Over the years on this blog and elsewhere I have written about mining investment.  In particular, I wrote a course for EduMine called Mining Investment – Understanding the Risks. 

The course has proven to be popular, and now the folk at EduMine have persuaded me to give the course as a live webcast.  The webcast is planned for the 27, 28, and 29th March.  It will consist of three, three-hour long sessions each day.  Details are available at this link.

In preparation for the webcast, I have updated information, stories, advice, and opinions in the original EduMine course.  So this promises to be a topical event. 

The course is aimed at people like me and you: those of us interested in investing in mining, but not necessarily experts or full-time investment analysts. 

The course explains the basics of mining, the basics of investing in mining, and the risk we face and can avoid if we know what we are doing.  Thus we will survey companies, commodities, and countries.  We will consider how the decision to invest in a specific company, commodity, or country may impact the success of a mining investment.  We will talk about whether it is best to invest during exploration, feasibility studies, construction, or operation.  Obviously it is not good to invest as the mine approaches or is in closure.  We will examine scams and bubbles in mining.  And most of all we will concentrate on how to read the signs that may portend an increase (or decrease) in share value and your net worth.

If you sign up for the webcast, you will also get free access to the full EduMine course, and all the new materials that I have prepared in anticipation of the webcast.  I promise that in the coming months, we will update the EduMine course to include the new materials.  So if you miss the webcast, you can still get the benefit of my stories, opinions, and advice by monitoring the EduMine course once we have added in the new materials. 

So come and join us and participate in the discussion I trust will happen.   Then go out and make money investing in mining.  Or at least renew you investment activities with new ideas and insight.

(By way of  disclosure: I do get paid for standing talking for three hours a day for three days.  But believe me, it is not much by comparison with the amount of work I have put into writing the course and preparing for the webcast.)

PS.  The picture above is me in a more spectacular setting than we will enjoy for the webcast. 

PPS. EduMine is associated with other universities.  They demand a high standard, but have not imposed their ideas on me. 

Post 1: Brazil Tailings Failure

Way back in 2007, I read:

Brazil’s state government of Minas Gerais has shut down the Mineracao Rio Pomba bauxite mine after the failure of a tailings dam.

Streets and houses in the towns of Mirai and Muriae - in the south-western Brazilian state of Minas Gerais bordering the state of Rio de Janeiro – were partially buried several metres deep in mud. Plants and animals in the area also suffered serious damage, said the state of Rio’s Environment Minister. Furthermore, the water supply of several towns was interrupted as the mudslide affected the rivers that they draw on. The state authorities distributed food, clothing and mattresses, and disposed the deployment of cistern-trucks to supply water to the population.

This failure follows a rupture which occurred at the same tailings dam in March 2006. A government spokesperson said the government has decided to shut the mine at least until a containment facility can be constructed.

Today, early 2012, I searched via Google to find out what has happened since.  Not a word to be found.  Not even in Google Portuguese.  Is it possible nothing has happened since? Is the mine still shut? Has the failure-impact area been cleaned-up?  Is there an official report?   Or have the lawyers clamped down on news and views? 

Post 2: Tailings Failure Research

What research should we suggest a reputable university undertake regarding tailings failure?  This is a plea for discussion on this topic.  Here are some of my ideas;

• Set up an FMEA template for tailings facility failure analysis.
• Go back through old failures and analyze them using FMEA methods.
• Evaluate the theory that ten things need to go wrong for a tailings failure to occur by re-examining old failures.
• Set up an expert system to help practitioners evaluate the potential for tailings facility failures.
• Re-evaluate the failure of the Rum Jungle, Australia closure works.
• Evaluate the need to dewater tailings prior to closure as a way to mitigate flow from a breach.
• Write a manual on tailings facility dam break analyses.
• Compile an economic analysis of the cost and benefits of filter-pressed, dry-stack tailings as a way to limit facility failure.

You are invited to comment below or to access the conferences at this link and see the rest.

PS. The picture above is a painting by one of my grand-daughters.  She sent it to me and told me it is an underwater scene.

Most mines have a place where the miners eat.  Let us celebrate the cooks at these places by telling of the many fine meals we have enjoyed in these mining canteens. In celebrating cooks at mining canteens, I also seek to describe a job in mining that most do not write about.  If you like cooking, then maybe a job at a mine canteen is for you.

At the East Geduld Mine where I grew up, there was the Single Quarters.  This is where the single men working on the mine lived. My cousin lived there.  I was envious of his lifestyle; for I dreamed of living away from my parents, free to come and go as I liked; free to ride a motor bike at speed through the wind; free to spend your own money on whatever sin you choose; why was I still stuck under parental control?

On many a Sunday, my father would pile us into the 1949 Mercury for the one-tenth-mile ride to the Single Quarters where we ate Sunday lunch.  Most of the single men were somewhere else–riding their motor cycles and entertaining women.  Feeding the mining families was a way to bring in some money and keep the cooks gainfully employed. And maybe give some fleeting pleasure to underpaid miners and thier families.

The meal was the same every Sunday.  First soup: thin gruel served in thick ceramic plates that would kill if thrown with accuracy.  Then some white fish of the cheapest kind with lashing of tartar sauce to color the taste.   Next roast mutton; for what self-respecting miner does not eat mutton on Sunday?  Finally, a desert: something sweet topped with yellow custard.  Then a cup of a coffee-chicory mix in yet another thick ceramic thing.  Pure heaven for a kid like me who was fed spaghetti and meat balls or sardines on toast most days. 

As a student at university, Professor Jennings took us to a mine in the Free State.  Their canteen was down for the day; but they made us sandwiches.  Thick white bread that turns to musch in the mouth; thick layers of cheap cheese and processed ham; and cold from storage in the freezer.  At least the professor had a bottle of brandy which we used to wash down the sandwiches. Great. Even though the brandy was warm and undiluted.   I still drink too much brandy in memory of that mining meal.

Then I went to the Cannery at Greens Creek, Alaska.  We ate like kings.  We ate salmon and halibut, two fish I had not hitherto heard of.   The Bull-Cook at the Cannery was Anita.  We never learnt her surname.  But how can you ever forget her flaming red hair and her erratic energy?  While went out drilling, she went out fishing in Hawk Inlet.  She caught salmon and halibut which she cooked fresh for the evening meal.  Vast meals of the finest food I have ever had—Anita is still my “best cook.”

I have spent many days at EKATI.  There is a kitchen and food to celebrate!  Now the cooks are professionals and employed by a First Nations company contracted to BHP Billiton.  When you first arrive at the mine, they warn you in the health & safety briefing not to eat too much.  “People have been known to put on thirty pounds while staying here, and that is not healthy,” they remind you.

But how can you resist a huge steak cooked rare, loaded with gravy, and surrounded by green beans, carrots, and potatoes?  Well you could add beer or wine if only this were not a dry camp and you have to settle for milk or orange juice.  No wonder I will never make this a permanent thing.  Then to the cookie cabinet where there are cookies of unimaginable variety.  And a warning: “Avoid peanut contamination; use gloves when picking up a cookie.”  Damn.  Never heard of peanut problems as a kid when we ate copious quantities of cheap brown bread loaded with peanut butter and syrup.

Flee to Guatemala and the Marlin Mine.  There, up the hill from the rooms of the mining camp, is the dining room.  There many lithe, local women labor to prepare perfect Guatemalan Indian food: beans & rice; tiny pieces of tomato and onion in vinegar; a local pancake of corn; and meat that is indistinguishable and unmemorable. 

But after a day in the sun and spectacular mountains, all the while traipsing down crystal clear streams, this is perfect comfort food.  Particularly if after supper you go to the gazebo to drink Guatemalan rum.  Only 23-year old Ron Zacapta will do.  But what a treat!  I will go back any-day just for the food.

If you seek solid, stolid food, go to the canteen at the Suncor Mine in Alberta.   The portions are big.  The food is substantial.  The cost is low.  The plate is full; so full that an ordinary apatite cannot possible eat it all.  Better to buy a packet of beef jerky, a diet coke, and a Kit-Kat at the local gas station before you leave Fort McMurray and eat that in one of the many eating rooms scattered around the site.   There you can enjoy the company of fellow TRO staff and chat about the snow and freezing tailings.

Back in Guatemala at the Escobal Mine.  The place to eat is run by the daughter of the local important person.  The food is varied.  One night it is chicken flavoured with local spices and surrounded by beans and rice.   The next night it is fish of  type I have not encountered before.  Beer is flowing.  Conversation is jubilant at mining advance.  The price is right, and the atmosphere is perfect as you emerge into the square dominated by the police station and a Roman Catholic Church.   And walk, safe, to your hotel, which is an old house along a narrow street.  Then back for breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, coffee, and orange juice.  But it tastes so different from the American breakfast of the same ingredients.  For there is salsa and corn tortias; food not found elsewhere.

My point is that cooking for miners is an important job.  You will prepare food that we will remember forever.  You will prepare food that makes a miners lives OK or not.  You are part of the essential services that make foreign travel to distant mines memorable and inviting.  Go for it, if you can cook.

On this blog, I often write about jobs and careers in mining.  I often write about the wages, salaries, and compensation for those who work in mining.   To make it easier for you to access the past postings of this blog on the topics of mining jobs & careers, and on mining wages, salaries and compensation, we have collated all the past posting in two places.  This is where they are—click on the links to get them:

• Mining Jobs
• Mining Salaries and Wages

I hope this helps all who are contemplating mining as a job or career and who want to know what they will earn. 

On jobs and careers, there is a great opportunity for all.  There is a shortage of people wanting to work in mining.  Probably because it involves moving and going to different places.  But I know from personal experience, that it is worth moving.  You will learn more and earn more than those who stay in the same place—the sedentary-inclined who are more likely to be unemployed and stuck in a rut.

Mining needs people.  From those with physical skills and ability to those with intellectual capacity and energy.  Men & women are needed.  I have liked and loved women in mining from truck drivers to process engineers, from miners to accountants.  I have admired men in mining from bear hunters to crazy rheology researchers, from lawyers to drill ooperators.

Makes no difference if you are a marine enigneer, sailing the waters of the tailings impoundment, to the bull-cook in a remote exploration camp, there are so many different opportunities in mining that I am convinced there is a job & career for you.

But more: working in mining, you will get paid well.  The wages & salaries of those in mining are well above the average.  Take a look at the link I provide above; it proves my point.

In working in mining you will be contributing.  You will be contributing to the production of those things we need for the good life.  If you are an environmentalist, you can promote protection of the environment by helping mines do it right.   If you are concerned about social justice, you can make mines be sustainable, responsible, and a benefit to local communities.

My point is that mining is not only about getting resources out of the ground—something we must do if we are not to starve, freeze, and made unable to travel— but it is also about doing things right for our generation and for generations to come. 

If the best people, people like you, enter and work in mining, it will be done right and we will all benefit.  And in this noble roll-call, I include those who choose to work for NGOs and all those other organizations that rationally criticize mining and keep it good & honest.  If you cannot stomach working for an international mining company, then at least go join the Pembina Institute, MiningWatch Canada, or any of those other critics of mining who add to the reasonable balance and adversarial system that is, I believe, the heart of the Western ethics & morality, and which must in the long run beat out government capitalism, socialism, Vale, and all those Chinese state-run mining companies. 

Work well; earn well; have big families; and enjoy life to the full.  Mining provides an honest and proper opportunity to do that.

PS.  The photo above I took in Huntington Beach earlier this year.  In 1984 I bought the identical model with money made in mining (constructing the Cannon Mine, Wenatchee tailings impoundment.)  I had the car for 25 years.  I still drive a  Honda Civic, but a much newer one, paid for by money made in mining.

Monday and to serious mining topics.  Today’s topic is mining impact benefit agreements.  I received an email from somebody asking me what I knew of the topic.  Very little in truth.  I sought help and this is the reply I received:

The best site to learn more about Impact Benefit Agreements is: http://www.impactandbenefit.com/ Ben Bradshaw set this up and is very knowledgeable about IBA agreements, innovations, etc..   There is also a toolkit available on the site.

As far as I understand, it is not common place for the agreements to be made public as the First Nations and mining companies tend to keep the terms of reference between them, but communities who have been through the process are often willing to share their experience and may provide sample agreements. That would need to be explored on a case by case basis.  The database on the site provides links to the communities that have been through the process: http://www.impactandbenefit.com/IBA_Database_List/

I took a look at the site and am impressed.  Here is how they describe what they do:

The Impact and Benefit Agreement (IBA) Research Network aims to:

1. Connect IBA-focused researchers, consultants, IBA signatories, and Northern governmental/regulatory agencies
2. Identify and house all existing IBA-Focused Research, both formal and informal
3. Identify IBA Knowledge Gaps
4. Work cooperatively to address these knowledge gaps

Beyond these core aims, the website does its best to provide an up-to-date Database of existing IBAs in Canada, and offers some IBA-relevant Links and News items.

If you have something to contribute, please join us!

The First Nations in British Columbia website has guidance documents for preparing agreements. MiningWatchCanada as befits its name describes the basics of such agreements, but issues stern warninig about the benefits of such agreements.  Here is a bit of what they say:

In focusing only on the IBAs aboriginal communities risk getting sucked into the system and losing sight of the big picture. Companies are often willing to provide jobs and training as a form of individualised economic benefit to community members, but this is problematic for many First Nations. It assumes that entry into an economy based on wage employment –in what tend to be particularly brutal, alienating and toxic jobs– is a necessity. It also assumes that economic benefits should be provided to individuals rather than to the community as a whole. Aboriginal communities should have the right and the ability to say no to mineral development when they so choose, or to receive a share of the enormous profits that are made from the resources located in their land to use as they see fit.

In a paper from 2010 examining if these agreements work, we read this conclusion:

As IBAs grow in popularity and become de facto requirements for mineral developments in jurisdictions like the Canadian North, the need to assess their effectiveness will also grow. The challenge lies in developing appropriate evaluative criteria, and in overcoming the challenge of securing sufficient and representative evidence of outcomes. Our assessment of the fourteen IBAs signed in support of the Ekati, Diavik and Snap Lake diamond mines in the Northwest Territories attempted to address this challenge by assessing the degree to which the IBAs were meeting four broad aims using evidence from time series secondary socioeconomic data, key informant interviews, and community-level focus groups. While not all IBA objectives were fully met, this analysis nevertheless indicates that the region‟s IBAs have achieved a number of positive outcomes, especially when compared to typical outcomes associated with mineral developments in the past. Where past developments were often non-inclusive, dismissive of Aboriginal concerns, and largely uninterested in providing benefits to surrounding Aboriginal communities, the signing of IBAs in support of the three diamond mines to the northeast of Yellowknife has contributed to relationship-building, delivered benefits, contributed to capacity building, and enabled follow up in a way never afforded by EA. Limitations of both negotiation and implementation were evident, which, along with growing community expectations, will need to be built into subsequent agreements.

The last word to PDAC:

PDAC believes that greater participation by aboriginal peoples in the mineral industry in Canada will promote greater understanding and co-operation between aboriginal communities and mineral exploration and mining companies.
The PDAC believes that if governments shared a portion of revenues, derived from natural resource extraction, with aboriginal peoples, these revenues would;

• provide economic benefits to aboriginal communities;
• form a basis for aboriginal communities to build towards economic self-sufficiency;
• facilitate direct participation in the mineral industry by aboriginal peoples; and,
• encourage exploration on aboriginal traditional lands.

For a copy of PDAC’s position on resource revenue sharing please follow the link: English | French

A perfect Vancouver day: sun and clear mountains topped with snow.  We rode the seawall around Stanley Park and then to lunch at Dockers.  Supper with friends and then to a new DVD of the opera Anna Nicole.  

Before we talk of opera, a recommendation for Dockers.  It is down next to the harbour; small and inconspicuous; staffed by friendly old folk; good & cheap food; and eclectic patrons of all ages, types, persuasions, and beards, including ours. 

Back to opera.  In particular Anna Nicole which was first performed at the London Royal Opera House on 17 February 2011.  Indeed less than a year ago.  For there is such a thing as modern opera.  And this is a modern opera. 

The kids in the office all know Anna Nicole.  I confess I did not.  Somehow I managed to pass oblivious through her life.  For she was real: a Playboy model, the third wife of an eighty-year old billionaire, the mother of two, a drug addict, and more.  See the opera for details.

Anna Nicole and Beatrice di Tenda,  a very old opera by Bellini, must be the two most disturbing of all operas.  Two women caught in the grasp of lustful men and exploited to death.  Both left me exhausted and emotionally drained; is life really like this, is all I can ask.  Maybe I and my daughters have been sheltered; is life really this brutal for women? 

Anna Nicole puts to music every four-letter word that I know and love to use, and some more.  There are four-letter words in the opera that I did not know; and the ones I do know I would never dare to put in this blog.  Yet there they are in full glory on the stage, sung to opera-jazz, opera-blues, opera-cantata, and Te Deums of the best of religious chant.

For this is opera in the best tradition: current; profane; foul: tragic;  and all set to music of the streets made sublime. 

If your ear is attuned to such things you will hear the Wedding March, the best of Ella Fitzgerald, the Hollywood ethic, the TV special, the blues, country, and jazz all rolled up to that super-special essence that is opera music—a sublimation of the ordinary and everyday to a special that hits you in the guts and curls your balls.

Sorry for this crass reference to anatomy; it is mild and bland by comparison with what we hear in the opera.  Truly, I repeat: there is more swearing and foul language than every I have heard.  And I have read the book Filthy English, The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing.  There are more swear words in that book than I every dreamed of. 

 The opera adds many more.  What a pity we cannot use this rich and colourful treasure in everyday language in North America.  I fear the politically correct have narrowed the scope of linguistic expression for the worse.  But then as my cycling companion reminded me; “Most are inarticulate; most speak bland; few can write a sentence worth reading; they cannot handle plain English, net alone the vast variety and color of swearing.”

OK then, enough of foul English and foul opera.  I nevertheless encourage you to give some time to modern opera.  Anna Nicole, Doctor Atomic, Lillian Alling, The Ghosts of Versailles, and the ten or more new operas that appear each year.  We are in a time of vast new opera innovation & productivity with new operas appearing at a greater rate than ever before.   Enjoy.

First I notice that Mike Davis, who will head the new company, likes opera.  This is what the report notes:

The relationship between Davis, 53, and Glasenberg, 55, blew hot and cold. Davis, a burly man, is methodical. He likes opera. An orthodox Jew, he gives generously to charity. Glasenberg, also Jewish, is short, compact, speaks in staccato bursts and has a temper.

We add the opera-loving Xstrata-Glencore mining company to Goldcorp, another successful mining company, whose chief fellows also like opera—at least they sponsor the Vancouver opera as I have noted before. 

I know that the fellow who heads up Rio Tinto’s rock mechanics division in London is devoted to opera.  But I do not know if the rest of Rio Tinto likes opera.  somehow I cannot imagine the head of BHP going to the opera—but you never know. 

The new company is made up of a bunch of Witsies as we called ourselves way back then.  This is what the report says:

Glasenberg went to Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, where Davis lectured in accounting. While Davis took off into mining, Glasenberg went to work for Marc Rich, the oil trader accused of breaking sanctions against Iran and then pardoned by president Bill Clinton.

I spent eleven years at Wits.  Although I have not done as well as these two fellow.  Yet I wish them luck in their new venture, for in those days it was nowhere clear that there would be a place for graduates from a white, English-speaking university.  We dared not hope for Mandela who is also a Wits graduate. 

Starting in the early 1960s, emigration from South Africa got underway.  The first I became aware of the concept of emigration was when two of my Jewish friends at school announced that the families were emigrating.  We were  astounded, for this idea, this act, had not hitherto crossed the paths of our sedate and serene lives. 

At Wits we saw the brave ones protest.  Those of us on mining scholarships hid low, for we did not have an independent source of money; we could not afford to loose those bursaries.  But we secretly cheered for those brave enough to protest, to be carted away in police vans, and to flee the country. 

Once we graduated, the idea of emigration grew.  At one point, we looked around and said: “We have no friends from varsity days; they have all emigrated.  All we have are their dogs and desks handed down the day they left.”

Of the ten who did their masters with me in civil engineering, only one is still in South Africa.  They rest are in Canada, the USA, Australia, and England.  We have made our contributions to mining and civil engineering in those places to which we fled. 

Mining companies too have left South Africa and populated the world. Part of  BHP Billiton is the old Union Corporation for whom my farther worked all his mining career.  Union Corporation paid my university bursary.  Anglo American was the quintessential South African mining company.  And now we will have Xstrata-Glencore. 

Some have said this is reverse colonialism.  Others have claimed that fortunes made off apartheid financed the growth of the big international mining companies.  I think this misses the point.  There is a South African diaspora, which is sad, but the success of those who moved on is not to be attributed to the benefits we enjoyed in a racial society.  Rather it is the scare, the agony, the hiding when the police came to cart people away, the realization that to get out, reestablish, and succeed, you just have to work harder than the locals where you arrive or those who were left behind.

Music, in particular opera, has brought me far more pleasure than gold.  I have a few ugly gold cufflinks—can you find shirt to wear them with these days?  I have many gold rings; one sporting a one-carrot, yellow, Australian diamond.  They are beautiful, and still fit my fingers after many years.  But they are empty reminders of past times, past loves & joys, and a world that is gone. 

Opera and its music are still here, always alive, and always new.  Tonight I listened to an opera by Richard Strauss that I had not heard before: Die Liebe Der Danae.    Translated, it is the love of Danae, a princess in an impoverished land who has rejected all suitors until Midas comes to claim her love.  One presumes they live happily ever-after.

Being opera, it is not as simple as that.  Midas is the king who turns whatever he touches or kisses into gold.  He kisses Danae in a bout of passion and she turns to gold, a substance she has long desired.  It takes Jupiter to revive her, which he does because he wants sex with her. 

Thus we have gold, the love & desire for gold, the pernicious influence of gold, and the golden dreams of gods and mortals as themes running along with music that took Strauss twenty years to compose and which was not played until three years after his death in its first performance in 1952. 

Salome, Elektra and his other operas are more popular.  This one is maybe too visceral and too modern to catch us.  But it does in the production from the Berlin Opera.  This production reminds us that love and music are the gold; it is not the metal, the glimmering goblet, the thread in a gown, the ring that entices and has lasting value.  Why even Jupiter sloughs off gold in preference to sex. 

Yet if you seek to understand the lure of gold and the lust for gold, watch this opera.  It explains it all: visions of wealth and luxury; palaces and princesses; gods & goddesses and their lascivious ways; adultery forgiven; vengeful wives able to wreak havoc on husband’s lover;   power & possession; and all that the heart desires.

Except, as in the opera, love, plain & simple.  Danae loves Midas and he her.  They merely have to deal with Jupiter, Juno, and Midas’ unfortunate “gift” of turning all he touches to gold. 

On Monday when MineWeb returns with its interminable stream of fatuous stories on the price of gold, when the air-head pundits return with their opinions of the direction of the price of gold, when dumb-assed politicians return to blather on the value of untaxed income, simple reject them all for what they are:  hypocrites. 

They and you may be in the thrall of gold.  Like Danae at the start of the opera.  But like her transcend the lust.  Like Jupiter transcend lust.  And seek rather the noble in humans. 

Oh and help me explain to my grandkids why I have so many gold caps on my teeth.

If you live in or around Vancouver, here is how to show your support for mining and show your support for your loved one.  Take them to the Britannia Mining Museum on Valentine’s day.  At this link you can read why, including:

• Three-course fine dining meal with wine parings
• See the buildings, gallery and underground mine
• Transport to and from Squamish where can sleep it all off
• Tickets at $220 a couple.

I am not getting free tickets for this.  Indeed I am not getting tickets, period.  I have been to the museum many times over the years, usually taking grandkids from lost Valentines.  I can testify that in recent years they have significantly updated the site and this event promises to be fun in a spectacular setting.  Let me know if it works out for you.

In the past, we have all done silly things at mines that constitute safety violations.  Here I record a drilling program I worked on in 1981 and 1982 at the then-proposed Greens Creek mine in Alaska.  I post with only minor edits what I found last weekend amongst some old papers in the attic.

I post this old incident here in the hope that others (over 65) will similarly write of their past mine safety blunders.  Maybe these stories will help the young to avoid repeats and make mining life safer and safer.  Here is the story.

Noranda are now exploring a rich new gold and silver deposit on Admiralty Island, ten minutes by seaplane from Juneau across Douglas Island and Gastineau Channel.  We proposed a conceptual design for the tailings impoundment and are now in our second summer of drilling and soils testing. 

For the last two weeks I have been on the Island organizing drilling, logging core, and supervising a geophysical exploration program.  I have a good bedrock contour map, a chosen dam axis which limits the depth of excavation to 20 m, soil samples are being tested in Boston for response to electro-osmosis and dynamic disturbance, our drilling rig is broken and I have time to write.  Most of what I set down is extracted and rearranged from notes I made during idle hours on the drill site.

We are drilling again. The frustrations of completing a hole, moving the rig by helicopter, and starting a new hole are over.  The helicopter was late, the drillers were forced to stand around doing nothing for hours, the gas drums leaked, the Allen key for the Shelby tubes was lost, the rig rope broke, water pipes leaked, the wrong hooks were put on, oil was needed in the machine, and the whole affair seemed chaos and disorder.  I do not think though that the move was better or worse than others I have seen.

The rig is roaring contentedly, churning through a firm, very plastic gray clay.  The sun is warm on my greasy khaki sweater (made in Poland.)  The morning chill is gone, today is the solstice and we will have light well onto midnight, and I feel pleasantly sleepy.  Pity I cannot lay down and snooze.  But soon the STP hammer will fall and expectantly we will watch and count its every blow.  I take the split spoon, break it open, and reveal the cool, gray earth—clay and silt from some distant glacial lake.

Jack Watkins is the driller.  He is fifty and onwards with a hoary beard and deep sonorous voice, a slow pace and a cigarette at every break in the drilling.  He wears yellow plastic pants, a wet cream cotton shirt, and a black baseball hat embossed with the red letters R&M. 

His helper is Larry, his stepson and half Indian.  Larry is nut brown with a round open face, cheeky and smiling.  His dark black air falls profusely in a wave to his shoulders.

Larry works hard; yet he lacks a flair for imitative.  He is quiet.  He seldom says anything and when he does he remarks only of food or the drill rig.  He is nineteen and tells me that he has a girl that he will marry in three months.  His younger brother has been in jail five of the last six months.  Jack says that at first when told by the police of his arrest he worried.  Now whenever the younger brother is arrested, he says: “You took him; you keep him.  At least I know where he is.”

Normally the helicopter collects us at six o’clock.  But that night it had not arrived by seven.  With a forty-five minute walk back to camp, we decided to brave the bush and the bears.  None of us had brought a gun.  Larry seemed to recall the general direction to the beach, and he took the lead.  We came on large, fresh bear prints just as we were about to enter the woods and leave the clear area of the muskeg.  Recall that Admiralty Island has the greatest concentration of bears in all Alaska.  We milled around rather stupidly, muttered a few trite words, and in a collective act of courage, walked into the woods.

Except for the usual luxurious green forest, we saw nothing until we reached the beach and the long vista down Hawk Inlet to the Cannery where we camp. 

Now two guns lie side by side next to our lunch packs, jackets, and the logs on which I profile the soil samples.  The first evening target practice was a disaster.  I hit nothing.  Then we noticed that the gun sights had been adjusted by someone with left-dominated vision.  This corrected, the next evening I came within two inches of bulls-eye.  That is good enough to get a bear, I reckon.

I carried the gun with me when Syd Hillis, the SRK review consultant, and I wondered around site.  However, I neglected to take a compass.  We got lost; a strange and frightening experience.  Oh, we had just moved south about 200 m from an old drill hole, sat and looked at a particular geomorphic feature, turned around and started back along the path through the trees.  Syd took the lead but veered too far to the left.  Confidently I took over and guided us to the right and the path through the dense growth and the drill pad.  The rig was humming in the distance to my front-right and I knew my general direction was correct. 

Then we stopped to look, for nothing was familiar, and all was quiet.  We noticed the rig had stopped and somehow things looked different.

“Do you know where you are?” Syd asked.  I did not.

Carefully assessing things we noted the rise of the right abutment to our left—the east and the sun in the north.  The only problems were that I was not sure if it were indeed the left or right abutment and whether the sun should be south, north, or somewhere else in the land where summer sun goes from three in the morning until midnight. 

A sort of quiet panic sets in.  Complete indecision reigns.  Alternatives are not viewed clearly and one feels like a gambler: whatever you do is as likely to be right as wrong, right or left.

We stood on the tree stumps and looked, discussed possibilities, blundered a bit, and finally I lead us down slope.  The creek was running in the wrong direction, at least it was opposite to what I expected.  Outwardly confident, inwardly shaken, I went upstream.  At last I espied the flags of seismic lines and then I knew where I was.  Syd did not believe me, and I don’t blame him.  Even now I am not sure where and how we did stray.

It was good to get back to the Cannery.  Since 1974 when the main factory burnt, the bunkhouses on piles out onto the beach have stood, barely used. Now I sit in my room with its gray-painted wooden floor, thin board walls and look down the inlet.  The boat houses, the dock, and a fishing barge lend interest to the foreground.  In the far distance are the snow-covered peaks of the hills on adjacent islands, andVancouveris three hours flying time south.  Perhaps next time I will write of those views.

More written in 2012, thirty years later.

That drill rig kept breaking down.  The drillers, Jack & Larry, grew more impatient and frustrated.  Their final revenge was when time came to remove the rig from site, for the drilling program was ended.  We all stood around watching as the helicopter lifted the rig for the last time to fly it back to Juneau.  Then, of a sudden, the cable snapped, the chains came loose, and the rig plunged from a dizzy height into the muskeg and sank below the surface.  We never recovered it.  So today there is an old drill rig below the Greens Creek tailings facility.