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A 6.7 You probably havent seen before...

4K views 26 replies 10 participants last post by  Reverend Suede 
#1 ·
Hey guys....I usually hang out in the 6.0 section, but the mine I work at bought a brand new ford and turned it into a man carrier. Basically they use it to bring the guys down the portal from surface to thier work areas.....It was a slow day at work and I've been itching to take a video, so I finally got around to it yesterday. The video was taken underground, so its pretty dark...The heading I took the video in is about 2 miles underground! We also have a 6.4 thats set up exactly the same way....But I like the 6.7 better....anyways, couldnt figure out how to imbed the video so heres the youtube link...

 
#5 ·
Nope were a GOLD mine......Lifes pretty good for them right now with gold being around $1,400 an ounce! Its a cut and fill mine, so as they take the cuts into the ore body, they backfill them with a coarse cement type mixture, then take the cut beside it. I work in development, so my job is to drive drift down and around the main ore body and out to other ore bodies. you can sort of see the working face in that video...It was flooded with water that day thanks to my cross-shift...The ramp were working on now is going down at 15% and its been going for well over 1000 feet and has another 200 feet before we turn and continue for well over another 1000 feet at 15%.
 
#7 ·
Two miles?!!! What is the temp at that depth? I got to tour the Homestake Gold Mine when it was still in operation but it only went to 8000ft. Temp was around 95degrees if memory serves me correctly. My dad worked at a shop on the 7400ft and 6500ft levels and I think he said low 90's year-round. Nice video, thanks for posting.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Whoa...My step-dad worked at homestake at the u/g shop too...I thought it was the 7800-7900 level...cant remember exactly.....and yeah your right....95-98 degrees...The heading I'm in is about 76 degrees according to the truck thermometer....our ventilation is never more than 100 feet away, and its blows crazy hard.....the core drillers have left us some holes in the rib that put out like 50 GPM of water thats warmer than you'd want for a bath.....so the heats there, we just havent hit it yet.......I did hear that homestake numbered thier levels by the depth they were from surface....we number ours by our elevation according to sea level....were actually under a mountain...so thats where most of the 2 miles comes from....


EDIT: our elevation accordeing to sea level is only 3910FT above sea level...
 
#9 ·
Yes Homestake did the levels by the depth from surface. But Lead's elevation was a mile above sea level to start with, so in reality they were only 3000 below sea level. If your step dad worked there I bet my dad would know who he is, although he was the fleet mechanic on the surface until the big lay-off/shut down in 1998. Then he was moved to the shop on the 7400 level.
 
#12 ·
My step-dad was there until the very first time the mine started having trouble and they offered early retirement and he took it and we moved to upstate NY...Only time we ever got away from mining and we nearly starved to death! Didnt stay long and his buddies were calling and telling him about the boom out here in NV and we made the move....We got here Dec. 1995.
 
#10 ·
Thanks for the video. It came out reasonably well. I've not had much luck with videos underground. My photos turn out spectacular though. What state is your mine in?

Love readin you guys swappin the mine stories and relations. My old man worked the gooseberry in Nevada in his early 20s before he lost his leg. Then for a while he worked for Boart Longyear in the late 90s as shop and field mech. He did a lot of work around the bigger names like Midas and Getchel and goldstrike. I love hearin all his stories. I never could seem to find the correct door to get in to mining. It was just so much easier for me to get into heavyhaul. But that still allowed me to haul to every major Nv operations for Newmont and Barrick along with dozens of smaller outfits. I loved it!! With the curiousity that developed from Dads gooseberry days, me and a partner got into exploring and assessing abandoned underground claims with documentation for historical and prosepctive purposes.
 
#13 ·
Im in NV and I know all those mines except the gooseberry...But it rings a bell.....I work at Barricks newest U/G out in the cortez hills. Its right across the valley from the Cortez pipeline pit. If your familiar with the area, were pretty much re-mining the old cortez mine area from the 1860's. They found such a huge gold deposit, they put in an open pit right above the underground mine. The old ghost town of cortez is still standing, but its on mine property now and they dont let anyone in. 2 summers ago me and a few buddies snuck onto property and had a look around, then went straight up mount tenabo and got to actually go into the origional old cortez mine. theres two portals and a shaft all about a mile and a half from each other....Its freakin huge....Those old timers were mining placer gold back then, and its crazy to think that they could have been mining through some really rich ore deposits and never even knew what they had!

Its funny you mentioned assessing old mining claims....Me and my partner at work have been itching to go re-work some abandoned mines or prospect and find some placer deposits....Were in the early planning stages, but things should get going pretty good once the roads start to dry out.
 
#14 ·
Wow! Yea I've hauled so much into 1 and 2. Is Mach 4 still workin in there? I've hauled a bunch out of the gold acres side from their de-comissioned bone yards. As for the gooseberry, it has been out of service for I don't know how long. It fell on it's face ONLY due to modern regulations and because they tried heap leachin everything rather than targeting the high grade bodies and runnin it through the mill. Everything from the headframes to the old ghost town still stand but it's locked up inside the 102 ranch which is story county. If you know where USA parkway is east of Reno then that will give you a basic idea of where in the hills south of 80 it is. The old timers know what's in there 3,000 or so deep.

Me and partner explored the cortrez hillside back in '07 or '08 I can't remember but it was before the season that they forested the hillsides before gearing up for the current phase. He still lives there and works for the same outfit in Nv and the last 735 he brought to you guys, he claimed the hillside where Cortez stood was gone? But geez were there holes up there, most were too extreme for our gear to get into. We did find a portal with maybe a 5yrd ore cart at the adit behind a gate. The whole drift was highly unstable so we never ventured further and had to leave the cart. There was an old mill and tons of tracks and hoppers in that terrace of the mountain.

Pm me with your email and I'll send you my pictures and tell you hot spots that we had out there. GREAT one in battle mountain. The time is ticking fast on it, newmont is about to knock the mountain it sits on down for copper and turqouise.
 
#15 ·
I know exactly what ore cart your talking about....When I was there there was a heavy gate right in front of it....It was in the high 90's when we were there but the air out of the portal was in the low 60's. You pretty much have to go on foot from there on up....The higher you get the steeper the going...I managed to get my kids up most of the way, but I had to leave them under a pinion to get up the last 500 feet where I found the shaft....Wouldnt have wanted them anywhere near it anyways....Rocks dropped down the middle of it took 3-4 seconds before they clanked against something metal....Its deep..... up to the right from that same portal is the "winter shaft" or maybe "winter portal" dont remember which....Its a portal that goes in about 100 yards then you hit a shaft which goes down god knows how far....I only got in so far before my flashlight gave out but my buddies got in to the shaft and said there was drift behind it but there was no realistic way to get over that hole....Pretty cool portal though. absolutely no ground control except on one slip where they used rough hewn pinion logs to shore it up.....Tons of bobcat tracks in the dust on the floor....

Its funny...The old timer that gave me the heads up on that mine had pictures of what that hill looked like in 1880.....There wasnt a tree for 50 miles! He even had pics of people feeding the mill furnace with pitchforks full of chopped sagebrush....It pretty much reforested itself with no help....They did do a lot of knocking down junipers to get that pit open, but thankfully they only hit the road areas and the pit area. Right now the pit is starting to nip at the base of mt tenabo, but its nowhere near the town of cortez, and even further from the old cortez mine.
 
#16 ·
Awesome video!

It amazes me what some of these trucks do for a living! :nod:
 
#18 ·
Everythings diesel underground since gas engines produce too much carbon monoxide. The soot diesel engines put out has been regulated down a lot in the last 5 years, so theyre pretty picky now about which engines they use. the 6.7 is nice because it scrubs out a lot of the NO2 aswell. a lot of the other diesel engines managed to reduce the soot but it kicked up the NO2 level. Luckily our mines ventilated really well and the NO2 level hardly ever goes as high as 2PPM.
 
#20 ·
I just saw this same article on yahoo and was just about to post it in here.....

it's sad about this happening...... :(
 
#22 ·
I'm kind of frustrated that he was left for dead and they openly admit it in the statement releases and in the media. Now while I do explore these old mines I use common sense, strong judgement and great care before and during my exploration. We go in expecting the worse and hold no one responsible but ourselves for the decision we made. But we have determined that alot of the statistics are from un educated individuals who make poor choices when around abandoned mines. However I am not assuming or implying anything negative about this unfortunate individual. What fires me up and I know there's a side to every story but I feel the rescuers were ignorant in the case. I am fully aware of the hazards and risks involved but I see no excuse that their lives were in danger with the specialized equipment they have. The story sounds if they were all barging down the shaft tryin to be glory hounds causing the disruption of more material. If it had been a worker in an operational mine they would stop at nothing in their attempts. Yes this person trespassed and made a mistake by entering but even as big of a cold hearted arsehole as I can be sometimes I find it chickensh t to leave him and we'll come back later to exhume the corpse.


My deepest remorse for his family he left behind. It was unclear if they were housed in Nevada with him or if they recieved the news at their home in Wyoming. Fwiw, I have always assured my friends and family that if I'm lost in there it was because I was enjoying something that made me happy.
 
#23 ·
Well...For starters....Ive been doing mine rescue for 3-4 years, and I know a lot of the guys on the Newmont team through going to competitions. I can personally guarantee they did everything they could...And if the Navy showed up aswell, along with some of the rescue guys from the state agency....If they said they couldnt do it...They probably cant.

But theres a few other things working against them. For one...No one owns that mine...So its not like the big gold companies we have here who automatically start writing checks and have an almost endless amount of money to bring in equipment from all over the world.

Second, the shaft was between 18-36 inches wide. and at an angle, which would make it extremely dificult to get in with ropes without touching the sides of the shaft and knocking loose ground out.

People have short memories when it comes to disasters. A few years ago the Crandall coal mine in Utah lost 5-6 guys...They tried like hell to get them out....Even when they knew the ground was bad, 4 mine rescue guys and 2 MSHA guys went in as a last ditch effort, and the back collapsed and killed them.

They are not going to make any attempt to recover the body at the bottom of the shaft.

They are going to seal the mine with that dead guy in there just like they sealed the Crandall mine with 10-12 guys in there.

As a mine rescue guy...I want to be the guy that gets into **** like that and brings the guy out...We all pretty much have the same mentality, so if they say it cant be done...I'm pretty positive it cant be done.

Its a bad situation...Without a doubt...The only thing I wish is I could have gone out there and dropped down and taken a look for myself....We were put on standby but never got called out...
 
#24 ·
I will never forget the Crandall mine workers. I tried like hell to contribute an effort. While many trucking companies and equipment companies were donating their services and equipment to help with the rescue I was buggin my boss to get me somethin. The whole first week I was relocating exploratory drills in central Nv and delivered one in Delta, Ut. My radio never left Fox or any other radio news as I was waiting for the good news. If I could of even drove from there to donate a case of water I would've is how bad I wanted to help. I was in the Hollister when several men were lost over at Midas when the floor opened up takin them with there machines. That was a grim feeling. I've always seem to have been in the "neighborhood" when there had been a collapse or death at Getchel, Midas or Queenstake. I don't know why but when those accidents happen but it hits so close to home and I don't brush them off.

I did not mean to offend you or give rescue workers a bad name. Im only reading the newspaper. One artical I read said efforts would be made to bring his body out, that context right there would pizz anyone off. I believe you when you say the mine will be sealed. It and any others nearby will be cat walked after this tradegy, most likely performed by the blm.

I am not familiar with the Murphy district. Nor was I there to examine the shaft in which he fell in to. My only experience in Jersey valley is all the cranes and geothermal drill loads I've hauled in there over 3 years for NSCI and geodrill. I've been around the Kennedy district which is loose and soily. So I can guess by elimination where the Murphy area is that it wouldn't be much better.
 
#25 ·
One of the bosses at work has a saying...When he knows its a shi- situation, but theres nothing you can do(or he doesnt have a good answer lol)....."It is what it is"....

(not going to stop me from exploring my As- off this summer!) Thanks for the email too I'm gonna run 'em past my buddy and I'm sure we'll check them out.
 
#26 ·
You're welcome. I don't know of too many that would any closer than the independance. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, we always do and we'll explore every last hole we can get into kind of like a no stone left unturned. Lol. Some aren't always that great but you know you didn't miss something cool and exciting. Most portal/drifts usually dead end in a couple hundred feet but it's the incline shafts that take you to some amazing places. You can usually tell by the headframe and amount of tailings and other factors on the surface to know what's below.

Be careful and have fun.

Since I do not know or have never been to the Murphy area, if you find out where it was, if you happened to visit, could you help me out and pass along my final respects? And thank you for being a mine rescuer.
 
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