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.