 Good morning YouTubers, T-Dubbers, Desert Explorers, Mine Explorers, and a whole bunch of the rest of you. Julie and I are here today. It's March 19th. It's a Tuesday. We're getting kind of a late start today. It's about 11 o'clock. We are going to head out towards the talc mines today. We are here off of south of Shoshone, near Ibex Pass. 277 is right there, and we are on Ibex Springs Road, which is going this way. Let's go see what we find today. Straight ahead are the talc mines, the white areas you can see. Those are the Ibex Hills, cool area. So that's the way to Saratoga Spring. We've come about two miles down Ibex Spring Road. There's a fork here. The right fork goes to Ibex Spring and the talc mines. Okay, we're here at Ibex Spring and the old mining camp that was here. You can see the palm trees over there. That's near the source of the spring. And then the relics of the old cabins. We're not going to go through that camp today because it takes a while to go through it. We've done it before. I have another video of that. I believe it's called Ibex Spring Ghost Camp. But we're going to take this road up to the Monarch Mine. Here are the lower portions of the Monarch Mine. It looks like this was probably some kind of a loading facility, as well as the other two structures ahead of Julie there. Well, here is a portal that's still in pretty good shape. Leads into an attic. There are some old cart tracks coming out of here. Leading over towards this loading dock there. So that's got potential. Let's look around a little bit on the outside first to see what we see. This track comes out to another loading dock here. I'm not sure why there would be two, but this one's pretty well tumbled over. Let's go up the hill a little more. We'll come back to this portal in a few minutes. That's looking back on the lower level where we just were. This is the third and final loading area. Looks to be the biggest of them. Pretty well collapsed though. This was a chute up here, it looks like. And I'm sure that was a bin at the bottom there at one time. The sides are pretty much gone. Big waste rock pile here. Some barrels and rails. Looks like there's something else going on up here. And it looks like there's an attic right over there by that ladder. I'm not sure if it's open or not. We're going to go check it out. Here's the portal. It's somewhat eroded shut, but we can get in. Big rock right here, you don't want that to fall on you. But it looks like there's plenty of room to scramble in there. Well, we found two portals with open adits behind them. There's supposed to be one more and I believe it's up here. So we're going to work our way up the hill here before it gets too hot. It's supposed to be about 80-something today. You know, Death Valley area is pretty warm. Well, this looks like the upper attic and portal. This one looks a little gnarly. There's about a two ton boulder, at least, right there. Although it's wedged in pretty good. I think if you wanted to, you could get in there depending on how badly you wanted it. This is just up above where I was looking in that portal. This is the big rock right here. There's a big vein of talc over this way. Wow. This looks like it was an old collar of a shaft. There's a ladder going down there, but it's all caved in now. You're not going to get in that one. Something over here too. Well, that stuff is crumbly. I'm not going in that one either. Here's another opening. It's pretty steep. I'm unable to get down there. Well, I could get down there. I wouldn't be able to get back out. And this is looking straight up above me. Well, we have at least two adids to explore. Julie's up over here. So that's the collapsed one again with the large boulder on top of it. And there's not a real large waste pile here. So with the effort that it's going to take to get into that one, probably less extensive workings than the lower ones. We're going to go back down to the lower ones. Okay, let's go in this lower adit through this semi-collapsed portal. I'll restart when we get inside. Okay, we're in. Looks like there's still either a pipe or a track. That's a pipe, isn't it? It looks like it turned shortly up here. I'll try it for nails, Julie. Some boards down there. Solid. Going to echo for a talc mine. Quite nice and cool. Not dusty either, like some of them are. And there are tracks here still too. There's a pipe and a track. And I see a chute coming up. Danger, it says up here. This one says keep out. I wonder if there's bad air there. What do you want? Danger or keep out? Take a look at this chute. Well, this went further, but we're not going any further because it's collapsed. This chute is plugged solid. See how all of a sudden it got muffled again too? They're all timbered up in here. It looks like the tracks kept going, but they're... She's plugged solid. When this talc comes down, man, it really collapses. It's brittle stuff. So let's go back the other way. Some more timbering. Another chute. And some pretty good collapses over there. They collapse here too. That's pretty well collapsed on the other side of that timber that's collapsed. Let me just see if I can peek around the corner a little bit. It goes on, but it's all collapsed. Oh boy, that thing's just hanging there too. Okay, we're heading back towards the entrance. I'm guessing this went back considerably further. Here are some load counts on the post here. Maybe we'll have a little more extensive exploring in the lower adit. Else. Well, that was kind of interesting. There's a nice riveted tank. Boy, it's straight as an arrow too. Not a dent in it. This is the end of the waste truck pile of the adit we just came out of. I figured that was jammed up because this is a big pile here. That was probably a fairly big digging. This is all the same one. Okay, we're back down at the first portal that we came to. Let's head out in and see what we find. It's got pretty nice timbering coming right into it. And the door. And the door is open and it's nice and cool. There it is. Well, there's another blockage right here. There are rails coming out of here. This one goes a pretty fair way back. I can see already. Okay, we're in. I was seeing if Julie would fall for the old trick of passing me and being the first one in here. The tracks are still in pretty good shape. I see a ladder up here. And some timbers. Looks pretty solid so far. Every once in a while they have wedges up in the ceiling like that. I feel like here's another one. There must be to hang some ventilation pipe I'm guessing. Looks like the tracks curve to the left. And there's also a junction here. And a whole stack of ventilation pipe. Looks like six inch light duty pipe. Danger that way. Looks like there are quite a bit of load counts here on the posts. Nice timbering here. Full round tree trunk type posts. There's a chute with like a table like platform. And a tracks curve. And it's all full of this stuff. Let's see what's this box say. Ashville, North Carolina. It's from a built-more manufacturing company. Pretty good size box. It's insane. Los Angeles sheet metal manufacturing company. To Southern California. Minerals company. Alright, well let's go around this way a little bit. See if we see. There's a ladder. Of course we're going to have to take a peek up there aren't we. This is another, looks like some figuring. Look at all the load counts. And there's a cable down here. And a big chute here. Looks like it goes down. Boy this is all crashed in. Look at that. A talc you'd think would be light duty stuff. But man it's not. It's heavy. Look at how this is all crashed in. And those are some heavy duty timbers. Right above where I'm standing. Right here. And right here too. This is right above my head. Nice. Well that down is completely collapsed in. There's some Spanish. And it looks like it went this way too. But man look at how it's buckled that huge tree trunk right there. So yeah this is the end of the line for this little part. Dangerous. Well let's go up the ladder a little bit. If I can keep them crashing the whole thing down here. Oh boy. That's ready to buckle too. You just take a quick peek here. Wow. Crazy stuff. There's another chute. I think they same when you get those greenish veins. That's where the most pure vein of talc is. Pretty well stuffed. Let's go back by that ventilation pipe and see if there's anything there. I'll go try to over your head. Alright I gotta climb down this ladder. And then I shall return. This is looking behind me. I just walked past the edge of those pipes. There's this ledge that they used to stand on. Up here. Here's an old piece of tape measure. But there's a big chute here completely jammed. And the tracks look like they would have. No that looks like the end of the line there. That's not caved in. So this was just a chute from up above that led to a piece of track that just a short ways from the entrance. So that's that. This almost looks like it's never been used. Looks brand new. Well that's the last look back from where we came from. There's that little ladder I went up. Here's the makeshift blockage of lumber where the ramp was. Okay I made it through there myself. Not as easily as Julie. Things don't bend the way they used to. Here's the nice door. It doesn't move anymore. But it was pretty heavy duty. But it's stuck that's what Julie said anyway. A couple little benches here I suppose where mines would gear up with whatever they were doing. It's too bad that they collapse. It seems like quicker than other hard rock mines do. Their stuff's kind of flaky. Boy is it heavy too. A piece of that those talc rocks are very dense. Very heavy. Now they buckled up those huge timbers in there. They snapped them right in half when they let loose. Alright let's go walk up the hill here. Looks like an old house or something up on the hill with a refrigerator standing and a tank. Here's kind of a sweep of the whole mine area. Well there were obviously a couple structures up here at least. And it looks like they're in pretty rough shape now. Looks like they blew up. There's the old refrigerator. They must have worked hard when they were out here in the desert. The refrigerators. A surveil. And a big water tank I'm assuming. Here's another floor that's left from another building. Just uphill from the last one. There was a window there. Not anymore. There's a roof off of something. A little gable. Well here's the can dump. I knew it had to be around somewhere. And there's another part of it over here. Let's see if we see any hand-soldered cans. Probably not. I don't think these are that old these mines. I think they hand-soldered like before 1900. Alright let's go find the little T-dub. I don't see it but it's over here somewhere. Found it. Just over here taking it easy all by itself. Let's keep back on that little mule. Beautiful view down there. Across Death Valley. To the fork in the road. We're coming from Ibex. Spring. And to the right here. Well we made it back to the old Saturn view. TW had great. We had fun in the mines. We didn't get stuck in a mine collapse. Took us about 35 minutes on the bike to get from 127 out to the Ibex Springs in the mines area. We're riding two up obviously so we're not really doing a lot of racing. We're just trying to stay upright. So we're going to get this racked up and head on away. Thanks for watching the video you guys. We appreciate it and we will see you on the next adventure.