ODDS ‘N’ SODS — A frosty mine camp

As a result of a lunch meeting I had in 1951 with a man from New York, I was hired on as a mine foreman at an operation near Keno in the Yukon.

Our crew consisted of a number of capable graduates from the Haileybury School of Mines, including Eric Norppa, Val Williams, Bill Taylor and a few others. My crew also consisted of Tom and Bert Cross, Glen Upton, Bob Martin and, later on, Dave McWatters. Our cook was Peter Duke, who had taken a bartender’s course in Vancouver. The crew and I supplied the booze, and Duke supplied the mix. We never failed to have a couple of cocktails before our evening meal.

Our base of operations was a couple of fine old log cabins on the main street of Keno, together with some tents set up in the backyard.

We worked for Jersey Yukon, which had some claims on Galena Hill and Faro Gulch. At the latter, an adit had been driven up fairly high, and another, which was barren, was driven about 400 vertical ft. lower. We did find, however, some grey copper in a nearby dump that yielded a lot of silver.

We built a road to the proposed portal site, and the engineering staff went ahead with the construction of the bunkhouse, cookery and dry. Norppa, a Finlander, saw to it that we had a sauna in the dry. There was also an artesian well just above the dry and, for a little while at least, we had gravity fed water. As far as water for the drills, I had to haul snow up the hill and melt it (I had a stove set up in the portal shack). We would then fill a pressure tank made from an old mine car, roll it in and attach the hose from the airline.

We had a well-equipped mine there except for the lack of a mechanical mucker.

Myles Flynn, the New Yorker who hired me, asked about a price to contract out the mucking. I told him it would cost $21 per ft. if by hand and $14 per ft.

if he’d get us an Eimco 12B mucker. We got our machine.

The first 400 ft. of the upper adit at Faro Gulch was in permafrost, which seeped. Driving the adit was a problem as it had to be reinforced with timber, which slowed our advance and reduced our earnings.

In the spring of 1952, word came back from New York that the operation was costing too much money, so we were told to cut back.

It was then that Dick McCombe, who managed the Yukeno property, where an adit was being driven, offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse. I then moved my little crew from Faro Gulch to the workings at Galena Hill.

— The author, a retired miner, resides in Hedley, B.C.