He also lends his expertise to searches for missing people. That\u2019s how he got to know Bill Powell, who looked for his 18-year-old son, Riley, for months before the teenager and his girlfriend were found dead in a mine shaft outside the small town of Eureka.<\/p>\n
The teens\u2019 families formed a close bond with MacLee and other volunteer searchers. Despite his painful memories, Bill Powell decided to see what draws his friend to those dark recesses deep in the desert.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a whole different life. The underground life,\u201d said Powell, who has a gravelly voice, close-cropped gray beard and a quick smile.<\/p>\n
On a recent day, he and MacLee joined a group of friends in front of a mountainside opening near Eureka, wearing helmets, oxygen meters and strong lights, and carrying a stash of extra batteries. Cool air blasted from the opening, cutting through the desert heat.<\/p>\n
The group walked between metal tracks that once carried ore carts, making their way through a tunnel shored up in places with squared-off timbers. After nearly a mile, the railcar tracks suddenly dropped into an abyss as the tunnel opened wide into a huge cavern. A hundred years ago, it would be a bustling scene lit with candles and carbide lights, as miners climbed a scaffolding the size of a seven-story building to drill out lead and silver.<\/p>\n
Now, it is silent and pitch-black, illuminated only by the searching headlamp beams.<\/p>\n
Bill Powell thought of his son, and the trips they took through the desert when he was a kid. Sometimes, they\u2019d come across an old mine shaft and toss a rock down, trying to imagine how far it fell. He doesn\u2019t do that anymore, not since his son\u2019s body was found in one of those pits.<\/p>\n Though the teenager never got to explore a mine like the one his father was in, Bill Powell thought he\u2019d like seeing it. \u201cHe\u2019d probably wish he was with me, hanging out.\u201d<\/p>\n But the dangers of abandoned mines weigh on Utah officials\u2019 minds. There have been 11 deaths since 1982 and more than 40 injuries, including people who entered mines to explore and others who fell in by accident, according to state data. Some abandoned mines become filled with tainted water, as in the toxic 2015 spill from Colorado\u2019s Gold King Mine, but most in Utah are dry.<\/p>\n Legally, entering a mine can be considered trespassing in Utah if it has been closed or there are signs posted outside, but prosecutions are rare. Explorers argue it\u2019s no more dangerous than outdoor sports ranging from hiking to skiing, which also claim lives in the West.<\/p>\n But there are hazards specific to mines that can be especially dangerous to the unprepared, from abandoned explosives to the potentially fatal low-oxygen air known to miners as \u201cblack damp,\u201d reclamation specialist Chris Rohrer said. And while some explorers like MacLee go in prepared, many do not.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just a wide open, Wild West thing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a completely uncontrolled situation.\u201d<\/p>\n In Arizona, prospector John Waddell fell to the rocky bottom of a mine shaft after the rigging he used to lower himself broke Oct. 15. He survived by sucking moisture out of his shirt before a friend who he\u2019d told about his plans came to check on him.<\/p>\n There are also cases like Riley Powell and his girlfriend, Brelynne \u201cBreezy\u201d Otteson. Prosecutors say an enraged man killed the teenage couple after they visited his girlfriend despite his warning her not to have male visitors. He dumped their bodies in the mine shaft, where they remained for nearly three months before being discovered in March.<\/p>\n Similar cases have occurred in states like Wyoming, Colorado and California. Investigators also searched old mines in Utah and neighboring Nevada after Susan Cox Powell\u2019s high-profile 2009 disappearance. The 28-year-old Salt Lake City-area woman \u2013 no relation to Bill and Riley Powell \u2013 was never found.<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately, an abandoned mine is probably a good place to dispose of something like that \u2013 a person or something you want to hide forever,\u201d said Hollie Brown, spokeswoman for the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.<\/p>\n For the state, the message is as clear as its skull-and-crossbones signs: Stay out and stay alive. The program has been around more than 30 years, and the division has already sealed about 6,000 abandoned mines.<\/p>\n In that case, it plans to seal the opening with a metal gate. At other mines, crews build cinderblock walls, backfill with dirt and rocks, or weld rebar over the openings so bats and other wildlife can still get in and out.<\/p>\n \u201cFor 150 years, people have dug holes in the ground and brought wealth out of the ground,\u201d Rohrer said. \u201cUnfortunately, after they brought that wealth out of the ground, they left that hole behind.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" effort to seal openings<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61941,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-61940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61940"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=61940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}