Copper Pass Mine NWT.

A brief history…very brief, as I cannot find very much information on the mine.

The mine is located near Sachowia Point,in the Hearne Channel, of the East Arm Great Slave Lake,on Sachowia Lake. N62^o24’53”,W111^o51’15”.

Copper Pass was a minor past producer of nickel and bismuth. There were various attempts at exploration and mining that date back to 1940. The “mineralization occurs in fractures filled with quartz and carbonate within Archean metavolcanics and minor associated sediments of the Yellowknife Group and within granite dykes. Metallic minerals that have been reported are: niccolite, skutterudite, gersdorffite, rammelsbergite, annabergite, erythrite, arsenopyrite, native antimony, pyrite and chalcopyrite. The main zone, which occurs near the margin of a diabase dyke, is located across the SW limb of a conjugate fault system with the massive niccolite lens in a hanging-wall felsite-breccia along a minor NE striking fault." "Mineralization appears to be associated particularly with bands of red granite which have been sheared and brecciated, and which have been veined or cemented by carbonate and lesser quartz. Niccolite, skutterudite, gersdorffite, rammelsbergite, arsenopyrite, pyrite and chalcopyrite occur in structurally controlled quartz-carbonate veins and vein breccias."

For those of you (myself included) that don’t understand the above information, it means that the mine was a very minor player in the mining seen. It operated for only a year or two and produced very little nickel.

Our day starts with breakfast and a daily briefing at 0545h followed by packing up our gear and lunch and heading to the float plane base for 0630h. There we have a 20 minute safety video on what to do if the plane ditches in water and flips over, and a lifejacket demonstration, and then we are off to Copper Pass.

The flight is only 45 minutes, then a few laps around the site for photos and aerial inspection, land and unload the twin otter and begin work. The work day is around 10 hours of digging, lifting and carrying, taking notes and photos and samples, the wait for the otter to return, load it and fly back to Yellowknife, where we classify and prepair samples for the lab, pack gear for the next day and make dinner and lunches. Bed by 2200h.

The site is heavily forested with black spruce, dwarf willow, alder, birch and Labrador tea, cinquefoil, rose, blueberry, raspberry, bearberry and a host of other wildflowers and berries I cannot identify. There are low swampy peat bogs and very high rock outcroppings with sheer cliff faces. The camp is on a point in Sachowia lake, a ½ km walk up one of the mountains through the trees to the Main showing, through the peat bog to the Main showing second trench, ½ km through the woods to the Pond area and another trench, the east showing is over a kilometer away through the woods, bogs and over mountains, through all this we were accompanied by mosquitoes, deerflies and every other biting insect around. I think you get the picture.

We finished the work on site by Friday and used our 2 day off shipping samples, collecting equipment and gear for the next project (Contwoyto Lake) doing laundry and shopping for food and other supplies. What a fun way to spend your time off!

Cheers

P.S. i am trying to load photos, but the hotel internet service is super slow and cuts out on a regular basis.