An open pit at an elevation of 1.5km still means the bottom of the pit could be 1km higher than the place the ore is processed at

Depends on the scale of “going down”. Many mines are in the mountains and the material has to be brought down to lower elevations. The mine entry may be lower than the nearest pass but still a lot higher than the destination of the ore.

That is the “low tech”; works 100% of the time; will make your live easier in the future solution.

It takes longer than remounting but getting rid of a NTFS drive in a Linux only environment is a good move.