VERTICAL MINE SHAFT EXPLORATION: RANDSBURG, CA

We made our home in an old abandoned mining camp that straddles the Kern-San Bernardino County line.

Randsburg, Johannesburg and Red Mountain are three small living ghost towns along Highway 395 between Ridgecrest and Boron, CA. They are the mining district towns of the Rand area, the gold and silver mining belt named after the Witwatersrand of South Africa. Atolia, which was the source of large amounts of tungsten ore during the two world wars and the Korean War, is located less than 4 miles southeast from here. As you can see from the red dots, this particular area of California is full of mines.

I met up with my crew of fellow mine explorers who had already set up camp next to an old abandoned building that was most likely used as a machine shop back when the mines in the area were still in operation.

Our first mine of the day just happened to be next to where we had set up our camp for the weekend. The collar of the 150-foot vertical shaft can be seen here in between our vehicles.

It was a long drop down to the bottom.

The ladders that used to reach all the way to the top of the shaft had been removed or destroyed at some point within the last few years, so it was a rather perilous journey down to the first landing. The three of us made our way to the bottom of the shaft one at a time in order to avoid getting hit with falling dirt or rocks as we made our descent.

We dropped a tape measure down the shaft, even though we already had a pretty good idea of its roughly 150 foot depth after watching a video of other explorers making the same descent back in 2012.

Looking up from the second platform.

We came across this memorial in a small exploratory drift 58 feet down from the collar. The inscription read: “R.I.P. Tony Friel 1967-2012. Mine Explorer, Stagehand, Father, Rider. Alcohol and cars don’t mix.” RIP Tony.

The tape measure ran out after 66 feet, we still had another 84 feet or so to go before we reached the bottom.

There were no ladders towards the bottom of the shaft, so we had to use the rope to rappel down the remaining 10-15 feet. The bottom was full of miscellaneous debris that had been thrown into the shaft over the years, so we had to make sure we touched down lightly in order to avoid injuring ourselves in the tangled mess.

Time to explore.

An inclined shaft met up with the one we were exploring…

…but we weren’t about to risk climbing up or down the heavily damaged ladder. We may be crazy but we’re not stupid.

Looking down the very unstable ladder of the inclined shaft.

The Hercules Powder Company was one of the several small explosives companies acquired by the Du Pont Company in the 1880s. By the beginning of the 20th century, Du Pont had absorbed so many of its competitors that it was producing two-thirds of the dynamite and gunpowder sold in the United States. In 1912, a federal court, citing the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, ordered Du Pont broken up. It was through this court-ordered action that the Hercules Powder Company was reborn, a manufacturer of explosives ostensibly separate from Du Pont.

Here kitty, kitty. A blue box of Purina Cat Chow was just one of the strange items we found 150 feet below the surface. Meow!

Tunnel Love

Cash Money

After exploring the shaft we made our way back up into the light in order to explore more of the mines in the area and take in the incredible scenery that surrounded us. Stay tuned to strayngerranger.com for more stories of our adventures in the area including the incredible ruins from the ghost mining camp we stayed at and our four hour exploration of a nearby inclined shaft that dates back to 1938. – Photo credit Xavier Drenfold