Boulder Dude

An article in the Denver Post today provided yet another idea for a group road trip...

Visiting a Mine.

The first mine I was in (summer of 2nd grade) was a working mine near the top of Mosquito Pass on the Fairplay side. It was a gold mine and a small stream of ochre colored water flowed out of it. Inside the ceiling was about 5' tall, so all the men needed to stoop as they walked along. The showed us the holes they were drilling to set the dynamite to blast away the face of the seam of gold that they were following.

Now, the second mine I visited was when I went to Hippy School (4th grade), and did a tour of the training mine that the School of Mines runs. It is a hard rock mine that goes in about ½ mile and has all the things that hard rock mine needs to train new Mining Engineers. Very educational and fun.

The third mine I was in was part of the Georgetown Loop train ride at the Lebanon Mine. An old silver mine (you can still find silver baring ore if you look hard enough), where the best part of the tour is where the guide turned off the electrical lights, put on a hat with a candle, and showed you how much fun it would be to hit the drill bit with a sledge hammer in one candle power light. And the put out the candle to show you what complete and total darkness is like.

Not for the claustrophobic.

So, as I said the paper today had several suggestions for mine tours: