can actually upload videos. After a bit more research and talking to some local offroaders out in the desert there seemed to be a popular offroad trail that ran partly through BLM and Joshua Tree NP land we thought we'd give a shot. After a bit of getting lost and some old fashioned boots-on-the-ground wandering about I spotted the headframe of Mission Mine down near the edge of the valley. It took a bit of hard trail riding to get over the ridgeline and down into the valley itself but we finally made it to the mine.

Here is a short video waiting for some stragglers on the north side of the ridge just before we did a bit of hiking.


The headframe seems to be the most modern in the area that is not actively in use, though word on the street is that the site will be reopening in the near future as an open-pit style mining operation. Dates found on the structure indication construction during the 80s

1. A quick site overview from the trail leading down to the site


2. Time to cook and nom down on some noodles and Mountain House


3. I continue to give "selfies" a try... still not sure I get it.


4. The headframe was just too much excitement, I stayed up there for a solid 15 minutes just chilling and sinning the freaking wheel at the top.


5. Buddies checking out the processing area. Interesting side note, it seems like some of the equipment was modular via a series of big-rig style trailer axles and bases depending on what exactly they were doing with the materials.


6. Skooting around the collar. Despite a medium sized concrete collar and the more modern digging methods, the outside edges of the collar are ant-hilling leaving a hanging collar courtesy of the headframe structure. More pictures of this later.


7. Found a friend on the ground and invited him to join us on the expedition. He eventually decided to return to what we presume was his hangout in a series of pipes.


Just before reaching the mine approach we ran into another group of desert travelers (also with a Jeep) and they advised us about a manway nearby the main excavation shaft that was laddered. I won't name the cardinal direction for the fourm's sake but it still took us a hot second to actually locate. In our local wanderings I shot a video of the headframe with my beloved spinny wheel in action.



We finally located the manway which was also surprisingly modern and descended down the ladders to the first 150ft level. Most of my companions for this trip had little inclination to continue the climb so I descended to the rest of the levels solo. A word of caution: despite the good state of the ladders the climb is extremely long and the drifts below the 150ft level have very unstable overheads. The air will cake your lungs without a mask and the soot will turn you black due to a past burn out.

8. A soot "tan line" from my glove


9. Sweat and constant wiping kept my face relatively clean after the 30min climb from the bottom (600ft?) back to the surface.


Having spent the previous day camping out in the desert and subsequently using all the daylight in our quest to locate Mission, we decided to turn tail back the way we had come. Having scouted the shaft and mind mapping the levels from the manway I made a plan to return for an epic shaft rappel.

A short video of the rugged trail coming out of the minesite. 4wd pretty much required and above stock clearance or a good ground guide to avoid trashing your oil pan.

26 April 2014

As I mentioned, I really wanted to hit the Mission shaft. Supply is always a good visit though so this weekend we decided to head out a bit early and do both. I also just bought a new headlamp, a BD Icon, that I wanted to give a go with the Contour camera. Today we were just planning on doing a pretty casual walk-through of Supply. I forwent my helmet to spare my buddy the unpleasant experience to knocking his head on every damn beam and overhead during the crawls since, having hit my head enough before, I was diligent to avoid.

Supply is always a treat to visit with it's wide array of features and ever changing landscape of explorer artifacts. The first encounter is almost always the massively deteriorated shaft you have to cross. Today, however, this also included my first up close encounter with a black widow spider. I felt like Sam and Frodo in Sheilas Lair or whatever



As usual, we made a push for depth and decided to explore the nooks and crannies on the way out. The main descent down the ladders pretty much all made it in one file.


Some notable video screenshots of the adventure:

1. Crossing Sheila's Lair, looking down the shaft. This originally should have only been a few feet wide (like it is at the bottom). The fact that the shaft has taken so much infill and still is not filled in is a testament to its original depth.


2. Heading down a super sketchy ladder


3. Decided to put the hand line to good use since I went through the trouble of bringing it


6. Now to actually use it


7. I suppose from this angle the ladders don't look too crazy but it was reassuring to have the line just in case.


8. Sitting overtop of one of the winzes and looking at the beams makes me wonder how much of this interior structure was built by miners or explorers. Couldn't decide which prospect disturbed me the most.



9. Ended up assessing the condition of the next ladder and decided not to continue but rather explore all the cool stuff that was currently on levels above our current position.



10. Climbing back up a winze.



11. Busting out the free climbing moves to reach a small tunnel that was caved in.

This one also comes complete with its own kick-ass video!



12. Climbing back through some debris to see where all the rock came from if the roof is otherwise shored up.


13. Found an awesome stope. It was so filled in with tiny debris we even got to do a bit of skiing back down to the manway at the bottom.

Epic rock surfing video:



After a solid two hours or so we unassed the way we had come in and pleasantly found the Jeep infested with bees so we hauled butt over to Mission.

Set up an anchor using the headframe and was able to drop rope right through the access grate straight down the shaft. First time using the 300ft rope so it was a bit difficult to judge whether or not it was bottomed, snagged, or free hanging but from the previous visit I was quite certain the length would be well short of the bottom. While mating the other length of 200ft would have been a cinch, I really wasn't sure I was in for a crazy long ascend without a better ascension system.

1. A quick picture of the base of the headframe from the last trip. The excavation shaft is directly below the tower.


Video of the main rappel. And of course such an awesome rappel deserves awesome music courtesy Rammstein and the novel idea of using a phone to play it through the speaker.



2. Yeah, this still seems like a good idea.


3. Ok, definitely reminiscent of something I would intrinsically call the "Pit of Doom" or something to that effect. And yes, I naturally do brake with my right hand for some odd reason, be it rappelling or belaying.


4. A quick surface check.


5. annnnd we're finally at the bottom. A slight bend in the shaft at just below 150ft resulted the the surface light suddenly vanishing. The 300ft rope ended just a few feet shy of the next level. I initially wanted to try and swing over and take myself off the rope but remembering that even static ropes stretch and having so little left I decided that would have been a comically awful idea.


6. After an ascend that consisted of about 45 minutes not counting breaks, I was entirely grateful to be back at the surface.


7. A quick picture back down the shaft. My greatest fear is losing my phone or keys while on rope. Luckly since I had a buddy on the surface, I was able to leave the keys with him.


8. And finally after dragging myself over the edge I reminisce on the adventure before packing up and calling it a job well done.