Copper Mines S-QE

A copper mine closed about ten years ago, production having ceased due to ore exhaustion. Even so, workers and modern machinery are still present on the construction site outside. The mine entrance takes the form of an enormous concrete portal large enough for a truck to drive through. Almost immediately after entering, the tunnel is flooded to a depth of twenty or thirty centimetres. You can wade through this flooded section for around five hundred metres, after which you will reach a collapse and a turn to the right. Beyond it lies the old abandoned workings.

Preserved inside are the rooms of an explosives store (with only the wooden shelving remaining), mine supports of various types — wooden, concrete, and fabricated from steel channel beams — two flooded shafts with underground hoisting machines, a cargo cage, and an almost vertical shaft used to pump groundwater to the surface. The pipe has rusted through and is unreliable.

If you walk a short distance further into the mountains from the working site, you can see an old spoil heap with a collapsed shaft collar and a portal sealed with a grating, through which the drainage pipe mentioned above once emerged from depth.

A strikingly beautiful and atmospheric location, but it is essential to exercise extreme caution to avoid falling into the flooded shafts. Entering and leaving is best done after dark, when workers near the portal are unlikely to notice you.