“Hello John, would you be interested in traveling in an underground mine this spring?” We received a lot of strange phone calls at the office, but since this one came from a credible source and the calendar didn’t show April 1st, we were willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.
The call was from Justin Dawes, Kawasaki’s ATV communications guru. It seems that he and his fellow adventurer rider Jon Rall, also of Kawasaki, had a trick up their sleeve. They had caught the scent of a unique driving destination in west-central Pennsylvania called Mines & Meadows Resort and thought it would be a great destination where they could showcase the capabilities of the company’s Brute Force 750 4×4.
Frankly, the 54 miles of above-ground trails are reason enough to visit the Mines & Meadows Resort, as the varied terrain, featuring hill climbs, rock trails, and mud holes, offers challenges for experienced riders, but others easy trails with wide gentle curves allow anyone to come and try it out.
The underground limestone mine, however, takes this riding destination to the next level. How many places can you go where you get great trails, plus the opportunity to travel 200 feet underground in complete darkness and drive through an underground lake?
The answer, as far as we know, is one, and that place is Mines & Meadows.
Putting it all together
Meeting Bob Svihra, the brainchild and money man behind Mines & Meadows, it’s sometimes a miracle that this guy can tie his shoes in the morning without being distracted by an idea running through his head. When he speaks, he barely finishes a sentence before the next is out of his mouth, and seems less likely to stay on the original topic than jump to something else he wants to say.
However, he is not clueless. Svihra has been very successful, starting and managing businesses involved in such disparate fields as medical waste disposal, manufacturing shoulder and knee harnesses, creating a process to remove materials from CDs and DVDs, and as an investor in a variety of things, including local. BeaveRun Motorsports Complex located a couple of miles down the road from Mines & Meadows. So Svihra is definitely a person who has shown that he can carry out a concept, but while he is doing it, a dozen other ideas are also pulsing in his gray matter.
“One business supports the next one I do, and then that supports the next one I do… I’m a good builder but a lousy maintainer, so when I do something like this, I throw it over my shoulder and let someone else take care of it.” it once it’s up and running,” Svihra said with a smile.
Mines & Meadows is one of his latest start-ups. Some friends took Svihra for a ride in an ATV on private property about seven years ago. The horseback ride was interesting, but then his friends took him to an abandoned limestone mine.
“When they took me to the mine, being an entrepreneur, I put two and two together and said, ‘This would be a great place to ride ATVs.’ So that’s what I tried to do,” Svihra explained.
Svihra invested $2 million in the park, initially purchasing more than 400 acres of land around the mine and leasing part of the mine to the Grinnen family, who purchased the mine in 2004 and formed the Underland Development Corporation. The riding park has now grown to over 600 above ground acres, with 54 miles of trails winding through interesting and varied terrain. Another 14 acres are located underground in the limestone mine, providing a unique experience for visitors.
Underground:
Leaf
After a short ride through some April showers, our Kawasaki-mounted group headed for the mouth of the mine. The entrance appeared to be about 5 feet wide and 7 feet tall, with a wooden sign reading “Mine Entrance – Guided Tours Only” hanging above the door. The entrance was lined on the top and sides with wooden beams similar to railroad ties, and from the outside it looked like we were entering a bear’s den.
We watched as other machines disappeared into the darkness, then took a deep breath and ventured through the narrow door. The bright light from outside was quickly replaced by darkness: our eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden change in ambient light. Fortunately, the Brute Force’s headlights illuminate a narrow path in front of us as we move forward.
The initial preparation room has only a little light, thanks to the brightness that filters through the door, but it is still dark. The room we entered was the size of a high school gym, except it had a relatively low ceiling.
Once our group was inside and some photos were taken, we followed our leader further inside. We could only see as far as our headlights extended, and only in the direction of those lights. Do you want to see the rock walls up close? Better turn your machine in that direction, because that’s the only way you’ll see them.
The mine itself was created in the 1800s, when gangs of miners using the relatively crude tools available at the time dug through a high hill to capture the natural strip of limestone found there. For more than 60 years, limestone was extracted from the mine and used in the local manufacture of cement until the mine closed in 1958. When excavating the limestone, crews had to leave sections of stone intact every 35 feet so that the roof will not collapse. in essence, leaving irregularly shaped support pillars.
What remains is a kind of underground hive. As we followed our leader further into the mine, our main path wound through the darkness, and on either side of us would be a “pillar”, then what looked like a secret room or passageway leading further into the mine. darkness. We knit our Brute Force 750 back and forth to shed some light on these side areas. Some were shallow, some were deep, and in some cases there would be room behind room, again with pillars separating the spaces every 35 feet.
The roof hung about 15 feet off the ground in most places, though we would occasionally go through a “keyhole” or other area that wasn’t dug in as much, and had to duck our heads as our ATV climbed. over rock to get to the next room.
Sheer darkness is the first thing that catches your eye – it’s creepy, especially when everyone turns off their lights and it’s pitch black. Your eyes try to adapt to changing light conditions, but they’ll never really catch up: without even a ray of light coming in from anywhere, you’re completely blind. Fortunately, the Kawis came back to life and we set off again.
A musty, cold dampness is also noticeable. The mine is kept at 55 degrees year-round, and the humidity hovers around 80 percent. It made it a perfect location for a mushroom farming operation (yes, LEGAL mushrooms!) that filled this particular mine in the 1970s and 1980s. Crews of up to 45 people worked 24 hours a day as moles in this cave, ensuring the right garnish for pizzas, salads and the like.
The slope is mostly flat in the mine – you’re not actually going downhill into the land, rather the land rises 200 feet into a hill as the bikers traverse it.
Eventually, we came to a 3 acre underground “lake”. The word lake is in quotes because the water here is simply trapped by a dam at the other end of the mine. Still, it’s an interesting sight and fun to drive.
The mine was abandoned in the mid-1980s and became a hangout for local explorers and partygoers until the Grinnen family purchased the land.
“We wanted to develop it and possibly get into vehicle, boat, RV and RV storage and log storage,” explained Steve Grinnen. “Also, our main focus right now is a wine cellar. This is the perfect temperature to store wine, and the humidity can be controlled very easily. There’s a lot of square footage here.”
In total, leisurely tours of the mine last around an hour. There is no extra charge for the mine tour – it comes with the price of admission, but the only way in and out is with a guide.
Above the ground:
Trails everywhere!
The mine is awesome, but we’d be interested in riding Mines & Meadows even without it.
The facility has more than 50 miles of trails that wind through the wooded, rolling landscape. A color-coded map illustrated the web of trails, with simple yellow and green trails running around the perimeter and down the center of the trail system, and then a hodgepodge of blue and black trails marking the biggest areas of challenge.
In Brute Force, we found the system to be relatively easy to understand, as trails were marked by number and color, and directional signs pointed the way back to the main staging area.
Better yet, many of the trails are one way so it’s unlikely you’ll ever run into anyone around a corner and it’s a cinch to find your way back to your tow vehicle as all trails eventually lead to other paths that will take you. you back
Knowing they had some experienced riders with them, our guides took us on the toughest stuff the park could muster. The challenges were fun, but in the end, the rock climb, power line hill climb, and mud were the ideal habitat for the Brute Force 750.
The Mines & Meadows Resort near Wampum, Pennsylvania is open year-round, except for two weeks in late November or early December for the Pennsylvania deer hunting season. A day pass is $25, and that includes a tour of the mine.