What a Blast!

Whoops! Another play day.

Our day began with a morning coffee cruise around the lake. What a great way to start the day. We visited our parent Bald Eagle, checked on the babies and made sure the loon families were still thriving.

Bald Eagle

Then using insider information from nephew Nate we drove to the overlook for the Hull-Rust Mine in Hibbing to view their weekly blast to break up the ore and rock. They drill a few dozen 16 inch diameter holes 55 feet into the ground, fill them with explosives and then fire them off. It makes quite a spectacular sight. US Highway 169 is closed during the event.

The Blast

We were viewing the blast from about 3.5 miles away. 

The haulers used to move the dirt and ore are enormous. In fact they are as big as a house. 44 ft long, 24 ft wide and 22 ft high. They weigh in empty at 320,000 pounds and can haul 240 tons of material. You too can have one for only $3,000,000. The six tires on the hauler are 12 ft high, 3 ft 4 in wide. Each tire weighs in at 4 tons and costs 25-30 thousand dollars to replace.

Nate drives one of these 240 ton haulers as does nephew Tim Matvey. Tim's bother Todd operates one of the loaders used to fill the trucks. Nate works at Hibbing Taconite while Tim & Todd work at Minntac in Mountain Iron. The loader with the largest bucket takes 3-4 scoops to fill a hauler.

Playing Trucks

Getting Loaded

One Full, One Empty

Don Next To a 170 Ton Hauler (Small One)

Panoramic View of Part of the Mine

The mine pit covers over 5,000 acres, is over 6 miles long, 1.5 miles across and 600 ft deep. Hibbing Taconite removes about 50 million tons of material every year. Water is pumped from the pit at a rate of 18,000 gallons a minute.

The magnitude of this operation made us hungry so we headed for the Stand in Chisholm for lunch before our bus tour of the mine.

The Stand

To my delight, and Don's, they had breaded pork tendrloin sandwiches on the menu. What could we do but order one. It was delicious.

Breaded Pork Tenderloin

After lunch we drove to the Minnesota Dixcovery Center to catch our bus tour of Hibbing Taconite. Found out our bus driver grew up in Floodwood (my home town) and graduated in 1960 three years after I did. He began volunteering as a bus driver after retiring from banking in Hibbing.

The tour took us to places in the mine we couldn't see otherwise and gave us a better sense of what Nate experiences in his job.