Exploring A Giant Soviet Mine Crucial To World War II - Part 2

After visiting the tailings fields I ended the first video of this Soviet abandoned mine series with, I drove back and started working my way around the base of the mountain in search of a haulage tunnel leading into that giant pit that we also saw in the first video. I was absolutely convinced that there had to be a large haulage tunnel as it did not make sense for the miners to have gone through the extraordinary amount of effort it would have required to lift all of the (heavy) lead ore up and out of the pit and then down again to the mill, when it could have simply been dropped down and taken out straight through a haulage tunnel. So, when I spotted the adit that I explored in this video, I was convinced that I had found the mysterious haulage tunnel that I was seeking.

We missed this adit on the drive in because it is at a sort of angle to the road that makes it much easier to spot when driving away from Bayzhansay than when driving into Bayzhansay. So, it wasn’t until I was working my way around the mountain, looking specifically for a haulage tunnel, that I discovered it. However, it would be perfectly obvious to anyone leaving the village.

As I was so sure that this haulage tunnel just led straight to that giant pit and wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to check out, I went charging in with just one battery for the camera and without even bothering with the gas meters since the air flow was so strong. One of the most valuable things that one can learn in life is to not make assumptions and my experience in this part of the abandoned mine is a perfect example of the wisdom of that… Frankly, I don’t know if the adit connected to the pit or not. There WAS air flowing in from somewhere and so, after considering it, I believe it is possible that some of those ore passes or stopes lead up to the bottom of the pit. They could be mostly blocked with rock debris falling in from the pit, but still open enough to allow air flow.

Alternatively, the workings explored in this video may have had nothing to do with the large pit and were a separate operation to extract the lead ore deeper in the earth. The Soviet Union was not renowned for its labor efficiency and so perhaps the miners really did lift the ore up and out from that huge pit. The air flow underground may have been coming from crevices in the mountain or from air shafts hidden away in those upper levels I was unable to reach as a result of the rotten ladders.

Either way, there was definitely a hell of a lot more to this adit than it simply being a haulage tunnel... The lower workings must be immense if that giant stope that was turned into an underground lake is any indication. I am bitterly sorry that I did not have the time to explore this adit more thoroughly.

If you’re curious to see where this adit is on a map or a program like Google Earth in relation to the mountain we visited in the first video or to Bayzhansay, the GPS coordinates are: 43.165717, 69.914331. If you look, you’ll notice that it is a straight shot toward the pit, which served to further convince me that it was a haulage tunnel.

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Thanks for watching!

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Growing up in California’s “Gold Rush Country” made it easy to take all of the history around us for granted. However, abandoned mine sites have a lot working against them – nature, vandals, scrappers and various government agencies… The old prospectors and miners that used to roam our lonely mountains and toil away deep underground are disappearing quickly as well.

These losses finally caught our attention and we felt compelled to make an effort to document as many of the ghost towns and abandoned mines that we could before that colorful niche of our history is gone forever. But, you know what? We enjoy doing it! This is exploring history firsthand – bushwhacking down steep canyons and over rough mountains, figuring out the techniques the miners used and the equipment they worked with, seeing the innovations they came up with, discovering lost mines that no one has been in for a century, wandering through ghost towns where the only sound is the wind... These journeys allow a feeling of connection to a time when the world was a very different place. And I’d love to think that in some small way we are paying tribute to those hardy miners that worked these mines before we were even born.

So, yes, in short, we are adit addicts… I hope you’ll join us on these adventures!

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