Holloway Bar Placer Mine - Picture of the Week

Kelly Hoover is Holloway Bar's latest resident. Kelly, a generic name because we don't know his/her sex, and Hoover, because none of Ri's fallen food crumbs stay on the floor for long, was discovered alone on the Holloway Bar property with no sign of parents or siblings. Since predators will quickly take care of any little ones left alone, this baby goose was quickly gathered up and moved somewhere safe. Now Kelly's quite at home, eating Ri's crumbs, swimming and foraging for food in the camp pond, and cozying up to the oil stove for warmth. Once this little gosling has grown into a young adult, it'll be back to the wilds of the McDame Creek Valley.

Summer time is mining season in the North. Unlike oil and gas exploration and extraction which is busiest in the winter when the ground has frozen, most mineral exploration happens in the summer when the snows have melted. This twin otter aircraft is on final approach to a short, gravel airstrip at Anniv on a mountaintop near the Yukon/ NWT border. There are short airstrips scattered throughout the North in various strategic locations, making mineral exploration camps much more accessible and affordable to access and maintain. This site is home to one of the world's largest lead-zinc deposits in the Howard's Pass area north of Cantung.

Family. It's something that the early miners likely had to leave behind. McDame Creek is very isolated from the rest of the world. 100 years ago, you would get here by taking a steamship from Seattle to Wrangell, Alaska, then travelling up the Stikine River as far as Telegraph Creek. From there, you forged ahead over a land route to Dease Lake. Then, after a 20 mile float up the lake, the mostly-slow moving Dease River would carry you another 150+ kilometers into the Cassiar Mountains to the mouth of McDame Creek. Scott's Uncle Red arrived via motorhome on Highway 37, which runs through the placer lease, for a visit and to pan his gold. It's much easier to get and stay here now... And, once here, you can even connect your laptop to the Internet-enabled wireless network that covers much of the property with invisible radio waves and connect to the world.

Mining is the buzz word in Northern British Columbia and many small communities are banding together to try to build their economic futures from the current boom time. The Holloway Bar Placer Mine is located right in the middle of the action - with large projects such as Eskay and Galore Creeks a few hours drive to the south. The Cassiar Mountains are ripe with minerals as well - gold on McDame Creek and many other area creeks, asbestos mined for 40 years just around the corner in Cassiar, hard-rock gold at Cusac just minutes to the southwest, jade mines in several directions but concentrated to the east, and many future prospects. Rocks like this one, quartz crystals poking out of pyrite, aren't frequently seen and tend to excite prospectors and miners. It's a great time to be in this valley in the wilds of Northern BC!

Lava is boiling over the ridge of the cinder cone!!! Whoops - wrong movie... But our Dragon Mountain's erosion and other interesting characteristics almost make it look volcanic, particularly in some early mornings when the sun's rays illuminate the mist wrapped around its peak lighting it in brilliant orange. Although hundreds of kilometers from the coast, we are still part of the "ring of fire" with volcanic activity very close. The Tuya volcanic plateau is just a few miles to the east; Mount Edziza, part of the spectrum range and its perfectly symmetrical cinder cones is no more than 150 km directly south; and BC's most recent active volcano in the Nass Valley is just a couple of hundred km further south just north of Terrace.