Tales of the Mojave: A Bit About Northern Exploration Company

I planned to have this descriptive section as part of the last post—the one about being packed and ready to leave town—but this "little bit" grew and grew, and eventually it had to find its own home. I've written lots of little pieces like this; many of these could be hyperlinked from several main posts. This one might most properly go near the beginning of a Tales of the Mojave book.

N.E.C.

Northern Exploration Company (NEC), a famous former international mining and minerals exploration company, had seven exploration offices when I began working there as part of a small horde of young or “junior” geologists in NEC’s Western District. Some of us were temporary summer hands (and many of us, like me started that way); many of us were on year-to-year contracts (me!); and a very few of us ended up with permanent positions in the company. There were three or four permanent geos leading the horde when I began working there; that permanent cadre had expanded to maybe six by the time I left.

When not out in the field, we worked out of one of several office-warehouse complexes scattered here and there in Reno and Sparks.[1] The complexes seemed to have been slapdashed together and often had a few problems; for example, the typical southwest-desert–inspired flat roofs were prone to leak during storms or snow-melt. Our complex—and a nearby complex leased by another, also famous former mining company—was near the Truckee River and so occasionally flooded. The large windows of the office half of our complex faced south across a largely undeveloped area of the Truckee Meadows; these windows caused overheating, especially in winter when the low sun provided unplanned for solar energy. Nonetheless, we had a good setup that included a smallish warehouse in the back with shelves for field supplies, tables for core logging, and rock saws and grinding wheels for cutting and polishing hand samples.

The Western District of NEC was a decidedly renegade district, though at the time renegade attitudes were fairly common within exploration groups based out of Reno.[2] Geologists aren’t ordinarily known for their adherence to rules, and they are especially not known for following pointless and questionable rules sent down from above—an above that was usually either outside the country or east of the Mississippi, the latter being nearly the same thing as a foreign country to those born and bred in The West.

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We can argue nearly forever about where The West begins or ends. The Mississippi River clearly constitutes one viable boundary for defining what is east and what is west. The hundredth meridian has also been used as the boundary between east and west; for example, in 1843, Thomas Farnham said lands between the 100th meridian and the Rockies were “usually called the Great American Desert” (Stegner, 1954). Later, Thomas Durant held a “100th Meridian Excursion” when Union Pacific crews passed the 100th meridian in 1866, a goal set by Congress. A little later, John Wesley Powell, writing for the USGS in 1879, recognized the 100th meridian as a line roughly defining the eastern boundary of his “Arid Region,” an area that generally receives less than 20 inches of rainfall per year and encompasses most of the west (by any definition). I think one could also use the Great Continental Divide as the boundary between east and west: All drainages east of the divide would drain to the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic. All drainages west of the divide would drain to the Pacific.

Google Earth image with yellow line marking part of the 100th meridian. The meridian cuts several states in two and roughly separates a greener area in the east from a notably browner area in the west.

I usually maintain that the true west, “The West” as I capitalized above, begins at the eastern edge of the Front Range of Colorado. Denver is not inside The West by this definition. (Neither is Boulder, for that matter.)

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As mentioned in our main text above, geologists within the exploration offices of the west (however we define west) were often fractious and rebellious, and they were unlikely to listen to anyone from Chicago, say, some muckety-muck who might be sporting a fancy three-piece suit and polished black shoes. (There are numerous stories revolving around entertaining such VIPs.) Denver’s offices were often a little spiffier than those in Reno, perhaps having been influenced somewhat by the fancier petroleum offices in the area. Also, some Denver offices acted as headquarters for the minerals explorations groups of larger companies, and some *were* the headquarters for smaller companies. Consequently, geologists who had the misfortune to be based in Denver often ended up being a little more stilted, a little less rebellious, a little more formal: they were ever-so-noticeably more well-behaved when it came down to orders from above, and they were a little more likely to look at you askance if you decided that a rock-throwing contest was in order before the sampling program began in earnest. (A few were definite leaders as far as renegade actions go—here I’m particularly thinking of some unnamed few during my later years at Former Mining Company. Most, though—well, many—tried hard to keep up.)

The Kmart of Exploration

Our Hughes 500-D in 1978.

The Western District of NEC came to be known, at least to a select few, as “The Kmart of Exploration.” This appellation had been assigned to NEC by a summer hire[3] —Dan, the guy with the Frisbee dog, a black and white Aussie of one variety or another—during the uranium summer of 1979. He said he came up with the epithet after being involved in procuring supplies and provisions for the field largely at Kmart. I thought the nickname—seemingly indicating that the company was cheap—was overstated; after all, each uranium camp[4] had a trailer with space for a full kitchen; an office with drafting area, map storage cabinet, and beaucoup supplies; a camp cook; canvas tents with room for two field hands in each tent; a couple of 1978 4WD pickup trucks, brand new during the uranium summer of 1978; and a Hughes 500-D helicopter equipped with radiometric instruments capable of detecting radiation and breaking it down into the three major source elements, potassium (K), thorium (Th), and uranium (U). I thought our camps and equipment were pretty plush, especially when compared to the archaeological camps my husband frequented.

Much to the head honcho's dismay, "Kmart of Exploration" stuck. Perhaps it was partly our field schedule that made the name stick. We worked eleven and three, drive-on-your-own-time. That schedule meant eleven days in the field, three days off, with the driving time between home and field (and vice versa) being on our own time, not on paid-for company time. Perhaps the name stuck because we were encouraged, if not required, to camp out rather than stay in motels.

Camping supposedly saved gas, time, and money because we didn’t have to drive in to town every morning and evening and didn’t have to spend money on motel rooms. We also bought groceries instead of eating in restaurants, resulting in a lowered food expense. So we typically lived outdoors—in the dirt and weather of whatever area we were working in—for two to four nights; then we were into town for one night to get a shower, to sleep in a cool, air-conditioned motel room, to gas up, to stock up on fresh food, and—most importantly in the Mojave—to stock up on water and ice. Then, back into camp mode we went. I thought there were some flaws to the party line about camping, although I never did an actual cost-benefit analysis. For one thing, those of us who didn't have a permanent camp located somewhere near running water in the higher and cooler reaches of eastern Nevada (a certain lucky few that I was rarely part of) spent a certain amount of time setting up camp every evening. After getting our new camp in order, we made dinner and cleaned up. Then, nighty-night. After waking up in the morning, we tore everything down and repacked the back of the truck. With all the unpacking at night and repacking in the morning, we often ended up rearranging boxes of sample bags twice a day. Because we prepped our own camp and food daily, we were essentially working twelve to fourteen-hour days, rather than ten, with little time to rest or recoup in the evening before falling asleep (on cots or on the ground). Ten-hour field days were de rigueur at NEC. That meant we'd quit camp at 7:00 am, say, with breakfast and camp tear-down already complete, then work in the field until 5:00 pm. Then we'd finally get on to camp setup and dinner making after that. When someone else was cooking your meals and when there was running water available for cooling off and even showers, as in the uranium and moly camps, the hours were okay—long, but feasible.

In the Mojave, they were hell.

To be continued...

Notes:

^[1] These complexes were often called "geo-ghettos" back then—although that term would probably not be politically correct now—often because they weren't built all that well in some respects, and also because they seemed to house a lot of geological groups.↩

^[2] We cultivated—or were known for—a semi-outlaw attitude and everyday defiance that was deliberately exacerbated by the temperament of the head honcho in Reno.↩

^[3] We didn’t call our summer employees “temps” until a good number of us moved to Forminco, where "temp" was already in use.↩

^[4] For more about the uranium camps, see this series about the Caliente camp of the first uranium summer (that's what we called them: the first uranium summer, and the second uranium summer).↩

A Reference

Stegner, W.E., 1954, Beyond the hundredth meridian: John Wesley Powell and the second opening of the west: Penquin Books, 496 p., 1992 reprint. Quote from p. 215-216 of 1992 reprint.

The Approach to Titus Canyon: Amargosa Narrows, Bullfrog Pit, and the Original Bullfrog Mine

We're officially on the Titus Canyon leg of our larger Death Valley trip—a round trip odyssey that will take us to and near a number of places. This section of our journey began with the last post, which was centered around Beatty. I’ll be complementing my February photographs with photos from a similar journey MOH and I took back in the late spring of 2009. So, let's get on with it! We'll begin by leaving Beatty.

There are two ways to get to the Titus Canyon road from Beatty. I usually forget that fact because it's generally been years between journeys into the canyon. Consequently, I seem to end up on this route one time, and that route the next time, alternating routes without really thinking about it. Then I wonder why the road, the signs, and the overall lay of the land don't look the same as the last time I passed through the area.

Beatty's main intersection: a 4-way stop.

We went one way in 2009, turning left at Beatty’s main intersection, which kept us on U.S. 95 as we drove east and then south through and out of town. We passed the dirt turnoff to Fluorspar Canyon (might there be some fluorite up there?) and passed into the Amargosa Narrows. Not far beyond the Narrows, we turned right onto the unsigned paved road to the Beatty Airport, which goes by an obscure ghost town, Gold Center. Airport Road turns to dirt beyond the airport.

The Amargosa Narrows: Precambrian Z rocks crop out on the right, left, and straight ahead.

We went the other way this past February, going straight on Nevada S.R. 374, the Daylight Pass road, at the same intersection. This paved road winds through a bit of the Bullfrog Hills, going by Velvet Peak and Paradise Mountain. It then meets up with Airport Road near the Bullfrog pit of the currently inactive Bullfrog open pit gold mine.

The Bullfrog pit, as seen from the dirt portion of Airport Road, looking across a sea of blooming creosote (from the early May trip, 2009).

The Bullfrog gold mine—AKA the Barrick Bullfrog gold mine—was in operation from 1988 or '89 through 1998, when it produced about 2.4 million ounces of gold from two main open pits, the Bullfrog pit and the Montgomery-Shoshone pit, and from at least one related underground project, the North Extension. Discovery of these ore deposits began in 1982 with St. Joe Minerals Corporation (overall history is described in some detail here, here, and here). The exploration property then passed through several companies in quick succession through a series of acquisitions or buyouts, going from St. Joe to Bond Gold Corporation, then to Lac Minerals Ltd (or LAC Minerals Ltd, depending on the year—this company went back and forth with its name several times in a few years), and then to Barrick Gold Corporation.

The deposit is hosted in Tertiary volcanic rocks, mostly ash-flow tuffs that are cited by Castor et al (1989) as being correlative with the Miocene Timber Mountain Tuff, which has age dates ranging from about 10 to about 15 Ma (Geolex). In fact, the host formation was mapped by Maldonado et al (1990) as the Rainier Mesa Member of the Timber Mountain Tuff.

I had a tour of the Bullfrog pit back in the late 1980s or in 1990, while I was working for Former Mining Company. Bond Gold was probably the operator when I was there, and the mine was just called the Bullfrog mine. We learned then that much of the overall low-grade ore is concentrated in veins, breccias, and stockworks, and we thought at the time the deposit would be fairly difficult to make money at. It later surprised me that a large company like Barrick got involved in the mining. (I have no idea how the economics really played out; so much can depend on the up front expenditures a company has made and the price of gold during production.)

The deposit formed near the end of an extreme extensional event that took place in the area between 11.4 and 7.6 Ma (Castor and Weiss, 1992; Weiss et al, 1995; Castor et al, 1999). Although ore is partly hosted in and controlled by structures in the upper plate of the Bullfrog Hills detachment fault, it's not generally considered to be a detachment-related type of ore deposit (although knowledge of detachment faulting and related structural models would be indespensible for making discoveries in the Bullfrog mining district).

A little farther down the Daylight Pass Road, about six miles from the center of Beatty, the Titus Canyon dirt road heads WSW toward the Grapevine Mountains.

Turnoff to the Titus Canyon road.

The Titus Canyon road is a dirt road of variable character, narrow and washboardy in many parts, and entirely one way east to west. It isn't possible to turn around once you get going, and from asphalt to about "Tan Mountain," [name from Panoramio photo no longer available] there are few pullouts. It's possible that one could exit the road in two or more places within this first section, but it's not clear to me that any of these possible exits are really roads.

High clearance 4x4 vehicles are recommended!

Although 4WD is not usually necessary along most sections of the road, high clearance is a must, and 4WD can become necessary at any time (especially during bad weather). I think the road is blocked from the east when bad T-storms or flash flooding are expected, but I'd always want to check the weather to avoid getting stranded during a bad washout, like the kind the Death Valley area experienced in October, 2015.

This is what the October flooding looked like, during and after:

Don't get caught up in one of these!

Somewhere between the Titus Canyon warning sign and the Death Valley sign, you can look off to the north and see some classic Nevada ash-flow tuff formations, in this case tilted moderately along two detachment faults. The visible roads and workings are in the area of the Original Bullfrog mine, a little less than four miles west, as the crow flies, from the Bullfrog open pit.

Tilted volcanic rocks on Bullfrog Mountain (the highest point in the photo), with the Original Bullfrog mine not far left of center.

Wildflowers and creosote are in bloom in this May, 2009 photo. More precise photo and location information can be had by perusing the map near the end of this post.

I got to fooling around, saving this Google Earth image of Bullfrog Mountain from a similar angle as my photo above.

Google Earth image of Bullfrog Mountain.

Then I fiddled a little more and shortly had a geologic map overlay of Bullfrog Mountain. The two USGS maps used here are the Geologic map of the northeast quarter of the Bullfrog 15-minute quadrangle (Maldonado et al, 1990) and the Geologic map of the northwest quarter of the Bullfrog 15-minute quadrangle (Maldonado, 1990).

The same Google Earth image with two kmz file overlays.

What fun! Okay, this was so much fun, I went ahead and made the image match my photo more precisely, and then added a few geologic labels.

The photo, again, for comparison with the image below.

Geologic overlay of Google Earth (G.E.) image, labeled.

This is a good part of the Bullfrog Hills in which to see the results of the extreme extension that occurred in the area during the Miocene, although I'm not sure if its possible to actually place a finger on the main (or secondary) detachment surface. For the most part, the detachment faults are shown on the maps as dashed beneath Quaternary cover. In only three areas is either detachment fault mapped in the hills where we might be able to go look at the fault planes, and in only two places are dip measurement shown, and both sites are in the low hills to the east of the photo and images.

As for the rest of the local geology, the mylonitized lower plate Precambrian rocks are easily reconnoitered in the light colored hill on the far left of my photo (lower left of the G.E. geologic image), and the tilted volcanic section is easily walked in the hills above the Original Bullfrog mine. The main volcanic formations, oldest to youngest (west to east, left to right), are as follows: Ts3, mostly sandstone, shale, and conglomerate; Tql, quartz latite lava flows; Tlr, the Lithic Ridge Tuff; Tbt2, bedded tuff; Tcb, the Bullfrog Member of the Crater Flat Tuff; Tbt3, bedded tuff; Tpc, the Tiva Canyon Member of the Paintbrush Tuff; Tbt4, bedded tuff; and Tmr, the Rainier Mesa Member of the Timber Mountain Tuff. The Op on these maps is the Ordovician Pogonip Group, here consisting of limestone only 60m thick. The Zm consists of Late Proterozoic metamorphic rocks that have mid- to late Miocene cooling ages related to the regional extension.

Bullfrog ore.

The lower trenches at the Original Bullfrog mine used to be a great place to stop when driving through the area. (The location dot in the last image shows the site of the original mine, not the lower trenches; the lower trenches are more easily seen in the last photo as the small color anomaly below the location of that dot.) The easily unearthed quartz-amethyst veins contain v.g. and other neat minerals (see this post and next week's post). Much of the mineralized material was mined out in the 1980s (or earlier?), and a bunch of it was placed on a nearby heap leach pad. I doubt that leaching was an efficient way of recovering gold and silver from this ore, and we used to bemoan the placing of all this great specimen material out to leach. Not long after my first introduction to the area, which was probably in about 1986 or a little later, someone—no, I really can't won't say who—came and scraped the leach pad, removing all the rock in order to recover and melt the gold and electrum down for a wedding ring (at least that's the story I've heard). I visited the area most recently on the last day of the last millennium (depending on when we say the millenium started). I camped on one of the drill roads after wandering around the roads, trenches, and prospects. I didn't find much. If you ever happen to stop by the area, remember that you're probably on patented (private) ground, at least up near the original mine site, although I don't remember seeing any signs.

The Death Valley National Park boundary on the Titus Canyon is marked by signs, a fence, and a cattle guard.

Here's where we'll stop our journey today, right at the eastern boundary of Death Valley National Park (as an oldtimer, I keep wanting to call it a National Monument).

Location map

Related Posts (in order of posting):
Death Valley, "Super" Blooms, Turtlebacks, and Detachments
Death Valley Trip, Part 2: More of the Badwater Turtleback Fault
Death Valley Trip, Part 3: Northward, and over Daylight Pass
Death Valley Trip, Getting There: Wave Clouds beyond the Sierra
Death Valley Trip, Getting There: A Hike to Pleistocene Shorelines

Death Valley Trip, Getting There: Walker Lake, Road Stories, A Bit about Copper, and Some Folds near Luning

Death Valley Trip, Getting There: A Jeep Trail, Folds and Cartoons of Folds, Even More Folds, and Boundary Peak

Death Valley Trip, Getting There: Highway 95, Redlich, Columbus Salt Marsh, and Another View of Boundary Peak

Death Valley Trip, Getting There: Coaldale, Black Rock, Lone Mountain, and the Boss Mine

Death Valley Trip, Getting There: Black Rock to Lida Junction to Beatty

Beatty: Old Buildings, A Fold, and Onward toward Titus Canyon

Finding a Thesis: Coming into Clayton Valley

On the road to Silver Peak from the east, about six or seven miles past Alkali and while one is still on pavement, Clayton Valley comes into view. The road turns to dirt—gravel and dust—not far beyond this first photo, and not far before the second.

Panoramic view of Clayton Valley in front of the eastern nose of Mineral Ridge.

The same photo, labelled.

In this view, we're looking at Mineral Ridge nearly end-on, essentially down the axis of the mountain-sized anticline that it is. Mineral Ridge, Red Mountain, and the ridgeline on the far left are all part of the greater Silver Peak Range. The ridge, with its high point of 9376 feet (2858 m), hides the range's high point, Piper Peak, and also blocks any view of the Mohawk and Sanger Mines beyond. The reddish brown, dome-shaped Red Mountain, composed of Tertiary rhyolite (Albers and Stewart, 1972), sits at 8957 feet (2730 m) just in front of and to the right of the unnamed ridge. Silver Peak itself is barely in the picture in the left side of the photo—you can see little hints of green if you look closely—just beyond the lithium brine fields of Clayton Valley. The low green slopes on the either side of the dirt road in the foreground consist of natural outcrops of olive to bluish-green shale of the Cambrian Harkless Formation. We'll see more of the cinder cone, The Crater, later in this Silver Peak portion of LFD's thesis-hunting series.

Labelled aerial view of the Clayton Valley–Silver Peak area, courtesy USGS (TNM Viewer link). The lithium brine fields are dead center. "You Are Here" marks the site of the previous photo.

Topographic map of the same view, courtesy USGA (TNM Viewer link).

Past the gap between the north end of Clayton Ridge and the south end of Paymaster Ridge, Silver Peak Road begins to cross the ever-changing lithium-brine fields and ponds. It turns out that there’s a more direct way to Silver Peak from the Palmetto Mountains on dirt via Oasis Divide (off the southwest edge of the map above), but fortunately I didn’t try it back in 1976. It’s a usually washboardy, tire-spinning, sandy road, with lots of inconvenient turns. I doubt the Opel would have made it.

So there I was, finally crossing the large, lithium-brine mining operations in Clayton Valley. (Photos are all from a photo-gathering expedition I made in the summer of 2010.)

Sign near the middle of the lithium brine fields.

The lithium operation, run by Chemetall Foote Corporation back in 2010 according to these signs, is now supposedly owned and run by Albemarle Corporation. Back in '76, it was run by Foote Mineral Company. (The brine mining operation has undergone several name changes over the years.)

More signs.

I'm not really sure what I thought of the lithium brine fields when I traversed the playa from east to west back in 1976, but I probably felt conspicuous and out-of-place. (This was a common feeling during my thesis-hunting adventures: An Opel was fairly uncommon vehicle overall and was even more uncommon off pavement, dirt roads and the Nevada outback were unfamiliar to me, and I was persistently plagued by the thought that I didn't know what I was doing.) Even now, making the crossing can seem a little strange to me, although I did become accustomed to going back and forth across the brine fields back in the mid-1980s when I worked on top of Mineral Ridge. What's odd about the crossing? It's unusual to find such a major dirt road traversing a playa, and what with the all the power and phone lines on both sides, the visual impression is unique. The traffic can be heavier than one usually finds on a playa (barring unexpectedly being on the Black Rock Desert during Burning Man), and one has to watch for trucks and construction equipment.

Silver Peak: about four more miles.

Off to the northwest, the dark prominence of The Crater, a basalt cinder cone, stands out above the salty desert floor.

And there we are: the south end of Silver Peak is to the right.

Read a little more about the brine fields here (USGS, basic info apparently from 1982, still relevant), here (the origin of the brine fields), and here.

Related Posts:
Thesis: Finding an Area
Finding a Thesis: Battle Mountain to Austin to Gabbs
Finding a Thesis: Pole Line Road
Finding a Thesis: Pole Line to Belmont
Finding a Thesis: Klondyke District
Finding a Thesis: A Joshua Tree Aside
Finding a Thesis: Into the Palmetto Mountains
Finding a Thesis: Farther into the Palmetto Mountains
Finding a Thesis: A Bit O' Geology in the Palmetto Mountains
Finding a Thesis: Future Stories from the Palmetto Mountains
Lida Summit Roadcut
Finding a Thesis: Next Stop, Silver Peak!

The Road to Majuba: Keep Out Sign

Keep Out. Stay Out. 

The signs are a bit old, left over from a previous exploration company, Minterra Resources Corp, a company that no longer exists. By the time we reached this location on the switchbacks up to the Middle Adit, we had possibly passed a locked gate that had been opened by a field trip leader or rep from Max Resource Corp, the current owner/lessor. I'm not, however, positive that there was a locked gate: on the three day trip, we went through at least two or three locked gates, and I'm just not sure about the road to Majuba Hill.

The location below is shown on the most likely switchback.

Jungle Fever, A Documentary about the Bre-X Gold Scam

This is actually Masterminds - Fool's Gold (1 of 3) on YouTube, not nearly as good (or as accurate, IMO) as History Channel's "Turning Points of History": Jungle Fever, no longer on YouTube. I have no idea how long this video will remain up.

Also see Fool's Gold parts 1, 2, and 3, provided by B.C. Prospectors for educational purposes; I don't know how long these videos will remain on YouTube, either, and they are not embeddable. In case they go down, check out this re-enactment.

Bre-X: Gold Today, Gone Tomorrow  (1st edition, 1Nov1997) is a book I highly recommend reading for the story itself and also for some background into the way things work (or used to work — some things have changed) in the mining/exploration industry. I found that a character list at the beginning of the book would have been useful. The book got into more than one mining scam story, mostly for background about the people involved in Bre-X, and also just as general background about what mining scams are all about (see a list of a few other scams here on page 16). Also read this review of the book by another Nevada explorationist.

I've seen a few would-be scams in my day, but they were fairly minor and easy to spot, and aimed at myself or other grass-roots and early stage explorationists looking for the next best property to pick up, drill, and turn into a mine.

I was out of the business when the Bre-X scandal hit (and when its stock price was going from nearly nothing to its peak in early to mid 1997). The price of gold already wasn't what it had been in the 1980s; it had been sliding gradually for quite some time.

Historical gold price in USD and inflation adjusted gold price in USD,
by Realterm, from Wikimedia Commons.

I went to the Northwest Mining Association meeting in Spokane in December of 1997, thinking to get back into the business after a hiatus of some few years, and found the place in a kind of hectic chaos. Funding for junior mining companies was already starting to dry up, even though the price of gold hadn't quite dropped to its lowest recent low (which it would on 20Jul1999, when it hit just below $253 USD). I had said at the '97 mining convention that if the price ever went below $250, I'd buy (oh well, I'd probably be set for life now!).

Funding for companies and projects bounced back slowly as the price of gold began to rise again into the early 2000s, and after implementation of Canadian National Instrument 43-101 (called "the NI 43-101," "the NI," or "the 43-101"; also see Wikipedia), which — although aimed primarily at properties with economic resources or reserves — became a set of standard procedures to follow for any grass-roots or later-stage exploration property one had even vague hopes of getting promoted to a Canadian or American stock exchange. I'm not sure that getting funding has ever been quite the same since Bre-X, but the 2008 market and commodities crash has also had a negative effect in more recent years.

A Few More References:
Bre-X Strikes It Rich in Indonesia (3Mar1997; with property location map)

The Bre-X Gold Scandal: First there is a gold mountain, then there is no mountain (Andrew Alden's About.com Geology, originally posted 20Apr1997, with later updates)

Bre-X Collapses (19May1997)

Jungle Fever: The Bre-X saga is the greatest gold scam ever. But to understand the enormity of the fraud, you had to be there. Our man in Borneo tells his story (9Jun1997)

The mine, The man, And the scam (probably 1997)

Bre-X Geologist Mike de Guzman Rumoured to be Alive (13Jun2005)

Report: A review of Michael de Guzman's death (24May2007; forensic report dated 17Feb1998)

The mystery of Michael de Guzman (26May2007)

Bre-X Timeline (updated 31Jul2007)

Bre-X Scandal Ends in Acquittal (Oct2007)

Life after Bre-X (31Dec2012; Felderhoff says de Guzman "had nothing to do with it"; probably paywalled)

Updated 26Aug2016

Things You Find in the Field: Old Cabin...

...overlooking a currently inactive open-pit mine.

Cabin overlooking one of the old Willard pits.

The pit was in production from 1989 through 1992, with operations conducted by the now defunct Western States Minerals (which became or became managed by NewWest in 2006, which was bought by Fronteer in 2007, which was acquired by Newmont in 2011).

It looks like it would be a nice place to live provided mining in the future didn't eat into the front yard, and if only there was a tree or two and a nearby running stream. Oh well, can't have everything!

The area is visible and accessible, via dirt roads, from I-80 at the Coal Canyon exit. Mining claims on the property are currently active, so access may be partially restricted.

Field Book Scribbles

Like Short Geologist, I'm unable to post much in the way of what I really write down in my field book, which usually consists of what I do every day (what I worked on or accomplished), who I talk to, phone numbers, ideas, things to do that I shouldn't forget, and other real miscellany. I prefer the kinds of Rite in the Rain® field books that have a grid on one side, title blocks on each page, page numbers, and lots of goodies in the back: these. Because I can't really get into who I've been working for in particular, or when, I've shown a typical title block as mocked up a little: location, date and weather (when a page has notes from more than one day, the rest of the dates and weather go farther down the page), client, and random comments or notes as desired. I don't usually use the scale portion; instead, I draw a scale with diagrams or sketch maps as needed.
On rare occassions, I fill out the table of contents at the beginning of the book. Here's my only "current" example.
I found a few pages here and there that I can photograph to show my general note scribbly-ness. I'm not nearly as neat and exacting as in my early field book years, when I filled them out like I was still in field camp and might get graded at any moment, using neat, small lettering, and very nice drawings. This one is from a field trip up in Alaska. I was obviously concerned about which way some fault or other moved, and am still not sure whether I got it right.
A little drawing of the North Window at Arches National Park, which goes with a photo I haven't digitized, and this watercolor.
Here's a few scribbles from a March, 1998, field trip to the Fort Knox gold mine near Fairbanks, Alaska: "low grade .013-.019 [ounces per ton]." I imagine the "low grade" is lower than that now.
Here's a little (and partial, I'm sure) story about the discovery of the Gold Bar gold mine from a May, 1998, field trip to several gold mines in central Nevada. "Lots of 'smoke' on range front." The underlined "picture rock" indicates that I took a photo and have a rock sample lying around somewhere, probably in a box in the garage.
In the back of my field books, you'll typically find some version of a calendar.
And scattered here and there, you might find doodles taken during some meeting. This one shows a horn of plenty (i.e., ore), on a table??, next to an evergreen tree.
My meeting notes (yes, I generally take meeting notes in my field book so I can find them later), often contain fairly elaborate doodles. Here's a mine adit on a hillside, or maybe it's a hobbit's home.
My field mapping notes, which are small and blurry in this photo by design, are often messier than this, and usually quite succinct.

Oh, and my field books are mine. They don't belong to the company I consult for, unless the company buys field books for me and requires ownership by contract, something I would strongly resist. Companies have a habit of losing things and getting rid of things after projects are over. I don't think I've had to give up any of my field books so far. I *have* left copies of field notes in company files when requested. It's good to know ahead of time that someone will want a copy; that way, I won't accidentally put extraneous notes from one company's business in the middle of pages that will go into a second company's file.

More of my field books can be seen here, at least from the outside.

Submitted to Accretionary Wedge #47: Field Notes.

A Few Questions (and some Answers)

What do you do when hard rock geologists are hard to come by (as was the case when geological hiring was making a comeback in the early 2000s after the gold crash of 1997-98?

Normally, a lack of geologists with a required experience level or orientation toward mining, exploration, mineralogy, etc. has resulted in an across-the-board increase in pay for geologists in the industry.

Related Thought: Experienced hard rock geologists aren't necessarily hard to come by at the moment, but everyone I know is pretty busy.

One thing that can be done when geologists are hard to find is to increase recruiting efforts at schools that support mineralogy, petrology, geochemistry, and field camp. If you teach at such a school, you should make sure the industry knows that your school falls into that category. Some companies currently recruit, at least in part, outside the U.S.

Companies can advertise jobs where they will be seen: at schools supporting required classes and at geological societies geared towards mining and exploration such as the Geological Society of Nevada (GSN). Many companies routinely do the latter, and I get emails with the resulting job postings.

An Aside: More basic training is probably offered by some companies now than at any time in the recent past, although documentation of this supposition of mine is sparse. Training geologists to recognize common minerals and rock types should not be necessary. Training geologists to recognize uncommon minerals associated with common ore deposit types has, perhaps, beome more common through the years; many of these types of minerals used to be learned in ore petrography, in economic geology and mineral exploration classes, and in grad school. With the industry booming, many young geologists are bypassing grad school for jobs available now (a practise which is being recommended and supported by many companies). In my early days, it was fairly routine to be sent out to your first drill rig without any, or much of any, introduction to drilling, sampling on rigs, contamination problems, what to think if the driller says X, what to do if the driller says Y, when or how to tell them to shut it down (for a variety of reasons, such as poor sampling, drinking on the job, not showing up at the rig...), and many other things that I mostly just picked up on my own.

What do you do if your contacts in the hard rock world happen to be minimal or out of date (as mine were in the late 1990s and early 2000s)?

You go to places where hard rockers hang out, such as meetings of the GSN or AGS (Arizona Geological Society) or other state geological societies, field trips run by the GSN twice yearly, field trips run by the SEG (Society of Economic Geologists) every year at GSA, conventions offered every five years by the GSN and yearly by the NWMA (Northwest Mining Association), and you take short courses as necessary. In other words, you update or re-create your contact base. This may or may not take much effort, depending on a variety of variables.

What do you do if you happen to be unwilling to pay the going rate for experienced geologists or less experienced geologists with hard rock degrees (as happened to me in the late 1980s)?

A lot of times, you end up doing the work yourself or end up doing less work per time period—in other words, you suffer. If you hire less experienced people or those with an inadequate background (as I have had to do on occasion because of company hiring policies), you get less done, sometimes spending nearly the same amount as if you had paid a higher rate, depending on your overhead. And you kick yourself a couple times while complaining vehemently to your boss about the company pay rates. There is no real fix to this latter situation, except time and hopefully a management willing to buck the trend or status quo. (Your company may get bought or spun off, thus possibly fixing the management problem, as also happened in the late 1980s and probably also at other times.)

How long does it take to train inexperienced geologists to do the tasks at hand?

This really depends on what you need to have done. For a jasperoid-sampling program down ridgelines in Nevada, training time is minimal, perhaps a few days, at most a week if you also need to teach field location skills (GPS should make this considerably easier than in the past—though map-reading skills should still be required, in case the satellites go down or in case your batteries go dead or you drop your GPS in the water or over some cliff), maybe a day or two more to teach 4WD skills (use a helicopter instead!). If you want detailed rock descriptions or unusual mineralogical determinations (by geologists rather than by x-ray) in somewhat complicated alteration assemblages, for example in IOCG deposits and skarns (iron oxide-copper-gold) or in high and low sulfidation gold-copper systems you had better plan on two weeks minimum (often even with experienced geologists) depending on background and mineralogical aptitude—also, consider sending your geologists on an intensive mineralogy or alteration short course or an appropriate field trip. And, be sure to hire geologists with good observation skills! Always!!

As a just-out-of-school geologist, how should I go about getting a job in mineral exploration and mining?

Here, my ideas are possibly somewhat out of date, but see question number two about creating contacts, elicit help from your professors who are hopefully maintaining some contacts, and contact major and some minor exploration/mining companies.

Consider traveling to mining-oriented states like Nevada if you get some encouragement or just to knock on doors; this may not be done as often as it used to be, but I suspect it would still be considered a sign of initiative.

Sign up for the GSN so you'll get job announcements (not just for Nevada). Although many of these postings will be for people with at least some minimal years of experience, you may be able to apply for some of those jobs, and you will get names of people to contact. Also, jobs for entry-level geologists are advertised through these emails; I got one of these as recently as late May.

Other ideas that work are welcome.

First Jobs in Brief

Once upon a time ... I was a budding but green economic geologist of the hard rock kind (I'm no longer green or budding, but otherwise the same). It was an era when many mineral exploration companies and related outfits looked to hire graduates who had recently completed their Master's degree in geology, a time when summer jobs (not internships as they seem to now be called) were often available to M.S. students prior to graduation, and a time when some summer jobs were available for geologists still working on their Bachelor's degrees. A solid background in mineralogy, petrography, structure, and completion of field camp were usually expected, and for "real" jobs (the so-called full-time jobs, permanent or semi-permanent, which eventually led to variable benefits), it was expected that your graduate degree had focused on hard rock geology of some kind, with a thesis centered around some economic problem—the mapping of a mining district being one classic type of thesis that companies looked for and encouraged (and sometimes funded).

Never mind your background and degrees, however, one could still expect to do some kind of fairly basic field work for one's first summer or two—or even for many of the early years—the details of that work depending on your aptitude, the availability of more creative or responsible assignments (and the possibility of designing self-generated exploration programs), and the type of on-the-job training you might get (or not get). Because we all came from hard rock and mineral-exploration–oriented backgrounds, companies and bosses expected us to want to go out and find something (a gold or moly deposit or prospect, for example), and companies and bosses expected us to be enthusiastic about getting out there and doing it, despite the long hours, hard work, variable to poor accomodations, and generally poor connections to what might have been our home life, if we had managed to create one while in grad school. It was a work-hard–play-hard sort of ethic, one left over from field camp, one that stayed with many of us through the long years. In recompense, you got paid somewhere between one half and two thirds of what petroleum companies were paying M.S. grads, and you got to see lots of new countryside (the Brooks Range in Alaska was quite popular for a couple-three years), and you probably would get some serious 4WD experience and maybe even learn a few basics of helicopter flight (which you would hopefully never have to use).

For my first field job, a summer job, I collected stream sediment and water samples across a good portion of central Nevada. I worked for a young woman younger than my then 25 years; I did most of the navigating, she did most of the driving.

For my second field job, a summer job that ended up lasting four years, with one-year renewals every winter, I was given a hand sample test as part of my interview, an interview conducted by at least two, if not three or four, male geologists who were perhaps mostly in their late twenties to possibly mid-thirties.

After being hired, I was, as I've mentioned before, almost immediately sent out to a semi-remote helicopter camp (town was only a few miles of pavement away, but town was small, and we were all a long way from home, with the company offering transportation and accomodations on days off to whatever "larger" town was nearby*). Our primary job was to collect numerous stream sediment samples and the occasional rock sample on daily traverses down 3 to 5 mile drainages, while also taking scintillometer readings along the way and at sample sites. We worked in 4-man crews (2 women, 2 men in my camp—plus camp cook, a helicopter pilot and fuel truck driver shared between two camps, and an occasional boss). We were fortunate to do some on-the-ground geologic mapping in four areas staked by the company during the course of, and as a result of, our summer explorations.

I hired my own field assistants/partners from 1981 through about 1991, usually one per summer or year, sometimes with jobs lasting as long as two years. I unabashedly practised reverse discrimination as much as possible: looking around, I could see that if I didn't hire women, none or very few would get hired. I rarely ended up hiring someone who didn't know basic rocks and minerals. In fact, the young geologists I interviewed, my age to a few years younger than me, often knew more than the basics, and they usually knew the basics quite well. Some were mineralogical hot shots; others were strong in geochemistry. I would often have to teach sampling methods and what in particular to look for; this basic exploration introduction was often accomplished by an early season field trip designed to see mineralized areas of interest, whether or not those areas were held under claim by us or by others (the latter would, of necessity, involve some stealth operations). My favorite place to go for this recon intro was Yuma, where we could always get good food and pitchers of margaritas (stories of Yuma not yet told).

Because of the orientation of geologists coming in to interview, and the orientation of schools we sometimes recruited at, I rarely had to work with young geologists who had no, or little, interest in the work we would set out to do every morning. I had one or two field assistants who were rather lackluster, maybe showing little inclination to learn the terminology of the field or to put in the required hours of throwing drilling samples into the back of my truck, only to lug them once again from the bed of the pickup to the sample trailer—but I've been lucky and have rarely run across these lackluster types. At least once I was at fault for hiring the wrong person (choosing the right people hasn't always been easy for me, and at least once, with the company refusing to match the going summer rate during the slowdown of the late 80s, the best candidate got away to some worthy competitor, maybe Freeport or Newmont). At least one of the lackluster types was hired by someone else for later in the season, with me being stuck with that person until my temp showed up later in the year. (At Northern Exploration Company, our summer geologists were called "summer hires" or "summer" somethings; at Former Mining Company, we called them "temps," an epithet I gradually adjusted to and finally used.)

During my own slowdown years (and perhaps the trend had already started sometime during the 80s), it gradually came to pass that geologists with solid hard rock basics and Master's degrees became unavailable or less and less abundant, schools changed directions and dropped mining-related degrees and course work, and some schools eventually ran out if funding for field trips and field camps while basic on-campus field methods classes fell by the wayside. Some Schools of Mines became Schools of Earth Sciences. And so it went...

---

* On my first days off, because I refused to be shipped off to the larger town of Las Vegas (at only 4 years in Nevada, I was already a die-hard, not interested in casinos or glitz), I stayed in camp, driving a company truck up to Wheeler Peak one day, and driving around the Caliente area on other days. We had three days off for every 11 worked (that, by the way, fully identifies "Northern Exploration Company" to those in the know).

What Is a Road Song?

For those of you who may not know, I have a series (or at least a tag and a page) about road songs. The road songs are often posted as videos, sometimes with lyrics or links to lyrics, usually without much fanfare. Occasionally, I attach a story, or weave the road song into a story or blog post in some way. You might wonder, though, looking through my list, what exactly qualifies a song as a road song?

Road songs began back in the mid-1980s, when a colleague of mine in the Denver office of Former Mining Company made a tape or two containing a bunch of road songs. That year — it would have had to have been 1988 — I was traveling to other districts, going from project to project, visiting other geologists' properties and projects in a kind of geologist-exchange program. It was educational for me, and the idea was to foster communication and exchange of ideas between districts, and also to foster camaraderie. The districts I'm speaking of here aren't mining districts, which are fairly small geographically, but rather districts making up the company. FORMINCO(Former Mining Company), like many other mining companies including the earlier and now totally defunct Northern Exploration Company (NEC), was organized into districts that were tightly to loosely based on geographic territories. At FORMINCO, we had four districts defined by state lines. The offices of two districts were in Reno, offices of the other two were in Denver.

So one day, I'm in the passenger seat of some other geo's truck, being driven from place to place through thick trees and over rutted and roily dirt roads somewhere in central Idaho, in search of particularly fascinating outcrops — any outcrops would do, given the number of trees and lack of visibility — and JS, the geo-type whose projects I was visiting, pulled two of his newly made road tapes out of the glove box. The tapes, filled with road songs, were meant to be played while on the road, any road. Brainstorming while we listened, all the while watching for outcrops, we came up with a million more road songs, and a rather loose definition.

A road song must contain a word pertaining to roads — road, highway, freeway, byway, street, interstate — or it can instead contain words pertaining to cars, trucks, semis, and railroads or railway cars. Travel songs without mentioning the roads or railroads or the vehicles don't count, and airplane or boat songs are generally out. Exceptions to these rules may exist, but I can't think of any.

The broad definition leaves a lot of room for inclusion, which is why a song like Pancho and Lefty — mostly not about roads or travel, but mentioning "the road" in the opening lines — can be considered a road song, and a classic one at that, because it initially refers to the life of living on the road.

After being inspired by the two JS tapes, I went home and immediately began making 90-minute tapes of my own. I think I made three. I no longer have these tapes, but I sent copies to JS way back when, and he eventually put them on a media more permanent than casette tapes. Then, sometime last year, while talking about old stories at some geological meeting, he mentioned that he still had the songs as originally taped, and he cut me a CD and sent it in the mail. The CD has two of my original three tapes, two or three of his, one or two of someone else's, and several audio cuts from movies that relate to roads, travel, gold, discovery, or the west in general.

And that's the way road songs began: way back when, on a back road in central Idaho, on a mining property I barely remember and would never be able to find again.

Photo: Old Highway 50 (formerly S.R. 2, now S.R. 722) in Smith Creek Valley, looking due east toward the Shoshone Range, with Bunker Hill of the Toiyabe Range in the background (MSRMaps location).

Seen in the Field: A Preserved Headframe

This headframe-ore bin from the mercury diggings at the [Paradise Peak] mine-site provides a strong contrast to the mining and ore processing techniques used in the industry today. The bucket was used to lower miners into the shaft and to lift out mercury ore which was then dumped into the ore bin for later handling. Though the technology of mining has changed, the perseverance and determination of the Nevada Prospector has never wavered. FMC Corporation has preserved this headframe - ore bin in recognition of Nevada Prospectors' dedication to their profession in years past, present, and future and for their continuous contributions to the mining industry. [sic]

Whew! I think the sign verbiage must have been written by someone in the PR office back east.

There are several interesting stories behind this sign, which is located just outside the fence of the old Paradise Peak Mine millsite about eight miles south of Gabbs in west-central Nevada (MSRMaps aerial B&W, Google Maps aerial color). One story tells of the old mecury miners, who stopped their underground diggings within 50 feet (or less) of gold ore, not knowing it was there; another story tells of the two Nevada Prospectors who brought company geologists into the district, which caused the claims to be staked, which caused the soil samples to be taken, and so on. There are many stories about the discovery of the gold deposit, about the geologists who discovered it, and about those who didn't. I won't get into all of them here — I'd need to do just a little more research. One discovery story keys in on the several names by which the ore deposit has been known.

After gold was discovered outcropping on top of a small, now mined-out hill, the geologists who did the discovering exclaimed, "Even a blind pig could have found it!" They said this because the mineralized knob or small hill was easily visible from the Pole Line Road — the main dirt road between Gabbs and Tonopah — and because rock samples from the top of the hill contained as much as 0.25 ounces per ton gold. (I think some samples ran as high as 0.35 opt Au.)

The unnamed knob was located near the north edge of the Granny Goose Well 1:24,000 quadrangle — the knob was split in half by two topo maps, and it was within three miles of the corner of four sheets, thereby meeting one of the rules every mine needs to meet (see below). The mine was first called "Granny Goose" or "The Goose" for short, named after the well or the topo sheet. Corporate types back east decided that "The Goose" didn't match their company image, so various fake names, labels, and other appellations were considered until the alias "Paradise Peak" — stolen from a nearby, often snow-covered peak located several miles to the northeast — was selected. The topographically misleading name fooled a few geotypes into looking for the newly discovered deposit in a totally incorrect location.

In order to preserve some sense of accuracy, and to register outrage at the incorrect labeling of their gold deposit, certain geologists wore football jerseys sporting the team name The Goosers, and some wore baseball caps imprinted with hill, headframe, and the saying, "Even A Blind Pig Could Have Found It!" Sometimes the knob was called Blind Pig Hill, most often it was just called The Knob.

The hill is entirely gone now, replaced by a relatively small hole in the ground. Stripping ratio, because the ore deposit stuck almost completely out of the ground the way it did, was almost negative (well, not really, that's a mathematical impossibility).

Some Locations:

Granny Goose Well - U.S. Board of Geographic Names

Granny Goose Well - 1:24,000 USGS Topographic Map, 1980.

Granny Goose Well - MSR Maps.

The knob and original location of the headframe - MSR Maps, the south end of the knob and headframe on the 1980 Granny Goose Well topo map.

Paradise Peak, the peak, and the Paradise Mine (not the Paradise Peak Mine) - on MSR Maps.

Some References:
John, D. A., 1988, Geologic map of Oligocene and Miocene volcanic rocks, Paradise Peak and western part of the Ione quadrangle, Nye County, Nevada: U.S. Geological Survey, Miscellaneous Field Studies Map MF-2025, scale 1:24,000.

Sillitoe, R. H., and Lorson, R. C., 1994, Epithermal gold-silver-mercury deposits at Paradise Peak, Nevada; ore controls, porphyry gold association, detachment faulting, and supergene oxidation: Economic Geology, v. 89, no. 6, p. 1228-1248 [links to abstract].

Some Requirements for Finding a Mine:

1. Be located within 5 miles of a paved road. ✓ The ore deposit was 2 air miles from pavement, 5 miles on dirt from pavement, and less than a mile from a main gravel road.
2. Be located at or near the corner of 4 topo sheets. ✓ In fact, the ore deposit was bifurcated by two topo sheets and within three miles of the corner of four.
3. Be located less than 30 miles from a bar. ✓ The knob was about 7 miles from a then active, now defunct bar and mini-mart.

The now defunct bar, where many rounds of no-slop, bank-the-eight were played (Austin Rules).