Climate a real challenge

Life at a northern project definitely isn’t for those who prefer the bright lights of a big city or being cocooned in an air-conditioned office. As The Northern Miner discovered during a recent visit to the Colomac gold project of ABM Gold (CAMEX), the camp site is in a barren region, about 137 miles north of Yellowknife. Some 300 employees who work at the fly-in, fly-out operation are subjected to some of the most extreme conditions that miners can face anywhere.

Daylight hours at the Northwest Territories project are reduced to just four hours in mid-December and early January when temperatures often dip to a numbing -60 degrees C.

It gets so frigidly cold during the winter that hydraulic arms on the front-end loaders have been known to crack, says Alonzo Dagot, a native of the Philippines, who has worked at Colomac since the first ground was broken in 1988.

Because ABM is building a mine in a semi-Artic wilderness, drillers are complaining of having to fend off wolves and grizzly bears while attempting to keep warm inside their drill shacks.

Even in the summer months when daylight hours extend almost around the clock, Colomac’s location within the tree line means that employees working outside are plagued by blackflies.

“It definitely isn’t everyone’s cup of tea,” said ABM executive Vice-President Ken Hill who sees to it that potential employees know exactly what they are letting themselves in for before they are hired.

“What we have learned at Detour Lake and other remote mining projects is that it takes a very special type of person to work at these types of operations.”

To prevent the Colomac workforce from suffering the cabin fever that often goes with working so far from a populated area, ABM staff fly out for a 2-week vacation after working on site for two weeks.

“You get a very closed-in feeling, but you can take it because you know that in a week or 10 days you can get away from that,” said ABM’s 32-year-old chief metallurgist Sean Waller, who often flies home to his apartment in Vancouver.

Day shift begins at 6.30 a.m. and finishes 12 hours later when night shift crews arrive for work. Alcohol is absolutely forbidden on site and employees are automatically fired if caught drinking.

But although Colomac resembles a small winter village with its two-satellite dishes, a heated pool hall and canteen, Hill has found that productivity tends to be higher at northern mines, compared with those in more populated areas.

“Essentially, people go up there to work, eat and sleep,” said Hill. “There are no distractions.”