Holloway Bar Placer Mine - Picture of the Week

Mining at any time of the year in the North, particularly late into the fall, means walking through wet forests digging holes to sample the soils and determine whether or not they contain gold in enough quantities to make it worthwhile mining. While many enjoy the peace and serenity of being outdoors - just you against the wilderness - it's always nice to come home to a warm fire. In days gone by, modern miners would burn wood gathered on another expedition into the forests in their wood-burning stoves, but these required someone be at camp to keep the fires lit and burning. A much easier way to produce heat reliably and affordably is to use an oil-burning appliance like this EFEL stove. Stove oil is combusted in the vaporizing burner and there are no moving parts to break - important in the wilderness - and they're odourless - no big stink!

One of the more difficult adversaries faced by most miners in northern climates is the weather. The mining season is short in the Cassiar mountains - there's still snow on the ground in May and it's falling again by September. The main mining process consists of feeding many truckloads of gravel through a gold processing plant like The Wizard. However, there's more left than just gold - the mixture removed from the sluicebox is a heavy slurry of water, fine gravel and black sand. This is where the cleanup actually begins - where the gold is separated from the final material. One of this year's projects on Holloway Bar was to build a new clean up house where the final clean up stage could be completed out of the elements where it's warm and dry. Moving this final job inside turns it from a cold, nasty job in the wind and rain to something that's a little more enjoyable.

While the old-time miners are long gone, there's still plenty of evidence that they were here. This old sluicebox (or what's left of it) has been laying here for years, slowly turning back into dirt to nourish new growth. The early miners mostly carried only supplies for survival into the McDame in the 1870's and built most of their mining equipment on site out of whatever local materials they could find. Perhaps the only pieces of this sluicebox not made by the miners themselves are the old square-headed nails used to hold the wooden planks together. These probably came from the nearest blacksmith who would have pounded them out from iron in nearby Centreville, just downstream, or perhaps Laketon, another early mining settlements along Dease Lake, that was on their route to the McDame. Most metal tools, other than perhaps a shovel and gold pan, were just too heavy to carry to such a remote area.

Christina, Scott and Al and all of the critters at www.hollowaybar.com wish to extend their holiday greetings to everyone.

Here's hoping for a great 2008 Christmas season with family and friends and may your your gold pans be full in the coming year!

See you in 2009!