The mine I used to love/hate to inspect in CO was Mid-Continent Coal Company's Coal Basin Mine. It was an old gassy coal mine right near Anthracite Creek, but I can't say it was an anthracite mine. Don't remember. Don't know when it started, but it was an old nasty place. There had been some disasters there and it was the only mine I know of where MSHA maintained a permanent office.
The topographic feature called Coal Basin is beautiful. One of my favorites in CO. Access is limited to foot or horseback, but we were authorized to run 4 wheelers as part of our inspections.
There were five portal locations that were very spread out. The highest portal was somewhere around 11,000' in elevation; the highest coal mine in the US. We saw mountain goats a couple of times coming off Huntsman Ridge.
Avalanches were bad. I remember there were pictures in the mine office of mangled equipment, one bulldozer for sure, that had been swept off of the bench. They used to control snow load with cannons...or try to.
Anyway, since I am an environmental inspector, I hated the place. PCB's, coal waste, etc., washing into the Crystal River which feeds the Roaring Fork. They wiped all life out of Dutch Creek. The portals weren't above timberline, but quite close. Reclamation in that environment, on those slopes had never been tried before in the US. They weren't good at it and eventually abandoned the mine and left us taxpayers to take care of it.
I had a number of actions on that site. All of my pictures that I took while it was active are in legal files in our Denver office. I did find some pictures of the part of the Basin though:
This was one of the lower portals. Since the mine was opened before any environmental laws, they just pushed all the cut material over the outslope. Most of it was unrecoverable for reclamation. As you can see, not much was available to eliminate this wall.
The black shale on the outslopes defines where they had some portals or vents. There are two portal benches in this photo, an old substation bench, and I think a storage area; just a small part of the overall disturbance.
Getting a permanent vegative cover capable of stabilizing the soil surface on these slopes, with a northern aspect, where they probably get 30-40 feet of snow a year is...difficult, especially when alot of the growth medium is crappy ol' pre-law spoils.
All the crap washing into Dutch Creek during a wet time.
Now, here is why I loved it:
View from one of the benches. That's a sedimentation pond down in the bottom.
Just another view off one of the benches.
A little throttle will give you a thrill. (No, I don't ride with my handgun in that position
)
Break time. The guy standing is the current head of the Colorado coal program, and the other guy is the AML guy in charge of reclaiming the mine. Both good men.
Left a little bit of history in place.
Another bench, right in the middle.
The dedicated public servant. I have loved my job.
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