Prospecting in Wekusko, Part 3

It was now winter 1956 and the four drillers at the Crowduck Bay camp in northern Manitoba were intent on making more in wages and completing the drill contract on the Violet lithium claims, named after the daughter of my prospecting partner, Einar Sanden. Meanwhile, I was intent on proving up our lithium reserves.

It was a rather dreary and tiring period, broken only by the weekly mail and grocery deliveries by Bill Kobar coming in on the Bombardier snow tractor from Herb Lake.

Earlier, we had lost our cook to illness, and my wife took over in her stead. But my wife left before Christmas to be with her family, and now we had no cook. The meals usually left a bad taste in one’s mouth . . . literally.

After a few bad meals, a new cook was sent in and the meals improved.

The on-site rig was used to drill two holes: one at minus 45 and the other at minus 60 at each drill site to explore the lithium-bearing pegamatite dyke. This was in the days of standard drill equipment employing the “A” core size and required pulling the rods from the hole to recover the drill core at each 5- and 10-ft. run. In those hard rocks, 30 ft. of core per 12-hour shift was about average. The drill sites were at 100-ft. intervals along strike, moving north. There were heavy snowfalls and the little D-2 tractor had difficulty even making a road for itself, let alone pulling the drill and rods from site to site.

Water for the drill was supplied from a part-plywood, part gunny-sack pump house on the lake ice near the camp. The gas-powered pump drew water through a hole in the ice, and it was warmed by a series of coils and then pumped through a hose buried beneath the snow to insulate it from temperatures that reached as low as minus 40.

The drill helper periodically left the drill to refuel the water pump. On one such occasion, he spilled some gas and it hit the nearby stove. We could hear the explosion from camp.

The drill helper’s face was burned and some of his hair was singed off. He escaped through the doorway of the small shack and rolled in the snow to keep his grease-covered overalls from catching fire. After realizing he was no longer on fire, he returned to the blaze and put it out using shovels full of snow and his bare hands, which were also badly burned. After it was all over, he returned to the rig, ready for duty, but the drill runner insisted he go for first aid. We cleaned up the helper’s hands as best we could with some burn ointment I had on hand.

We called Flin Flon to have him taken to a hospital but we could not get through. He said he was feeling better and returned to work, but he was not OK.

Over the next week, I treated the man’s hands morning and night. His fingers grew black and cracked as a result of exposure to cold metal on the job. Furthermore, the digits started to stiffen and curl up. In desperation, I tried a jar of zinc ointment — it worked miracles. Over the next few days, the man’s hands softened and straightened out. The crisis was over, but another would soon take its place.

One of the rules in camp was that I be at the drill to see the drill core and decide when the drill should be stopped. This meant the drill helper would have to wake me in my tent on some nights. On one occasion, it was 3 a.m. when the helper woke me. I went with him to the shack and helped myself to the syrup-thick coffee bubbling on top of the heater.

The driller took his focus off the drill for only a few seconds to greet me, but in his absence the big rig bucked and churned to a halt — the rods were burned into the hole. It took three hours to get the rods unstuck and out of the hole, but the drill shell was ruined. The core was still in mineralization and drilling had to continue.

At about 6 a.m., the drillers tried to contact Flin Flon to order another shell. They reached headquarters and another shell was dispatched to us by train, but it would take a couple of days to arrive.

In the meantime, I put on my snowshoes and made the 4-hour journey to the Green Bay camp to procure another drill shell. It took some convincing to get the foreman to part with one of his few drill shells, but I managed to get it. By mid-afternoon we were up and running once more, and by evening we had finished our last hole.

The next day we tore down the driller’s camp and began hauling the drill gear toward Herb Lake. On the way, we met Bill Kobar coming in with the new drill shell, which I later gave to the guys at Green Bay as a replacement.

Over the next few days, I blasted a few of the holes we had not been able to blast while the camp was set up and took further samples. This lasted a few days before I packed it in and headed into Herb Lake.

By the time we had some reserves, there was no market for lithium from spodumene. Still, it was a great feeling to have found a new mineral deposit.

— The author is a retired prospector living in British Columbia.