Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mine

June 18 2010 by Darrin.

It’s almost 22:00 on Friday night, and my friend Pete and I have been mostly “on the go” since Tuesday at 17:30.  During that time, we logged around 1030 miles traveling from Wyoming through Colorado and back home.  Pete had some medical tests to take care of in Denver, and then we went to see some other Wyoming friends now living back in Colorado between Florissant and Cripple Creek [below, green square “1″].  For those unfamiliar, this is just west of Pike’s Peak, and about an hour and a quarter west of Colorado Springs [red square “2″].

Our friends, Rod and Getta, were originally from Colorado, moved to Wyoming for the employment opportunities, and headed back to Colorado six or seven years ago to be near their kids again.  They both found new jobs at the Cripple Creek & Victor Mine - a South African-owned gold mining operation.   Originally, the area was underground stope-mined and boomed in the early 1900s. Old derricks and huge winches like you see here are all over the hills.  Rumor has it they lowered foals down these shafts with the winches, and the young horses were put into service, never to see the light of day again.  They grew to be too large to ever lift out.  (This particular example was electric, and the photo on the right shows some early braking resistors.)

 There are still a few ‘mom and pop’ mines in the area, but CC&V is the Big Dog.  It’s now surface (leach) mined by crushing rock and soaking it with a solution of sodium cyanide and some other “good stuff”. In the following photos, you can see the surface mining process as the rock is blasted out (left) and hauled to the leach pit on top of a rubber liner (the black in the center photo).  The aurocyanide solution drips through the crushed rock, runs down the liner, and is then pumped up to the refinement building by the pumps at the bottom of the pit (right).

Things are still pretty low key, and Rod gave us an incredible tour of the business, even though he officially retired as a CC&V electrician less than a week ago!  Here’s he is (right) with Pete (left) as we’re about to go inside the building that processes the aurocyanide solution and refines it into gold…

 It’s too late for me to Google it and figure it all out, but the solution runs down these little “pools”, all the while becoming more concentrated.  Here are some photos from inside.  Naturally, DON’T drink the water (or lick the soles of your shoes after you leave).

 The solution is refined and refined some more, and then eventually makes its way into some electrolysis tanks where electrical current deposits the leached metals onto a steel wool type material.  This stuff is then eventually thrown into a 3,000,000 BTU furnace where it melts and is poured into a little cone called a button (right, covered in slag)…

Once cooled, it’s sampled, weighed, and put into a safe.  Here’s Pete with the button we just watched pour out of the crucible…

And another shot of Pete, Rod, and me as we stand on front of the safe door…

So, what’s in that button?  Well, this one weighed 940 Troy ounces (~64.5 lbs).  It was 82% gold, 17% silver, and 1% copper.  We won’t worry about the silver or copper; 82% of 940 oz is 771 oz of gold.  And on that day, gold was $1245/oz.  That’s around $960,000 in gold.  In one lump.  And they produce 4,000 to 5,000 oz per week, 52 weeks per year.

Now if you think you’re about to get into this “easy money”, consider that it takes about 350 dump trucks to make one of these buttons.  And these dump trucks haul 300 TONS of rock at a whack.  (That’s 105,000 tons, or 210 MILLION pounds of rock.)  This mine burns 25,000 gallons of diesel per week.  (Pete points out that his coal mine in our beloved Wyoming burns up 600,000 gallons of #2 diesel per week.  Yeah, SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND GALLONS per week.  And they use 400 TON trucks.  They ship a hundred million TONS of coal per year.  Now THAT’S mining.)

So what’s a 300-ton capacity gold-minin’ haul truck look like?  Check it out, and BE SURE to stop at the stop signs when you cross the haul road…

Of the 350 loads per button, about 250 of them are overburden and other rock that doesn’t contain the good ore.  It’s dumped elsewhere.

Oh, one final note: The crucibles from the furnace last about 30 buttons.  They’ll do a few more, but it’s pushing it.  The bottoms start to burn out, and the gold can leak out onto the floor.  Shaun, the final production manager (red shirt, standing by the crucible) said, “Yeah, we don’t use ‘em for more than about 30 pours.  The boss gets kinda pissed when you spill a million dollars of gold into the concrete below the furnace.”

 For what it’s worth, the crucibles (made in Germany) run about $1500 each, and after 30 pours, they’re crushed and also smelted off-site, where they yield 5 or 6 ounces of gold.  (~$6,800)

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