Tag: mining

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The Land of 10,000 Lakes

Eric views rapids Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell
Eric views rapids
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate Newell pulling in front of canoe Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell
Nate Newell pulling in front of canoe
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate pulls canoe on shore Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate pulls canoe on shore
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate takes a break Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate takes a break
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate Newell with Eric Newell providing rudder Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate Newell with Eric Newell providing rudder
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Porting Path Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Porting Path
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Eric and Nate Newell Porting Canoe Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Eric and Nate Newell Porting Canoe
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Porting the Canoe & Contents Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Porting the Canoe & Contents
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Eric Porting the Canoe Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Eric Porting the Canoe
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate in Front Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate in Front
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Minnesota, in the Dakota language (mnisota or mní sóta) translates to “sky-tinted water.”

A year ago, my alarm blared in the pitch-darkness of the bunkhouse at Packsack Canoe Trips on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

5 AM comes fast.

I turned off the alarm, swung my legs out of my sleeping bag, and planted my bare feet on the cold plywood floor. I turned on the light. My adult son, Nate, squinted at me from the adjacent bunk. Flashing a groggy grin, he muttered, “That was a short night.”

The day before we drove from Minneapolis to Ely, Minnesota. After a late start and a dinner stop, we drove the last couple hours in the dark, down State Highway 1—the Voyageur Highway—a narrow two-lane strip of asphalt, with no shoulder, and crowded in on either side by endless forests.

Our forecast was for highs in the 40’s, a stiff wind, and scattered rain showers. If I didn’t live 1400 miles away, I would have been happy to wait to paddle for another day, but this was the window of time we had. And, as the Eagles sang so profoundly, “We may lose and we may win, but we may never be here again.”

Most canoe trips into the Boundary Waters are days to weeks long, but you can get a good sampling in a long day on the water.

By 7 AM we were at the Fall Lake boat ramp where our rented Kevlar canoe was waiting for us, as promised. All our good paddling gear was back in Utah, so we placed our day packs in garbage bags to keep them dry, and pushed off into a headwind, which also meant no mosquitos.

Traditionally the homelands of the Anishinaabe people—also known as the Ojibwe or Chippewa, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness includes more than 1,000 interconnected lakes, extends for 150 miles along the US/Canadian border, and adjoins Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park. Combined with Voyageur National Park, the three areas create nearly 2.5 million acres of internationally protected land, lakes, forests, and waterways that connect to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. In April, a twenty-year mining ban in the vicinity was overturned that poses a risk to the pristine waters.

The Boundary Waters is the most visited Wilderness Area in the United States, but not on a day like this. Nate and I zipped our jackets up, put our heads down, and paddled towards an island ahead that provided some refuge from the wind and a chance to rest. We continued picking our route this way, finding the sheltered coves and shorelines when possible and powering into the wind when we had to.

We portaged Newton Falls in a drizzle, then worked our way across Newton Lake, and portaged Pipestone Falls to Pipestone Bay on Basswood Lake. We paddled to an obscure portage route that led us to Azion Lake—a small lake 150 vertical feet above Basswood Lake. We ate lunch on the shore in light rain. The wind died down and we paddled a lap around this double-lobed lake on glassy water with several loons.

For our return voyage we had a light tailwind or no wind. The portages were long enough that we were grateful we paid extra for the Kevlar canoe rental. All in all, we paddled twelve miles, made six portages (three each way), paddled on four lakes, and I plucked three ticks off my pants. Nate seemed unbothered that they liked me more than him.

Though we were a bit soggy, both of us were smiling as we finished out, just a father and son paddling in sync, moving across the dark glassy water, tinted by a gray sky overhead.

I am Eric Newell and I am wild about wild lands in Utah and beyond.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin and Anderson, Howe, and Wakeman.
Text: Eric Newell, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University
Additional Reading: Eric Newell

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah Pieces by Eric Newell

Boundary Waters Canoe Trips & Log Cabins In Ely, Minnesota, PackSack Canoe Trips and Log Cabins by Nicholas Ott, https://www.packsackcanoetrips.com/

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, 2026 Explore Minnesota Tourism, MN.gov,
https://www.exploreminnesota.com/destinations/boundary-waters

Explore Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness,
https://www.friends-bwca.org/explore/

Quetico Provincial Park, Camp Quetico, Atikokan, Ontario, https://queticoprovincialpark.com/

Voyageurs National Park-Minnesota, US National Park System, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/voya/index.htm

Save the Boundary Waters , SavetheBoundaryWaters.org, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness (NMW), https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/

Lawrence, Beatrice, Why mining in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters matters to Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Radio, April 30, 2026, https://www.wpr.org/news/why-mining-minnesotas-boundary-waters-matters-wisconsin

Kraker, Dan, Trump ends ban on mining near the Boundary Waters, Minnesota Public Radio News, April 27, 2026, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/04/27/trump-ends-ban-on-mining-near-the-boundary-waters

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Giant Hole in the Ground

Giant Hole in the Ground: Rio Tinto Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Rio Tinto Kennecott Bingham Canyon Mine
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Bingham Canyon Mine from the International Space Station 2007 Courtesy NASA
Bingham Canyon Mine from the International Space Station 2007. This astronaut photograph ISS015-E-29867 was acquired September 20, 2007, by the Expedition 15 crew with a Kodak 760C digital camera using an 800 mm lens. The image is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast.
Courtesy NASA

Kennecott Mine from Outside Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer Kennecott Mine from Outside
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer

Years ago, I was flying in an airplane headed into Salt Lake when the captain came on the intercom and suggested we look out the windows. Below us was a truly huge hole in the ground. This was my first look at the Kennecott open pit copper mine.

In 1847, when Brigham Young and the first Mormon pioneers arrived in the Utah territory, this bit of land we were flying over was an 8,000ft mountain, part of the range the Native Americans called the Oquirrhs. Back then two brothers were grazing their cattle in these mountains when they noticed some gold that had washed down the mountain and settled in a sandy stream bed. They took the gold and showed it to Brigham Young. Brigham Young told them to “forget it.” Growing food for the survival of the settlers was his top priority.

The Bingham boys went back to grazing cattle, but by 1873 the news had gotten out that there was gold in these hills. People started to move in, many of them recent immigrants. The Finns and Swedes settled up Carr Canyon, while the Austrians and Slavs settled near the Highland Boy mine. The town of Bingham grew up around 30 saloons, its many brothels , as well as many boarding houses where single men rented a room and took their meals. I really enjoyed reading a memoir written by Violet Boyce, whose Aunt Becky ran one of these boarding houses. She tells us the softer side of life in the early mining town, like one miner, Pete Kalvos, who had a beloved pet magpie. Now this bird was the chief suspect when Aunt Becky’s thimble, teaspoons, and jeweled pin disappeared. Aunt Becky got so mad she took the bird outside and told it to “git.” Joe moped around the house until the bird returned. Luckily by then Aunt Becky had cooled off, because some repair work on the chimney had revealed the magpie nest and all the missing items.

Everything changed in Bingham Canyon in 1906 when new entrepreneurs and engineers decided the real future of the canyon was in copper, and the best way to get it out was with an open pit mine. Dynamite started blasting away the hillsides. Violet writes how vases were knocked off shelves and pictures turned sideways on the walls in her house. As the mine kept expanding, the walls of her house crumbled. Eventually the whole town was devoured.

Nowadays, if you go to the Visitor Center at the Kennecott mine, you can stand on the viewing platform on the upper lip of the huge bowl-shaped pit. It’s a breath taking 2 ½ miles wide, ¾ of a mile deep – and still getting bigger. Trucks the size of two-story houses lumber up the inside of the bowl carrying away the newly blasted debris. It now takes 2 tons of this mix of rock, dirt and ore to eventually produce 9 pounds of pure copper.

The story of this giant hole in the ground is woven into Utah’s history, but it’s also left its mark on our planet Earth. The Kennecott open pit copper mine is one of a handful of man-made structures that can be seen from the International Space Station as it passes over us, 250 miles away.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy NASA and Mary Heers,
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Anderson, Howe and Wakeman
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Wild About Utah Postings

Crump, Scott, The Oquirrh Mountains, Utah History Encyclopedia, https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/o/OQUIRRH_MOUNTAINS.shtml

Strack, Don, Years of Discovery, to 1863, Railroads and Mining in Utah’s Bingham Canyon, Discovery to 1863, UtahRails.net, https://utahrails.net/bingham/bingham-discovery.php

The Bingham Mine – Our National Historic Landmark, Rio Tinto, https://www.kennecott-groundbreakers.com/stories/the-bingham-mine—our-national-historic-landmark

Milligan, Mark, GeoSights: A View of the World’s Deepest Pit – Bingham Canyon Mine Overlook, Utah Geological Survey (UGS), Utah Department of Natural Resources, Survey Notes, v. 49 no. 2, May 2017, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/geosights/geosights-bingham-canyon-mine/

Bingham Canyon Mine, USA, Captured 20 April 2021, by the MSI instrument, aboard the Sentinel-2 satellite, NASA, https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/news/worldview-image-archive/bingham-canyon-mine-usa

1904 to 2022, Bingham Mine through the Years, https://youtu.be/yvoQuH9C2d0?si=wQhMZWXYs-M-zclW

Massive landslide at Utah copper mine generates wealth of geophysical data, GSA Today, The Geological Society of America, https://rock.geosociety.org/net/gsatoday/archive/24/1/pdf/gt1401.pdf

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POCKING: Potentially the “best” technique for restoring remote canyon landscapes during mine reclamations

Pocking for Cottonwood-Wilberg mine reclamation Courtesy & Copyright Chris Brown
Pocking for Cottonwood-Wilberg mine reclamation
Courtesy & Copyright Chris Brown
In Utah, when a coal mine closes, the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining (OGM) is the agency responsible for overseeing the reclamation.

PacifiCorp is a mining company that provides electrical utility to one million customers in Utah, Idaho and Wyoming via Rocky Mountain Power. When it submitted the Cottonwood-Wilberg mine reclamation proposal, it claimed a sedimentation pond which catches run off, would not be needed. OGM was skeptical and initially rejected the plan.
Dennis Oakley, senior mine engineer at PacifiCorp said, “We explored the state and federal regulations and found there was some latitude if we could show we were using the best technology currently available.”

Tom Thompson, GIS Manager at OGM said, “Technology has come a long way, if we leverage it correctly we could do a lot better for our environment.”

The method PacifiCorp claimed as the best technology available was deep gouging, or “pocking”; a technique used to prevent erosion and stimulate vegetation growth on steep sloped landscapes.

To use pocking, the natural canyon slopes are first restored, then pocks three feet in diameter and one-and-a-half feet deep are dug into the slopes next to each other in a random and discontinuous fashion. The landscape soon resembles the surface of a golf ball with thousands of dimples.

Green dyed hydro-mulching, which contains native seeds, moisture and a protective layer of mulch is then sprayed over the entire pocked landscape.

When it rains the pocks capture the water, forming mini ponds. The moisture is slowly absorbed into the ground, preventing run off and giving the seeds a moist environment for growth.

Each year the sides of the pocks slowly erode into themselves, and the vegetation becomes established and spreads. Eventually the pocks fill with sediment and fade into a natural looking stable slope.

If pocking is the best technology currently available – then OGM wanted to know.

With the help of PacifiCorp, OGM set up the Cottonwood-Wilberg mine as a research site to determine the efficiency of pocking.

To add additional expertise to the research, OGM applied for Utah Legislature appropriated funds, to access to the knowledge of Doug Ramsey, the director of the Remote Sensing and GIS Laboratory, in the Quinney College of Natural Resources at Utah State University, and his graduate student Chris Brown.

Ramsey and Brown explain, The RS/GIS lab is evaluating the pocks by using drone imagery of the entire landscape to create 3D models and topographic maps that identify where the vegetation is growing, and the depth of each pock across multiple seasons and years to show if the pocks are eroding as expected.

PacifiCorp installed monitoring devices around the reclaimed site so it could measure the amount of precipitation, the vegetation growth over time, and the sediment load of the runoff above and below the disturbed areas.

Oakley explains, “It’s our theory that the sediment levels of the background runoff will be equal to, or less than the runoff at the bottom of the disturbed area.”

Ramsey visited the site in June 2019 and found vegetation was already growing in the bottom of the pocks.

Data from the site will be gathered and analyzed over the next few years. A key part of this monitoring work will be a manual describing the drone data collection and analysis methods so OGM can establish a monitoring protocol for other reclamation sites.

Keenan Storrar, hydrologist from OGM, said, “We hope this research on the pocking technique, which PacifiCorp helped develop, will be published for future operators use.”

This is Shauna Leavitt and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright © Chris Brown
Audio: Courtesy
Text: Shauna Leavitt, Utah Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Quinney College of Natural Resources, Utah State University

Sources & Additional Reading

Cottonwood-Wilberg Mine, Emery County, Utah Reclamation, US Department of the Interior, https://eros.usgs.gov/doi-remote-sensing-activities/2018/osm/cottonwood-wilberg-mine-emery-county-utah-reclamation

Cottonwood-Wilberg Mine, Utah Division of Oil, Gas & Mining, Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://www.ogm.utah.gov/coal/minedetail.php?C0150019