ADVANCES IN THE ADAPTATION OF THE MINE
The beginning of the work in the adaptation of the Vereda Guayaquil mining project was already carried out at the pithead of the Colombia gallery, in the Guayaquil vein (the main vein). This underground passage is a 200 meters long tunnel, in which work began on the cleaning of stones and minerals that have been falling inside, during the second half of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first century.
It should be noted that during this cleaning, the material removed was not discarded but was stored, since it was found that it contained a gold tenor that threw very significant amounts of this precious metal. We already have, therefore, thousands of tons of material — with very interesting grams of gold per ton average values — ready to be washed when the time comes.
Once the gathering of all this material was carried out, leaving a diaphanous tunnel, free of any obstruction, the gallery was divided into 6 sections. The objective was to be able to organize and adapt section by section, according to the different needs found in each of these sections, and also taking into account the level of risk that existed in each of them.
Within the mining tunnels, Colombian regulations require a standard with minimum measures of 1.80 m high and 1.80 m wide. However, for the Vereda Guayaquil mining project, the decision was made to improve these minimum standards, opting for measures of 2.20 m x 2.20 m — tunnel’s height and width — in order to enjoy greater breadth at when working and, therefore, to be able to offer miners a more comfortable movement through the gallery.
At the end of July 2019, 140 meters of the Colombia guide are already perfectly adapted and conditioned, according to the indicated standards. Therefore, in this whole space the steel arches providing heavy support, as well as the wood cladding to avoid falling rocks, have been completed. 60 meters are still pending for cutting and expansion.
Likewise, a new pithead is also pending to be opened in the tunnel for the entry and exit of the locomotive and wagons that will remove the material extracted from the mine.
We are already seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
The InnovaMinex Team.
