The Underground

A few weeks ago, I went into an underground gold mine in Elko, Nevada. Jacob Johnson and Christine Armbruster came with me as the film crew, and Steve Bessert was our tour guide. The purpose in going down was to take photos and video of the environment and the miners in an effort to show the world what this kind of work entails. In an essence, these men and women work in extreme and dangerous conditions every day, just to put bread on their tables. They work twelve-hour shifts, sometimes on graveyard, and sometimes during the day, rarely seeing the sun.
Having grown up in Elko, I have always wondered what the mines were like. They seemed like a different world than I had ever experienced before. I was right.




Lucky Helmet. This guy has kept the same helmet he was issued the first day he came underground - he claimed it is good luck. He also said that having women underground was bad luck... oops.






This is a "brass." It has your name and worker ID# on it for identification. Anytime you go underground, you hang one on a peg and keep one on your belt - this is so they know who is underground in the event of an accident - or so they don't start blasting when people are in the mine.