Biker fiel in Schacht

[Oberhutmann]

Dirt biker killed in mine shaft
By ADAM L. R. SUMMERS
News Review Staff Writer

A young man died Sunday afternoon after falling into a vertical mine shaft during an off-road motorcycle ride near Red Mountain.
According to the San Bernardino County Coroner’s Office, 21-year-old Matthew Frey of Mission Viejo and two friends were riding dirt bikes Sunday afternoon just east of Highway 395 in Red Mountain. As the trio rode off the trails and up a slope of mine tailings, none of them knew that an uncovered vertical mine shaft — reported by one estimate to be 780 feet deep — lay straight ahead of them.
Frey fell directly into the shaft. One of his friends nearly met the same fate, but was able to save himself by grasping the outgrowth of a bush near the mine entrance and holding on until the third rider could pull man and bike back from the brink.
Members of the group Indian Wells Valley Search & Rescue, Inc., were having a meal in the Silver Dollar, said William Moen, a volunteer with IWVS&R. The team had just completed training exercises in Johanessburg.
Moen said a young man burst into the restaurant and called, “Can you help me? My friend fell down a hole!”
The team leapt into action, setting up equipment at the opening of the deep pit and going to work on getting to Frey.
Soon they were joined by members of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department, San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, California Highway Patrol, Bureau of Land Management, Kern County Fire Department, San Bernardino Fire Department, San Bernardino County Search and Rescue out of Barstow and Hesperia and Liberty Ambulance Service.
Getting down to Frey proved quite difficult, said Moen.
IWVS&R Team Captain Sean Halpin began to descend into the shaft, dangling from cables lowered by hand-cranked winches. As he descended, he began to perceive that the air was increasingly filled with subterranean gases and low on oxygen, Moen said.
Richard Sake, IWVS&R operations leader, said that Halpin reached the 300-foot limit of the phone cable that kept him in communication with rescuers on the surface. At that point, the bottom was not in sight, and Halpin had to come out.
Using cable provided by the Barstow search and rescue group, rescuers spliced together a cable more than 1,000 feet long, Sake said. After being fitted with a biopack - equipment to sustain him if he encountered gas or other hazards - Halpin began to descend again.
His descent was again cut short, this time because his air supply began to run low and communication along the jury-rigged cable was difficult, said Sake.
Teammember Will Denson then suited up and attempted to reach Frey. As the rescuer dangled approximately 450 feet down, he lit a chemlight and dropped it down the shaft, said Sake. His light fell far but struck bottom and stopped - he couldn’t see anything at the bottom in the weak light, but the rescuers now had a target to shoot for.
But as Denson dropped the light, the spliced cable failed again. With communication down, he was pulled back.
Halpin suited up again and descended, coming at last to within sight of the bottom, where the 20-foot wide shaft opens up into a hewn-out cavern that Sake described as 100 feet high and 150 feet across. There he found Frey, who had apparently died on impact.
“It was dark. There was a lot of debris - 55-gallon drums of who knows what, old wood and steel, mattresses and boxsprings, and a big owl living down there,” Halpin said. “It was definitely quiet.”
Before Frey’s body was brought out, his parents had also arrived on the scene. He was their only child, a witness said.
During the rescue effort, several media representatives arrived on the scene, including a news crew from KGET Channel 17 in Bakersfield. Within hours, the event was making television news broadcasts for hundreds of miles around and appeared in dozens of newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times.
The mine shaft that swallowed Frey appears to be on land privately owned by the Silver Dollar Mining Corporation of Red Mountain, said BLM Law Enforcement Ranger Marion Eppright. He said he believes that the shaft was covered at one time, but the cover had degraded with time and exposure.
Eppright used the example of mine shafts on public lands to explain why a privately owned shaft like the one Frey fell into might not be better protected. BLM tries to keep people safe from mine shafts by variously placing warning signs, covering the shafts and fencing the area around the mouths of the shafts, Eppright said. But the type and degree of protection the bureau uses for a particular shaft depends on several factors, including how noticeable the opening is.
“Some of the smaller mines that will catch you are fenced,” he said. Fencing might not occur around a large shaft opening onto fairly clear terrain.
Covering, fencing and monitoring every mine shaft is not practical, given that in the area are hundreds of mine shafts.
The ranger emphasized that recreation on the desert needs to take place on designated routes, because those routes are designed to keep people safe as well as protect the environment.
“So everybody knows, there’s nothing [valuable] in abandoned mines,” Halpin added.


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