Well richest finds processed in Japan sounds like Sumitomo who some company was rumoured to have made a deal with. We would all like to hear about the company. Fine gold in a silicate rock sounds like better stuff than they usually find in BC where gold is, outside and excepted the Bralorne camp, usually tied up in high sulfides that companies find hard to deal with. All the gold in the Stewart area and there is plenty is of the type associated with high sulfide.
I know of ways to deal with this sulphide material that would work better than what has been tried. Most of the companies in this area did not seem to make much money in relatively high grade gold, and that was because of the processing cost of the sulfide material.
The Tintina trench stuff that runs into Alaska hit at the end of the mining fall off that post dated Bre-X. That sure was a disservice to mining in general. There has been the odd scandal in claim salting and the like but that revealed a darker undercore, an ugly structure of bilking the customer that is needless. As we have seen from banking scandals there is no shortage of this in other sectors, and the money rip off from banking scandals and intellectual property theft, and the interference from monopoly malfeasance in tech makes Bre-X looks silly dollar wise. (I keep saying here that SNC Lavalin bears a large role in the Bre-X disaster, as it lent its name as an engineering firm to the credibility of the assays there, and this breaks BC mining and securities law. A Texas court refused to hear this aspect, but I think that the political clout of SNC, connected as it is with the powers that be interfered early, as I was vocal on the net from 1997 one that this was a factor. The quicker you get turned away, the more certain you can be there is something behind it.)
The Tintina trench discovery of Teck's is actually better than Hemlo, the best hardrock gold discovery in Canada of the past 30 years. Hemlo strangely ended after three mines, when the potential was there for much better than that. But all the companies looked with the wrong idea, and in the wrong places.
On the Canadian side or the Tintina trench, in low grade gold, there are at least ten properties that could perhaps be developed including Brewery Creek. There was lots of claim staking but little finding n the immediate vicinity of the Pogo deposit. Teck raved about the grade (0.50 ounces) and the size, (25 5o 50 feet wide) and it looked like it would make a difference to Teck's bottom line but then gold price dove.
There is no shortage of scenery in the Cariboos or Bugaboos. They are the mountains of the Heli ski companies. There are lots of logging roads back in there. In fact the Kootenays are on the average higher than the rockies from base to top, often snow covered year round and very spectacular. There are some mountains that are near 2 miles vertical drop from base to top. It should be remembered that Everest is, from its base only 13,000 feet high, as it sits on a 20,000 foot high plateau. The BC base elevation is often less than 1500 feet. There are some cliffs that are the highest vertical cliffs in the world (one mile plus), and valleys perhaps travelled by a dozen people in history, that see the sun only 1 to 2 hours per day and have arctic vegetation. If you travel west by aircraft from Calgary to Vancouver on a clear day you will cross snow fields that are breathtaking and very, very large. Few people ever go back in there. The Valhallas range is seldom trod. We seldom think of the vastness of the pristine untraveled wildereness that dominates in this country. Until you see from the air and travel the same on the ground do you get a feeling for how few people know it, or actively appreciate it. I travelled many backroads in BC for mining companies, (you have to take a 4 wheel drive, as some roads are too steep for 2 wheel) and while it is dangerous with logging trucks going the opposite way, it is worth it. Turning the corner often I was greeted by valley scenery that made me catch my breath. I had never seen photography, either moving or still, that did justice to some of the mountains I saw. In one valley I was taking in an imposing pyramid mountain, about 6,000 feet vertical. It was wooded for half its extent then like the peaks in the Rockies, a perfect pyramid of unscalable looking smooth rock for another 3,000 feet. This is not a small peak. I was marvelling at its imposing inaccessibility when I noticed halfway up the sheer rock face a small square hole in the side of the mountain. It was clearly a mining adit, or tunnel accessway. Some silver miner had dug a tunnel in the side of the rock cliff years ago. HOw he got up there I will never know and scarcely imagine. I looked in all the research of all recorded silver and other mines in history (Some 1000 mines ofthe Pacific North West) and could find no record of the mine!
I don't think from my experience that you will find many placer miners wanting you to document their operations. Theft (of equipment) is a big problem. Another is government interference. If you meet them in town and ask to come out to their operation, that is one thing, expecting to film them in the wild, well, that is another. I would not expect too much co-operation ad hoc.
The feds and government boys in general have been selected it seems to be anti mining. Their weapons are environmental restrictions that they can sell the ignorant public, but have never been seen to be called for in this industry. I am not solely an industry cheerleader, as I have always been a skeptic, and there are some (often government approved) eyesores, but it is plain that the governments have been talking out of both sides of their mouth on mining. Their first reaction is to be against it as it has a 19th century smokestack image. Every whisper I have heard from the suits in the last 40 years is to be dead set against the hewers of wood and rock. They are bad. City folk, who 99% of our politicians are, are good. I think they should travel and work a bit more. Perhaps they will see how the whole thing fits together.
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