This article originally appeared in the March-April 2011 edition of our sister
magazine, Cottage North. With Hudbay’s Lalor mine near Snow Lake entering
full production, it seemed only fitting for
The Reminder to republish this piece.
Take a look around the Snow Lake of today…it bears little resemblance to the community of five,
15 or even 30 years ago.
Gone are the Main Street businesses of the 1980s. Gone too is the producing mine on the edge of town from the ’90s. And gone is the general feeling of hopelessness from five years back.
However, change is constant and as is the case with most things in life, for everything that disappears, something takes its place.
Snow Lake’s hopelessness has been replaced by enthusiasm and a collective optimism. The shuttered mine on the edge of town is still that, but it now sits across from a 200-person camp that awaits the workers who will sink and build the infrastructure for the massive Lalor mine.
The Lalor (pronounced Law-ler) property is thought by some to be the biggest and best thing to happen to Hudbay (then HBMS) since the early 1900s and its discovery of the Flin Flon mine.
It is definitely the best thing to happen to Snow Lake since Christopher Parres transformed a rusty groundhog push-up into a gold mine that spanned six decades.
Both those instances are the result of people who tramp the bush in search of elusive mineral wealth. The backbone of each community is built upon their pioneering spirit.
But what of pioneers…aren’t they a thing of the past? Not likely, when something as amazing as Lalor comes along.
Visionaries
It took a number of visionaries over decades of exploring, drilling and investigating before one person with the power to do so said, “Dig here!” They all deserve congratulations, because without their foresight and perseverance, we wouldn’t be here today.
Of late there has been talk of recognizing the people who contributed along the way and
with their discovery of Lalor, restarted Snow Lake’s economy and Hudbay’s reputation as mine-finders.
Over the past few years there have been two men who have become the personification of the Lalor discovery – not through their own promotion, far from it, but through media looking to put a face to fame.
Hudson Bay Exploration and Development (HBED) principal geophysicist Alan Vowles and Dave Koop, owner of Koop Geo-technical, both feel that there have been a lot of people left out in past recognition of this major discovery, and both men would like those people to be identified for the integral parts they played.
In an interview that took place over several days and in a number of locations, Koop and Vowles laid out the story of the exceptional Lalor find.
Koop says that first and foremost Jerry Kitzler deserves recognition. Kitzler, now retired, was Snow Lake’s senior exploration geologist for a number of years and spent the majority of his career following up on geological data and the history of the Chisel Lake Basin.
“He, along with Ted Baumgartner, Hudbay’s former exploration manager, had pushed Anglo (Anglo American, HBMS’s parent company at the time) to keep going way back when,” said Koop. “They had actually come within 500 metres of Lalor with hole Dub 33. The rocks were screaming ‘Drill more!’, but like typical Anglo, if you didn’t hit a major discovery within the five or six holes they gave you, they would shut off the tap.”
Chris Roney spent much of his career working as a mine geologist in Snow Lake and understood the Chisel Basin geology.
“It was Chris Roney’s recommendation to Anglo to work with Alan Vowles to come up with a technique that would survey deep enough to reinforce the gut feeling that there was something big down there,” Koop said. “It was Chris’s knowledge of the geology and his exploration program, which included Alan and Koop’s geophysical experimentation, that came up with the two major geophysical targets that eventually led to the discovery.”
“Chris had been in Ireland and came back in 2002 to take charge of the Chisel Basin exploration,” Vowles concurred. “Tom Lewis was in charge and Ed Yarrow was giving the Chisel Basin one last chance.”
Do surveys
Koop’s company, Koop Geotechnical, was seen as the best geophysical contractor in the field and was hired to do the surveys on the project.
After 15 years of being Hudbay’s main contractor, Koop had earned the right to work these claims and said he was honoured to be able to work with such geological and geotechnical geniuses as Kitzler, Roney and Vowles.
So together Vowles and Koop performed several tests before initiating the official survey coverage leading to the two deep targets that would become Lalor.
“We tested a known deep lens that was more than 500 metres below Ghost Lake,” said Vowles. “We then also tested over a hole called CH93-5W1, that had a known target 1100 metres down and we could see that as well.”
Koop noted that Vowles has always possessed the uncanny ability to think outside of the geophysics box. He tweaked and pushed the Crone Geophysics deep penetrating electromagnetic system to new levels, and made a system that had a limit of 300 metres and could see an ore body at 800 metres.
“His knowledge of geophysics is unparalleled and his ability to work so well with people is also worth mentioning,” said Koop. “But he was mentored by one of the best...Alan says Bob Frazer, a chief geophysicist with Hudbay for 30 years, taught him everything he knows.”
Let’s come back to the two deep targets found with the new geophysical technique and Roney and Kitzler’s extensive exploration around the Chisel Basin. They pushed
for and eventually drilled the first one in 2003,
hitting copper mineralization almost 800 metres below surface, but it was not ore grade.
Roney and Kitzler were elated. However, Anglo American was discouraged and elected to pull the funding to drill the second target. It was not too long after this that Roney left Hudbay, and Koop felt that this was based on Anglo preparing to give up on everything that they’d done around Snow Lake.
Fast forward to 2004 and Anglo’s sale of HBMS to OntZinc Corp. and subsequent name change to HudBay Minerals (now simply Hudbay).
Around 2006 Hudbay began humming along with metal production and now had a surplus of money to spend, so the company started pumping it into its exploration program.
Follow-up
Craig Taylor, who came over from Leaf Rapids’ Ruttan mine, became Snow Lake’s new senior geologist. He began doing follow-up on the work that Kitzler and Roney had done.
“From the start, he jumped on the potential of the Chisel Basin and poured a ton of effort into drilling around the area,” said Koop. “He was always interested in the second deep target that Anglo refused to fund and never drilled. Craig, being a true explorationist, did not
give up on this area, and after years of trying to convince management
this was a worthy target, they finally drilled.”
At the time, metals were going through the roof and Hudbay’s exploration arm, HBED, was being given budgets like they’d never seen before. Taylor was given free rein to drill the second target. The long-awaited efforts of so many visionaries were about to finally pay off.
The much-anticipated second hole, DUB168, was plagued with problems from the start and it seemed almost impossible to get the drill crew rolling on it. They had every kind of equipment, road, weather and manpower problem one could imagine. What was supposed to be a three-week job turned into a three-month test of endurance.
Once again, the drill was almost pulled off the target. According to Koop, the drill was at the 600-metre depth when Hudbay management asked to transfer the drill for a deep hole at Trout Lake near Flin Flon.
The request was denied. The geological team just couldn’t pull the drill off the hole and give up on a target that had haunted company geologists for years.
So the drill kept on turning, and with numerous other problems in the field and several other exploration projects on
the go, it seemed to get forgotten.
Sitting down?
On the late March day in 2007 when they hit the Lalor mother lode, Koop said he got an excited phone call from Vowles.
“He asked if I was sitting down,” Koop said with a chuckle. “I said sure, then he said they hit ‘big time’ on our survey work on Chisel. I asked which drill and, basically, what he was talking about? It was like that for everyone who was told, except for Taylor and Vowles. No one knew where this drill was or which target they were drilling. It was like something out of The Twilight Zone.”
Koop says he was already in Snow Lake and that Vowles rushed over from Flin Flon. The core hadn’t been in the core shack for four hours when they saw the first 20 metres of high-grade.
“Sarah Bernauer was looking after that drill and her face lit up with a big smile when she showed us the core,” said Koop. “Alan and I just turned, shook each other’s hand and said congrats. We knew it was just the beginning. Taylor showed up not too long after that and we gave him a big handshake and thanked him for pushing for the target to be drilled.”
Koop’s crew was out on the zone two days later doing the down hole borehole geophysics and came up with more great news. Not only did they see that there were more lenses to the side of the discovery hole, but the borehole showed another major target ahead of the hole.
They deepened the hole and came up with 30 more metres of high-grade zinc. The second hole, Dub169, hit 20 metres of high-grade gold.
“Not a bad way to start drilling off an ore body,” said Koop.
Both Vowles and Koop are adamant that several situations kept this hole from being drilled, but they stress that without the teamwork of everyone involved, from the secretary to the core cutter, a drill program couldn’t have been organized.
“Yes, there are always key people and sometimes they are the people who collected the data from years past to enable those in the future to do their best,” said Koop. “It is always a scary thing to try to pick a few heroes when the whole team needs to be properly thanked. HBED has been the backbone of Hudbay for over 80 years. It goes to show that you can’t mine them if you can’t find them!”
