After seeing the collapse on the east side of the Second Sun Vein
we decided to have a go at carrying out our first attempt at doing some digging
- admittedly this was a easy choice, but you have to start somewhere. The
passage here only goes to the forehead and so there is nothing too new to break
into, but we felt it was going to be a good grounding for future
digs.
22/01/06 (Charlie, Karli, Mark and Mike):
Mark and Karli had made a number of useful digging tools and these were put to
good use on our first attempt. The collapse was due to the roof falling in and
the material coming down was not good - a muddy mix of shale, clay and
sandstones, the type of stuff that keeps on falling and filling in. Charlie and
Mark started some excavation work whilst Karli and I stacked some of the bigger
rocks - making a little culvert to keep the water flowing, whilst doing this we
discovered a sand bag containing some rope and a little plastic scoop - not the
first ones doing this. After a while it became apparent that some sort of
shoring up would be needed as more and more material was coming down filling
what we had excavated - the biggest danger being large rocks that had a habit
of falling from the top of the collapse. At this point we took a lunch break
and Karli came up with the idea of trying to unblock a choked hopper with the
view of climbing up and over the collapse.
We examined the hopper and I
was of the feeling that it was going to be full to the top, sealed with deads,
Karli thought otherwise and we ended up giving it a go. Using the aluminium
pole we had brought along we took turns levering the deads out of the hopper,
one, two, three at a time, shortly the rate increased and the pole broke
through the choke - Karli's gut feeling had been right, it was just a choke at
the bottom. We cleared out the rest of it until we were able to get in. The
hopper was not just a straight forward circular lined shoot, but a walled one
with stone arching. Looking up to the top we saw our favorite friend - hanging
death. The top of the shoot was choked with deads and wood. It looked like the
shoot had been finished with and had been covered with wood and had deads
stacked on top of it.
This was as far as we took it for this trip. What
we needed now was to clear the choke at the top of the shoot and then try and
climb up into it, hopefully getting up into the stope above - what would it
reveal and would we be able to get past the collapse without having to bring in
shoring? A possible alternative that came to mind was bringing in a bit of
450mm gas pipe to put into the collapse, a couple of metres should do
it.
25/02/06 (Charlie, Karli, Mark, Mike and
Ryan): Just over a month since we where last here, this time we where
going to try and unchoke the blockage at the top of the ore shoot rise. Using
some angled poles so that the operator was out of the way of any rocks we had a
go at ramming the choke, this wasn't too successful as it seemed to be very
well lodged and all we managed to bring down was a handful of pebbles and more
mud. However the good news is that the choke is not deep as Charlie could
definitely see a level up there. We really need to get it down
somehow.
As the choke situation was a no brainer Charlie and Karli
started digging the collapse in the passage. Since last month it has filled in
again, but the good new was that there seemd to be less material in the cavity.
They carried on doing some more digging and discovered a vertical support beam
inside the cavity - our original guess may have been wrong, the beam may be a
roof support or part of a rise. Anyway the cavity was now much more clear and
maybe no more debris would come down. We need to have another look on the next
treip and see if we should get some shoring in. |
