I knew there was a road on the back side of the Bingham Copper Mine, but I wasn't sure how rough it was, and if you needed a 4 wheel drive and/or high clearance vehicle.
Turns out, you don't. Any normal car can make it pretty easy. The road is paved most of the way, and highly traveled, as there are other hiking places and ATV trails up the mountain. The paved road does go along the side of the mountain, and is one lane in some places, with very sharp curves and steep drop offs the side of a cliff, so you have to go slow and hope a big truck isn't coming the other way.
The last 3 miles or so is dirt and it's not bad at all. The dirt road dead ends into an overlook of the mine. It was actually pretty crowded up there, more than you'd think.
The mine can be seen from just about anywhere in the valley - it's so big. It's the largest man-made excavation site in the world, and is almost a mile deep and 2 1/2 miles wide. It's the single most successful copper mine in history. It currently produces about 20% of the world's copper, and it can be seen from the moon.
Up at the overlook, we were as high as surrounding mountains! It was very windy and about 10-15 degrees cooler
This is the way up..you can see the road winding around in the lower right corner
More of the road coming up
This is a photo from the air from Cherie as she flew over the area
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