Over a decade
underground,
in mines nobody’s
entered since 1926.
Letters from a Retired Madman — one photograph, one story, once a month.
From British Columbia’s abandoned mines, ghost towns and backroads — and as far afield as Mexico, Australia and the Antarctic.
Probably Mental
Frank Schlichting, retired madman. He has cheated death for years — crashed planes, attacked by a bear, and explored hundreds of abandoned mines, going places nobody else would dare to go. How does he do it? His dad told him that even a cat only has 9 lives. Frank shrugs and says it’s mostly mental.
When the film ends, the letters begin — one photograph, one story, once a month.
The Mother Lode, Greenwood
An old drill steel, set down at the end of a shift and waiting in the dark ever since. Some tools tell you more than the records ever will.
The Company You Keep
An old drill steel, set down at the end of a shift and waiting in the dark ever since. Some tools tell you more than the records ever will.
Riding the Rails at the Yankee Boy Mine, Grand Forks, BC
An old drill steel, set down at the end of a shift and waiting in the dark ever since. Some tools tell you more than the records ever will.
For over a decade, the man documenting British Columbia’s vanishing underground — more than 400 films, a museum full of rescued history, and a lifetime of stories from places most people will never see. BC is home for Frank — but the explorations and productions range from Canada’s north to Mexico, Australia and the Antarctic.
This is not nostalgia dressed up for the camera. It’s a working archive of places, skills and lives that can disappear in a single cave-in.
UNDERMINE — Phoenix, Anyox, and the Mines They Left Behind
Made with a Telus STORYHIVE grant, this television documentary tells the story of two massive BC copper mines — whole towns, with their own railways and smelters, abandoned in 1919 and 1935. Frank and his crew go deep underground to show what still lies beneath the ruins.
“First of all: you should never go into a mine.” That is Frank’s own first rule, and he means it. He has spent more than a decade underground — trained, equipped, and working with people who know what they are doing — and he is still at risk every time he goes in. Nothing you see in his films is safe. It is survivable, on a good day, by a man who has spent years learning how.
What Frank does is extremely dangerous. Abandoned mines kill: bad air that gives no warning, rotten timber, hidden shafts under loose ground, rock that fails without a sound. His rule of threes underground — three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food, and three months without hope. Alone down there, no one finds you in time. The films exist so that no one else ever has to go.
And one rule as firm as the first: these places, and everything left in them, are history. Take nothing, damage nothing, leave every site exactly as you found it. What truly must come out before the mountain takes it is museum work — documented, and kept in public trust at the Yankee Boy Mine Museum. History belongs in a museum, not on a souvenir shelf.
New here? Start underground at the Mother Lode, Greenwood — then work your way back through the letters.
Rescued machinery, tools, lamps and relics from a century of BC mining — collected, restored and kept. Yankee Boy Mine Museum visits by appointment in Grand Forks.
Visit the museum →
Exploring Abandoned Mines
The underground, filmed before it disappears — all over BC, plus Canada’s north, the USA, Mexico, Australia and the Antarctic. The workings, the machinery, the geology, and the people who knew how it all worked.
Watch on YouTube →Frank Schlichting
The flying, the backcountry rides, the ghost towns and the long ways home. Everything that does not fit down a mineshaft.
Watch on YouTube →That’s the whole deal. Frank picks one photograph out of the archive, tells you the story of the day it was taken, and signs off until next month. A short P.S. points to whatever’s new — films, mine pages, the museum — and that’s it.
Leave anytime.