Lead’s Alco store will close sometime in the coming months along with the Kansas-based national discount retail company’s 197 other stores scattered across 23 states. [Black Hills Pioneer]
Clambering up a slippery, groaning sheet of ice is not necessarily for the faint of heart. But it’s also not as inaccessible as it might seem, said Cody-based professional ice climber Aaron Mulkey. [Casper Star-Trib]
The biggest #IceClimbing event, #OurayIceFest is coming! Don't miss the clinic sales tomorrow http://t.co/UGaabnhL9v pic.twitter.com/lXxYqjzXzQ
— San Juan Mtn Guides (@SanJuanMtnGuide) November 12, 2014
How does a moveable camp of ice climbing vagabonds sound to you? We think it's a swell idea. Gear… http://t.co/IzXTiT8o5H
— Bozeman Ice Fest (@bozemanicefest) November 17, 2014
Not long after Homestake Mining Company announced its intent to close operations in Lead, we were listening to this NPR story about an ice climbing park in Ouray, Colorado, a former mining town that has remade itself by farming ice. My daughters' mother turned to me and said: "Wow, they should do that in the Open Cut."
It was if she had spoken with the Voice of God. The very next day I made an appointment and met with Bruce Breid, the general manager charged with the mine's mothballing, an aerial photo of the pit displayed on the wall behind his desk.
"What a brilliant idea, Mr. Kurtz, we have water here, here, and here," Mr. Breid said, pointing to locations at the rim near the Homestake Visitor Center. "Can you provide a legal instrument holding Homestake harmless?"
Right. There was that.
Though not a climber myself, more research led me to locals, some of whom had actually climbed some of the natural seeps deep in the pit while working for subcontract miners.
The horseshoe-shaped bowl directly under the Visitors Center is geologically sound, anchors for top roping easy to place. I have spoken to every Lead mayor since; the desired property is in the city limits. Barrick, the current owner has resisted any discussion of the concept. The Sanford Lab is apparently uninterested.
The Open Cut contributes about 11% of the water to the mine being pumped for the Lab, the ice climbing park would add another 5000 gallons or so. If a clay liner would be applied to the floor of the pit, the resulting reservoir (yes, acidic mine runoff mostly) could be tapped for emergency fire-fighting or diverted to the treatment facility for water from Sawpit Gulch in Central City: some of that is already happening.
Barrick returned some Wyoming holdings to the tribes; and, after it takes responsibility for its complicity in the destruction of the Missouri River Basin it should divest of its remaining holdings in the sacred Black Hills remanding them to the owners by treaty.
Lead has a long wait before the Lab starts producing the number of jobs needed to sustain the community now. Hope they hang on.
LK, could I trouble you to post this over at Cgirl's? It's a nice little analysis of this asshole spencer. Jeebus. I tried to warn people that the inbreds were coming, but they didn't believe me. Hell, we've even got'em here in GF. They live in a group of five or six camp trailers parked in a close circle formation with NO sewage arrangements at all. Gross. It looks like texass. And down by Hardy Creek are the squatter inbreds. They're all over the place. They just find a place and squat. Things is gettin' real weird here in Montana now. And the Lege is full of these assholes.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/the_hatemonger_next_door/