Slideshow Index: Mine Tour

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• Entrance to the Asarco Copper Mine Tour
• Bill & Marie Kidder made the reservations
• Giant Barrel Cacti
• Cactus garden
• Cactus garden and Discovery Center
• Cactus garden and tower
• Overview photo of this huge open pit mine
• Our guide and bus driver
• They use non-pottable water and recycle it
• Slurry rotater at the process center
• We came back here later
• An ore truck unloads up to 320 ton of raw ore
• The crusher pulverizes a load in about two minutes
• First of three panoramic shots
• Second of three
• Third of three shots
• 20x zoom of shovel and truck in the bottom
• Zoom shot of the east end. This pit is about 2.5 miles across and 2.5 miles wide
• Some of the crushed ore
• Only about six miles per hr up, thirty down
• Zoom shot of the digger
• Regular trucks look small next to the ore trucks and digging shovels
• I think this is used to bore dynamite holes
• Marie, Bill, and Kathy by the 12 foot diameter tires. They cost $60,000 and last about six months.
• Arnie & Kathy tire shot
• Tried to shoot this truck as it passed
• Water pond used at the processing plant
• Slurry rotator
• Overview east of the plant
• A second crusher works the ore stones smaller
• Our very good guide gives us the summary before entering the processing plant
• The copper floats to the top in these tanks
• These huge rotating drums crush the ore finer before feeding it into the floatation tanks
• This building is gigantic
• The ore is mixed with water here
• The minerals are floating on the surface
• This jar contains the raw ore particles
• Thanking our guide and driver at the end of the tour
• Lunch at Marti's Bistro in Green Valley