Seeing as I'm on the topic of dams, waiting for paint to dry and bored, I thought I would show a cross section of our dam as I finally found a decent photo of it. On the left is the current elevation of about 7km of the dam. By the end of mine life, the entire dam will be 60 meters higher. The center section is the core of the dam. It's made up of about 14 meters of "S" material, clay like soil. Against this is 1 meter of "F", filtered sand and then a meter of "T", transition sand. This is compacted by the Sheepsfoot and smooth-drum roller until it passes the compaction tests. The entire base of the dam core was subbed out to about 10 meters to get to hard ground. This will prevent the dam from sloughing out like the Mount Polley dam. The rest of the dam is made up of "C", common soil, basically dirt (the dark stuff to the left of the dozer) and the outer part is NAG, to prevent the C from running off into streams and fish bearing ponds.
Funny you should mention that Andy. There was a documentary about the Dam Busters filmed on the other side of those mountains in the background. This is part of it.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik9vCg-xRr4
Cool. There was a whole episode of "Ice Pilots" devoted to that project. Quite entertaining. Unfortunaltely, Arnie Shreder, the pilot, died of cancer in 2012.
In two weeks, I will have been at this mine for three years, employee #44 out of 363. The starting elevation of the pit was 1163 meters(above sea level). The current elevation in the photo is 1025 and will go down to about 750ish or when the ore peters out. It is still expanding out to the right and the left, just by the haul truck on the ramp, and we are now stripping on the hill in the background, elev. 1066.
Not sure if this swallow was looking for a place to nest as he popped into the pipe twice while I was filling out my pre-trip book.
Thanks gents. #1 daughter was in P.G. today doing the Mud, Sweat and Tears 8K obstacle run. She's never done anything like this in her life. On top of the mud that was already on the course, it was raining and 8°C/46.4°F. She finished the course in 2hrs. Very proud of her...