Another successful but challenging trip sampling mine tailings in the high Alps.
12 hour day in the rain, sleet, snow, 50kmh winds... Bit cold but lots of cool samples, some interesting new discoveries, and even got to see some primary ore in an old adit.
#geology #oregeology #minewastemining #Alps #Gastein #Montanuniverstät

Great visit to the #Bleiberg mine last week. The largest Pb-zn (Ge) mine in Austria, consistently worked for 700 years until the 1980s! Really impressed and excited by the sizes of the waste rock dumps, and their potential to be a modern source of Ge. Neat to see medieval workings and the way that they worked the ore seams back then. (# 1 waste rock pile, # 2 underground ore face from a moder working, # 3 mined out ore seam in a medieval adit).
#criticalmetals #minewastemining #oregeology

View down a historic mineshaft near the Austrian F1 circuit @ Spielberg. Always a bit humbling to imaging the poor sods who had to dig this in the first place.
#styria #redbull #minewastemining #spielberg

Sometimes I feel more like a soil scientist when I go mine waste sampling 😂.
Where is a lovely profile through a oxidation horizon in a tailings pile from a historic Cu/Au mine. The green layer you see is mostly malachite/random copper oxi-hydroxides. I guess this is what happens when you have 300+ years of weathering..
#minewastemining #geology #oregeology #styria