Gold! Mining up the Klondike

Thursday 9th July

At last the purpose of all that paddling...today I am off to see a placer gold mine at the Gold Bottom mine at the junction of Gold Bottom Creek and Hunker Creek about half an hour out of town. The road house is original and the only building of substance, the rest of the site is made up of mining equipment, portakabins, bulldozers and junk, so its hard to believe that this was a thriving city of more than 3,000 people at the height of the gold rush.

You have seen me panning but miners use a little more sophisticated machinery. 

At the mine itself, pumps are used to strip the muck or over burden away from the gold bearing gravels at the base of the cliff. The soil is permafrost and on a sunny day perhaps the top 30cms is defrosted ready to be washed away so it can be a long slow process.

The pumps weren't working the day I visited so I have substituted a photo from an earlier trip.

The gold bearing gravel is then put through a trommel with gallons of water and the gold and other heavy particles get trapped in the matting under the riffles...although now a days they use astro turf.

The matting is shaken out and there is gold in the bottom with other material. as seen in the red pot. This is then passed over a magnet and the magnetite is removed and then it goes through the blue gold wheel which separates the gold from the lighter material.

Then you have your gold...or in fact the gold here is only 80% gold, there is about 18% silver and 2% other material which is only obtained after it has been refined.

After the mine tour we picked up some pans and panned the old fashioned way and could keep all that we found. In an hour of back breaking hard work I panned several pans and obtained several flakes, the largest the size of a pin head...so I had my gold but I wasn't about to make the big times.

Claim No 1 in the same valley is up for sale in case anyone is interested for just CAD3,000...is any one interested?

After the initial gold rush, large corporations moved in and combined claims so that they could use more efficient machinery that could mine down much further which was not possible for the artisan miners. They even reprocessed some of the tailings and recovered gold missed by earlier mining efforts. we went up Bonanza Creek to Dredge No 4 which has been carefully restored and moved to its new position after it sunk whilst working and abandoned. It floated in a pond that it dug itself, processing the gravels on board and dumping the tailings out the bak. It inched itself forward using winches and anchors slowly but steadily upstream.

That evening it was back to Diamond Tooth Gertie's for our last night before the long drive back to Whitehorse. Tomorrow I start the Chilkoot Trail so there will be no more blogs for a week and I leave the Yukon so no more Yukoner jokes...I have more but you will have to wait to rerad the book to get the rest!

You know you are a Yukoner when...

...the mayor greets you using your first name

...when canoeing you are greeted with ‘Guten tag’

...there are piles of bear rugs and antlers around the house

and a special bonus as a good bye to the Yukon...

...the children always wear snowsuits under their Hallowe’en outfits

...the local paper has one page of international news and ten on local news and sport

...you can play ice hockey outside your front door for six months of the year