On June 6, 2009, a friend of ours got us a tour of the Phoenix Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, CO. This was an underground mine, and I was not able to take photos in the actual mine. There was a pleasant gold panning area and a place where you could feed the super-tame chipmunks. I have photos of us feeding the chipmunks.
On June 7, she got us a tour of the Victor and Cripple Creek active gold mine. The first stop along the way was the solution extraction plant:
The next stop was the crushing area. The haul trucks dumped the ore into a crusher. After the crusher, the ore was carried to some sieves and eventually leached:
The last stop of the day was the maintenance area where haul trucks and other equipment was serviced.
