Thursday, July 17, 2003

Greetings,

We awoke to a foggy morning with the heavy mist clinging to the green hillsides about a 100' above the valley floor. Much cooler but still very humid; by the time I left The Drift in Daddry Shield it was raining and before I headed into Eastgate it was a torrential downpour obscuring even the windshield wipers. But, by the time I drove into the quarry the rain had abated and there was the odd spot of sun around the mine.

Byron and Dave were a few minutes ahead of me and by the time I had suited up I was really sweating. Nothing like a rubber suite and a warm muggy day to make you appreciate the normal cool weather of Weardale.

It was decided that since nothing was showing in the face of the North West Crosscut that Dave would start by running the air bag into the mine and refurbishing the air-fan. Byron and I moved various bits of equipment around until we could push the hydraulic unit into the mine. Dave and I were skeptical of using the diesel unit underground without the air-fan but lo-and-behold the big cooling fan on the unit actually did a great job of moving the air, in fact, I'm sure that people around here would have paid to stand in 50F air moving at about 10 mph.

Byron started right in sawing in the aragonite cave between the North and South West Crosscuts and was assembling some very nice material which needs to be fine tuned back home in Fallbrook. Today's attempt at a picture is a nifty specimen replete with 10p coin (size of quarter) out of an aragonite band. I am sure it was the first of several but I had promised to be home by 1:00pm to take Kerith to Alston to the organic grocer and to visit the antique shop and buy some of the local tasty handmade sausages.

Weather tomorrow calls for more of the same, should be good for the group from Killhope Lead Mining Center coming out for a visit and to pick up a portion of the galena and fluorite set aside for them.

Cheers, Cal

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