Mining the Christine Marie: Watching a Rock Fall

Rocks fall onto mountain roads all the time, but rarely do people see it happen. Trees fall in the forest when the wind blows hard, but it is unusual for a person to be in the right place at the right time to witness it. The more I worked into the steep slopes of the Christine Marie claim, the more I knew when a rock slide was about to happen.

Big rock ready to fall.

I was following small veins of jasper in small rocks down around a very large rock. The large rock, about ten tons in size, did not have any visible jasper showing in it. The large rock was nested in among a vast number of smaller shattered rocks that did have some jasper. The large rock had moved here from some place higher up the slope. I worked slowly down the side of the rock over a period of several days, exposing it as I went down. The jasper I was finding was good, but small. The seams were barely ¾ inch wide, and did not go very far but traveled from one rock to the next as I worked down. I finally found the bottom of the large rock which seemed to be standing on its end, and the jasper in the small rock started to show indication of getting better. I started to follow the jasper under the big rock.

Rock in the upper left before the fall.

After working for a while, I got up to take a break and look things over. A little to my surprise the big rock looked a little more precarious than it had earlier. It was hanging in the back wall of the pit with not a lot of other rocks holding it in place. I thought it would be fun to watch the rock fall by itself. I went back to work, more carefully this time, removing rocks from under and around the large rock, one at a time. After a while I started to hear small noises coming from around and under the rock. I got out of the hole I was working in, found a nice rock to sit on far enough away to be safe, and watched and waited.

The whole process took about thirty minutes. Every few minutes there would be a creaking sound or a small pebble would slide down the slope under the rock. Then, there would be a long silence before another sound or trickle of dirt would cascade down the slope somewhere else. After another long silence, I became impatient and tossed a small stone below the big rock. At first the sounds and movement increased in intensity but then it went back to their natural rhythm.

The rock after the fall.

Finally, after about thirty minutes the sounds and rock slides under the big rock rapidly increased and the large rock fell over on its side as if someone gently pushed it over. It was fascinating to watch the whole process and realize that the rocks on this slope are continually falling; some just faster than others.