The pace of videos has been slow because the pace of mining has been high. We've been driving drift as fast as permitted by our various personal schedules, so time for recording and editing has sadly been limited.

Another day, another delay for machinery repairs! One of the high-flow tramming hoses on the LHD decided to give up the ghost shortly before the face was ready to shoot. It required an adapter that our local hose shop didn't have on the shelf, so the new hose took a couple of days to have made. Fortunately the situation was not as bad as we thought - rather than dumping the entirety of the hydraulic system, only about half of the fluid was lost, which both saved us money and prevented damage from running the pump dry.

This shot was drilled on 24" centers and loaded entirely with dynamite. Although ANFO is far cheaper, it is less energetic, has trouble when stored in a damp environment such as an underground magazine, and does not hit quite as hard as dynamite.

All the effort was worth it, though - heavily mineralized quartz like what this shot revealed has carried high gold and silver grades in lower levels of this mine. Stay tuned...