Down Under Cripple Creek

One of the photos is from “Garden of the Gods”. An incredible rock formation that we visited in late afternoon and early morning the next day. Quite dramatic and lovely.

After our walk at Garden of the Gods we spent the day traveling through aspen mountains and visiting ghost towns and gold mines ending up in Cripple Creek Colorado. Cripple Creek gold mines pulled more gold out of their mines than all the gold gathered during the California Gold rush. The town is at about 10,000 ft, the deepest mine at 3,500ft down from the surface. The type of gold mining is called “hard rock” mining, which based on what I saw and heard in the Mollie Kathleen mine that I visited means a lot of dust, and even more earth shaking noise.

I went down in a small cage that held 6 or 7 adults. We started out with drama, as one of the tourists fainted and we had to pull her out of the cage before going down. Mike was smart as usual and thought that only one of us should “experience” the mine (they still actively mine for gold in it-which means mostly the use of dynamite on the levels where they don’t take the tourists). So he stayed topside and I went down 1,000 ft to the 10th level along with about 10 visitors and one miner. Needless to say it was one of the most exciting things I have ever done. He demonstrated all the equipment from the 1800;s to the present and we could hear the explosions above us as we walked and rode through the tunnels(whether or not they were mining when we were there I don’t know. But the mine is for sure active during the Nov to Feb non tourist season where they continue to pull out gold each day. I was “pumped” when we got to the surface. As you can see from the photo of me “emerging”.