Without knowing where to start looking, one would never find the Fractal Mine. It's tucked quite a ways back from any of the main roads, and wholly inaccessible from late autumn to late spring; the former due to snow obscuring the roadway making it easy to drive into the swampy pond the road bisects, and the latter due to meltwater flooding out the access road. But preservation pays off when finding this beauty.

Not that finding it is the only challenge; the Fractal Mine is dark and hard to photograph. It can be done, as evidenced here, but not easily. It's also quite expansive; from the adit there are at least three drifts, and one of those drifts has it's own drifts, which in turns has it's own drifts... you get the point. It also has a winze, tucked away under rotting wood; Brind and I opted not to poke at it too much since we didn't have the equipment to descend it. We also didn't fully explore the lateral workings; one heavily timbered drift made us think twice about continuing without helmets. Safety first, you know.

As with most abandoned mines, the Fractal Mine was home to bats; most of whom kept sleeping while we did out things. There was one, however, that was less than impressed with us and felt it necessary to buzz our heads a couple of times until we moved along... which we did in rather short order. It was also home to a lot of non-draining water... very cold non-draining water. Make sure to bring boots for this one.

Being a silver mine, there was still quite a bit of silver left in the veins, due to the low value of silver making it uneconomical to continue mining at this time. That's not to say that the mine will always be abandoned; there was certainly enough silver to make it worth reopening should the market ever change. Until then, though, it's the best mine explored to date, and will certainly see future visits.