Motocross in an old abandoned mine. 3km deep.

I had heard stories of an old tin mine in the district of Thong Pha Phum, Thailand. I asked around within the motocross world over here but no one knew where it was. Google didn't shed any light on the location either. I search every square inch of Google maps of the rough location I thought it was but was kind of guessing.

We set out on the road heading towards Burma/Myanmar. I had a couple of friends over who were visiting Thailand and we decided to try and find it.
Our first stop was wrong, Google maps had lied! It also lied the second time (or was it more poor planning). On our third attempt we arrived in a small village where the local people were able to give some useful directions and information.

We parked up, unloaded and rode out of the rural village along a dirt road. A small turn off down an over grown track next to the big tree- as were were told, we felt were were getting close.

A few kilometers of riding and we found the entrance.

Things were about to get exciting. I was riding my Honda CRF250R and my friends were riding rental bikes from Bangkok!

The tunnel was large enough for mining vehicles so we didn't have any problems on our bikes. Once we got in, we realized that the main tunnel split many times. Some tunnels turned left, others right, some went up while others went down. It turned out that there were multiple entrances and exits and from what we could work out, about 5 different levels that spiraled around through the mountain.

The longest tunnel was about 3km, but with the addition of all the others, the total distance of tunnels was much further.

In the photo above you will see a square white light beam- I had a hand touch mounted on my helmet to ensure I had light in what ever direction I looked.

The 2 rental bikes were standard road legal bikes and had lights. My motocross bike isn't road legal and as many of you know, doesn't have lights!
With some pre-planning I temporarily installed a 36watt LED light bar (flood beam) which was hooked up to a 12V lithium ion 6800mah battery (good for about 2 hours of light).

The LED light was incredibly bright and really lit up the tunnels. I would really recommend doing something like this if any of you do any night riding- or mining!
I took out the handlebar-crossbar from my Renthal bar and made a steel replacement that could hold the LED bar brackets. It was just a simple angle grinder job and some drilled holes. A small pouch was attached to the back of the new bar to hold the battery. Neither the LED bar or battery moved. The full set up was tested at the track beforehand on 30ft jumps and it was rock solid. I would imagine this kind of enduro riding was much kinder.

Here are a few more photos from the ride to and from the mine.

The rental bikes had a few accidents along the way- which caused a couple of problems when we returned them! One of which was a lost licence plate, as you can see in the pic below.

Finally we set up camp and had a very wet night, because it rained and the tent leaked lol!

I hope you enjoyed the read and the photos. If ride in Thailand, let me know.

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