Mine Tour
December 28,2010
Note: All pictures came from the internet - we didn't take any as per the rules.
Michael and I left a little after 10:00 to travel to the Empire/Berthoud Falls area up the I70 corridor. It was beautiful day with temperature in the 50s in Longmont, which translated to the mid 30s at 10,000 feet. As we drove, we talked about fantasy, about the Lord of the Rings, about Balrogs and Orcs.
What better topic when you are going to the roots of the mountains. We stoped in Idaho Falls for a little lunch.
We arrived at the Empire Henderson mine at 12:20, exactly when Mat asked us to be there. He had arranged for us to get through the gate. He had everything set up for us inside. He had it all arranged. We watched the safety video and learned the two big rules for our tour. Always have three points of contact when getting on equipment, and keep arms and legs and other body parts in the equipment at all times. Mat then talked to us about what we were going to see. On a side note, when Michael arrived last Saturday, I was talking to him on the way home from the airport and he said he didn't know anyone who really liked his job. I told him to talk to Mat. Mat loves his job. He has learned so much about how things operate in the mine. And he just loves being there.
After orientation we went to get equipment. It consisted of iron toed wader boots, a hard hat with a light and battery pack, and a belt with an emergency respirator. Mat took us to meet Steve. He is a trainer at the mine and he had set up a tour using a "buggy" so we wouldn't have to walk. If Mat had taken us, we would have had to walk and we wouldn't have gotten to see even 1/3rd of what we got to on the buggy. We really appreciated Steve, and he was such a nice guy.
Steve checked us into the mine and we went to "the cage", which is the lift that takes you down 2500+ feet into the mountain. At that point, with the mountain above, you are some 5000 feet underground. The cage was scary at first. It is not smooth like a normal elevator. It is a bumpy ride and takes a couple of minutes to get down.
First stop was to get the buggy, which is really a tractor outfitted with seats. We drove a little ways through "drifts" which are some of the horizontal tunnels in the mine. That in itself was cool. At that level they were well lit. We visited a warehouse where they stored everything they needed in the mine, which of course had to be brought down in the cages.
We also visited a "refuge room" which is an emergency gathering site. It is equipped with food and water supplies, a first aid station, oxygen and communication gear, just in case something bad happens underground. Over the history of the mine, the refuge rooms have only been used for drills, but everyone in the mine has to be familiar with all of the operations, which is why I think they took us there first. A note about the Henderson Mine. They have a lot of visitors from government officials (Senators, Representatives, etc.) and foreign dignitaries because it is considered one of the safest mines in the world. It is used as an example of how mine safety can and should be done.
We then started going into the drifts. Steve took us to a place where we could see what the Molybdenum looked like in its ore state. It was also a place where we could turn off our hard hat lights and be in total and complete darkness. Pretty cool.
He then drove us to a place where a loader was loading "muck", the mined out ore, into a "chute", a hole that drops the muck down where it can be crushed. There was quite a bit of dust there but the ventilation system in the mine made it very easy to breath all of the time. This loader was a huge front end loader, and it was brand new. Michael and I got to sit in it and it still had that "new car smell. The driver was a little bit disgusted that they had scratched his loader when they were bringing it down in the cage. They brought it down in three parts – the bucket, the front end and the back end which were hinged together so the loader could negotiate the corners in the drifts easier. The drifts are about 5 yards wide so the equipment had to be made to manipulate in that size area. Pretty cool.
Next Steve took us down a ramp to almost the bottom of the mine. This was the level where the muck from the cutes was crushed. We saw the crusher. It is a giant machine that works like a mortar and pestle. It is a gigantic piece of equipment that one would never expect to find at the root of a mountain, and it had be brought down and built on place. Pretty cool.
The muck is dumped in and if the rocks are too big, they get crushed down to a manageable size. The crusher is loaded by giant dump trucks. Now when we say giant dump trucks, they still need to manipulate in the drifts, so they dumb sideways into the crusher. Each one carries about 80 tons at a time. Michael and I got to do a "ride alone" on a dump truck while they made one pass from the chutes to the crusher. Maximum speed was 13 miles per hour, but in that environment it felt a lot faster than that. The truck backs under a chute and then the driver uses an automated hatch to fill his own truck. Then he drives back to the crusher and dumps. The whole procedure takes about eight minutes. My driver told me that he had been doing this for about six years. He said you had to be pretty alert or you would hit a drift wall and then it reminded you that the mountain didn't move. Even that big truck lost that encounter. Let me tell you, that was pretty cool.
Steve then took us one step deeper. After the crusher was done, the muck dropped down and was automatically loaded onto a conveyor belt – the longest conveyor belt in the western hemisphere. It takes the muck to the mill 14 miles away (10 miles underground) on the other side of the continental divide for processing into "chemical grade" Molybdenum. The Moly from the Henderson mine is the purest in the world.
Then it was back to the surface and I'm glad I didn't need to walk back up that ramp. It was a real cool experience. Mat told us that the first time he went down into the Henderson Mine he told Andi it was an experience he would remember forever. I can see why. I feel the same way. I learned so much and saw things I never could have imagined.
Thanks Mat. Thanks Steve. It was more than way cool. It was awe inspiring.
http://www.climaxmolybdenum.com/worldwidelocations/usa_colorado_henderson.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henderson_molybdenum_mine
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