Just a thought..

[Doc4261]

Reading this "clue" makes me wonder why Walt would talk about what I would consider the walled up tunnel when when he supposably said u would have to find the mine to find the cache. Unless the cache was in the walled tunnel ? Though's??

82) The tunnel entrance is supposed to be shaped like a bell. (Waltz to Thomas)

 

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[somehiker]

Reading this "clue" makes me wonder why Walt would talk about what I would consider the walled up tunnel when when he supposably said u would have to find the mine to find the cache. Unless the cache was in the walled tunnel ? Though's??

82) The tunnel entrance is supposed to be shaped like a bell. (Waltz to Thomas)

Here is my take, partly based on other clues which I believe to fit the circumstances....

The mine itself is located on a ledge, thus can only be approached from the side.
The mine is a steep sided funnel shaped pit which had been dug down into two adjacent types of rock....very rich gold bearing quartz and hematite with pinhead sized nuggets.
A short distance below the ledge with the pit, the Mexicans had begun a tunnel, sloped slightly downwards, apparently trying to intersect the deposit somewhere below the bottom of the pit. This tunnel, had it been completed, would have allowed the Mexicans to determine the depth and direction of the deposit, as well as allowing another crew of peons to recover even more gold bearing ore.
The tunnel was also said by Waltz to be like a "rat hole", typical of Mexican mines at the time.
He told Rhiney that it was hard to see, even when someone was very close to it, and both he and Julia would need heavy clothing because it was very brushy in that area. That he had also chosen to hide one of his caches just inside this tunnel, likely for those two reasons, and had made it even more difficult to see, by partly walling up the entrance with rocks after placing his cache inside. Therefore they would need to find the pit first, to know where to look for the tunnel and cache.
From the military trail, the pit couldn't be seen because it was much higher and went down on/from a ledge. The tunnel couldn't be seen because it was too small, as well as being hidden by thick brush and the rocks he had placed in the entrance.....but he could look down on the trail from that location.
A tunnel that tight would make it difficult to remove the ore and waste rock....unless it had room down each side {aka bell shaped}of the worker at it's face to push it off to his sides. This would allow a second peon to muck it outside to where it could be sorted and broken down further.