I was just reading an article about 11 crazy places that people actually live, mostly about really remote places. There are some pretty neat ones, but La Rinconada, Peru was my favorite. It's a mining town located at 17,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes. It has 30,000 inhabitants, is so remote that they have no sewage or water systems, and the mine workers work 30 days straight with no pay. Why? Their payment, on the 31st day, is that they are allowed to take all the gold ore that they can carry...........
Gold ore is the key word.
In most cases it takes several tons to extract an once of gold.
What would most of the workers be able to carry home in ore? 150 or 200 pounds? It'd have to be incredibly rich ore to pay much.
I once stopped at a mine near Yellowstone. An engineer told me to take all the ore I wanted to load on my truck. Said I would lose money If I couldn't buy the necessary chemicals in train-car loads.
At this huge gold mine in Victor, CO...they are basically dismantling whole mountains and crushing them up to expose the sides of the smaller crushed up pieces of rock to a cyanide solution which they saturate these huge piles of crushed up rock with...the cyanide leeches the gold into big leech pits. Then they use more chemicals and processes to extract the gold from that. It's a huge undertaking.
At this huge gold mine in Victor, CO...they are basically dismantling whole mountains and crushing them up to expose the sides of the smaller crushed up pieces of rock to a cyanide solution which they saturate these huge piles of crushed up rock with...the cyanide leeches the gold into big leech pits. Then they use more chemicals and processes to extract the gold from that. It's a huge undertaking.
I haven't been through Victor since the 90s. DId a bit of hunting up there and had a buddy that lived in Florrisant.
Sounds like a nasty way to mine stuff.
I worked Security at a gold mine for 13 years.
They would process 60,000 tons of ore to end up with 600 oz. of gold............and that was the high-grade ore.
so, 100 tons to get an ounce of gold.
At this huge gold mine in Victor, CO...they are basically dismantling whole mountains and crushing them up to expose the sides of the smaller crushed up pieces of rock to a cyanide solution which they saturate these huge piles of crushed up rock with...the cyanide leeches the gold into big leech pits. Then they use more chemicals and processes to extract the gold from that. It's a huge undertaking.
Yup. The Rockies have lots of highly polluted areas from old mining operations that were left as is when the gold played out.
There were 500 gold mines in the Cripple Creek Mining District alone...!
The CC and V is a stunning operation for its scale. Should turn it into a rocket facility when it's over.
just don't tell Carlos Hector Rodriguez Valdez. he thinks he's going to be rich. when he finds out he's getting took, he'll go fuggen machete nuts on some motha fuggas.
I worked Security at a gold mine for 13 years.
They would process 60,000 tons of ore to end up with 600 oz. of gold............and that was the high-grade ore.
so, 100 tons to get an ounce of gold.
That's why China figured out years ago that it was profitable to accept all of our old computer waste. It's cheaper to mine old cell phones and computer for gold than it is to mine ore.