Injuries or Worse

I have read many of the Board's topics with their respective comments.

I then wonder how often or how many injuries or worse have occurred while collecting in mines, hills, mountains, shafts, quarries and caves?

Any stories? Any strong advice?

Have a Happy and Good Holiday!

While I have escaped serious injury while rock hounding, my most serious event occurred while climbing up a railroad embankment along the Bad River at the Penokee Gap in Wisconsin. I had been placed on blood thinner about six months earlier and was on a short leash by my wife. To check out a rock outcrop along the Bad River, I clambered down a railroad embankment about a 50 foot drop. Not finding anything, I began my way back up the slope. The rip-rap consisted of a foot or two sized block of stone which were mostly stable. Unfortunately, I came to a spot, flattish compared to the surrounding area, when I stepped on a rock which was unstable. The next thing I knew I was flipping over 360 degrees what seemed like slow motion. An attempt to stop myself by grabbing a dead tree (only six foot tall, diameter of 2 - 3 inches) failed when it came all the way out of the ground! I landed on my face with my weighted backpack holding me in place.

Well, it was more of embarrassment than anything else. After all, my wife watched the whole thing, something she still reminds me to this day. My shirt was torn several places across my chest. Picking myself up, I made it back up, taking it more slowly this time. When I reached my wife's side, she looked at me and noticed that II was bleeding. Turned out that I had major bruises across my chest and stomach. While I never suspected such injuries when the world was revolving around my head, the blood thinner contributed to the mess. Took me another three months to convince my wife to let me go out on my own again. Never before had I had such a toss and of course it had to have happened in front of my wife. Simply underscores the fact that something serious could arise even in the most innocent of places.

No one was hurt, but several years ago in late April I visited an abandoned iron mine in Roxbury Station, Connecticut. Previously I had entered the mine on several occasions. When I reached the opening to the adit, I saw ice on the floor inside the entrance, several inches thick. Resting on the ice was a piece of ledge rock that probably weighed 1000 to 1500 lbs. There was only one place that rock could have come from and it convinced me never to enter old mines again.

An illustration of why it is important to wear safety equipment relates to injuries suffered by Don Knowles in the late 1970's or early 1980's. He was part of a collecting group tunneling parallel to a steep slope in a pit, part of the Calumet iron mine complex near Silida, Colorado. They had been blasting during their work. Don stepped out of the adit onto the access road for a smoke. The slope above the road consisted of bedrock with a thin surface layer of soil and rock that had been destabilised by the blasting. Without warning a patch of scree and soil slid down and over the road bank, crushing Don. He suffered major injuries including serious fractures and nerve damage but his hard hat, which was crushed down over his head, saved his life.

Steve

Well, I had several smaller incidents during my collecting trips in the Alps, but in 2005 I really had an accident. I hiked up a steep slope and finally scrambled up a 10 feet high rocky outcrop, which was very easy since I am an experienced climber. However, when I touched slightly a table-sized rock, it came immediately loose. All I could do was jumping off to the other side – with my heavy backpack still on me. I tumbled down the slope and came to a stop after 50 feet. Surprisingly, I was completely clear, took my mobile and called my friend, who was there with me that day. Then I tried to wash the blood from my face and realized that my shoulder was dislocated. Together, we walked down for an “eternity” and got a lift to the next hospital from a very helpful member of the local forest service. That was the point where the automatic self-composure of my body ceased and I finally felt all the pain. In the hospital they found additionally to the dislocated shoulder, a broken jaw, a light fracture of the skull and several cuts that had to be sewed. It could have been worse: the plastic coke bottle in my backpack was disrupted from the first impact...

The most stupid point of the whole story is that it was not even necessary to climb up this rock. So, what you really can learn from this is that minerals are just not worth the risk – think at least twice and if you still feel that you have to look at that special place, make it save to go there (come back another time with rope, harness, crampons, a friend etc.). Second, if you have a serious accident, check if you are really hurt and call if possible an ambulance – do not listen to your body, since at that moment your brain is most likely flooded with adrenaline and „body’s own pain-killers“.

I hope you never have such an experience and many good collecting days.

Back in the very early 1960's two carloads of us boys from the geology dept. left El Paso, TX for the 3 1/2 hour trip to Bingham, NM. Me driving my car with several guys and my buddy in his car with several more. We had just arrived at the mine and got started on a good day of collecting when a little chunk of steel flew off of buddy's rock hammer and went in the soft web of his hand between the thumb and first finger. In just a few minutes that thing swelled up like he had a tennis ball under the skin. We drew lots on who was going to have to forgo a day of collecting to take him to medical help. I was the "lucky" one chosen so we left his car for the others to come home in and I wound up driving him all the way back to El Paso before we found a Dr. that could see him.
( Sunday morning is not a good time to need a doctor) I always thought about the importance of gloves and safety glasses and a good quality hammer after that.
Charles Creekmur

Twenty plus years ago I was working my way into a huge pocket in a pegmatite vien of loose material. As I worked my way in I started finding large crystals that got my excitement exceeding my judgement. After working until well after dark, on my belly beyond my waist through a three foot hole when I couldn't see any more, I decided to come back two days later. When I returned, I found the entrance to the pocket filled in and thought someone had come the day before and filled it in to hide the pocket. While pulling the rubble out of the entrance to the pocket, I realised that the roof of the pocket had collapsed in the spot where I had been laying on my belly waist deep into the entrance. If it had collapsed when I was working in the dark two days earlier, I would not be telling this story today. Dumb luck to be sure, but I did learn a lesson.

Some accidents have a “happy” ending...

A collector friend was sledgehammering on a long (50 cm) heavy chisel set horizontally in a rock face on an Highway 55 road cut, as we worked to open an alpine-type cleft. At the end of the day, fatigue seeps in, and calculations tend to be less precise, so the tip of his sledge handle jammed on a protruding rock, and his blow went off-balance.

With the result that instead of having the sledge head land on the chisel, his clutched fingers forcefully hit the metal. Just can't forget the sound... that low “thud” meant pain for sure ! My friend froze instantly, his eyeballs rolling around in their sockets, and it looked like he was going to faint. Held him up and shook the guy to keep him conscious, which he did, and we looked at the injury.

A bit messy and bloody, but not frightening as we had expected. So I bandaged his wound with what I had in stock : toilet paper ! Made up a nice lil' doll around his finger, and advised him to keep his arm up, to limit the blood pressure... After a while, we realized the strange gaze of drivers passing by... and burst into a long, very long tear-filled laughter : his gesture was quite obscene (a closed fist with the middle finger pointing upwards at the end of an extended arm is a common scene in certain movies !).... Did we have fun !

The dangers of field collecting cannot be underestimated. Statistically some of us are going to get seriously injured or die doing what we do. A good friend's son was killed in a mine collapse years ago and that accident reminds me to be extra careful every time we enter a mine. But, being careful isn't enough. If you enter a mine, you take your chances knowing that you are putting yourself at risk. We lost another friend, just a couple of years ago, due to a seemingly solid rock face collapsing onto him. So, yes the worst can happen and does. Though these accidents probably won't stop us from collecting, they should serve to remind us of the possible dangers involved.

If close calls count then I have a dozen hairy stories to tell, but they are unimportant in comparison to the loss of our dear friends. As they say "in horseshoes, close doesn't count".

One of my secondary jobs was as a safety engineer at the lab. The most important lesson that I learned from it was that most accidents are preventable. Careful thought and planning beforehand can greatly reduce the chances of injury.

Gene

20 + years ago I joined a mineral club and went on my first official field trip. It was to Maybee Quarry in Michigan. I found a beautiful pocket of large transparent Celestine crystals. My son and I were trying to remove the vug in one piece, but I needed some advice on the best way to accomplish the task. I enlisted the help of the most knowledgeable person and held the chisel while he swung my 10lb sledge. The sledge bounced off the chisel and pinched my finger tip. It stung and I pulled the off the leather glove to look at my finger. The distal phalanx, (end section), of my left ring finger was a bloody piece of chopped liver with bone fragments sticking out. This person was also the safety man. He wrapped it and drove me to the hospital. When I called my wife from the emergency room to tell her the bad news, she said, "That's not a funny joke." The joint was gone and the doctor put three rods in the pieces to try and save the finger tip from being amputated. Welcome to the wonderful world of mineral collecting. It healed, joint is gone and it now has a odd shape. Doesn't like cold weather either. I stuck with the collecting though and thankfully never had another accident of that magnitude.
Cheers,
Jim



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2012 06:07AM by Jim Gawura.

I also used to collect at the Maybee quarry in the early 1960's. Saw a chunk of the wall that had separated and was leaning outward. Underneath was a pocket a couple of meters long with loose celestine crystals. I crawled in, tearing off my shirt and doing damage to my skin. I was very limber, so I spent several hours plucking crystals out of the sand (none of them were damaged). By far the best and biggest was a 25 cm, doubly terminated crystal with a spiral of smaller crystals from to bottom. I don't drive and the guy I was collecting with confiscated the crystal as his "fee" for driving there. We went back the next weekend and the rock had collapsed.
Same sort of story-as an undergrad we went into a 1st level copper stope just south of Houghton, Michigan. Next time we went back there was no trace of the opening.
I do think there is some sort of "god" or angel who protects mineral collectors. Have heard dozens of scary stories, people that should have been injured, killed, or simply vanished when they went underground without telling anyone where they were.
Dave

If you do a lot of field collecting or mining you will eventually suffer some close calls, and or be injured or killed if you are really unlucky. Of course you can be struck by lightning or more likely in a car wreck also. Abandoned mines and unstable quarry walls or mine benches are great places for accidents to happen. Most big open pit mines now have strict rules against walking within so many feet of a bench wall and the firm procedures to be followed in moving into an area after an underground blast relating to scaling the ceiling and placing roof bolts. Often by thumping a wall or a ceiling with a hammer will tell you what is loose and what is not. Not necessarily a good idea either in many cases.

In collecting gerstleyite out of an old underground stope in the Old Western mine at Boron, California I had lifted one end of a 10 x 10 mine timber to the top of a pile of rocks so I could walk up the timber and collect at a particularly tempting spot in the roof of the stope. I hammered at a boulder in the ceiling about a foot across which came crashing down about a foot from me. It hit the 10 x 10 timber I was standing on and snapped it clean in half. I got knocked as over tea cups and skinned up a hand, but it didn't need stitches. That was the first lesson I had about the power falling rocks have. I did get few pounds of Gerstleyite specimens however from the fallen boulder.

The second lesson I got was collecting in the Raleigh mine in Arizona and was again about to go after a tempting seam of barite and wufenite in the ceiling. Before I started hammering I took a close look at the ceiling and decided that standing where I was would not be a good idea. I took a step to the side before landing the first blow on the chisel and that saved my life. One strike on the chisel brought down a block about half the size of a refrigerator a few inches from me. I decided that was all the collecting I needed to do that day. I didn't get any good wulfenite specimens either.

The final lesson, perhaps the one that decided me that I probably didn't need to do all that much more field collecting was in Chile. Neil Pfaff and I were collecting atacamite in a small stope, about the size of a largish walk in closet. This little stope was off to the side of a much larger stope with a lot of breakdown in its center. Every once in a while we would hear a rock drop out of the ceiling and add to the pile in the big stope. I am not sure what possessed us to even chance collecting in such an environment. Well, that's silly of course, of course I know what caused us to do it. it was the beautiful flat radiating stars of shiny dark green atacamite, growing on beautiful light blue chrysocolla or a while background. All you had to do was pry out one of the breccia blocks in the wall or ceiling and you had a good specimen or two. The size of the blocks ranged from hand size to the size of grand pianos. You stayed away from the piano size blocks, but even bread box size ones were really to large to shift and about all you could do is to whang on the sides of the blocks and hope to spawl off pieces of rock covered with nice atacamite. We were busy prying out blocks and one about the size of an old size cabinet television set fell out of the ceiling between us. We looked at each other and without a word we left the area as quick as we could. Neil stayed a week longer that I did collecting in various parts of the mine. The day before he left he returned to his "wrapping station" and found it burred under a giant boulder about the size of a small house. With that he decided that he didn't need to collect in that mine anymore.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

This is a topic worthy of creating Mindat Subject category.

I've been field collecting in dangerous mines and dangerous alpine areas since 1965.

I should be dead, but all I have suffered is one shattered leg. The stainless screws are still in there.

I could write 100 pages of my experiences, and add many types of dangers not normally thought of.

Such as the time I was laboring down through the steep woods with a 97 pound quartz cluster on my back. It was from a location North of Mount Rainier that I named "Onan's Toybox".

As I approached the road end I heard gunshots and bullets whisltling overhead.

I screamed "Hey you're shooting at me !!" The gunman screamed back, GOOD !

He was extremely drunk and had driven his truck off the road. Instead of just leaving him stranded, I helped him get his truck back onto the road.

I suppose my help allowed him to go on to shoot at other people in the woods and continue to yell at his kid on another day.

One reason that I'm still alive is that I usually collect solo. When you collect with a partner you take more risks and are more likely to have your partner''s boulder rolled on you. Plus, supersonic rock splinters from your partner's rock hammer are more likely to find their way to your eyeball.

Bart

You have been very lucky. The most likely reason that a rock collector ends up dead is that he was collecting alone. Good luck.

Dennis

Dennis,

Do you have any data, or even any anecdotes to support your point?

Here is another reason that collecting solo has its virtues.

I only collect in excellent weather. When you have a collecting partner, you are limited by their schedule.

That often means collecting in dangerous weather. Wet logs are slippery.

Bart

I guess we are in two different worlds. Logs are virtually non-existent here, most creeks are dry, and anything wet is a bit of a rarity. Three guys have never been found after an ill-advised trip into the Superstition Mtns. and recently a fellow in Utah, I believe, fell into an abandoned mine, and though he apparently survived the fall, a decision was made not to attempt a rescue. I believe he is still there. Nobody in their right mind would collect alone in this part of the world. On two occasions I participated in, an injured person was taken to the hospital. Fortunately neither was very serious. Again I say, good luck.

Dennis



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2012 10:29PM by Dennis Tryon.

Great topic and posts! I like to hear about some of the close calls you guys have had. It's amazing how lucky some of you were

Fortunately, the worse thing I ever got from collecing was a rock in the windshield while traveling up to Franklin, NJ. The good ol' arthritis has set in, and can't get out my own way anymore but I have never, ever 1) entered a mine shaft 2) gotten with 15' of a sheer wall and 3) wel, there is no #3. Unfortunately these days, just falling down now could be quite serious. Getting older and creakier isn't wonderful, but I guess it beats the alternative.

Dennis,

I have collected all over the Southwest. Except for lack of easy, natural drinking water, and the presence of nasty poisonious animals I find the desert areas to be low risk compared to the mountain areas of the Northwest. We have frost wedging, active rock fall, sudden snow storms, terrible underbrush, bergschrunds, hazardous snow bridges, avalanches etc. etc.

Mind you, a mine ANYWHERE is a dangerous thing to enter.

I must be in my "right mind" since I've undertaken at least 2,000 solo field days since 1965, and at nearly 62, I have zero aches or pains.

I'm not actually advocating solo collecting. I just prefer it for many reasons. One being that's it's hard to find someone whose company you enjoy all day long.

Now that I'm in the heart attack and stroke years, I have taken to collecting with a partner, but by the time my partner could get me medical attention, I'd be long dead from those afflictions.

I have had three dire collecting situations in all my trips. Two of them, including my broken leg, related to collecting in bad weather and bad planning due to accomodating my partner's schedules and wishes.

The third dire situation is interesting, I was exploring the Tecoma Hill, Utah wulfenite locality, and dropped my main pack to start ferreting around the stopes. There was a tricky spot right at the edge of a shaft in the middle of the adit. I navigated it with some trepidation. Beyond that point, I became enamored with a bathtub sized vug of lemon yellow wulfenite on white aragonite. I had only my MSA cap lamp for illumination. The official mining lamp of industry in the old days.

After two hours, I noticed the lamp's light dimming rather quickly, and decided it was time to head back out. By the time I arrived at the tricky spot, a place where I could easily have plummeted down that shaft, it went dead dark. I sat down and pondered my fate. I had just called home and would not be expected to call back home for days. I had no water and felt doomed. Much later, on my labels for the wulfenites I named the locality the "Black Panic Stope". Secrecy is one additional virtue of solo collecting for a commercial collector. Your localities stay YOUR localites.

I was saved by what is known as "battery bounce back". After 30 minutes with the cap lamp turned off. I turned it back on and I had plenty of light to get me past the tricky spot and back to my pack with the extra flashlights.

My favorite delight of the modern world is the LED flashlight. I carry a small bundle of them and always have an extra in my pocket.

The lesson. When your light goes dead, turn it off for 30 minutes then continue on with an extra five minutes of illumination.

The better lesson. Carry lots of extra LED flashlights. Smaller than a candy bar, and about the same expense.

Bart



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2012 08:21AM by Bart Cannon.

Like Bart, I've collected alone many times and lived to tell the tale. But I do prefer to have a friend along to share the experience, if nothing else for the camaraderie of sharing stories around the campfire. My usual mode of collecting is to lease properties, file permits, and bring machinery/explosives, then stay at a locality for a month, a year, or longer. This style is condusive to having friends with 'normal' lifestyles come visit.

One of my ugliest experiences was in the mid-80's at Spruce. My girlfriend, Carole, (now my wife) was my collecting partner that summer. We were running out of dynamite, I needed to hike down the steep trail to get more from the powder magazine. Told Carole not to worry if I was late, as I needed to do some work on the mag. I left about 3 p.m., got my mag work done quickly, and started back up the trail by 4:30. About 1/4 of the way up, I stepped on a rock I'd stepped on a thousand times before, only this time it flipped over, which flipped me over a small cliff. I only fell about 12 feet, but landed with my leg behind my back, and heard/felt a distinct SNAP.

The pain was excruciating, but once my adrenalin kicked in, I tore a strip from my shirt and bound up my broken leg so I could crawl. Took about an hour to crawl down to my truck. Sitting in the passenger seat watching my leg swell, I recalled that there was a case of beer in a creek just past the magazine. Having already crawled a few hundred yards down the mountain, was not much effort to retrieve the beer.

Carole didn't get worried until near dark, then hiked down to find my pack and a case of dynamite on the trail. That discovery made her run the rest of the way, so she was quite breathless when she arrived at the truck. By that time, I was feeling no pain. She wasn't happy when I told her she had to go back up and return the powder to the magazine.
It was after midnite when we got to the small town clinic closest to the mine. Carole commandeered a wheelchair and deposited me at the un-staffed admitting desk. As she went off to find signs of life, a nurse appeared and said to me, "Good lord, what happened to your hands?" My hands looked like normal quartz collector paws, covered in scabs, cuts and scars.

"My hands are fine, mam, but I broke my leg"! Got a cast applied, and took a day off to acquire some more effective pain meds, but needed to get back on the mountain since we had pockets open, and a new driller to train. Hiking back up on crutches was probably not my wisest decision, based on how that leg feels 25 years later, but its hard to resist the pull of a good pocket.

Bob