Small miners big characters in British Columbia

More than a hundred years after the end of the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada, individual and small groups of miners continue to seek gold in mountain streams in northern British Columbia.

Increasing numbers of "small" miners are having a go because, even though the price of gold has been fluctuating during the past three years, it has still risen from $US400 ($438) an ounce 20 years ago to about $US1250 now.

Most of these miners won't get rich, or even find sufficient gold to make the whole exercise worthwhile, but enough do find gold for other hopefuls to justify staking a claim on streams they believe to have so-called "placer deposits". The British Columbia (BC) Government fee for making a placer claim registration is just $CAD5 ($4.95) a hectare, though after that additional fees and requirements - and there are many of them - begin to add up. Placer mining is the technique where miners extract gold that has accumulated in alluvial sand and gravel, taking its name from the Spanish word "placer", meaning alluvial sand. This compares with "mineral" mining, where the gold ore is found in solid rock.

Most of the gold found in the Yukon during the gold rush, and subsequently in northern BC, comes from alluvial deposits in old glacier moraines. These are relatively easy to mine: in the simplest form, shovelling gold-bearing gravel into a sluice to separate the gold from the stones, and panning the heavy silt that gets caught in the sluice. But because the material is loose and found in stream beds, you can't tunnel into a deposit - you just keep on shovelling.

A sluice is a sloping wooden or steel box with riffles in the bottom. Gold-bearing rock and gravel are placed at the top of the box and water is pumped or gravity fed through. As the gravel is washed through the sluice, the heavier material, especially gold, settles behind the riffles while the rest is washed out as tailings. It's as simple as that. On a slightly larger scale, a miner might use a trammel - a rotating cylinder that separates the larger rocks from the gravel before they enter the sluice box, permitting larger amounts of material to be sluiced.

Placer gravels often contain black sand, a shiny mixture of iron oxides, mostly magnetite and hematite. Small operators have to separate these from the gold by hand.

The increase in the price of gold has attracted not only more miners but produced a wealth of advertisements offering small mines for sale on juniorminers.com. An example: "For Sale. Placer gold claims on lower Wright Creek (which drains into Surprise Lake) in the famous Atlin mining district, over 400ha. Upper Wright Creek produced 40,000oz. of coarse gold, many nuggets over 10oz." The asking price? It's $600,000, though a smaller claim nearby is going for $175,000.

Many placer miners do find gold and the best placer areas can be the ones that were best in the past. An old, well-worked claim can still produce fine, as opposed to coarse, gold or nuggets, which were easier to find. This is where good modern equipment, though expensive, will help. For example, a better sluice box can trap in its riffles finer gold that an old one would have let wash through.

There are stories of newcomers - young men with no experience - striking it lucky and making millions in a few years. Believing the mine will continue to produce, they invest in bigger machinery, then more and . . . the gold suddenly runs out and within a couple of seasons they're broke.

A number of the claims on the creeks draining into Atlin's Surprise Lake have gone through four or five different owners but each new owner seems to be able to make money from them. It's usually not much but it's a great hobby that supports great dreams for many people. One such person is Larry, a former Yukon Territory fire chief who lives in Whitehorse but who spends the summer months on a claim off Surprise Lake. He has a shack, a truck and a few bits of equipment.

Larry's claim is in a beautiful place, partway up a creek overshadowed by Idaho Peak. Even without the chance of gold, many people would be happy to camp here for a summer month or three. There are big trout in Atlin's lakes, delicious Arctic grayling in Pine Creek and the forest has an abundance of berries, mushrooms and other delicacies, if you get them in autumn before bears do.

"I don't make enough money from my claim to say I'm getting wealthy," Larry says. "But I do make enough to keep me coming back." As he smiles, his eyes almost disappear into his wrinkles, but they're still twinkling.

Then there's Rick, on the opposite side of the lake, who works a claim with a mate. They employ a New Zealander, an excellent mechanic who keeps everything going, especially the ancient rock truck they use to dump gravel into the sluice box.

They seem to be doing well, without putting a value on it, though a couple of other miners in the district last northern summer were reportedly making $15,000 a day. Most evenings after the plates are cleared from the dinner table, Rick painstakingly separates the black hematite from the day's pile of gold dust, grain by grain, using the tip of a knife. The magnetite is easier - he uses a magnet.

"It keeps me out of mischief and pays the occasional bill," he says. "When I feel like a change I can always fly down to the Taku River and catch salmon."

I've been visiting Atlin and its lakes every summer for the past seven years and know many of the villagers and the miners. They're good people, gentle in demeanour but tough, as they have to be, living in a subarctic climate and making a living shifting tonnes of rock a day.

Up to a dozen well-seasoned miners gather each morning in Atlin's Pine Tree cafe for breakfast and an everlasting coffee. They discuss the status of their claims and whether the line they're following on a creek is too recent to contain the alluvial deposits they're after, or whether the gold is hiding in the creek's older bed, bypassed in recent floods that gave the creek a new line (recent meaning any time since the original glacial deposits were laid down more than 10,000 years ago).

These conversations can go on for hours, until one by one they get up and saunter out to their battered trucks and rattle off up to their claims - to work and dream. Each year the faces are a little older, a little more weathered, but they're the same.

Perhaps it's the promise of getting rich, maybe it's the beautiful place; they keep on coming back.