Rusty's Gold Tips

In addition to having mined with his parents during the Great Depression of the 1930's, Rusty has had many gold claims of his own throughout the years and operated all sorts of gold equipment from gold pans to D9 Cats. He has a wealth of knowledge and wisdom and will share some of it with you by giving periodic tips on mining, prospecting and panning for gold.

RUSTY SEZ
Old mine shafts and tunnels are fascinating to people and everyone wants to go into them to see what is in there and to look for any gold or other minerals that may be left. This is a lot of fun, but just too dangerous. Old timbers have been in place for years and are dry rotted and deteriorated and it dosen't always take much to cause them to cave in or collapse. Sometimes just movement and noise will cause the whole shebang, or a good part of it, to fall down on you.

Cave ins are not the only danger. There are sometimes air shafts connecting tunnels where you can fall in if you don't have proper light. Pack rats have usually been in there making nests filled with cactus and other debris. Scorpions and various undesirable crawlies live in this mess made by the rats. Rattlesnakes abound, living in these tunnels and even hibernating for the winter. Bats sometimes live there, and they tend to carry rabies. Once in awhile, bigger animals such as bobcats and mountain lions will be using tunnels. Sometimes there is water in these mines and it can be deeper than it looks and there is cactus and all sorts of stuff floating around in it. By the way, rattlesnakes can swim well and are hard to see in water.

Another bad thing is that sometimes there are poisonous gasses in deep mine tunnels. The oxygen can be replaced with carbon dioxide and this can be lethal. There is no smell or anything, you just run out of oxygen and suffocate before you can get out of there. There are other gasses sometimes in old tunnels, too. Some of them give you warning with smells, such as sulpher, but some of them are, like the carbon dioxide, odorless.

You don't have to be lowering yourself into a mine shaft to be hurt. There are plenty of shafts that you just can't see because they are surrounded by brush and you can walk right into them and not know they are there until you fall.

The bottom line is, be really careful when you are poking around old mining areas. Besides, there is easier gold to be found in a safer way than this.

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