Brendan Jesus
Welcome back, fellow treasure hunters! Not much interesting news has plagued Ufology since we last talked. There was a surprising premiere of Dan Farah’s new Ufology documentary, State of Disclosure, at South by Southwest. I can’t really think of a less welcoming place for a documentary like that. I’m friends with many people who attended SXSW, and many of them were confused at the inclusion of Farah’s grifter-filled movie. And if the reviews are any indication, it wasn’t received too well.
That’s enough of that. It’s time for us to join our favorite group of searchers and hunters deep in the Uinta Basin as we all try and get closer to finding the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
Get Off My Lawn!
We meet up with Duane Ollinger and Charlie Boy, who are at one of the poacher’s locations with a ranger from the Utah Bureau of Land Management. Duane says if the feds don’t kick the poachers out, they’ll do it the old-fashioned way. The Ranger confirms the trespassers do have mining claims, but it seems whoever signed the claims was misinformed about property lines. Duane gets a bit frisky when he hears this news, though he keeps his calm in front of the ranger.
The Seven Sisters
Chad Ollinger, James Keenan, Ryan Skinner, and John Gillam are at the parallel ridgeline in Crow Creek where we left them when they noticed the Seven Sisters. (The supposed landmark to the Lost Rhoades Mine.) The four men walk to the base of the Seven Sisters while the narrator goes on this weird monologue where he conflates the eye (that points to the Lost Rhoades Mine) they’re looking for to the eye on the dollar bill AND the Free Masons? It’s weird and feels like a wholly forced connection.
That’s not the only stretch in this episode. Once at the base of the Seven Sisters, someone points out two large hollow openings in the rock face and states that they look like eyes. They plan to rappel from above to try and get into the eyes so they can see if the etched eye (as stated in the Mormon journals) is inside either of these openings. Don’t worry, we’re going to come back to just how ridiculous this is.
A quick cut back to the ranch shows Charlie Boy using a large spotting scope as he surveils the trespassers as they surveil him back.
Back at Crow Creek, the four men have made it to the top of the ridgeline, above the “eyes”. John sets up the ropes to rappel them down. He goes first so that he can help swing them into the eyes. There is a drone shot of John rappelling down, and these drone shots clearly show how shallow the right “eye” is. This is where my next issue with this episode and forced drama comes in.
First off, if THEY need to rappel down to get into these eyes, then how the hell did an 1800s Rhoades get into it? Secondly, if they can use drones to get the shot of John rappelling down, then why can’t they just use the drone to look into the eyes? It’s bright enough for the drone shot to easily let us see how shallow the right eye is, so why don’t they just use that to check out both eyes? It saves everyone energy, time, and money.
Nevertheless, Chad is the first to go down after John. He gets roughly halfway down and tries to get to the right eye by swinging side-to-side. Chad fails. Up next is Ryan, who has never rappelled before. Ryan is successful with the right eye and notices it’s too shallow and no eye is etched inside.
Thankfully, they decide the left eye is impossible to try and swing into, so the next best option is to walk up the steep, uneven path. John stays back as Chad, Ryan, and James cautiously walk toward the left eye. James makes a misstep and falls, hurting his shoulder. But that’s not the last issue for James. By the time they get to the left eye, James has a medical episode. He starts to black out, gets incredibly sweaty, and loses his hearing. After spending some time on the ground, James starts to feel better.
Once regrouped, they notice a hidden canyon and ridgeline from their current location. See, they didn’t find the etched “eye” as stated in the journal. They’ve taken the hole in the rock face at face value and assume that’s what Rhoades meant. It’s the constant picking and choosing of information that sometimes pisses me off about this show. In the previous episode, they keep talking about an etched eye, and now that they can’t find it, they’re just abandoning that information to go with the narrative they see fit.
Charlie Boy is still surveilling at the ranch but takes time to show something odd he found. He shows the camera crew a photo he took of something strange in the beaver pond. It’s this 12 to 13-foot-long serpent with alligator scales. There’s no further explanation as we cut back to the team at Crow Creek.
By the time we get back with Chad and his crew, they’ve made it to the hidden canyon they noticed from inside the left “eye” hole. They see a set of stacked rocks that look peculiar and decide to check them out. Upon moving the rocks, Ryan states that he can feel a rush of very cold air emitting from inside. This indicates a substantial underground cavern. Ryan puts his hand back inside and pulls out a large iron spike, presumably from a mine track of sorts.
James is certain that what they’re standing on is a collapsed mine. The only issue is that digging here will be difficult because they are on BLM land. On top of the permits they’d have to go through, the location of this collapsed mine would require a major mining operation. Moments before they cut back to the ranch, the narrator says something odd. He states this collapsed mine location is two miles from the eye.
Okay, hold up. When they point out the hidden canyon from the left eye, it’s clear that the furthest away it could be is half a mile. The canyon they are in is 100% NOT what was shown from their vantage point inside the eye. It’s almost as if this collapsed mine location was something found separately and is being used as something to carry along the story of the Lost Rhoades Mine subplot.
Burn Baby Burn
We join Duane, Charlie Boy, Chad, Ryan, and James at the Miner’s Shack. They spend some time filling Duane and Charlie Boy in on what happened over at Seven Sisters. As happy as Duane is to hear about the collapsed mine, he’s cautious to move forward. If they go and dig on BLM land, are they no better than the poachers on their property? Duane’s current priority is getting the poachers off their land.
Charlie Boy and Chad decide to go check out one of the poacher’s dig sites. There is a wheelbarrow and multiple 2x4s and a VERY deep hole. This new spot they found is on the very edge of Blind Frog Ranch, but still on Duane’s property. Duane and James find another poacher site that has a tent and some gear with it. They look inside one of the bags, and it contains explosive wire and dynamite.
This sh*t ends NOW. – Duane Ollinger
Duane lights a flare and sets a poacher’s tent on fire.
Final Thoughts
OKAY. Let’s get the positive out of the way. It’s clear that Duane is at wits’ end with this poacher crap and seeing him light a flare to burn down a poacher’s tent was incredible. He’s a man at the end of his rope and finally realizes the feds aren’t here to help him. I’ll give him credit, he said if they didn’t take care of it, he would…and he does.
My big issue with this episode is all of the weird Seven Sisters/eye stuff. From making Free Mason comparisons to just throwing away everything they previously said about WHAT the eye is…there’s just too much retconning. And hearing the narrator say this collapsed mine was two miles away when they very clearly show the hidden canyon to be less than half a mile is infuriating.
To answer the question I always pose at the end of these reviews, no. This episode did not bring us any closer to finding the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch.
