THE SURFACE

An overview of mining in the Northwest

a Mhaing: in this corner of B.C. didn’t have one of its
great years in 1991, but after the exploration boom of the late

eighties there are few years anywhere in the past that would
stack up as being "great" by comparison.

It’s the dollars spent on exploration that keep local airlines
and expediters busy, that employ equipment contractors and their
service people, that.fill hotel rooms and buy goods of every sort
from local retailers. In ’91 things slowed down, but exploration in
the Northwest still accounted for $45 million, most of it raised on
the Vancouver Stock Exchange by junior mining companies; an
indeterminate amount of which landed in the pockets of Terrace
area merchants. Four dollars out of every ten spent on mineral —

exploration in B.C. were spent in the Northwest. |

The search for new ore bodies moved northwestward in 1991,
into the area now called the Galore Creek camp. During the
previous four years the Iskut River Valley had been the centre of
a spiral of exploration frenzy. Ore bodies called massive
sulphides, with their spectacular gold content widely dispersed,
were being discovered all over the mountain slopes that frame the
river. The gold content assays of drilling results fuelled volatile
stock trading in obscure companies, and dealers and promoters
hatched and blew strategies, found themselves alternating
between the roles of victim and predator in scenarios that could
provide lifetimes of material for squadrons of pulp novelists.

In 1991 the market seemed to meet the real ground. During
the last quarter of the year Placer Dome, the biggest gold
producing company in the world, tried to dump its interest in
Eskay Creek, hyped as one of the strongest gold finds anywhere

‘in recent history.
Then, in early 1992, Placer Dome ate — for the time being
— a huge investment in Mount Milligan, another promising gold
and copper discovery northwest of Prince George, writing off over
$200 million rather than investing another half billion to develop
a mine that seemed uncertain as a money-maker.

B.C. Mining Week /Terrace Review — February 28, 1992