Mountain Rampage Read Online Free PDF

before going their separate ways after their upcoming senior year.
    The team members put on their hardhats and clicked on their headlamps as they followed Clarence through the door. Chuck turned on his headlamp and followed. A stream of outside air coursed past him, drawn into the tunnel.
    A mining engineer Chuck had hired at the beginning of the summer to assess the security of the mine tunnel had declared it safe from the risk of roof collapse, pointing out that no explosives, which might have damaged the tunnel’s structural integrity, had been used in its construction.
    â€œThey did it the old-fashioned way,” the fire-hydrant-shaped engineer told Chuck, putting his finger to one of the countless indentations in the wall where miners had chipped away at the granite interior of the mountain, lengthening the tunnel pickaxe blow by pickaxe blow.
    The mining expert led Chuck deep into the tunnel, walking on the floorboards between the ore cart tracks three-quartersof the way to the bare back wall of the mine before turning and declaring it safe.
    The engineer tapped the thick floorboard planks with the sole of his boot. “I like that they installed rails to cart out the tailings. And the quality of the floor, too. Shows they thought they were in it for the long haul.” He directed the beam of his headlamp at the wall of the tunnel. “It’s too bad, all this effort—pick-work, flooring, rails—and they just quit.” He turned to Chuck. “I’ve seen it before, though. Probably ran out of money. Happened all the time.”
    â€œAt least they didn’t go too deep before they moved on,” Chuck said.
    The engineer faced the tiny rectangle of daylight that marked the doorway at the mouth of the mine one hundred fifty feet away. “They must’ve dug thousands of these things back then. Hell, tens of thousands.” He grunted. “Just another empty hole.”

F IVE
    Chuck trailed Clarence and Team Nugget down the mine tunnel. The six students fell silent, subdued by the darkness and the tunnel’s chill. They positioned the solar-powered LED floodlights to illuminate the day’s work area and set about dismantling the final, fifteen-foot stretch of ore cart tracks and underlying floorboards. Each time they removed one of the planks, the young men crouched shoulder-to-shoulder around the newly uncovered rectangle of debris, looking for anything of interest.
    At the start of their work in the tunnel three weeks ago, the students of both teams had groused about the extent to which Chuck required them to sift through the layer of gravel that comprised the base of the tunnel.
    â€œWe’re searching for a needle in a haystack,” Jeremy complained.
    â€œWhich is exactly what you signed up for,” Chuck responded. “Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. August, 1951. Hundred and ten in the shade. Louis and Mary Leakey scraping away at the side of a hill blazing day after blazing day. And what is it they found?”
    â€œFrosty the Snowman,” joked lumpy, disheveled Carson.
    â€œBroken bits of stone tools,” Chuck corrected. “Tiny pieces of bone. Tooth fragments. It was years before they came across the skull that made them famous.”
    â€œOh, my God!” Carson exclaimed with an exaggerated shiver of fear. “A skeleton!”
    â€œEverybody loves the mystique of archaeology’s biggest discoveries,” Chuck continued as Carson traded a fist bump with Jeremy. “Olduvai in Tanzania. The Valley of the Kings, Egypt. Machu Picchu, Peru. But the truths archaeologists work to uncover aren’t tied up all neat and tidy in ribbons and bows. They’re covered by jungle growth, buried in dirt and rubble, or—” he pointed at the base of the tunnel “—hidden beneathfloorboards in an abandoned mine. Gravity is an archaeologist’s best friend. Stuff falls down, other stuff covers it up, and it all lies there,