I saw this hidden in a canyon and had to investigate.

Hey everyone, Jeff here. You're watching The Trek Planner. On today's adventure I saw this off the side of the road right here. This ladder thing that just goes up here. But then when I was looking closer I could see way up there, that way, there's like another ladder thing. So I'm just wondering what is going on in this canyon. So uh, gonna check it out. Before we head out, if you love adventure and exploring new places like I do, please subscribe to my channel. It really helps the channel out and lets me know that you want to see more of this. Thank you so much, and with that let's get back to the trek. Oh there's like some carved steps too right here. What is this thing? That looks very old. Relative of course. It's so steep. Look at this. It's like a path right here. Oh wow, the metal poles. Yeah, I mean, I mean it's gonna fall apart if I try to climb up this thing. See look, just touching it. What is this? From down there you can see that there's something way high up. It's kind of long like this. Looks like some wood put together. It doesn't look like like poles or downed logs or something. This is really interesting. Yeah, somebody carved steps right here, kind of in this way, to come up here. And they hammered these metal poles in. Kind of see something there. Let me go up there. Look how old this is. It's already, it's warped. So what are your guys' ideas on this? Just a ladder to get out of the canyon? Like just down here there's like another way you can do it easily. Just over here. Check right over there. Mystery. So I just thought of an idea. I've seen something similar to this, but very flat. Like almost like this. It just went up this little grade and it was used for cows. Some rancher or cowboys would carve into the rock and they make these paths easy for cows, but these are really narrow. So I don't think this is, I mean, this is way too steep when to hold a massive cow. So I don't know. I'm thinking just an easy way to get out of the canyon, but there's other easier ways. I don't know. But I'm going to go down here, get some shelter, wait for the rain to die down to get the drone to fly up up there because it's about 300 feet, just right above here. This is what I love about the Trek Planner channel is that we can share these little things, these little nuggets of history that we wouldn't have seen otherwise if we weren't out exploring. I never would have seen this. I've never seen pictures of this. I never heard about this. Never seen it. And it's just so intriguing. It's just another layer of history to what we already don't know. We don't know anything about this, who made it. I'm betting it's some rancher who was here. Need an easier way to get up to the top of the mesa. Yeah, right up there. Fish went up here and then did something like that. Yeah. See, they could have gone out right there and up. That's why it's so intriguing to me is that there's better places to climb up. I don't know if I'm alone out here, would I want to spend time making a top secret, sweet, awesome ladder? Yeah, totally would. So I just spent about 15 minutes flying my drone around here and I found something that made me realize what all this really is, what's really going on here. And it just seems kind of weird just seeing that out of context. So let me show you the drone footage and you'll see. Once the rain fully passed, I pulled the drone out and send it up into the air to scout the canyon from above. Right away, you can see the broken wooden stairs from both the ground and the sky. It's clear there's nothing directly above them. And that thing I noticed earlier from below, at first I thought it might be part of some long forgotten trail system, kind of like the stairs. But as I got the drone closer, it became obvious that it was just fallen trees lined up in an odd way. Nothing man-made after all. So now the real exploration begins. I started scanning the cliffs to the right and then I saw it. Suddenly everything made sense. Those dark shapes in the rock, they are openings. To what though? Caves? No, these look different. These are mines. The closer we get, the clearer it becomes. Near one of the entrances, you can even see spray paint. I think it's a date or a marker left by someone who worked here years ago. That's when the pieces really started to fall into place. The miners likely lived down at the bottom of the canyon and built that wooden staircase to haul equipment up to these workings. Later on, roads were probably carved into the cliffs to make the climb easier for trucks and supplies. From above, you can spot more clues. Multiple mine entrances, piles of tailings, and the faint outlines of old structures scattered around the slope. It's hard to say exactly what they were mining. I mean it could be lead, copper, maybe even uranium. There's no way to know for sure. And honestly, climbing up there and going inside didn't feel worth the risk. But that's the fun part of these treks. Most of the time, the places I explore leave more questions than answers. This time though, the mystery slowly unraveled right in front of us. What looked ancient at first turned out to be part of a forgotten mining operation. It's still a really unique story, just a different kind of one. I would love to know your thoughts on this adventure, so please let me know in the comments. So I was going to be hiking up there, but I keep hearing thunder and I don't want to be on the side of a mountain or climbing up to the top of a mountain and all this going on. So even though it is kind of clearing up a little bit, right? But just to be safe, I'm not going to go up there. But they're mines, right? Of course they are! So it was really fun seeing this little mystery and I'm like, what is this doing? And then seeing those little landslide things. And I'm like, those are just landslides. And I thought that was something up there, but it was really just how the tree split. So split going up and then split going down. So from here it looks like stairs. So that's why I thought earlier, like, oh, this is just some big stairway. And I did see a notice inside of it. I'm going to try to zoom in and see what it says. But usually when you see notices, they say like, stay out, stay alive, or, you know, no trespassing. Or sometimes I've seen the mine owner's information on them. But this is on BLM land, which you can get a mine lease to mine this land. But this is in the 70s, I think. At least that's what I thought. So I'm not sure if this is an active claim or what. What do you guys think of this? This is really unexpected. Really fun. I hope you enjoyed this spontaneous adventure today. That's what my channel is all about. It's just exploration and it's unscripted. As you can tell, I have no idea what this place is besides it's a mine. I have no other information. But anyway, if you enjoy this type of content, please subscribe to my channel, The Trek Planner. I have a lot more coming soon. A lot more random stuff too. Thank you for hiking with me today and we'll see you on the next adventure. Thank you for hiking with me today. Why don't they just go up over there and then up over there and up wherever they're going? Thank you for watching. So thank you for being here. Well, I think, thank you for hiking with me today. That was fun. More thunder. So probably more rain too coming up.