Now Opening the Heron Channel! - Grouse Creek

The Heron Channel on Grouse Creek is one of the last great treasure hunts in Canada.
Geologists report, "An estimated 64,435 oz. of placer gold was produced from
various hydraulic and underground workings at Grouse Creek. Of this total, 45,000 oz. was recovered on Crown Grant claim # 13F. This portion of Grouse Creek's gold production came from a bedrock gutter measuring 3m across, 3m deep, and 60m long." This gutter has lain dormant for 100 years with only two significant attempts made to re-tunnel into the flooded portions of the claim(one attempt in the 1930's by hydraulic, and one in the 1960's by retunnelling). Both attempts failed to reach the target. Now, Devlin's Bench Mining Ltd has begun the process of removal of overburden to open up this famous gutter with modern machinery. To read more about this staggering treasure, have a look at the pdf "Grouse Creek Prospectus" at http://www.williamscreekgoldfields.ca/links_devlin.html
We've just uploaded a video as well, of the beginning of the stripping program. Snow flies early in the Cariboo, so we're going full steam to capture this prize by mid-october. That will open up the claim for further developments in the new year. The Heron Channel produced fantastic amounts of gold, but all of the surrounding pay layers are also high producers. Even as we dig to the target we are uncovering pockets of high paying gravels that we are stashing to the side as we set our sights on the main target! To see the latest video visit http://tinyurl.com/13f-opening-video

Revisiting old Mine Methods

After finishing our exploration of the main pit, we moved back up the canyon for one more look at the workings of the old miners.

It wasn't long before we broke into a huge underground room, directly underneath a surface hydraulic sluice. The accompanying photos clearly show the sluice emerging from the old surface tailings. Coming out of the puddle are posts from the old chamber. As we extracted more material huge roof beams emerged....Imagine the weight of these logs when they were first lowered down the shafts and dragged along the drifts to this location.

Cleanup from this area was the most difficult we've ever experienced. Over 40 ounces of fine gold was recovered from this area, but it was completely covered in Mercury, so it ran silver instead of gold on the wave table. If we hadn't been familiar with the action of the material and the performance of the table we would have thought we had been skunked, just looking for colour! The old-timers used mercury to 'soak up' fine gold, and then panned it out, and burned it off in what can only be considered an extremely hazardous situation. In the process of hydraulic mining, sometimes the mercury was poured right into the sluice boxes and that is clearly what happened here, with large quantities of it being sloshed out of the box and 'contaminating' the gold in the surrounding soils.