Well, just got back from my latest Colorado adventure, and I made time to detour off my normal path (Colorado Springs to Buena Vista) to visit Cripple Creek, Colorado, and take the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine tour. Saw a rerun of the Gold Fever show that featured the mine recently and decided to go next time out to Colorado. It's only a short drive (about 18 miles) South of Hwy 24 on Hwy 67 just as you enter Cripple Creek on top of the ridge.
Cripple Creek & its sister town of Victor 2 miles away had over 500 mines running at one time, and between 1890 and 2006 this volcanic caldera gave up 23,500,000 ounces of gold! #1 mining camp/district in Colorado & # 3 in the nation.
I have never hardrock mined before, and was fascinated the whole time......... Got there at 8:30AM, the mine opened at 9AM. Once the workers had done a first of day safety inspection, myself and just one couple had the first tour........and the tour guide & mine were all to ourselves. Early bird does get the worm. This meant we could hear everything the guide was saying, we got to handle all the tour items...........like a private tour really!
Hard hat, heavy overcoat & into the miner's cage we loaded, then a few bell rings later we descended 1,000 feet straight down to the 10th level. Took about 2 minutes.
Wow, that's a deep hole! Once off, we took some pics, got a outline of the walking tour and off we went......cool (50 degrees all year around), fresh air, well lit, easy walking.
Saw displays of oldtime miners hand steeling drill holes, setting explosives, mucking out the ore, and such. Talk about hard work! Got to see all the evolutions of steam, then compressed air drills, both dry and with water. Saw air powered muckers, pushed a 2-ton ore cart, and saw the trememdous hard labor it took to drill/blast stopes up chasing a vein, etc. Mines were/are dangerous places, especially for newbies learning the ropes...
I was amazed that there were no wood timber supports in the tunnels, and the guide said the one benefit of blasting solid granite was it was hard rock, but so strong it didn't require the cost/hassle of supports needed in softer rock mines. Amazed how the miners would chase veins up a stope, some a hundred feet, working off narrow planks and rickety little wooden ladders.
Or, chase a vein down, having to hoist up everything below them from the current floor level.They had some good gold in this mine, chasing Sylvanite veins, a gold/silver telluride, and poor ore had 1 to 2 ounces of gold to a 2 ton ore cart and several rich pockets had up to 1,000 ounces to a 2 ton ore cart!
Once the ore was brought to the surface it was pushed over to the sorting house, and hand graded by experienced miners. All the "poor" ore simply was thrown down the hill. That's why many of us with a metal detector can find missed gold they only could not see with the naked eye...
Oh, thought it interesting too that several mine owners many years back all banded together to blast 3 water level lowering tunnels down the canyon, to lower the local water level and keep their mines from flooding. Today? Not a chance envior-Nazis would let that happen today.
So, overall the tour took about 1 hour, and I really enjoyed the education and realized that hardrock mining can really pay off, but man-o-man, is there some real labor and risk associated with being underground. Still good gold in that mine. They just need a functional mill to crush and leach the gold out.
Got several gold ore samples at the end of the tour & I bought one nice large piece in their gift shop for $4 before I left. Nice momentoes of my gold mine tour.
A good link to learn more is here:
http://www.goldminetours.com/tourhistory.html
As for me, I'll stay above ground level, panning, sluicing & dredging!
Randy "C-17A"
www.goldadventures.biz
John