In
1980, I joined Arco Coal in the Denver Corpirate office, where I
spend a good deal of time providing permit assistance for the
BlackThunder Mine, a large open pit coal mine located near Gillette,
Wyoming.
Back
then, there were two commuter airlines that flew from Denver to
Gillette--Air US and Rocky Mountain Airways. We used to call them
Scare US and Rocky Mountain Scareways. They were 16 seater
cigar-shaped planes. The cabin was only five feet tall in the center,
so you had to bend down to get to your seat. The ticket said “snack”,
which was a bag of peanuts and a soda you got from the small
refrigerator located at the back of the plane. But you had to be
careful about drinking soda early in the flight because there was no
bathroom and the trip was 90 minutes long and bumpy.
On
one of these trips to Gillette, I was finishing up some work before
leaving, so I took the late afternoon flight. The plane flew at
around a 5,000 foot elevation through the Powder River Basin. The
coal mines were all lined up from south to north. Back in those days,
I could walk into the cockpit and tell the pilots the names of each
coal mine we flew over.
When
flying over the Rocky Mountains in the summer time, occasionally a
thermal pocket would be encountered and the plane would lose
elevation in a few seconds. This was one of those flights. My stomach
went into my throat and my head hit the top of the sloping cabin
roof, even though I had my seat belt fastened.
As
the plane was approaching the air strip, it suddenly pulled up from
landing and circled the airport for several minutes. It turned out
there was a Pronghorn Antelope on the runway and the plane had to
wait to land until the antelope was shooed off.
When
I got to the Holiday Inn, the only room left was the bridal suite.
The room had a water bed, red velvet curtains around the bed and a
mirror on the wall above the bed. Very kinky!
A
co-worker (Jim) accompanied me on this trip. We walked quite a bit
that day. When we got back to the hotel, evidently, he had had quite
a bit to drink in his room before dinner. Something about an old foot
injury from jumping out of the window when the husband came home.
We
went off to dinner and ordered. This is when Jim said he had to go
to the restroom. He was gone a long time and eventually our food
came, but no Jim. So I went to check up on him. Jim was a big guy,
about six foot four. When I went into the restroom, I saw the back
side of legs sticking out of the toilet stall and Jim retching into
the toilet. Later, Jim kept saying, “Don’t tell Don,
don’t tell Don”. Don was our boss.
The
hotel had a Holidome, common in Holiday Inns in the 70s and 80s. The
Holidome had an indoor courtyard surrounded by hotel rooms that had
tropical-theme decor, a kidney-shaped pool with a tiki bar, table
tennis, billiard tables and shuffleboard. Rather kitschy, but it was
nice to go for a swim after dinner.
The
next day, one of the engineers at the mine (also Jim) flew back to
Denver with us. Our flight was delayed, so we hung out in the airport
bar. Jim was drinking a few too many beers. We tried to warn him, to
no avail. About halfway through the flight, he had a pained look on
his face. He almost killed a few passengers climbing over them to get
to the restroom.
I
transferred to the Black Thunder Mine in 1982 in the Encironmental
Department. When I went there for my house hunting trip in early
September, it was snowing sideways and the wind was blowing 40 miles
per hour. I transferred there anyway.
The
Black Thunder Mine is an open pit operation. Everything at the mine
is oversized. The coal seam is 70 feet thick. The haul trucks hold
170 tons of material. Standing next to the haul truck, the top of my
head was about halfway up the tire.
The
trucks were loaded with 30 yard buckets. All day and night, 365 days
a year, loaded haul trucks would climb out of the pit traveling less
than 5 miles per hour. The graders and dozers were also huge. The
equipment you see on highway projects looks like toys compared to the
mine equipment. One hundred car unit trains would pass through a silo
to be loaded. Five or six 100 ton unit trains would be loaded every
day.
The
coal seam and earth above the coal seam had to be fractured to mine
it. This involved bulk mixing of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil,
ignited in a long series of shots by fuses. This was considered
explosives manufacturing and was heavily regulated by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
The
Environmental Department got involved in some pretty crazy wildlife
protection projects because the operation was located on Federally
owned land. There was a Golden Eagle nest that was in the eventual
path of mining. Because they are a protected species, we experimented
with relocating the nest when it was occupied by young to see if Mom
would go to the new nest location. She did. We were also mining
through sage grouse strutting grounds, another protected species.
Sage grouse males use strutting grounds to court females. We were
trying to find out if sage grouse would use alternative strutting
grounds. They did.
The
joke at the mine was that there are two seasons in a Wyoming, July 14
and the rest of the year. The winters could be brutal. Mining
equipment ran on diesel fuel, so when it got really cold, the
equipment was never shut down. All the pickup trucks had engine
heaters, and even then sometimes they wouldn’t start in the
morning. The roads were surfaced with rock so the trucks wouldn’t
bog down in mud. After a significant snowstorm, the mine would shut
down until the roads were plowed. You knew it was cold when Pronghorn
Antelope would freeze to death standing up.
Occasionally,
I had to work outside when it was very cold. I wore thermal
underwear, a flannel shirt and heavy jeans, a down vest, insulated
coveralls, heavy gloves and a ski hat under my hard hat with only my
eyes uncovered. Even so, one could only work outside for about an
hour at a time. We used to keep an eye on each other to make sure no
one was getting goofy In the cold.
This
was my first experience working at a remote, operating facility but
not my last. I like on-the-ground work, but after I left Wyoming my
blood thinned considerably And so I picked less brutal work
climates for my future job odysseys.
