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Thomas Krassmann arranged a trip to the Halit cave in the Merkers mine for making fish-eye 360-degree panorama pictures. We were allowed to 'assist' him :-)
After visiting the cave we were allowed to drive to two mineral localities underground for Rinneit, Carnalit and Bischofit...
It was one of the best days of my life... a short story:
We left at 05.00 and returned 20.15, drove 820 km, and went 800 meters underground...
We drove about 20 km underground in a 4x4 car to reach the cavity and two other locations where we were allowed to look for minerals...
This mine is 140 square kilometers large underground and has about 4.000 km of workings... the whole Werra mining district underground is 1.000 square km large... incredible...
At the K+S group 11.000 people are employed, of which 1.160 in the Merkers mine, and 4.250 in the mines in the Werra mining region.
The K+S group is getting 38 million tons of kali- and magnesiumsalts from their mines every year and has a turnover of 2,3 billion (miljard) euro...
We saw a 45 meters wide cavity, up to 10 meters high, with Halit crystals to something more than 1 meters big and sometimes waterclear...
We found Carnalit crystals of which some are 2,5 cm long and Rinneit and Bischofit also on the two other spots.
First we got our clothing for entering the mine :-) We changed in our personal clothing chambers with shower etc, quite different of what I expected... Then we waited for 'our shift'...
We descended about 500 meters into the mine and went from minus x degrees and snow blowing outside to 27 degrees warmth underground! There was a stong pressure change underground; the weather ('wind' from the pressure changes) was good and strong. Between the shaft and the mine itself there were two thick steel weather-doors with a 'pressure-chamber' inbetween, keeping the shaft free of the underground weather. We went into a small open 4x4 car and drove another 8 km to the Halit-cave underground. Driving underground is already a nice experience (also see: the pages on Dreislar :-)
Click here for one and here for another movie of us driving underground hahaha (just for fun; each movie is about 10 mb...)
(all of the pictures here are between 75 and 600 kilobyte large because I wanted to offer you the possibility to download them and use them as a wallpaper on your PC-background. Not the ones with me on it of cource but the nice ones with the Halit-xls ;-) Click on the thumbnail, then rightclick on the picture and choose 'set as background'. The pictures are really about one A4-page large, but they are made smaller on this page)
Then we went into the cave... Imagine yourself behind your microscope watching some micromounts...
Sometimes you watch a cavity with millimeter-small crystals so beautiful that you want to crawl into your microscope and walk around those crystals...
Well that's what happened: when we entered the Halit cave it felt supernatural, unbelievable. Like walking into a micromount box ;-)
Everything around you is big, and you are at once very small...
I just went silent and sat down and watched those crystals hanging from the ceiling. I wanted to get my sleeping bag and stay here for a week or so, just looking around... We did not take a single crystal from the cave; just sitting here, watching it, taking pictures was enough. Taking something from here would break the spell... This cavity needs to stay like it is, almost untouched.
After that we drove off to two localities a few kilometers further into the mine, where Basalt rock penetrates the Salt-layers. At those spots rare minerals formed like Rinneit, Carnalit and Bischofit; all of them need to be kept in airsealed boxes to preserve them. Carnalit is also found in the Netherlands by the way, see: nedmag.nl.
When our time was up, our 'shift' was done, we went up with the miners again, also a nice experience and a nice ending of the day... Click here for a movie of us going to the shaft again (the movie is about 16 mb... turn your head... I was stupid enough to shout the movie portrait...)
We want to thank the K+S group again for this great opportunity to visit their mine!
You can too visit the mine and this cave and watch the crystals from a little distance... See erlebnisbergwerk.de
The cave is getting smaller with time (perhaps 1 cm per year max.), it takes time but the roof will collapse with the decades to come... :-(
If you're searching for mineralogical articles (minrec-1999-0910-369-usa-new-mexico-carlsbad-halit, lapis-2005-06-13-duitsland-werra, etc...) on this locality, please contact us...
Also see:
giantcrystals.strahlen.org,
domanialemijn.nl,
erlebnisbergwerk.de,
k-plus-s.com,
salzindustrie.de,
Click on the Google Earth logo to go to a map of the locality...
(Click here to download Google Earth)
mindat.org on this location.
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