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I have to be careful here– so anything said in this post is from my personal perspective and is neither my professional opinion or representative of the views of my company. That wont cover me but it’s a start.

Our mine in Armenia is an entirely underground operation, with adits (tunnels) driven into the side of very very steep slopes (steep-dipping quartz veins for the geos). Also for the geos note the well-rounded boulders in the foreground deposited by the glacial river which roars down the valley next to the plant & offices. Those are powerlines too, not too many mines in Australia have mains power running through the site.
The mining is old school – wooden timbers used as roofs to stop cave-ins, narrow airlegs. This mine was opened, around 25kms of development done (ie they made the entire mine and got right to where the gold was) but never produced a substantial amount due to the Soviet co-operative way of working (ie we need x tonnes of gold this year from the country which means you will produce this many tonnes). An interesting story is that while resource estimates from the USSR are very reliably calculated the actual figures were often understated in case they were expected to increase the resource each year – hard to do with a finite resource, harder when you don’t actually have a budget to drill.

All visitors to site will be accompanied by the site dog

My job there was sampling of old stockpiles and auger drilling of the tails dam. Simple enough except for the climbing up aforementioned steep slope to get to stockpiles. Did I mention they were scree slopes i.e. made up mostly of loose rocks?!
Mchro was one of the few locals – most of the rest were brought in when the Russians opened the mines in this region up and have stayed despite the collapse of the USSR. They’re all highly skilled and very used to the hard life, especially in recent times where the collapse of the USSR may have meant democracy but also meant the loss of a certain job, and if they had a job no guarantee that their employer could actually pay them at the end of the month. Im not sure where their families are, whether they go back on break or stay there permanently until they have enough to buy a house or whatever they need. They sleep in dormitory-style rooms 4 or 6 to a room, I heard a story that we were going to build single’s quarters where everyone would get there own room but were told that the guys prefer bunking in together. Means you can pass the vodka bottle at night I guess.
Yes that’s a road. Thank Christ we didn’t drive up it. Mchro told us that all the locals are just shaking their heads and waiting for the accident. By the way the road I was on had a different danger – you drive past a missile silo. The dogs seemed to have more interest in guarding the country than the kids on national service.

Not many mines have this view behind them.