ok now i am inside we've got pat dobbs with me i t j and we saw a little bit of the dust blowing from the blast yes how much was blasted today well i don't want to tell you i don't know if i'll make you feel any better for not seeing absolutely everything it wasn't one of our largest blast but it was a little unique in that we had two areas shot at one time and it removed about five hundred times and earlier in the wake the sturgis motorcycle crowd also got to see a blast that removed a little over nine hundred tons that was on monday and sold so far this week a little over fourteen hundred fifteen hundred tons in into shots and all of that work is to continue the effort on roughing out the shape of that giant horse's head nail did the amount of the  blast how many more tons per week are you guys blasting off currently actually of the folks are tracking along and we post a lot of this on facebook as well as on the web page they're going to notice th numbers are down and here's why the as the work gets closer and with each blaster moving within what they want to and the rough shaping process you stop about twenty feet from your final they're getting close enough now in that area of the horse's nose that they're becoming a little more refined and working with the engineers and geologists to make sure they're doing what they're doing and i've always monitored the vibration rats not the issue so they tend to be a little smaller and not as often because now the measuring becomes more intense simultaneously in the last time you were here we were talking about the effort that ruth kicked off a year ago to start work on the final phase of as well sell i'll give you a quick overview on the update on the hand that they have continued to work with the engineering and geology consultants and if you remember if i didn't tell you i should have told you on the backside on the far side of the mount where the area we can't see now you're less than four feet away on that padded extension of your hand right here so the ability to just split off from rock and gold right to the torch is literally and i don't mean to be cliche but literally it's a hand on top of the back of the hand is that arm slopes you've only got seven to seven and a half feet of rust cover left and at that area where we see on the very far right of the mountain  approximates where their fingers going to be they don't need to remove any more rough blasting they're right there wow it's all about what the geologists in the engineering guys do is they take a look at all the data they surveyed the mountain they searched they surveyed the models they cut all the data points in the computer and they do the overlay as they say here's chalk's art here is the reality of the granite we have within any rock formation natural fissures are they such that maybe it's a line that's kind of like a facial blemish it goes off with more splitting and ultimately goes away or is this one of those seams where very large blocks of rock all come together now that it of itself is not necessarily a worry it's a matter of at what angle and  what did he have in mind as an example of the tilt of the horse's ear does it conflict with the existing seam does it stick out far enough that that weight becomes a long term issue the engineer people have looked at all the stuff that korczak had in mind and what the mountain is a up to and they've said it'll handle everything that he asked for here is the long term challenge in some cases it's the matter of the weight that's not  supported underneath and a lot of these models forces head tips away from the rest of the mountain there's no rock underneath it all entirely possible hundred thousand tons of rock if you want to do that long term we are going to recommend steel bolti underneath on his models it's the left rear leg that's raised maybe we have the right leg raised and acts like a solid column of brackets all supported we have less need for manmade fixes so in july twenty fourth and twenty not going to look as beautiful as my model does but i'll tell you what you come up that road or you're in an airplane a hundred miles away you're going to see my warrior pointing to his land on top of the one that is going to be there are going to  exactly the same no but i'm not worried about family knows what i want public knows what i want so yeah it's going to happen and we talked about him will come back around to the blasting in the close up on the the work and by now the bulldozers are probably up clearing away  know close up there as a zoom in there you go and and in this area we had in the two for one one of the areas was directly below that white painted circle that approximate location of course i and in that area that we painted outline of the eye that we see directly below that was one of the shots other one was farther to the left near the tunnel and in that area where you see the very dark ro and what they're doing is they're reducing we're now in that area three hundred forty three hundred sixty feet below the top of the crazy horse warriors head and they're as they move in and they're defining what is going t area just under the nose and depending upon your horsemanship you can call it the muzzle you can call it the nose i've heard some people call it the chin so it's all at this point we're very close to the rough production blasting the shapes that area of the horse's head now the other significant things for folks who are trying to understand how much has been removed i can give you pictures from one thousand nine hundred two it's been thirty years ago this year the chord chart passed away and that time he brought the rock down to where he was fifteen feet above the arm as we see it today and he had the area mapped out as to where the face was going to go he said always said i made one guess on this mall where the tip of the writer's noses and everything else falls into place it's also based on the measurements of a very top of the crazy horse and so he blocked out coming down from the far right and coming in and he actually was down and underneath what's going to be that horse's head so was interesting as we go forward and we bulldoze away a rock that's already been broken in mounted gas and said he's revisiting the areas that he was in as a child with his father and determined every single before even the kids were grown to do everything else that they needed that's correct a in a in ruth that would spend time in the library or what was also known as core chuck's room and they mapped out a three volume set of books and he was able to project not only what's going to happen on the mountain and he started talking about what's going to happen with the visitor visitor facility what's going to happen with the saw all of that and what's astounding is now you're thirty years after he has passed away and it's coming through and just on wednesday yesterday we had the third summer university program the completion ceremony for the students that came to us from seven states and thirteen tribes and they have finished there for first summer or actually their first semester of college level classes they've got up to fourteen credits they've already nailed and that's how they spend their summer and the kind of dedication that they happen and i'm next to them and you know all that really hats off i mean stop and think about when we were looking for young and i can barely remember when i was young but spending my first summer after high school with more studies was not real high on my priority list so these young people that have really stepped up and took a quite a prestigious opportunity and a number of them left not only with their college credits it's just not a tourist attraction no no it was his big concern and the other one is he wanted to give the indian people not only the honor and respect a monument that points out that they not only have had historically years but they continue to have great people but they also wanted to give their offer them the opportunity of something with education that was a tool that they could not only maintain their cultural to traditions but they could also live in the the new world as it develops and it's he said you gotta find it you gotta take it and then you return it to your people so you can help nourish them now one other thing that we didn't really international philanthropic community its annual award for the top giving and not only in terms of dollars but i think the lifetime commitment to helping others he jenny sanford is known throughout the country and most of his projects have been related to education and health care and health care as it has again toward the young he was also a friend of them people who are friends  ultimately danny also became a friend and sort of that in two thousand and seven he decided i'm going to lay out a challenge for the rest of the public that likes crazyhorse i'll contribute up to five million i'll match you dollar for dollar and for dollar up in million dollar increments the public responded to that the blasting industry continued to give explosives the heavy equipment people continue to give service and equipment and danny was very generous he counted all those things toward his match and at the end of two and the investments from that gift pays for the university operations and it needed a place and the christians talk to mr sanford and he built the two and a half million dollar living learning center and he was and they gave five and he says well i'm going to get into an ass i got to come up with another two and a half so he did and he directed that money toward the mountain project as well so all told then he sanford is responsible for ten million dollars to crazy horse directly out of pocket and inspiring other people to give so there's another five and through that you see the new equipment that's going to be used in defining the hand and the finger and it also was funded this very important study this this determines everything from here on on the progress on the mountain how it's done and how we do it and it also does the blasting that's going to finish up the horse's head here probably in the next year or so as far as that production lasting i on the money from denise sanford and his commitment to this project and probably donating several million more over the next year and two i'm sure it's going to happen the money from my right check to yeah and the other thing that he said in particular about the work on the crazy horse mountain as that he would really love it if it could be substantially done in his lifetime and for sure completed in the lifetime of his children and grandchildren ruth joke of he's eighty six she's been a crazy horse sixty five of those years no one wants this done sooner of course and but she also wants it done right and she's made a commitment to denny that we're going to get this done this as quickly and as safely and as economically as we can you know it'll be very interesting to see what see how it goes and i'm excited because i think we're going to see some major changes happen i think in that you know when we talked earlier about the potential that you're hoping to do with the timeline of all the footage so you can put that very long term story into something of a difficult spot and then we're almost at latitude to mention the weather we get around to another site so that you know folks can see from here it's flat you can't appreciate how much of the mountain between us and dollars and three cans of food well what happens is it's even even a little less than that three cans of food per person or money if you like and that goes to the regional k o t a carriage share food drives and helps our feed in south dakota food bank in rapid city the volks march association is the actual sponsor of the walk and they have a twelve dollars fee crazy horse was not otherwise charge admission that fee helps with the nationwide effort to not only  our journeys take us while we're here here's a little bit of a close up of that area and all the bulldozing more of that rock and blasting more over time since i'm doing this by myself this year zooming in and out with a remote just didn't quite happen the way i had hoped so we had our heads kind of cut off there but we're taking a look back sigh it's a bit quieter and there's a few structures still remaining from years his family so he established a dairy and beef cattle herd as well as they had chickens and all the other typical animals that you would have in a ranch not only to feed the family but you would sell off from time to time to raise money and be a cowboy and that's part of the current beef cattle herd that adam joel tusky now has he and his late sister and for a number of years they were referred to and for those who may not be aware in south dakota where we do not have a income tax the primary generator of local revenue for government services is property tax and the lowest possible property tax bracket is the farm ranch an agriculture designation and here you have a south dakota's oldest and largest certified tree farm as  well as the historic ties to ranching which predates courtship by this property and forty seven sixty five years ago it's been a homestead ranch operation and even though crazy horse memorial is a non profit foundation it still has to pay property tax so to keep the least amount of money leaving in the most of it directed to the mountain project as well as other programs the family in the foundation maintains the tree farm as well as the beef cattle herd so they can qualify for the agriculture property tax classification and we're seeing a little bit of a bac that the public doesn't usually get to see you know that's correct and because we're actually looking at a couple of rocks and i'm going to take back that are bigger than usual and going to help my mom out  we'll take a look a little bit more of the facility at before we head out of here though but before we go and check some of the main facility here this is the original  would have been the very early nineteen fifties was considered among some of the most modern equipment for a dairy operation in the black hills region it was almost semi automated as our research librarian steve is a rancher on his own in addition to working here at crazy horse and he and he and adam right right over the herd here it seems like it could be a closed the door to any possibility of what areas the students might be trained ok they're over from here please visit my archive page at seattle community media dot org slash node slash one two three seven four slash list shows and as always thank you for watching adventure t