Summer fun

Just a wrap up of my summer. I got to do a lot of fun things, but I worked hard too. I researched and tested mercury control for the process division of the Goldstrike mine. Hopefully, my work will be carried on and I will have done some good this summer :)

This is the Betze (pronounced betsy) pit. It is the largest, gold producing pit in North America. Pretty cool, huh?

I also did some work out at our reclaimed area, called Bazza. We try to track the wildlife that's out there, so we have a "stealth" camera. It's all cammo and everything, but we just hang it on a post in the open. When we moved it, though, we had to make sure the motion sensor worked, which is why I'm all crouched down.

Yep, it works, hahaha.

Good summer, great people, one big pile of dirt, and one amazing experience.

Haul Truck Day!

Ok, think about an average sized, two story house. Now think about putting giant wheels on it. Now think about driving it around. Yeah, that's how big they are! SEE??

The fact that I'm only about half as tall as the wheel kind of makes me nervous. Haha, I can't even keep my hard hat on straight!

I know you're asking yourself "HOW big is this thing?" Well let me show you some more. After you've climbed the 20 feet to get into the cab, you look out your right hand side and see the deck. Yep, it's 20 feet long. You could put a whole living room out there!

And, yes, I did get to drive it. So cool!!! It was weird, I would completely forget that I had another 20 feet to my right that I needed to worry about. But don't worry, we were just up on the waste rock dump, away from everybody else, so I couldn't cause any damage.

I still can't get over how big this thing is! It's engine is the size of about 10 of me.

Now remember how big the trucks are? Now look at the shovels. Even bigger!

It's hard to communicate the awe that is felt when standing next to one of these monsters. But I tried my best. I hope your inner child was awakened to appreciate this. :D

My Journey to the Center of the Earth!

There was one day this summer when I got to go underground. Every two weeks, someone in the environmental department has to collect sump samples from the underground. There's a lot of groundwater around our mine which we pump out at a rate of about 1500 gallons/minute (which we then pipe back in for dust control; I can't help but roll my eyes at the redundancy). But in the low areas, water collects and erodes the rock which creates some pretty nasty stuff. This railing has had water dripping on it that's so acidic, it's almost eaten right through it!

Anyway, Lakin (the environmental summer student) and I got to go underground.

You can't see our whole get-up in this picture, but we were wearing the hard hats with the light clip and the light with it's own battery pack (that weighed about 5 pounds) attached to out belts. Also on our belts (not your average flimsy belt but, industrial, haul-you-out-of-a-sticky-situation belts) was a self-rescue canister in case there was a fire underground so we didn't get carbon monoxide poisoning. Also, we were wearing knee-high rubber boots. FUN!

Of course, we had to fulfill our primary purpose: collect samples. To do this, we had to wade out into the pools of water and fill up a jug, or turn on a valve and get sprayed with mud. Lakin and I hung back a little while our guide filled the jugs from the spray. :D

But we also got to have a tour of almost the whole underground. It's a good thing we had an underground supervisor with us because we would have been sooo lost, the whole thing is just a maze of tunnels with spray-painting on the wall to tell you where you are. This one says "1038 B. F. P." which means we are 1038 feet below the surface. At one point we were nearly 5000 feet (ok, so it was only 4985 feet) below the surface! That's almost to sea level!!

Underground, there is all the same types of mining tools that are used in the open pit: shovels, haul trucks, grinders and crushers, etc. Everything is just smaller. This is one of the haul trucks; it's only about 15 feet tall with 8 foot wheels, which is TINY for a haul truck.

One of the stops on the tour was to see the crystal cave. A few years ago, the miners opened up this cave after a blast. It wasn't lit up like it usually is on tours, so I didn't get a picture of the whole thing, but it was pretty big: about 30' high, 40' wide and 30' deep. And all the walls are lined in these kinds of crystals.

As always, the safety culture at Barrick is prevalent everywhere you go. On all the levels, right outside of the shaft elevator, this phrase was sprayed on the wall.

The Blast!

There was one day that I had the chance to go out with the blasting crew. At Goldstrike we blast every day, and sometimes twice a day! But usually just once, at 2 0'clock. Anyway, they work hard all day filling and packing hundreds of 40' deep drilled holes with explosives. Each hole has a detonation cord that runs to the next one. The green cord is the detonation cord. This is what it looked like before the blast.

Before the blast, the holes are in neat little rows. Like this:

Then we have to run around getting everyone clear of the blast. No people can be within 1500 feet of any edge of the blast, which doesn't sound like much, but actually really is. We use the big trucks and other vehicles as road blocks so no one goes where they are supposed to. This driver wasn't quite sure where he was supposed to be.

When they blast ore, each individual hole has a microchip connected to it so that, when the blast is set off, each hole blows at the same time. This way, they know exactly where the rock falls and they can mine more efficiently. But, this blast was just for waste rock; there wasn't any ore here, so it didn't matter where the rock ended up (as long as it wasn't in someone's face). Instead of attaching a microchip to each hole, only a few holes at the top had them and then detonation cord connected all the holes after that. As a result, there's a ripple effect when the blast is set off.

After the blast, the crew has to go down and check each hole to make sure it detonated. If any of the charges are left un-detonated, it can blow the bucket right off of our shovels, which is a bad thing, considering those are multi-million dollar machines! This is what everything looks like after the blast.

Because it was so hot on the day that we blasted (about 103 degrees) a couple of the clips that keep the detonation cord in place malfunctioned. They're made out of plastic and when it gets too hot, they get soft and don't hold the cord in place. As a result, 2 holes did not blast. So we hooked up some detonation cord to those 2 holes and hooked that up to a manual detonator. I got to set that part off.

The trigger on this one is a bit tricky because it will snap that opposite way it's supposed to, so I did have a little trouble with it. But it all worked out in the end.

Good day, fun people, awesome blast!

Daily Life in Elko, NV

Just to give you an idea of what I did all summer. This was pretty much my schedule Monday through Thursday. With some variations, of course, throughout the summer.

First, wake up!

Yep, this really is about the time I woke up every morning on the weekdays. Towards the end of the summer, I started not being able to drag myself out of bed until about 4:30.

It was still dark when I woke up in the morning, and the hall was always completely deserted.
Climb into the car at about 4:55 am, with Kate and Lindsay. We carpooled all summer. Don't they just look fabulous this early in the morning?
Early morning van ride. This is when the sun FINALLY came up. But everyone was usually asleep again by this point. For some reason, I could never fall asleep on the morning van rides. But, as a result, I got to see the sunrise every day :)
Walking into the office, this was the first friendly face that I saw in the morning. Kris, the environmental secretary, was so nice and helpful all summer.
We usually congregated around Kris's desk in the morning to talk about our projects that day and what we had done the night before. The other person in this picture is Lakin, she was the summer student that took care of all the typical intern work that we would normally have had to do: copying, filing, organizing, etc. She was awesome!
This was my project for the day (on the day that I took these pictures): Planning the activities for Kid's College. These were the raw materials and I tested out all the activities in the morning.
Mmm, lunch! Peanut butter and jelly, allllll summer long! But, it didn't really ever get old. I'm pretty sure it's only because Mom's jam is the BEST!
These were the other two environmental interns that I worked with this summer; Tommy and Stephanie. We had a lot of fun together.
Triscuits and Wikipedia! What an excellent combination!
The product of the day's work. All the Kid's College stuff together ready to go for the next day.
At the end of the day, we had to sit outside and wait for the van to pick us up. Apparently Kate and Ewelina don't like each other by the end of the day.
Sometimes, we had to wait for a while for the van. So we found ways to entertain ourselves. Bevin got pretty good at stacking rocks.
Then, the ride home. I definitely had no problems falling asleep on the van ride back into town. Which is why I don't have any pictures of it :D.

When I finally got home, it was just dinner, a bit of TV and then bed. Getting up so early definitely takes its toll, so I usually went to bed at about 8:30 every night.

All together, a pretty fun and fulfilling day :)