I'm Dreaming of a Brown Christmas

Mining is coming to a close for the 3013 season which hopefully will give me adequate time to get caught up with the blog. Have some exciting finds to tell you about. Now back to Winter 2011 Although October isn't really winter we had a major snowstorm  with about 8" of snow and that made me a little nervous. Measurable snow in October is extremely rare and I can't say that I remember any in my lifetime. I do remember flurries one year on Halloween.  I have so much I want to get accomplished so as to have a strong start to 2012 snow is not part of the program. This snow ended up being short lived and all was gone several days later. Due to the lateness of the season I have given up working on Otto's pocket. I really need to lower the floor and approach the pocket from a lower level. To be able to do this I have a need to remove most of the rubble that is in the mine and I also need to be able to pump the water all the way down thus I'm dreaming of a brown Christmas to be able to get all this work done without the hindrance of snow. I will take some warm weather to go along with it. Lack of snow and warm weather do not necessarily go together.

As I have mentioned before mining isn't just about finding pockets filled with crystals. Much of the finding involves doing all the prep work so as to be able to work in the mineralized zone. As miners we are lucky if we can spend 20% of our time looking for minerals, the other 80% involves prepping for this work. With cold weather upon us it was time to start getting ready for next season. If this work isn't done now countless days will be wasted when it is warm doing the work. Workable days in the winter can be difficult to come by and you need to jump on them when they arrive. Working in the winter involves cold temperatures, snowy conditions and days when the sun goes down early. Some snow can be a good thing as it acts as an insulation blanket but too much and it just overwhelms everything. Snowplowing is a constant and the snow can make it slick to get the dump truck around. Volunteers are far fewer this time of year. Everyone wants to dig out a tourmaline pocket, almost no one wants to cut trees and move rock. Early winter with the low sun and short days can be depressing but by the time the Tucson show is ending the days are lengthening and the sun is getting higher. Much is still frozen but things are definitely looking more positive.

Moving material out of the mine is a slow process. It also is not very fun. There are almost always some pieces of blasted ledge that are too big to move without breaking them into smaller pieces and if they are from the outer margins of the pegmatite they can be very difficult to break as they are very hard. The area that I have been drilling and blasting has some natural fractures in the rock which means that the rock will break along the fracture and this has a tendency to give me some extremely large pieces. Occasionally there will be a 20 ton boulder and this makes for a lot of work as they need to be broken up in place as they are to heavy to move. When this happens the best thing is to find some large rock that the excavator can lift and drop them on the larger rock and hope that they break. Usually the rock that is being dropped breaks, so it is good to have a collection of big rocks that can be lifted and a few very hard ones at that.

December turned out to be very nice by Maine standards. There were mild temperatures and very little snow. It allowed me to keep getting material out of the mine so as to give me better access to start to work in the spring. If there isn't much snow it gives me time to do some clean up of the surrounding property. I have several years of woods cleaning ahead as most of the helpers get tired of this job quickly. After getting the mine almost empty of excess rock and since there wasn't much snow yet and it continued to stay mild, it was decided to build a new entryway into the mine. This would involve many days if not weeks of work. I would need to cut the trees where the new road would go, then get rid of the stumps and loam, install new gravel and this was the easy part. The difficult part was having to blast and lower the way into the mine by about 10'. This would take awhile and hopefully the weather would cooperate or I would fall way behind when it was time to start working the mineralized zone come spring.

On the right will be the new road into the mine. Approaching the mine from this way will allow me to have a more gradual decent into the mine. 

With all the tree cutting there was the need to burn the brush. At least we were able to get warm for a little while.

This grouse hung around for several months. He was usually on the road into the mine and if you were doing any work near where he was, he was get right in the way to the point that you had to stop or you wouldn't run him over.

After returning from Tucson even though it was still winter there still was not much snow on the ground. Highly unusual thinking back a few years ago when there was 4' which made for a slow start. With little to no snow this gave me additional opportunity to work on my new access road into the mine. The tree cutting had got done before Tucson so now it was time to move some rock. There was soil overburden that needed to be moved first and then the ledge blasted. All the ledge that was being blasted was going to barren of any interesting minerals. I was working in an area that was almost all country rock which did have a couple of pegmatite dikes running through them. Not much showing up that was exciting in the dike but it did give me something to look at. This ledge work was going to take a while and it was all going to be hard work and not much to break up the monotony

Who says Mardi Gras is only for New Orleans.

Sorting through some of the smaller material from the Spaniards Pocket. This is good winter work. All this material fell through the 1/4" screen and then sorted for gem material which is very small and sent overseas to be cut. Any of the larger gem material is cut in the US as the cutting is a much higher quality and the yield is larger.

A stringer of pegmatite cutting through the country rock which was later bisected with a small basalt dike. The basalt which  came in 200 millions years after the pegmatite had very little interaction with the pegmatite.

Getting ready to put gravel on the new drive into the mine. This new entrance was about 10' lower than the previous entrance making for a more gradual decent into the mine, at least for the present time.

Another one of those piles of rock that need to be moved. If you notice this rock is a bluish grey color and is predominately all country rock that is overlying the pegmatite on this portion of the property. On the back left is the Berry Quarry

The weather stayed decent for this time of year and all the blasting to lower the mine entrance moved along nicely, except for the fact that the rubble pile kept getting larger and larger. You don't realize how much rock is there until you take out the first truck load and it doesn't make a dent. The one nice thing about having all the blasted ledge near where I was extending the new road is it made for a short trip to move the rock. This would be nice as I was getting a little tired of just looking at waste rock. I wanted to see some color to get me in the mood for the upcoming season. There were remnants of last years pocket still left in the bottom of the mine, so as soon as the recent blasted rock was moved it would be time to start looking for minerals.