Let the Cutting Begin

Summer 2007 Before getting too far along in the mining process, I had to get permission from the town to work the mine. This involved the full-blown permitting, going in front of the planning board, and getting their okay to start mining. With some help, a good presentation was put together and my request was passed unanimously. Then the physical work began, and much of it there was. Although there were few large trees to contend with there were many, many small trees that needed to be removed so that I could start to clean the ledge off of the rock debris and see what I was up against. There was also a need to find a new access into the mine and this was going to be a challenge. The old access had been through the Berry mine and where the access was, was now a 20’ deep hole filled with water. The old access also went across property which I didn’t own. The most likely spot for the new access was through one of the old tailing piles which would need to be removed, and I developed a plan for creating the new access. Now that I had a plan it was time to start cutting all the trees and removing them. This was slow, hard and hot work as it was mid summer when I started. The terrain was very difficult to work, with steep drop offs and large boulders to work around. I did most of it by myself although occasionally I would find another hand to help.

Clearing off one of the old tailing piles in preparation for my new access into the mine

The inside of the mine involved the most tree work but it was also necessary to clear out the parking area and to clear up the edges of the road coming in. My estimate is that 80% of mining is doing laborious work and the other 20% involves mining the fun stuff. If you aren't willing to spend days, weeks, and months working on non productive areas, then you are probably not suited to mine.

Almost done cutting September 2007

It was not all work; I would usually spend some time every day taking a closer look at the rock and to try and figure out what was going on. There were areas that I could clean off with a small amount of shoveling and  other areas where I could peel off the moss and get a look at some clean rock. I didn't get any pictures of some of the first indicators. In truth, there weren't any areas that were jumping out and saying, "Dig here". I didn't spend a lot of time trying to dig through the loose rock as I had plans to bring in an excavator and start removing the loose material.