This will be my last post about my field camp experience! I can’t believe it’s already done! Some days definitely dragged longer than others, but overall this last two and a half weeks spent in South Dakota went by unbelievably fast! I am excited to get on the road and embark on my own adventure down in Colorado where I’ll be hiking and camping for ten days. I think it’ll be a great way to wrap up my time away from home before I go back to working full time and having real adult responsibilities.
The weekend was basically spent doing a wrap-up of assignments and taking a few, small hikes. Right in the middle of Rapid City, there is a nice sized hill that has trails all over it, so that little bit of hiking and some ice cream made for a pretty good weekend. On Monday, we hit the ground running. We spent a lot of time looking at slope and dam stability. The morning was dedicated to observing a slope failure in the Deadwood Formation in the Black Hills. This small circular arc failure resulted in a scarp about 5 feet in height. We created a cross-section of the slope failure based on measurements in the field, and then we created a pace compass map of the whole area that was displaced. The failure that we inspected was a small part of what seemed to be a large complex of failures that has caused damage to the highway running alongside it. Afterwards, we inspected a small earthfill dam near Lead, South Dakota. This dam was carved into a Tertiary intrusion, and it was poorly designed to say the least. Our inspections led to a reconstruction design for the dam that would improve the safety of the dam and the surrounding area. This was good experience for problem solving and critical thinking.
On Tuesday, possibly my favorite day, we went to a Superfund site called Gilt Edge Mine. It’s an old, abandoned mine that was used sporadically from the 1870s up until the 1980s when it was acquired by a mining company and became completely opened up. The mining company used a cyanide drawing method to retrieve the gold, and it ended up contaminating billions of gallons of water with acid rock drainage (ARD). In the 2000s, the EPA declared it a Superfund site, and remediation planning began almost immediately. In the beginning it was estimated to be a $27 million project, but now the estimated final cost is about $200 million!! The treatment plan that is in place is to remove all contaminated waste rock, sludge, and tailings, and place them in the old mining pits, which will then be capped. The mining site is an absolute beautiful disaster, and the head engineer at the site described it as “the perfect example of how not to remediate.” The project has become a lot more complicated as more contamination is found. The EPA has a mandate to try new, innovative designs. These costly experiments have caused the treatment of Gilt Edge to go on for a while. Going to the mine and conversing with the engineers really motivated me to continue on the path I’m on in education! I said possibly, but this was definitely my favorite day.
Today is just a wrap-up of assignments and saying goodbye to my fellow classmates. This whole experience has taught me a lot about the field and about myself. Thank you to everyone who helped support me through this journey, and I’m excited to be home and share more stories of my adventures!