Teck Corp. manages the small (4,000-oz-per-year) Granville joint venture, in the Yukon’s famous Klondike district on behalf of Balner Enterprises (40%). Operations are seasonal at the placer gold mine because of its location 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle in an area of extensive permafrost. Gold sluicing is usually conducted from late May to mid- September — about 100 days. Teck acquired significant claim holdings near Dawson City as a result of a merger with Yukon Consolidated Gold Corp. in 1978. Several claims are leased to individual operators and certain claims were joint- ventured by Copperfields and Balner for the period 1979 to 1989. Teck and Copperfields merged in 1983 and the operation is now a joint venture between Teck and Balner.
Since operations began in 1980, some 1.1 million cu yd have been sluiced, yielding 38,558 oz of crude gold (or 29,929 oz of fine gold). To date, all operations have been on Sulphur Creek. The camp and operations were moved to Gold Run Creek in September, 1986. Stripping started there in 1987.
Pay gravel is fed to a Ross- box (a type of sluice box) by a front-end loader, and scrapers haul the pay dirt to the sluice box area. Four scrapers, three D8 Caterpillar dozers, a front-end loader and a backhoe are used in the stripping and mining operations. Operations are normally on a one- shift basis for the 11-person mine crew which resides in a camp adjacent to the creek. Tailings are removed from the screen and sluice box discharge by a scraper. The fines from the sluice box discharge flow to settling ponds where the water is clarified prior to recirculation to the sluice box operation. The water system is a closed circuit.
Starting in 1987, operations will be on Gold Run Creek. This creek was first staked in 1898 as an up- stream extension of the Dominion Creek paygravel.
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