That title caught your attention, eh? I'm sorry to tell you but there's no story of satanic beheadings in this post... These mines are in a mountain are called Matagalls, which in Catalan literally translates to 'chicken killer'. We could also call them 'The Mines of Saint Marçal', but that's not a catchy name!
The chicken-killing mountain range where the mines are located, we hiked up a steep zig-zagging road to get to the workings.
Mine exploration is not such a thing in Spain as it is in the UK, so sometimes it's hard to find leads on places. My main source of info are blogs about mineral collecting (which is a thing around here).
There were some pictures online, it seems that the mineralogists don't dare to go further into the mines but it seemed like a promising place, and oh boy did it deliver!
Before the pics start, what I can tell you is that these mines were worked from the 60's until the 80's, and being in a natural park, all of the outside structures have been completely removed.
The first adit we found was truly well hidden, it was just a short tunnel but it payed off just finding it, plus there was a bucket and a spade inside:
Walking further up the road, we arrived at the main workings, here's the entrance to what we knew was going to be a good place, but we honestly weren't prepared for what lay ahead of us:
After the little crawl inside, the tunnel opened up, with the original wagon rails on the floor:
Pictures are going to be a mixture of automatic/experimenting with different modes. Some of them are blurry but I think they're cool and show the place well:
We pressed on, hoping to find a way to the upper levels, negotiating a series of collapses and rotten wood structures:
After going through these series of galleries and collapsed upper floors, we stood in awe as we didn't have any info about this:
This incline went like 7-8 stories high, the wire in the middle is not a fixed rope, just some old wire, we thought about it and said to save it back for later, for now let's keep to this level.
After the incline, I think we found the place where some people would say 'hm, that's it,let's turn back'. It was a dodgy looking collapse, plus the other side was flooded, but let's go...
It was nice to have gone through that, as we found some artifacts at the end of the gallery:
Having explored the whole first level, we went back to the incline chamber to see if going up the incline was feasible... my mate took the initiative and led the way.
Here he is standing at the entrace of the second level, which had a few surprises waiting for us:
I really enjoyed going to this second level because I have never been through one of those bridges, or seen are chute or stacked deads in the side of the path, really nice mine!
That incline surely had more levels to explore, but we didn't think them feasible without proper climbing gear, so we retraced our steps and went to find some other adits:
This was a straight gallery that led to a vertical cut in the mountain following the ore vein, it was a cool place but I didn't capture it quite well...!
And to the last adit we explored. There are quite a few more, but honestly we were tired, it had been a demanding exploration so far
so we visited this last one, which was a much wider entrance than the others:
This bridge had shafts dropping to darkness at both sides, and after it, a nice hall with a nice multiple trackbed:
I'll finish the report with some pics of the wooden features we found on this last gallery, hope you enjoyed!
Anyone know what's this? There were a few around all of the galleries, it seemed damp and it didn't look like wood, but I don't want to think it's dynamite...?
Until next time, and thanks for reading!
The chicken-killing mountain range where the mines are located, we hiked up a steep zig-zagging road to get to the workings.
Mine exploration is not such a thing in Spain as it is in the UK, so sometimes it's hard to find leads on places. My main source of info are blogs about mineral collecting (which is a thing around here).
There were some pictures online, it seems that the mineralogists don't dare to go further into the mines but it seemed like a promising place, and oh boy did it deliver!
Before the pics start, what I can tell you is that these mines were worked from the 60's until the 80's, and being in a natural park, all of the outside structures have been completely removed.
The first adit we found was truly well hidden, it was just a short tunnel but it payed off just finding it, plus there was a bucket and a spade inside:
Walking further up the road, we arrived at the main workings, here's the entrance to what we knew was going to be a good place, but we honestly weren't prepared for what lay ahead of us:
After the little crawl inside, the tunnel opened up, with the original wagon rails on the floor:
Pictures are going to be a mixture of automatic/experimenting with different modes. Some of them are blurry but I think they're cool and show the place well:
We pressed on, hoping to find a way to the upper levels, negotiating a series of collapses and rotten wood structures:
After going through these series of galleries and collapsed upper floors, we stood in awe as we didn't have any info about this:
This incline went like 7-8 stories high, the wire in the middle is not a fixed rope, just some old wire, we thought about it and said to save it back for later, for now let's keep to this level.
After the incline, I think we found the place where some people would say 'hm, that's it,let's turn back'. It was a dodgy looking collapse, plus the other side was flooded, but let's go...
It was nice to have gone through that, as we found some artifacts at the end of the gallery:
Having explored the whole first level, we went back to the incline chamber to see if going up the incline was feasible... my mate took the initiative and led the way.
Here he is standing at the entrace of the second level, which had a few surprises waiting for us:
I really enjoyed going to this second level because I have never been through one of those bridges, or seen are chute or stacked deads in the side of the path, really nice mine!
That incline surely had more levels to explore, but we didn't think them feasible without proper climbing gear, so we retraced our steps and went to find some other adits:
This was a straight gallery that led to a vertical cut in the mountain following the ore vein, it was a cool place but I didn't capture it quite well...!
And to the last adit we explored. There are quite a few more, but honestly we were tired, it had been a demanding exploration so far
so we visited this last one, which was a much wider entrance than the others:
This bridge had shafts dropping to darkness at both sides, and after it, a nice hall with a nice multiple trackbed:
I'll finish the report with some pics of the wooden features we found on this last gallery, hope you enjoyed!
Anyone know what's this? There were a few around all of the galleries, it seemed damp and it didn't look like wood, but I don't want to think it's dynamite...?
Until next time, and thanks for reading!
