On A Quartz Vein Binge In Underground Gold Mine

It is not uncommon to see miners drop a winze or run a stope on a rich quartz vein in a gold mine. If a quartz vein is particularly good, one can even see a couple of areas in a mine where the miners ran both up and down on a vein… However, it is unusual to see THIS MANY instances in which miners chased a vein simultaneously up and down as they did at this abandoned gold mine. And, to be clear, I’m referring to the smaller, historical mines and not the gigantic, modern mine complexes with that observation. If the flooded workings at this mine were comparable to the stopes, a lot of quartz was hauled out! The small waste rock pile outside did not in any way compare to the volume of space that we observed underground. So, that is further evidence that they were bringing gold ore (quartz) out rather than just waste rock. That quartz would have been milled down (there was a stamp mill near the adit) and there would be little trace of it today. I thought it was interesting to see where the miners