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Author: Admin | 2025-04-27
Holes into the mine wall, with the hole’s length determined by how far they wanted to advance. The detonator was inserted into the explosives, which were loaded into the drill holes with the fuse sticking out of the hole. A separate fuse was used to light them all. We had about a minute to reach a safe area of the tunnel. After the blast, the wall was inspected for signs of an emerald pocket. Once the rubble was cleared away, the process was repeated. The decision of when to blast is a complicated one, as it must balance the need to reach emerald-bearing pockets with the risk of destroying valuable material.Gachalá. Upon arriving in Gachalá from Chivor, our first stop was the company Mina La Emilia. We were met at the Diamante mine camp by principal owners Camilo Sanchez, Benito Mendez, and his son Christian Mendez, who is also chief operating officer of Mensal Emeralds. We immediately began examining emerald rough from their tunnels and others in the area. We also met a Chinese buyer, known to author AL, who was buying emerald rough. The buyer was looking for the clean, bright material the Gachalá and Chivor areas are known for. Gachalá Emerald Mines While not as well known as Chivor, we found the emerald mining at Gachalá to be active, with hope for future potential.The next day we had an in-depth look at El Diamante, La Estrella, and El Tesoro, all mined by Mina La Emilia. In Colombia, the name of the concession is often shared by one of its tunnels, in this case the La Emilia tunnel. When dealers refer to the mine an emerald comes from, they might use the concession name or the tunnel name. The La Emilia concession had four active tunnels at the time of our visit.El Diamante is over 20 years old and begins as a vertical shaft with an elevator that goes down 48 meters to reach a tunnel leading to a second internal vertical shaft. Here we descended by a harness, called la cincha, that was lowered with a winch. The second shaft led to subsequent tunnels and other internal vertical shafts. The productive zones were in the tunnels on the first level we reached by elevator.As we proceeded, we witnessed a common sight in Colombian emerald mine tunnels: the use of wooden braces for structural integrity. The mining areas had an abundance of groundwater, which added weight to the braces and rotted the wood.As we proceeded through El Diamante, we saw numerous wooden braces fracturing. Additional braces had to be built, and in one extreme case the tunnel’s entire wooden brace structure system had to be replaced. Often a fractured brace had a new one right next to it.In following the productive diggings, El Diamante’s leadership used a more systematic and thorough exploration methodology. They initially explore through 1,800 meters of a level, following the mineralization, and analyze every 50, 70, or 100 meters, depending on the geology. If they
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