West Side - Grouse Creek Bench

Portable Plant in production on the West side of Grouse Creek. Aug 2011 Opposite the deep lead Heron channel, on the west side of the 1875 13f private property claim are some shallow low grade benches that were mined by the chinese miners during the 1860's goldrush.
In 2010 Hard Up LTD made an attempt to mine these workings, trucking the paygravells to the large plant set up for the Grouse creek operations on the East side of crown grant 13F.
The trucking costs were to high and the grades to low to make the operation economical, we ran 800 cu yards in 4 different tests and locations,but closed down operations due to low grades and trucking distance from the gravels to our washplant.


In 2011 Hard up signed a royality agreement to lease the benches to a contractor so as some revenue would be produced form these low grade workings,The Contractor is a local gravel sales and construction firm that has taken on a 10% of gross gold produced property lease.
Gold production from these benches has been in the 1-2 ozs a day range so nothing spectacular, but for a 1.5-2 man operation and low cost portable plant this operation appears to be paying for itself, the machines are making a Blue book hourly rate so this is satisfactory to the contractor.

Prescreening pay gravel and rocks with portable grizzly screener using Contractors larger excavator,brought in by lowbed once a week for grubbing and pay preparation.This machine is used for looking after Diamond drill pads,roads and sumps for Hard rock mining companies in the Cariboo Goldfields.

Hopper wet wash box ,The Brand New plant is a fully portable unit set up in 30 minutes, and producing gravel, this is the first plant of this type and it has been an expensive undertaking, the cost of this small portable pump,plant,lines ,sluices, hyd riffles, and hoses etc are in the 100k range.

The pay seam, the Orange oxidized boulder gravels above are pay but the yellow seams of gravel on bedrock are quite rich in fine gold! Total depth is 2 meters.

Update August 29 after 5 full days pushing we are dropping the benches very quickly, notice the 2010 pit is half full and the pit walls are over 30 ft deep, the Heron target is only weeks away.
We rented two Amida light towers for night operations, these will be running all week.

The 2010 Pit on 13f, the cave on the right side of picture is the 1905 united company workings attempting to enter the old Heron workings.

This tool is essential, a D10 size ripper shank and tooth that fits on out 450 clc excavator, the hard pan that is covering the Heron lead is like a giant safe, it has to be shattered and this is the tool!!

August 2011

To speed up getting to the buried pay dirt, the mine recently leased a D8N Cat bulldozer.
Working on the crown grant 13f - "Jim Allen" and "Heron" location, the D8N dozer will push the overburden instead of been loaded into rock trucks.

HardUp LTD rented this machine for 300 hr contract to speed up the removal of overburden into the cleaned out 2010 pit.

It is now working on a 250ft push and we are all amazed as to its production.

The Heron tunnel entrance is now a reality we can stand on the strip benches and actually see the tunnels from the Excavator less than 50ft below us.

The bulldozer can push 60 tons at a time downhill over the 80ft deep pit wall into the old 2010 pit. It has a Ublade so material stays on the dozer blade while being transfered to the edge. (SU Blade)

We have installed a ripper D10 size shank on the 450clc excavator so as to maximize production, the cat is not ripping at all just pushing material that the excavators are ripping and moving.

The excavator ripper is far more economical than using the D8n 4 barrel ripper.

The D8N Cat is using about 260 litres a shift, these cats have very impressive fuel consumption rates.
We originally planned on leasing a D9H and these machines will burn 500 litres a shift pushing the same amount of material, so the decision for a newer model rental was a good choice.

2011 - New Development at the Grouse Cr. mine site

British Columbia has been cursed with rain this season but, it did not stop the Devlins Bench Mining crew from going ahead with new developments at the Grouse Creek mine site. With a slightly smaller crew than last year but, highly efficient, the crew has been producing and shipping GOLD!!!

Excavators, rock trucks, trummel, etc are all needed for the daily operations.

Opening of the Heron Channel on limestone Bedrock

As they dig for the paydirt, the mine crew is discovering old wooden mine shafts. The 1960's "square timbers" workings have ended with the advance upstream. The crew is now in the 1860's workings and coarse gold is showing up in the sluices. Approximately 80% of the deposit remains intact.

Devlins Bench Mining is still following its very high environmental standards. Moose and Grizzly bear have been seen roaming around the mine.

With the recent gold price, the crew will be operating and producing gold until the deep snow and cold temperatures make it impossible to operate heavy equipment and freeze the water needed at the trommel.

The Mark of a Successful Season!

Friends of ours recently flew over our minesites and sent us these great photos. Here are three great developments in the Cariboo Goldfields. All of them are produced hundreds of ounces of gold for us and thousands of ounces over their lives. Still more to come! Watch out for 2011! The Top photo shows Devlin's Bench, a great producer for 150 years. The highly successful dredge ponds from Kumhilla Dredge company still dominate the view on both sides of the Bowron Road.

35f actually adjoins Devlins in one large package that stretches across and along the original path of Williams Creek. This photo shows our workings in the upper placer canyon, our settling ponds and pay decs, and the virgin pit, with the mine road loop surrounding the future pit development toward the bottom of the picture.

Here's two shots of Grouse Creek. The first shows the orderly layout of the roads, ponds, equipment and drainage, and the lower shot shows the whole site in profile, illustrating the amount of material moved. This entire site was completed from scratch this fall, from land clearing to arriving at our bedrock target!

Winter Closes up the 2010 Season!

The Winter finally drove us out as you can see from the top photo. We managed to uncover a fabulous piece of history and we can do nothing but stand in awe of the work of early turn of the century miners who burrowed through this property with nothing to orient themselves! Drifts, adits, air shafts, tunnels honeycombed our workings and stood as a testament to the incredible resourcefulness of these miners. Every roll of the bedrock that we uncovered, we hoped for a mistake by those early miners, but each time, a beautiful drift was set down on the rock, timbered with still strong beams and sometimes reaching up to 30 feet wide.

It's a testament to modern mining technology that, despite the thorough workings of portions of this ground we can still show up the gold. Here are some shots from one of our cleanups and both the gold in the box and then, in the pan, the cleaned up remains of the days take.

It's not just luck that produces these kinds of results. It's also to the credit of brilliant leadership, combined with the excited commitment of a team of up to 20 guys who made this project successful for 2010, and set it up for 2011. In only 6 weeks we shifted over a quarter of a million cu metres of ground to uncover these historic riches.

In addition to the gold, there are also a variety of artifacts down there. In this same cleanup that is photographed a brass button showed up in the 'boil box'. The button was stamped with JCW Drummond, Cockersmouth, England. I did a little research and found out that this button came from a fine tailer and clothing store in the north of the English lakes District. How did a button from a fine clothing store, in a remote corner of Cumbria, make it all the way across the ocean to British Columbia and get lost 300 feet up a drift, 80 feet underground? Did it snag off the coat of a rich mine owner as he inspected the workings? or belong to an itinerant miner, who's worn fine travel clothes were only fit for 'work clothes' as they aged? It's little gifts like these that make placer mining more than a search for gold and turn it into a real and vital connection with the past and all of man's search for work and wealth.

To see more of these photos, I've also posted an album at http://picasaweb.google.com/109755961285514000452/GrouseOctober28th#

Historic Drifts and Shafts Uncovered!

We're close now....
Here are two photos. One looks down into a collapsed room, at the bottom is an incline tunnel from the turn of the previous century. Dirt is piled on the roof but the walls are exposed, indicating that the miners were rooming out from the protection of their tunnel. That is, they must have been digging into the unsupported gravels to get as much pay as possible for as little timbering as they could get away with!
The other photo shows the junction of the Jimmy Allen incline with the Heron Lead itself, and a cross tunnel heading off in search of other underground treasure. The sheer volume of wood under here is amazing. It is perfectly preserved from being flooded for 100 years!

Here is a portion of a press release I wrote on the subject: "This week a local, private mining company, Devlin's Bench Mining, did what no-one has been able to do in the last 100 years. They have reached to the center of this historic ground and are beginning to excavate the remaining channel. In an intense 6 week period they have dug into the hillside and removed 250 thousand cubic metres of overburden to expose the historic shafts to the atmosphere, rather than trying to enter them from underground.

Their work has revealed a honeycomb of old shafts and drifts from turn of the century miners struggling underground in wet dangerous conditions. Pumps hoses, shovels and ore-carts have emerged from the mud and debris which has slumped into parts of the old workings. One of the partners, Rick Mason, says, “This is an incredibly exciting project. The historical connection alone is worth it, but, of course, we're here to discover gold!”

As winter closes in on the Cariboo, this mine, which is already being dusted with snow, is racing the clock to clear out the slum at the old drifts and follow the bedrock to the unexplored sections of the Heron Channel. Although this channel was sometimes as narrow as 8 feet wide it was documented to have produced over 100 ounces of gold to the lineal foot! This makes it one of the richest finds in North America, and this small company is on the verge of uncovering the remaining portions."

Snow Flying and So is the Dirt!

Development work continues on the Heron Channel at Grouse Creek. These two photos show the orderly development of the benches as we reached the back bench to the back of the pit. Look in the background! Snow sits on the trees behind the highest hoe. At 5,000 feet winter can come early! The next photo shows the pit a couple of days ago. In the background is the new settling pond and trommel set up. In the forground the pit takes on its ultimate shape as we drop onto the section of virgin ground directly below. What a beautiful location to work in, with beautiful views of the Quesnel Highlands and the Cariboo Mountains.
In the last couple of days we have begun breaking into the 1860's channels, uncovering air shafts, looking down at flooded rooms and contemplating our pumping program as we are only a few feet above the original workings. Meanwhile, we have begun sluicing some surface pay that is stockpiled on the property and recovering fine gold with the new plant. It is incredibly exciting as we reach down to a target that has not been seen for 150 years and which is reported to have payed up to 10 lbs to the linear foot!