Getting ready to go mining...

The Holloway Bar placer mine on McDame Creek, while on a large piece of property, is a small gold mining operation. In fact, it is capable of and often operated by a single person, Scott. While it's easier with two or more, being able to run everything with one person gives the utmost flexibility, although probably at the cost of a little production.

However, it's not just a matter of pouring the fuel to the equipment and digging a hole - there's an awful lot of preparation that goes into a little bit of mining.

For example, Scott and Christina have been on the property for almost a month now and are just getting ready to start mining for the 2008 season. But first, the camp has to be opened up and the waterline hooked up. Since it was a late spring this year, that involved chopping through about a half-meter of ice in the head box to get the water flowing. The water system is essential and is usually right at the top of the to-do list each spring – it serves as the camp water supply, but more importantly, gravity pushes it through the turbine to generate camp power.

There's also a myriad of small (and large) repairs to be done after a tough Northern winter – this year's projects included some minor modifications to last year's bridge repairs, a last-minute emergency repair to the wood-fired hot water system (you can't have a bath when the heater's sprung a leak!), some work on the webcams, fixing a stuck-spool in the hydraulic system of the excavator, and this year's major spring project, fixing up the dump truck and getting it ready to haul.

The job started with paint. But with the closest paint shop hundreds of miles away, it would have to be fully completed in the bush. So, Scott loaded up the Holloway Bar buggy (the small trailer towed by the ATV) with a gas-powered portable compressed and waited for a couple of good days to do the actual painting. Good weather was essential as this was to be an outdoor job!

Sanding, lots of it, was the first task at hand. Preparing the body is key to a successful paint job. Once the sanding was done, it was time to mask off the areas of the truck that shouldn't be painted, such as the chrome trim pieces and the windows.

Since white was the first colour to be sprayed, all of the non-white parts were again covered up with masking tape and last week's newspaper. This is where you really hope for some good weather. As luck would have it, the weather held and the white went on without a hitch.

After drying for a day or two, the red was next to be painted. The masking was reversed and the fresh white paint covered up so the rest of the cab could be painted red. Again, good weather was needed for this part of the job.

The red went on and things are starting to look pretty good now – the tape's been peeled off and the shiny new red and white paint job has really made this truck look like a sweetheart.

However, if you've spent any time browsing through hollowaybar.com, you're probably aware that nothing is really finished at Holloway Bar until the dragon makes it's appearance. So, Scott broke out the stencil and a bit of green paint and put the dragon on the door to make the job complete.

And that's how you turn a blue dump truck into a red and white dump truck, ready to haul raw material to the Wizard for processing.

That's a little more insight into what it takes to run the Holloway Bar placer mine. So, when you're looking at the webcams and wondering when the mining will start, just keep in mind that there's a lot happening behind the scenes. This isn't a "hit and run" gold operation - we're here for the long haul - so we take the time to do the job right. Scott's training as a journeyman autobody technician sure came in handy on this job...

Be sure to watch the Holloway Bar webcams in the coming weeks as the Wizard gold plant and the rest of the Holloway Bar mining equipment springs to life to lead off another mining season in the Cassiar mountains.