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Gold/Mining/Energy : Winspear Resources -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LaFayette555 who wrote (15211)	2/25/1999 10:14:00 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 26850

Francois, check out KRT big volume, the spillage from KRT at Fort a'la Corne will be richer than the fabled Winspear mine. average joe

To: LaFayette555 who wrote (15211)	2/25/1999 11:53:00 AM
From: Walt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 26850

A little discourse on Ice Roads. I know what you mean by soft ice with mild temps but that is really not the story or concern with ice roads because we are talking alot of ice and an sub arctic to arctic enviroment. The first thing to go with the winter roads and what in fact shuts them down is not the ice but the snow melting on the portages. Once the snow goes the trucks start tearing up the overburden and that is an ecological no no so the roads get shut down. You can still drive around on the ice, have air strips on it etc but the land part is no longer useable. At any time of year you can get overflow. Snow on a south facing slope melts and goes onto lake. It will sit under snow as water. It is amazing at 40 below in the middle of winter to be breaking trail across a lake and hit overflow. First you are trying to drive through a foot or two of slush, not an easy thing to do and once you get out of it everything freezes so you have a ton of frozen slush now ice jamming up your wheels axils etc. A little story on overflow, a few years ago a bunch of bozzo ice fishermen put their fishing holes right on and beside the winter road. When the big trucks went by the road of course flooded and they had to build a big detour around the area. In the spring the overflow will cover a lake with a foot or two of icy slushy water. Driving through it is an adventure. Then the ice wants to rise and the water enters the lake. It does so through holes in the ice which look like little whirl pools and you wouldnt want to fall or get sucked into one. The ice rises and turns hard again but as it is frozen to bottom near the shore you get a pool of water all the way around the lake. Now getting on and off the ice becomes a challenge. Ive seen lakes on the barrens with great ice on the lakes, drills working planes landing on airstrips etc with 50 feet of open water all the way around the shore. Heavier stuff has to be slung ashore with helicopter, skido we just go full throttle and skim across the open water. A grweat sport if you have the nerve to try it. Getting across the open water is one think stopping when you reach shore is another. Ice melts more from the bottom up then it does from the top down in spring. the top ice candles and beneath it you have blue ice so airlines always want to know how much candle and how much blue. Once the blue goes and their is nothing but candle you can walk across a lake in the morning while in late afternoon you start sinking in. If you break through you are in an icy soup of water and sharp candled ice and it can be a real challenge getting back out. Fall on candle ice and you can really cut yourself up. Dog teams put little booties on the dogs feet to protect them. Once a lake has candled the ice can go real fast under the right conditions of sun and wind. I've driven across lakes one week, then the next week snowmobiled across and a week or so latter boated across. When the candles break up they tinkle so the whole lake can be singing its break up song. So to recap, its the portages which are the real concern, once they go the road shuts down and of couse the south end of the road goes first. So there you have a little discourse on ice. The principle are the same but when you have an inch or two of ice in the south as opposed to a couple feet of ice (up to six) the melt season lasts alot longer. Next time your local lake or pond melts take a good look at it and try to imagine the same process with several feet of ice. It can go through all the phases in a day or two where here it can take a month or more. Live ion the north and work in the bush and trust me you will learn a whole lot about ice. Another general rule of the thumb, the first areas to freeze and the first to thaw. hope this helps some regards Walt