Underground mining glossary
The jargon you hear on your first shift and quietly look up that night. Plain definitions, no assumed background.
These are standard, widely-used terms in Canadian hard-rock mining, not company-specific or disputed claims. Checked 2026-09-07.
The one-page jargon sheet
The compiled artifact for this cluster: every term below in one printable table, alphabetical.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Backfill | Waste rock, tailings, or cemented paste placed into a mined-out stope to support the surrounding rock so adjacent ore can be mined safely. |
| Cage | The elevator-like conveyance that carries workers and materials up and down a shaft. |
| Common Core | Ontario's mandatory modular safety-training standard for mine workers, set by the Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development. See /tickets/ for the specific modules, sourced. |
| Decline (ramp) | A tunnel sloped downward from surface or between levels, used for vehicle access, as an alternative to a vertical shaft. |
| Drift | A horizontal (or near-horizontal) underground tunnel following an ore body or connecting workings. |
| Ground control | The engineering practices -- rock bolting, screening, shotcrete -- used to keep underground excavations stable and safe. |
| Headframe | The structure built over a mine shaft that supports the hoisting equipment (sheave wheels) used to raise and lower the cage or skip. |
| Jackleg | A hand-held pneumatic rock drill mounted on an extendable leg, used for drilling in smaller headings. |
| Jumbo (drill jumbo) | A multi-boom hydraulic drilling machine used to drill a pattern of blast holes into the working face. |
| Level | A horizontal working area at a set depth underground, connected to the shaft and usually numbered or named by depth. |
| LHD (load-haul-dump) | The formal name for a scoop tram -- a rubber-tired vehicle that loads, hauls, and dumps broken rock underground. |
| Muck / mucking | Muck is the broken rock (ore or waste) produced by blasting. Mucking is the act of loading and removing it. |
| Ore pass | A vertical or inclined opening used to move broken ore or waste by gravity from one level down to another. |
| Raise | A vertical or steeply inclined excavation driven upward from one level to another -- the opposite direction of a shaft, which is typically sunk downward from surface. |
| Scoop tram | The common name for an LHD -- see LHD above. |
| Shaft | A vertical (or near-vertical) excavation connecting surface to underground workings, usually equipped with a hoist and cage. |
| Shotcrete | Sprayed concrete applied to rock surfaces underground as ground support. |
| Stope | The underground excavation created as ore is actually removed from an ore body -- the working area where mining happens, as distinct from a drift or a raise, which are development openings. |
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between a scoop tram and an LHD?
They're the same machine. LHD (load-haul-dump) is the formal/engineering name; scoop tram is the common name used on site for the rubber-tired vehicle that loads broken rock (muck), hauls it, and dumps it at an ore pass or dump point.
What's the difference between a shaft and a decline?
Both connect surface to underground workings, but a shaft is vertical (or near-vertical) and uses a hoist and cage, while a decline (or ramp) is a sloped tunnel that vehicles drive down directly. Which one a mine uses shapes a lot of day-to-day life underground -- a decline mine moves people and equipment by vehicle, a shaft mine moves them by cage on a schedule.
What is a stope, exactly?
The stope is where ore actually comes out of the ground -- the working excavation created as the ore body is mined. A drift or a raise, by contrast, are development openings dug to reach or connect to the ore body, not the ore-producing excavation itself.
Related guides
Off-shift entertainment
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