Did you miss Feiyang?
In this edition of “Life of a Miner” with Feiyang, our mining rock star, no pun intended, details the more dangerous perils of being situated in remote areas of China working on our mining farms. As most in the mining circle know by now, there are dozens of major river tributaries flowing through Sichuan Province that mostly end up converging into the great Yangtze River of China. And with those rivers, comes dozens, if not hundreds, or thousands of mountainous landscapes carving through the skyline being home to wild pandas.
Fun Fact: Based on a report surveyed through the National Giant Panda Survey conducted in part by the Chinese Government and the Wildlife Fund, there are close to 2,000 wild giant pandas in China up about 17% from a decade ago.
Since many of our mining farms reside river side, that means many of our mining farms are also under the presence of large mountains overlooking them from above. Great for hiking and sightseeing if that’s your forte, but also susceptible to rockfalls, which if not taken seriously can be deadly.
The past few months, Feiyang has been working on the new construction of our mining farm located in a small village of 甘孜州, Gānzī zhōu, located about a 3 hour drive west of Chengdu. There is one particular road that she and her team drives regularly on to commute to the new construction site from an existing mining farm. The surrounding mountain structure located on both sides of the road has historically not been stable as told by the local villagers there whom can only speak with the Sichuanese dialect.
As stated by a local villager, “。。。特别容易断裂，白天日照时间长，紫外线强，岩层会开裂，晚上温度降下来，热胀冷缩，岩层也会断裂，就会从山上掉石头下来。。。”, which translates to, “the side mountain structure is especially easy to break, from the long daytime sunshine radiating its UV light to the 180 degree change in temperature at night, the bi-polar hot and cold is the ingredient to rocks falls from the mountain side.
“每天都是要开车走同样的路，但是每天的路面都是不一样的” -Feiyang
The quote above translates to the title of this post: Everyday is to drive the same road but everyday the road looks different…reflected in the size and quantity of the stones on the road, where Feiyang and her team actually have to physically move them every time. Usually they are manageable to clean up but once in awhile can cause real setbacks.
What are rockfalls?
To digress a bit, rockfalls, similar to avalanches, are very more so than not, hard to predict and pinpoint the exact reason why a particular rockfall happened. As the name suggests, rockfalls refer to when quantities of rock, detached by sliding or toppling, fall freely from the side of a cliff or mountain, which can cause grave danger to any pedestrian below. Common to spot the aftermath of one on roads that hug a mountainside or cliff. Although there is a large degree of uncertainty about what exactly triggered it, favorable geology or warm changing climates are the principal causes of rockfalls. Common causes consists of external stresses, earthquakes, soil erosion, frost wedging, freeze-thaw, or even pressure from the root level of a tree can cause the last straw needed to awaken these thousand year old sitting rocks. Almost like a ticking bomb waiting for the right moment.
The Yosemite National Park in the U.S. is actually a hotbed for rockfall occurrences which can happen once a week. In fact, in 2019 alone, the park recorded 64 rockfall events happening.
“The most consequential rockfall for a park geologist occurred on December 5. On that day, a friend and the geologist were conducting field work at the base of the southeast face of El Capitan, near the start of the route “Zodiac.” The wall is overhanging there. At 12:48 pm they heard a scraping sound high above them, followed by the sound of a large object rushing through the air. As this sound increased to deafening levels, they ran to the wall and crouched behind a boulder just as a 15 cubic meter (45 ton) rock exploded near them, pelting them with small rock fragments. A golf ball-sized fragment struck the geologist’s helmet, but they emerged from the dust unscathed.” -Yosemite
The rockfall adventure encountered by Feiyang
As rockfalls are also common in the mountains of Sichuan, besides being a pain in the ass during a morning’s commute, they also lead to delays of the mine construction, leading to more stress and more headaches for Feiyang. Surprisingly the rockfalls aren’t so much of the problem, the most pivotal and crucial step in the construction process is the installation of the mine’s needed high-voltage equipment. In most areas where mining farms are constructed in China, the local government needs to firstly approve of installing high-voltage equipment, and also provide provincial adjustment on their side by having a week’s advance notice to halt power generation in the vicinity. If you miss this time period or cannot get the installation set up in time, the installation is deemed dead, forcing you to wait for the next opportunity by the local government in scheduling again.
The pressure and stress surmounts to levels Feiyang has never experienced before. There was one instance Feiyang recalls where her team had only 2 hours left before their deadline to install the high-voltage equipment into the mine. It was 10 p.m. and the vehicles carrying the equipment had not arrived. It was still 20 kilometers away blocked by an earlier rockfall that happened in the afternoon, forcing her team to waste more than 7 hours of rock moving with their hands and calling in bulldozer equipment.
As told in her own words of that day’s experience:
“The construction team members have already rested for a few hours and were dead beat exhausted during the day. I was getting very anxious. Just earlier in the day after we discovered the rockfall happening on our main road, I along with 20 young men, with tools, drove 5 cars directly straight to the scene of the rockfall. We had no other choice. Any specialized bulldozer equipment or cranes were going to take 3 hours to arrive to this remote village. Some of my men were even afraid of being caught in a “after shock” rockfall considering how unstable the mountainside was. Afraid to come but to see me, a woman, going into the fire, so to speak, rallied them on to the spot and followed alongside me. To the scene, I was the first to get off, arranging for the staff to start clearing the barrier. Remember we got to the scene of the rockfall around noon time having to waiting 3 hours later for professional equipment in helping us out. So we started moving the smaller rocks first and by the time a bulldozer and a crane came by, I would say 70% of the rocks were still there. By 9pm we were finally able to fully clear the road and by 10pm we were all physically and mentally gone. To keep this long story short, we were not able to fully install the high voltage equipment in our mine that night, but finally able to get it done 3 weeks later. Honestly, the most important takeaway was nobody came away injured, and I thank God everyday for this.”
A visual chronological order of the mining farm construction completed in December
We thank everyday for the bravery Feiyang and her team continue to have in their wild adventures managing our mining farms. We hope you enjoy these updates of seeing the life of a miner told by Feiyang and feel free to reach out to us if you have questions for her, or if you simply just want to learn more about Bitcoin mining.
Resources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garz%C3%AA_Tibetan_Autonomous_Prefecture
- https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/nature/rockfall.htm
- Maps.google.com
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