In this study, we test the performance of 2D elastic full waveform inversion (FWI) to detect a pair of galleries with 3-4 m diameter each at a depth of ~25 m. The study site is an abandoned tier of the Mt Erzberg iron ore mine. The ore is hosted in limestones, dolomites and calcareous schists. Those are hard rocks with a P-wave velocity around 4500 m/s when undisturbed. However, mining with explosives created a damage zone down to at least 40 m depth in which the P-wave velocity ranges from 1200 – 3700 m/s. Data was collected with seismic three-component stations at 2 m spacing on a 136-m-long profile. The long-offset recordings aim at imaging the gallery with refracted body waves. A buffalo gun was used as seismic source at 8 m spacing. It excites amplitudes in a 20-500 Hz frequency range. Our numeric calculations show significant phase shifts to be expected at long offsets (> 70m), especially above 200 Hz. Although the signal-to-noise ratio drops below 1 in that offset-frequency window due to high attenuation at the site, we are still able to detect the gallery as a significant reduction in density when applying an appropriately tailored inversion scheme.