25 September

The view from one side of my mobile office window
The other side is not quite as exciting
So I will show that later

see you later

al

22 September 2006

Keno City (pop 13 - and I am reliably told they all hate one another)
Latitude 64 degrees North
Yukon Territory

Reporting in :

It snowed on me today - sort of the wet sloppy kind that comes about at the start of the winter when the air isn't quite cold enough to make it crisp
and the ground isn't quite cold enough to make it stick

but it got me sticky (wet) and it got me crisp
my notebook stopped receiving pencil
and my glasses fogged up so I returned to the cell block to change
and finished the day in the office.

you get up in the dark and it stays that way until about 8am
and now its 8pm and the sun is still almost still shining
yes it cleared up - but i can see the new snowline on the hills where I was
and where I need to go back to tomorrow.

I arrived after one night in Vancouver
was met by Kerry Aaron & Noa - and I nearly re-acquired my baby handling skills
but I dont think I quite passed all the stringent tests
and so have to go back and try again -
unfortunately that will not be for a month
by which time I might have turned into a snowman.

Was a little too late for the best part of the fall colour display - but some of the alders still have some yellow on display. The country is kind of the low rolling sort with scrubby deciduous and spruce tree cover, with wide glacially sculptured valleys containing lakes and is more densely forested and beared at lower elevations. The higher parts of the work area are above bush line and that is where the snow came to today.

The camp is self contained, a new prefab kind of affair - with one long bunkhouse (cell block) with small single rooms, but has small lounge with satellite TV, washrooms, and laundry - eating is a separate building with seating at just 2 tables for 12 at one time. I haven't quite figured out who all is here yet - current population 25 and capacity is 35. The camp is serviced and catered for by an outside contractor and there always seems to be a couple of cooks around in the evening.

Otherwise there are probably about 4 geologists at any one time (they work a 20 day on - 10 day off rotation), a bunch of environmental monitors, fix-it blokes and the rest are drillers supporting the two rigs.

This is an old silver - lead - zinc mining district with the historic mining continuing from the early 1900's to the 1960's. This company has inherited ownership of the entire Keno Hill Mines village and mine buildings - most of which are in such a state of disrepair that they probably have a fairly short life span. The place is a warren of old underground mines with a few small open pits on some of the veins.

The current project is an unusual one of environmental rehabilitation - mostly to clean up some tailings and the water discharging from old mines; and a new go at exploration all at the same time. It is big budget and well resourced.

I am still trying to sort out the scope of my brief and how I can achieve it - since the place is the depository of all the old mining records and while these are being actively scanned to digital - there remains a huge job to then translate the information into useable 3D data. And somehow I have to work out a way to find some of the relavant regional exploration data and reassemble for current day use and interpretation.

It might take forever.
I will let you know.

Having trouble posting other photos - so will do them next time to show you here.

Cheers
Yukon Bill