As we had done the two previous mines, Karl had us put on jumpsuits, protective eyewear, and hardhats and before taking us into the mine to see where the work was being done. The tour was quite extensive, with Karl narrating the whole time like an experienced tour guide at a local attraction. He told us when each particular shaft had been dug and how much ore was mined from it and he had lot of stories about the false leads they’d followed a few times. Karl seemed to know every inch of the mine and he obviously loved what he was doing. Karl’s expertise was wasted on me, as I wasn’t paying much attention. I didn’t need to know the details. I was here to get a general idea of the mine and how it worked so that I’d have a better understanding of mining in general. My real task was supposed to start when we visited the proposed mines later on in our trip. Mark was the one who needed to pay attention and he was giving Karl his full attention, taking it all in.

Mark’s interest let me hang back and use my field to scan the mine as we walked. Karl had given me a clipboard with a map of the mine and as we walked I made notes on it. I shaped my field into a rectangle, six meters wide by six meters long by two inches high, and I sent it down hundreds of meters into the surrounding rock. As the field passed through the rock, it sent information about the type of rock that it was going through and it let me know where the silver and other metals were. Once deep in the rock, I moved the field around so that I’d get the shape of the deposit and I noted it all down. The miners have a way to get the same information by doing core samples, but it could take them months to get the kind of information that I was getting in seconds. I was also getting the information for free. Taking core samples and analyzing those samples is fairly expensive. Sometimes work in the mine has to be stopped while the samples are being taken. My way was much better.

I’d taken dad’s advice to heart and I’d been doing this mapping at each of the mines that Mark and I had visited so far. Howie had come through for me again and gotten me access to specialized 3D mine mapping software. While I could have found some software myself, Howie’s software was better in that I didn’t have to have years of geology experience to use it. It was very easy to use and had intuitive controls. I’d spent the week after exams playing around with it and practicing all over town. However, I wasn’t just practicing with the software, I was also practicing with my field. While it was easy to shape my field into a rectangle and send it out in any direction, I had never actually tried to measure the depth at which I found minerals. ‘Around 15 meters down’ wasn’t good enough. I wanted exact measurements of where the deposits were. I spent hours honing my perception of how far down I was sending the shaped field.

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Another great feature of the software was the access to its extensive library of maps. Topographical maps, geological maps, physical maps, and mineral maps. These maps could be downloaded and turned into 3D maps that I could edit in minutes. I’d called Mark and gotten the GPS coordinates of all the mines or properties we were going to visit and I downloaded them and the areas surrounding them into the software program. Combined with the GPS built into my phone and my computer, I’d had no trouble in adding my findings. By the end of the tour, I’d have a complete map of the different ore bodies in and around the mine.

After the tour of the mine, Karl took us around the rest of the complex and showed us the processing center, the offices, the mechanical bay and the tailings pond. As I had done at the other mines, when the tour was finished, I asked to borrow one of the golf carts that they used to get around, or an ATV if they had one, and I spent a few hours driving around the entire mine site and updating my 3D map. Over the next day or two, as Mark learned the ins and outs of the mine, I’d ride around the surrounding properties and find out if they had any interesting deposits to record.

From what I’d seen at each mine, Grampa Jake’s people really knew their business and there wasn’t much value that I could add to the work that they were already doing. However, their future work was another matter and Jake and I would be having an intense conversation about that a few weeks after Mark and I got back home.