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Many companys of the era including mining, were managed in a similar fashion to the army or navy……you did what you were told and did not complain ….. mostly a very tough life with very few benefits outside of survival.
 
It's probably the strangest place I've been as well. My brother has been to rainbow canyon in Arizona's Death valley and he thought the colours were much more striking at Pary's mountain. It had been on our list for a few years and it has the trifecta of things we like, interesting, quiet and free.
 
We did a mine tour at the Llechwedd mine near Blaenau Ffestiniog a few years ago and the life of those workers didn't seem fun. I remember you had to buy everything from the company that you needed, including candles, so they lined up where they were going to hand drill and blew out the candle for the next few hours.
 
The worst story I have heard was about a three person team in the Sarks Hope mine, 600’ deep and 200’ out to sea.
The father, brother and son team were boring a 1.5” hole in the ganite with timed blows of a 9lb hammer while the boring rod was twisted by the young 16 year old son. This was just before dynamite was invented so gun powder was used but the hole size needed to be quite large to work effectively.
The team used candles to light the up the work space but as you can imagine the conditions were dire and a miss placed strike from the fathers hammer struck the son in the head and killed hime outright!
There were other deaths related to flooding and drowning plus's uncountable maimings and loss of digits etc…. and all this happened in just a few years of the working mine!
 
That reminded me foxface of another thing the Llechwedd miners had to buy, fuses. Apparently because they were quite expensive they would try and cut them as short as possible to save money and you can imagine the consequences of doing so in a pitch black cavern.
 
All this talk about mining inspired me to dig up a picture I took of a mine lake in Minnesota. These lakes occured due strip mining in the Cuyuna Iron range. There are many pit lakes, but the deepest is reported at over 450 ft. Now a days these lakes are popular with local dive clubs, anglers, and the surrounding are is an excellent mountian biking park.
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On the hunt for hardscape

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It’s an old, unmanaged woodland. Everything is rotten, but there is a couple of lumps that look usable in there.
 
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