After Ironwood, we heading to Greenland where our next “adventure” was the Adventure Mining Company. We did the Miner’s Tour where we  rappelled down a mine shaft in darkness with only our hardhat light to guide us. We descended 80 feet to a lower level of the copper mine where we had to crawl through several small areas, and hike through some of the oldest parts of the mine. We were about 300 feet under the mountain and the mine was a very cool 48 degrees. To see what the miners in the 1850’s had to go through to make $1 a day- was extraordinary. They needed 2 candles a day at $.10 a candle to do their job. They’d light the first candle and when it went out, that meant it was lunch time, after lunch they’d light the second candle and when that went out, that meant it was time to go home. Since candles were relatively expensive, they would try to share one candle with a buddy to save money. At one point, we turned off all our head lamps and just had one candle lit- it was crazy to think that little light is how they were digging, chiseling and blasting to find copper! The mine operated from 1850 to 1920. Production ceased in 1908 due to low copper prices, but restarted for a short time during WWI. Production finally halted in 1917 and the mine closed in 1920. An interesting fun fact (especially for mountain bikers): since 2009, an annual bike race called Miner’s Revenge has been held whose course runs above ground AND below in the mine!

While we did have bats flying around in the mine, it’s actually a good thing since White Nose Syndrome has hit their numbers so hard. There used to be about 10,000 bats in the cave and now their numbers are down to about a 1,000. White Nose Syndrome is a fungus that makes hibernating bats wakeup during winter and then they die of starvation because their main food source, mosquitoes, is not around. Everyone should love bats because they eat mosquitoes!