Exploring mines is inherently dangerous.  We do not encourage you to explore abandoned mines.  Stay out, stay alive.

Today, my friend Kevin and I went mine exploring in the West Desert of Utah.  This massive patch of rugged mountains, salt flats, and desolate landscapes is home to hundreds of abandoned mines.  Kevin and his wife explored in this area before and had a great time and thought that I would too – and I did!

It has been quite a long time since I was underground exploring mines.  I really missed it.  Kevin and I drove about two hours west of Salt Lake City to a remote mountain where he knew there would be dozens of mines for us to explore.  It was a beautiful day to be outside or, um, underground and I couldn’t wait for what we would find.

The road leading up to the mine was definitely old and overgrown, even though the vegetation grows short in the desert here.  We drove up to as far as we could and parked for the day.

Right from the start we saw hints of past mining activity.  There were the usual piles of rusted cans, broken structures, random pipes, and pieces of metal all over.  It’s not clear what the structures were, but I imagined they had something to do with a mechanic shop, assay house, or mine office of some kind.

It was incredibly peaceful at this place.  Kevin and I both stopped many times to enjoy the views of the basins and ranges.  We saw a trail that was built up with rocks and we just followed that until we came around the hillside to a canyon.  We saw a bunch of mines from the trail along the way though.  Some of these seemed impossible to get to, but we were surprised at how easy these mountains were to traverse. They are steep though!

Right when we were talking about how peaceful this place was, we see a group of 7 Jeeps drive up the road!  They stayed for about 10 minutes and then went straight back down.  It didn’t seem like they were mine exploring today.

This canyon is beautiful, unique, odd, strange, and weird – we loved it!  Some people may think, “there isn’t anything out here.”  But I would counter with, “there is peace out here.”  It was so peaceful at times that it was hard to ignore.  We stopped and enjoyed it as much as we could.

After about 1/3 mile of hiking we got to a spot where we were in front of two mine openings.  We decided to go with the south mine first and went inside.

The mine had some slight twists and bends, but was overall fairly straight.  It had a few points where the tunnels would split, but they would end fast.  We also saw lots of small bats in this mine.  They seemed to be tucked in their bat beds for the day, and so we carefully walked by them trying not to wake them.

The tunnel eventually turned right and I was very surprised to find light! 

This mine had two entrances.  We went outside and found that we were looking down at our car!  That was really cool to see!  This mine probably had 350-400 ft. of workings in it.  After exploring outside this entrance for a bit, we went back inside to get back to the canyon we originally hiked up.

Once back at the original entrance, we went across the dry wash to the other mine.

This one went in probably about 200 ft. or so, but had a really neat entrance.

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We then went right above this mine to two more mines! Both of theses were pretty small, but one had a ladder in it.  The ladder was old and falling apart, but luckily, we really didn’t need to use it to get to the second level.

The second level was very small and probably had about 25-30 ft. of workings.

After resting for a minute, we continued our trek to the mines over yonder.  When we got close to it, Kevin saw a bunch of bones at the entrance.  This mine looked small, and we didn’t want to mess around with a potential mountain lion’s den, so we just went to the next mine.

The next mine was down the ridge and only went in about 25 ft.

We then slid down the tailings to get to the last mine we explored in this area. This one was probably our favorite because it had a neat entrance, a great view, and exciting tunnels.

The tunnels in this one made a circle at the end, even though the mine was smaller.  I estimate that this mine had about 150 ft. of workings.

We then hiked down the canyon and back on the mining trail to our car.  We flew the drone around for a bit before we went to another area.

By now, it was getting later in the day and we didn’t have much time left to explore a huge mine.  We decided to go up a different canyon to explore there.  It was nice having Kevin’s 4-wheel drive vehicle so we could easily drive up the canyons.

Once we got up this canyon we heard noises on the side of the mountains.  We looked up and saw some desert big horn sheep!  They seemed pretty interested in us, but at the same time, they didn’t really care we were there.  They kind of watched us and then would come down the mountainside a bit and stop to eat the grasses and bushes.

Luckily for us, we parked right where a mine was!  This mine looked huge.  We shined our flashlights down the entrance and it looked like this mine went on forever.

We went inside and immediately felt that the mine was probably close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit!  Even though it was about 30 degrees outside, it felt so good to be in the warmth! 

We got almost to the back of the mine when I thought I saw something laying on the ground.  We inched closer and saw that it was some kind of dead animal that had been there for a long time.  It was just a pile of bones now.  We got a little freaked out since we thought this was an actual mountain lion den, but once we realized we were at the back of the mine and no mountain lion could be found, we went in for a closer look…

I think the animal is some kind of baby big horn sheep.  It could be something else.  But it’s clear that this animal went into the mine and died at the back, or that a mountain lion dragged it inside to the back of this mine.  That is an impressive feat since this mine is probably about 350 ft. deep!  We took some pictures and got out of there!

By this time, it was getting dark and so we packed up and headed out for the night!