gold mining thing.

[DPete]

We had a dredge near here " La Grange Gold Dredge " that was pretty much intact until someone bought it and disassembled it for shipment out of the country. I can't imagine doing so. We used to be able to board it and explore back in the 70's. It turned the ground upside down and left many acres of cobble rock tailings in huge windrows off the discharge belt. Wish I had taken pics of it, here is all I could find on the net, no bucket boom attached.

 

[buggyman]

That old dredge looks better than it did in the 70's, that would be the 1970's ))))

 

[Hutch]

my dentist uses one of these................

 

[spitzair]

Came across this one while flying around near Dawson City today, so had to land to check it out! It's really neat to see how it was built and how it worked. A lot of the guts have been removed but a lot of it was still there. I couldn't climb into the machine too far because the wood was rotten and it would've been a long fall to the ice in the bottom, but from what I saw this thing had 22 control levers in the operator's cab, a whole rack of electrical stuff and who knows what else! There's a whole bunch of these things in various states of decay all over the place up here! The internet where I'm at is very unreliable so if the pictures don't make it I'll put them up when I get back home.

Cheers

 

[245dlc]

Nice pictures Spitzair my dad use to work up there in the early seventies and my uncle lived near Carcross until about 2000, one of these days I'll make it up there and do some exploring.

 

[cw4Bray]

The one I saw in the Killbuck mountains AK. was hydro-electric powered, I wonder how many of them were fueled ?

 

[Coaldust]

There is a picturesque one on the hill above Runway 3/21 in Nome. Ghostly when it’s foggy out. I should take a picture.

 

[cw4Bray]

When you see the amount of work a gold dredge does, it's a wonder they aren't still working today. In the tailing area, the fishing for arctic greyling is fantastic and wildlife seems to flourish in an area that otherwise wouldn't support much life.

The umbilical for the Nyac dredge is well over 10 miles long. The power cable, would be worth more than it's weight in gold in today's dollars. I wonder how big a crew it would take to splice and move the cable, And would they splice while it was live, or shut down for maintenance, my guess ? A universal plug and they could have a momentary power interruption while adding sections of wire.

here's another shot of your Nome dredge; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad_nkRHTKdc

 

[Coaldust]

Side note: Calista Corp is studying the Grayling in the NYAC area for alarming levels of Mercury.

The Tuluksak River is a fascinating area with lots of history. I don’t know much about it besides my experience with fuel & lube customers working there. I did get an opportunity to fly over it. That’s amazing matrix of Tetris block shaped tailings ponds.

 

[cw4Bray]

The natives are probably paying fishermen big money, to catch fish for heavy metal testing. I heard stories of briefcases of gold being flown out on a regular basis. So they were probably using quicksilver. Would they get away with using mercury, today ?

 

[Coaldust]

Much of the Mercury is being reclaimed as the old tailings get processed again.

 

[cw4Bray]

Sounds like a huge operation!!