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January 7, 2008
Winter brings many difficulties to those living in the North - but it also brings some advantages. For those pilots with a properly-equipped aircraft, frozen snow-covered lakes, meadows, and mountaintops are all new landing strips. This Bellanca Scout has been fitted with long-range fuel tanks and skiis instead of wheels, giving it a range of 7+ hours in the air and the ability to land almost anywhere this time of year. This Scout landed on a mountaintop above in the wilds of Northern BC one sunny winter's day to admire the view and enjoy the thrill of an off-airport landing. During the summer months, this aircraft was dedicated to patrolling the skies looking for forest fires.
January 14, 2008
Although it's too cold to actively placer mine during the winter months, many undiscovered minerals lay under the ice and snow that blankets the Northern lands. For miners not involved in underground operations (like the hard rock gold mine just down the road from Holloway Bar), this season is a time for pushing the paper to bring plans made in winter's darkness to life. Staking claims used to be difficult if not impossible in the winter, but the Internet and the BC government's Mineral Titles Online web site allow prospectors to electronically administer and manage their properties from the warmth of their homes, regardless of the weather or location!
January 21, 2008
Placer mining on a smaller scale isn't always about some huge, faceless corporation spending million of dollars stripping the face of the planet away for shareholder's profit. It's about sustainability and lessening the impact on the land, but more importantly, it's about family. We'll mine this valley for part of our lives, as have several generations of others, but when we're done, we'll have just scratched the surface of this vast resource, leaving an opportunity for the next generation of family to live this life. This crew is learning early about all types of mining operation, and will be well positioned to take the reins and try their hand at finding their own riches in years to come.
January 28, 2008
Today is a good day to break out the remnants of last summer's bounty - the berries that were picked on Holloway Bar last August. Fresh off the bush and quick frozen using green energy from the power turbine, these raspberries will be a perfect treat on this cold winter's day - the coldest day seen so far this winter! A quick look at the webcam page shows the current temperature at -46C in Watson Lake, Yukon, Holloway Bar's winter headquarters, and that extremely cold temperature is bound to drop a couple more degrees as dawn nears, before regaining a couple of degrees during the day.
This "screen grab" of this morning's temperature shows just one thing - brrrr!
