Brendan Jesus
Welcome back, fellow ranchers! We’ve reached my least favorite point of every season of Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch…the finale. This has been a roller coaster of a season, and I’m thankful for all of you who have joined us on this ride. In this season, we’ve experienced geysers, explosions, cave-ins, nearly-failed dams, and life-threatening medical episodes. The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch should be taking notes. There is a lot to go over in this episode, so let’s get right into it! (Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch: The Endless Shaft)
Coming Soon…
We start this episode with a jump ahead a few days. Chad Ollinger and Josh Feldman are digging their way into the declining shaft of a cave. The two men start crawling on their stomachs through this tight cavern. They soon come to a section of the cave where they can stand straight up. Chad holds his hand up, stopping Josh in his tracks. Chad hears someone.
Three Days Earlier
Eric Drummond is finishing his LIDAR drone scan of the Meteorite Fault Zone (Open Pit Mine). Later that night, Eric runs through the data and is set on coming back with some positive new leads.
The next day, Eric is at the Hideout, joined by Chad, Charlie Boy, Josh, and James Keenan. Eric has found three potential cave openings. All of them are south of the Open Pit mine, and all are [basically] leading toward the Keyhole Cavern. The team decides the best plan of attack is to split up into three teams, with each team investigating one of the potential openings.
Charlie Boy And James
Charlie and James start the expedition off by looking into one of the potential caves that’s slightly west of the Open Pit Mine. On their way, they notice the ripped ear tag of a cow. Just a few feet away from the ear tag is a mangled pile of cow bones with tiny parts of skin, sinew, and meat hanging off. Charlie says the kill looked vicious. They continue walking and come across the cave opening, where Eric’s drone was found.
James gets down and starts crawling into the cave. There’s copper everywhere throughout the walls of the cave. Unfortunately, the cave only goes back about 12 feet, and James finds a pile of bones at the end of it. But! James believes the cave does go deeper and that years of mud and runoff have packed the opening closed.
Chad And Josh
Chad and Josh approach their potential cave, which is the farthest away from the Keyhole Cavern and just a few hundred feet away from the Open Pit Mine. Josh says the soil around this opening has definitely been worked on. That’s when Josh finds old timbers in the ground. A quick shoveling of dust reveals that these wooden timbers are essentially a door leading into a deeper tunnel.
It should be noted that the timber they found here is oddly similar to the wood Chad found previously in the Water Pit.
Chad and Josh prepare to venture into this cave entrance, though Josh tells everyone to keep their wits about them as he’s not sure how stable this cave is. They start crawling on their bellies through the insanely tight cavern. Eventually, they come out into an area where they can stand. The deeper they go, the more Josh worries about the cave’s stability. What he is sure about is that whoever dug/extended this cave system was following a mineralization line. (Blind Frog Ranch: The Endless Shaft)
Eric Drone-mond
Eric heads out to his potential cave opening, which is about one-third of a mile away from the Keyhole Cavern. He thinks this cave opening has been worked over, but is inherently naturally created. There is good mineralization throughout this cave. But once Eric gets a few more feet in, he notices that it has caved in, and he might not be able to proceed.
As Above, So Below
We join back up with Chad and Josh. They’ve continued following the natural curve of the cave and have reached 50 feet below the surface. Then 75 feet. That’s when Chad hears footsteps. They stop walking, but Josh tells Chad it’s more than likely an echo. See, caves can play auditory illusions on people, and that’s most likely what Chad is hearing.
The two keep walking and eventually make it to 148 feet below the surface. A huge fallen boulder temporarily detours them, but they work around it. Suddenly, they come to a path that forks off in four different directions. Josh is creating the map on a piece of paper as they walk and thinks the best way for them to go is the direction that feels like the path’s natural curve.
Josh stops Chad at the perfect moment…Chad almost steps into a hole. But it’s not JUST a hole, it’s a vertical shaft that goes straight down. It looks just like the shaft James and Duane Ollinger saw a few years ago when they were going through an Aztec tunnel location in Mexico.
They decide to tie a rope around one of their GoPros and lower it down the vertical shaft. The 200-foot-long rope isn’t enough to do the trick. Can you believe that? Chad almost stepped into a hole more than two hundred feet deep. It’s decided that they’ll call it a day and come back in the morning with a longer rope.
Everyone starts to head out of the tunnel, using Josh’s map as a guide. But a wrong turn brings them to a dead end. “I’m not trying to panic, but are we lost?” Asks one of the producers. Josh quickly calms everyone down and tells them they will make it out and NOT to panic. Panicking when you’re lost in an underground cave system leads to death.
A little bit of backtracking reveals where they made a wrong turn, and everyone makes it out safely. (Blind Frog Ranch: The Endless Shaft)
More Than A Shaft
Chad and Josh head out to their tunnel the next morning. They make their way back to the vertical shaft with a longer rope. The only question is, how much deeper does this vertical shaft go? After tying the rope around the camera, they send it back down. With the new, longer rope, they finally reach the bottom of the vertical shaft. It’s 250 feet deep and definitely hand-dug.
At the bottom of the shaft lies a singular, lonely skull. This is now a burial site. Josh, smartly, says they need to leave the vertical shaft alone at this point.
The two men continue heading down the tunnel, deeper into the earth. They eventually come across some charcoal markings on the walls. One looks like two Vs and a sideways 6, while the other marking looks like a half circle with a slash through it. Josh immediately knows what this is. It’s the Deseret Alphabet, an alphabet created by Mormon pioneers.
Does this mean they’re finally back on the trail of the Lost Rhoades Mine? Is the Keyhole Cavern the Lost Rhoades Mine?
Final Thoughts
The season is over, and we still don’t have an answer as to what happened with Duane’s health. I’m sure he’s going to be okay, but will he be in Season 6? Will there even be a Season 6? I hope so. It seems like this cave that Chad and Josh are exploring is the single best find they’ve had on the ranch in years.
Finding the Deseret Alphabet on the wall points to the presence of Mormons, and the vertical shaft points to the presence of the Aztecs. It feels like a journey that has been going on for a decade, so watching them find all of this evidence feels incredibly cathartic. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed for another season because this cave could very well lead us to learning the Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch.
(Blind Frog Ranch: The Endless Shaft (S5E8))
Catch Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch: Drain The Pond! on Discovery or with a Max subscription.
