We're Back! The First Blast and We're On Some Amazing Gold!! Season 2, Part 1

Season 2 begins at the 125-year-old gold mine in the North Cascades, and the first trip back is anything but easy. After a long winter, the road is still buried in snow, the hike into the mine is brutal, and the portal area has taken a beating from heavy mountain snow. By the time the crew finally gets back underground, there is plenty to deal with: a damaged entrance, a broken ladder, a smashed wooden deck, signs of a break-in, and a full list of repairs before real mining can begin again. Once inside, the old workings are checked carefully, the rail is inspected, water drainage is evaluated, and the crew starts bringing the mine back to life. The deck gets rebuilt, tools are moved back in, old Swiss bunker phones are set up for underground communication, and daily scaling begins to make the workings safe again. This is the real side of hard rock mining: fixing what winter destroyed, dealing with flat tires, working in pouring rain, managing water in the drift, and doing the unglamorous jobs that have to happen before a single piece of ore can come out. Then the real mining begins. With Harry from ‪@mineoperator‬ back on the crew and new help from Casey, the compressor is hauled up to the mine and the drill steel starts turning. The crew begins drilling, blasting, mucking, and split-shooting the vein to keep the ore separate from the waste rock. The goal is to advance the drift toward an old raise that could dramatically improve ore handling by cutting out hundreds of feet of difficult transfers with sandbags, carts, and hand-mucking. The first blasts of the season reveal exactly what everyone hoped to see: beautiful white quartz, heavy sulfides, tellurides, and visible free gold right in the face. In places, the vein appears to widen to around four to four and a half feet, with gold showing across the rib and floor. Some of the ore is pulled aside for specimens and slabbing, while the rest is bagged and prepared to be hauled down, milled, and processed. The crew also pans drill cuttings from the face and finds fine gold and larger flakes from just a small sample of material. This episode follows the full process of small-scale underground gold mining in a historic mine that stopped production nearly a century ago. From hiking through spring snow at 5,000 feet, rebuilding the mine entrance, installing safety rails, washing down the face, loading ANFO, using boosters and stemming, testing continuity, blasting rounds, scaling loose ground, and mucking tons of rock by hand, every step shows what it really takes to reopen and mine an old hard rock gold vein. With the drift advancing, the ore improving, and the old raise somewhere ahead, Season 2 is officially underway — and the mine is already showing gold. Check out ‪@mineoperator‬ on YouTube:    / @mineoperator   Check out our Shopify, eBay, and Spring stores for ore, specimens, cabochons, and more from our mines: Shopify: https://mbmmllc.myshopify.com/ eBay: https://www.ebay.com/usr/mtbakerminin... Spring: https://my-store-c2b497.creator-sprin... FOR MORE INFO PLEASE EMAIL OR CALL Email: [email protected] Phone: 360-595-4445 Website: http://www.mbmmllc.com/ Patreon:   / mbmmllc   Facebook:   / mbmmllc   Instagram:   / mbmmllc   Twitter:   / mbmmllc   AFFILIATE LINKS What's an affiliate link? If you use our link to buy something, MBMM gets a small percentage of the money you spend. This DOES NOT mean you will spend more money using our link, you will spend the SAME AMOUNT of money while also supporting a small business and channel. UNDERGROUND MINING EQUIPMENT Milwaukee Hammer drill bits: https://amzn.to/3MjLf8A Milwaukee Sawzall: https://amzn.to/3Qt6Yy Milwaukee Flood Light: https://amzn.to/3NmvYEc Milwaukee Driver: https://amzn.to/3OqKoDT Milwaukee Grinder: https://amzn.to/3Qwro9C Hard hat with light clip: https://amzn.to/3Iss7nL Head lamp for hard hat: https://amzn.to/433G5US Hammer drill: https://amzn.to/3ORKSVi Safety glasses: https://amzn.to/439w8Fo Gloves: https://amzn.to/45ceXoF Feather and wedge set: https://amzn.to/3Om1kNz Respirator: https://amzn.to/3IqbclD #goldmining #undergroundmining #abandonedmine