We showed up at the largest copper mine in all of Europe. It is only about a 10 minute drive from Will's house. This open mine (meaning it isn't underground) is bigger than the big hole I showed you earlier on my other blog. THIS MINE IS 2 MILES LONG IN WIDTH!!! Then it is 1200 ft, yes TWELVE HUNDRED FEET deep!!!!!!!!
So we arrived and put on our dead sexy outfits... I looked so smart.
We put on our lab coats and met up with Bjorn, William's awesome friend!
We heard this annoying whistle sound, and noticed people all going inside. Bjorn told us we needed to go into the basement of any of the buildings. They were going to blast a section of the mine. Bjorn kept telling me not to worry that it would be just a small blast. Then suddenly the walls shook, my PANT LEGS vibrated everything shook like an earthquake. I'm grabbing the hand rail like I'm going to die and the rest of the workers just kept talking enjoying the break like nothing happened. THAT was rad. Freakin awesome!
Watch this video of the blast!
Carrie, your boys will probably like it.
You can imagine why we felt it. Haha.
We went outside, we were not allowed near the pit because of the blast, they had to determine that no monoxide was in the air. So Bjorn took us by the trucks... lol I GOTTA get me one of these!
How awesome is this!? This gives you a little idea of how big the scoops are on these bad boys.
ONE tire cost around $150,000... so do that 4 times.... JESH. They were MASSIVE. The tires on another truck were even bigger and cost even more. Sell 1 of those tires and you have a house in Logan!
After the trucks we walked over to an observation deck that looked down onto the mine. The dust was still settling from the blast but the sight was honestly unreal!
Those massive trucks now looked so little.
Still though I couldn't believe how everything was working so quickly.
While the dust was still settling down in the pit we went over to a massive building where the rocks are melted down into liquid and the copper, silver, gold and iron is extracted and then taken by truck to a train station and shipped worldwide! They make 4.5 billion dollars a year from this plant!
Once they go through the process the last part where they pour out as liquid they come to this point and are boiled and go through a process until the liquid turns to sand and is then trucked to the train station. Crazy huh!?
We left the crusher factory and got into the car and ... drove DOWN into the pit!!!
See the buildings way up high on the ledge there, that is where we were from the pictures we took you saw above.
It was so awesome down there! The machines were just massive.
Look how tiny I look next to this thing...
William and I down in the pit... we look so official.
We drove back up and we were behind this truck, freak me out though the rocks were going to fall off!
He took us up to the ledge of the mine where the sight is so beautiful!
It's insane how deep it is...
We drove up to the far end of the mine where the leftover material from the rock is pumped out through a pipe... this is the bad part of the mine, this liquid is full of chemicals...
Once the liquid cools out here it turns into sand...
The mine is required when they are finished with this area in 2009 that they have to fill in the hole and re-landscape the area. A new site is being built not too far away and digging will being in 2010.
How cool is that? That totally beat going with a guide, probably wouldn't of gotten go down into the pit with a guide, so that rocked! Pretty cool huh!? The blast was pretty wicked too.
4 comments:
Kind of makes Kennecott Copper Mine look rather small. Great video!
So Carrie feels bad no one comments on your blog, I figured I would wait until the end to tell you how it was been. I also love Will I even want to take him home to meet my parents. Get him down here so we can judge the crap out of him.
Sounds like you got to see and do some things that most people couldn't. Pretty cool.
Can't you just hear the conversation on those tires? "Well honey, guess we won't buy a house for a few more years, I gotta buy a tire today." You are starting blend in there Amelia. Pretty soon you'll have to pick a Swedish name and start saying "Yawh, pleez coll me Britta" and don't forget to tell everyone your great grandfather was born there and his name was Orstrom (almost Nordstom)
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