Watching the coverage of the Chilean miners’ remarkable rescue, I was reminded of the shortest, most dangerous career of my life, as a hard rock miner high in the Rockies, working for the Climax Molybdenum Co. For a while I got a kick out of telling people I was a Climax Miner, but everything else about the job was nasty.

It was January of ’71, and I was out of options. My suave job as a cinematographer and film editor for a commercial film studio in Denver had evaporated when the firm went bankrupt. Unemployment was high, jobs were scarce, my unemployment insurance had run out, and my savings were gone. I had a four year old daughter, plus a new girlfriend and her small child to feed. I had to do something. So I answered a display ad that ran every Sunday in the Denver Post which promised “good wages, benefits, no experience necessary.”

Reporting as directed to the company headquarters in Climax, Colorado, about 10 miles from Vail, I endured a long day of interviewing, testing, poking and prodding not unlike a pre-draft examination. I filled out forms for an FBI background check, since the mine was a “defense critical” operation. I was X-rayed for back or lung problems, probed for hernias, and tested for eyesight and hearing. The RN who tested my hearing reached over at the end, put her hand on my knee, and said “Honey, you want my advice? Don’t take this job. You’ve got the most perfect hearing I’ve ever tested. No sense ruining it for a pay check. Really, don’t go down there. It’s bad down there.”

But with babies to feed, and no other options, I took the job.  And yes, it was bad down there.

For starters, the mine head was at about 11,000 ft altitude, near Berthoud Falls, Colorado, and the work site was a half-mile underground below it, so we worked in thin air, a mile and a half above sea level. Even though sub-zero blizzards flew at the surface, at the rock face the temperature was a tropical 92° year round due to thermal geyser water being pushed up from far below. The humidity was very high, and it “rained” constantly, so we wore heavy raingear at all times. The wide brim on the miner’s hard hat is quite functional, helping to divert falling water and falling rocks. And there were a lot of falling rocks.

Fully equipped with heavy steel-toed rubber boots, thick yellow rubberized rain pants and coat, a web belt carrying  a big battery pack, helmet and light, rubber gloves and a water bottle, we were already toting more than 30 pounds each before we put down our lunch pails and picked up our tools.  As I looked around at the class of February '71 suiting up for our first day of work I noticed that my medium build 5’9” frame was the smallest in the shed. And I was acutely aware that I had never done physical work before, while the other men looked as if they had done nothing but. Still, I had babies to feed. So when the whistle blew, I pushed on out to the lift with more than a little feeling of dread.

We packed into the cage, heard the whistle blow twice and a big clang as the gate shut, then the floor dropped out from under us and we fell into the darkness at alarming speed. Still, due to the great distance the ride down took several minutes. At the bottom we swarmed out into the oppressive heat and the dim yellow glow of the explosion proof safety lights, clicked on our helmet lights, and proceeded to walk a half mile to the working face.

Our job was to drive a tunnel from our current position, a mile east of the continental divide, to the other side, fifteen miles west, where the molybdenum ore would be loaded on railroad cars for processing in Idaho. The job would take about 5 years, and the mine wouldn’t even begin being productive until this tunnel was finished. The cycle was to drill holes in the rock, pack them with dynamite, blow the charge, removed the shattered rock, lay railroad track for the rock cars, add new ductwork, and then move everything forward a dozen feet and begin again.

Different crews worked round-the-clock shifts, so all the major steps in the cycle fell to us in turn. Sometimes we’d come in to face a fresh rock face ready for drilling, but other times we’d come in to a newly blasted face and have to clear the rubble, or we’d come in to a cleared site and need to lay track. We did it all in rotation, depending on how far the previous crew had gotten.

The most dangerous job was clearing the rubble right after a blast, because there were often large slabs of rock, called “widow makers,” that had fractured from the ceiling but hung up on something so they had not dropped clear. We'd go in with long heavy pry bars and tap the rock, listening for the hollow sound that meant the rock was not solid. It was hard to hear, with all the noise of other work going on, and wearing the earplugs the RN had recommended to preserve my hearing, but it had to be done carefully. When loose overhead rock was found, the area had to be cleared of men and the slab pried loose before we could proceed. Every time a couple of tons of rock came crashing down that way I cringed at the thought of being buried under one because someone hadn't listened carefully enough.

  The wildest job, and one of the most unpleasant,  was handling the dynamite. We’d blast about 200 – 300 pounds at a time, four to six full 50 pound cases. Dynamite "sticks" are made of nitroglycerine soaked diatomaceous earth, like gritty PlayDoh, packed in loosely rolled paper tubes, similar to an oversized railroad flare, and are padded in the box with loose sawdust. Coming from the cold of the topside powder vault into the 92° mine the sticks would sweat little oily beads of nitroglycerine which, if they got on your skin, would soak right in.

You’d know that had happened when your pulse rate shot up and you got a feeling you were suddenly blind drunk. Shortly thereafter you’d get a pounding headache, known as “powder head,” and an urgent need for a bowel movement. Since the glory holes were at some distance from the working face, it took some fast footwork to avoid having a personal “accident,” which the old timers laughingly referred to as the “rookie two-step.” Since cracks and holes in our rubber gloves that let the nitro through were practically unavoidable, we each got a chance in turn to entertain the “rock heads” with our mad dashes for relief. One old-timer, and forty-five is an old timer for miners because their lungs fill up with rock dust, one old-timer nearly swallowed his chaw of tobacco because he was laughing so hard at one rookie who hadn't made it in time. "Shoot, I'll bet that boy's boots are all the way full!"

Packing the dynamite into the drilled holes was important to get a good blast. We’d place a stick of dynamite in a 12’ long hole, push it all the way in to the end with a long tamping rod, and then smash it with hard strokes to burst the tube and fill the larger diameter of the bore, repeating as required until the entire hole was packed solid. Once the 24 - 36 bore holes were packed, blasting caps were pressed into the ends of the doughy dynamite charges.

 Blasting caps are inch and a half long copper tubes containing an explosive squib, with two thin copper wires coming out the end. They are rated in fractions of a second delay, from instantaneous to several seconds. The engineer would specify which caps to place where to make up a progressive shot, in which each round of blasts pushed rock into the space left by the previous blast in quick succession.

Once the blasting caps were all in place, we’d remove the protective safety foil from their wire leads and twist them together to form a long daisy-chained wiring series. The blaster’s wire twist used is distinctive, designed to make a solid electrical and mechanical connection even when wet, and I’ve never forgotten it. If you ever see anyone twisting electrical wires together like this, chances are good they have experience with explosives. 

Once the wires were all connected, the circuit would be tested by the foreman, and if there was a break anywhere, just like an old fashioned string of Christmas lights, we'd have to search for the bad cap or loose connection. Once we had the green light, the blasting horn would blow, all machinery would be shut off and we'd move to a safe location at some distance away and around a corner. Then three honks of the horn, a press of the red button on the blasting box and BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM the charges would go off and WHAMMM the blast wave would hit you in the pit of the stomach and a cloud of dust would roll down the tunnel. After a few minutes to let the dust settle, we'd head in to search for widow-makers and clear the rubble. 

   From there on the work was like being on a railroad gang. We'd put down a gravel bed and flatten it, lay railroad ties, and then lay down steel track on top of them. Swinging a pick to take down a high spot was hard work. Bending the rails with long pry bars to fit the curve of the tunnel was hard work. Driving the spikes to hold down the track with long nosed spike hammers was hard work. And it was a relentless 8 hours, with only a 5 minute rest break every couple of hours and a 30 minute break for lunch, during which you finally had a chance to confront the fact that a hell of a lot of rock separated you from the outside world. The only job that wasn't hard labor was driving the little electric train back and forth to dump the broken rock, a duty that was fun, but that I only got assigned to a few times no matter how often I asked the shift boss for it. 

Finally, after 3 months, a day of reckoning arrived unannounced. My freshman class had undergone some natural attrition. A few men had quit, unwilling to work in such hard conditions, another had been hurt when a piece of duct pipe had gotten away from the guys installing it, and a few had shown up drunk or missed enough days that they were fired. But our rookie gang was still a few men stout of a full crew, and now that we all had some experience and were up to speed, the foremen had to cut the weakest producers. And as runt of the litter, I was first to be let go.

As we stepped off the lift at the end of the shift, the hot water droplets on our rainsuits exploding into mist in the frigid air, the foreman clapped me on the shoulder with a gnarled hand and said he needed to talk to me. Taking a big spit of his chaw as we walked into the changing house, he drew me away from the other men and told me with a sad but strong look on his face that he had to let me go. As I handed him my badge, the tears welled in my eyes, and I spluttered "But I've got kids to feed."

"Don't we all, son? Don't we all? Sorry, but that's the way it has to be." So I took off my now filthy, greasy rain suit, helmet, and boots, and headed back down the mountains one last time to an uncertain future. 

But fortune eventually smiled on me, and three months later we were headed back to Chicago, where I was to direct live theater productions for the Street Theater Project. At 597 feet altitude. No hat required.

Photos & text © 2010 by David Kinne,  

Except dynamite and blasting caps photos courtesy of TravelBlog