From exploration through reclamation, Susan Craig worked on the Brewery Creek gold mine near Dawson. Now, she’s moved on to Freegold Mountain.
Whitehorse’s Susan Craig has spent most of the last 19 years working on gold mining projects in the Yukon. Now, as president and director of Vancouver-based Northern Freegold Resources, she’s working to develop the Freegold Mountain project near Carmacks. Craig says a well run mine can do its thing without long-term damage to the environment. She spoke with UHB about responsible development, co-chairing the massive Vancouver Mineral Exploration Roundup conference, and her advice to young geologists entering a tough job market.
On her first visit to the Yukon, in 1990:
Loki Gold Corp. had optioned into the Brewery Creek property. Noranda was running it at the time. Loki had to spend $4-million to earn 49 per cent, and had probably spent close to half of that by the time I went to the property, just outside of Dawson City. My first trip was to go up and see what Noranda had spent our money on and look at the results and get a handle on what was going on. They were having some good exploration success.
I was fortunate with Brewery Creek. I spent a lot of time talking to investors and going to trade shows. When Loki got control of the project, I stayed with it. I spent time living in Dawson as the community liaison, telling people about the project. I still see people who say, ‘We never knew your name but you were that nice Loki lady.’
I was there throughout the permitting. When it went into construction, I was there. When the mine went into production, I was there, and I was there for some of the closure. I got a wealth of knowledge that you can’t get from school. I’m quite proud of the work we did there, particularly the reclamation.
On Brewery Creek’s brief, four-year mine life:
Unfortunately, we were in production at the bottom of the last downturn in prices. When we were in the engineering phase of Brewery Creek, the gold price was high. We designed a series of small open pits based on $375 per ounce gold, which at that point was conservative because gold was at $460 per ounce. By the time we got into production gold was at $220. But what impressed me was the commitment to progressive reclamation. It’s a great example of how reclamation commitments can be real if you have the right people.
On the bitterness Northerners feel over mine sites left to be cleaned up at public expense:
We have to realize that mining practices have changed. What was done in the past used the best technology at the time. I’m not justifying it, but at the same time we all used to use leaded gas for our cars. When we figured out that wasn’t good we switched and now we’re all using unleaded gas. It’s been a learning experience.
I did some research on historical permitting practices, particularly looking at the security that was posted for a number of different projects. In hindsight, those rules were not correct, but the rules are changing. These days, if your project is going to go to the development stage, it has to be done right. My mantra is responsible development. It takes effort, but in my mind a project – whether it’s mining or a pipeline or a dam or a shopping mall – has to be done right.
On the gold still in the ground at Brewery Creek:
If it hadn’t been reclaimed we could get it going again. It’s a Catch-22. A lot of the small open pits were backfilled and reclaimed. The recovery plant and the ponds have been reclaimed or removed. We all believed in the reclamation we were doing.
It was a progressive reclamation. We’d finish mining one of the pits and reclaim it while we went on to the next one. We probably left a lot of gold in the pits but it’s a balancing act.
On how the reclamation bond at Brewery Creek worked:
The reclamation bond was tied to the amount of mining that got done by measuring the amount of material that got loaded onto the heap leach pad. To me that makes sense. The more disturbances you make, the more you pay. If you ask a company to put X amount of dollars up front, that may cause issues with the development of the project. A lot of bonds are staged in this way now. At Brewery Creek there were also certain guidelines. If by a certain time there wasn’t enough money in the fund, the company had to top that up. The bond was in the $8-million to $9-million dollar range.
On the history of Freegold Mountain:
There’s been exploration for 80 years, and a lot of placer mining, but no mines. Our CEO, Bill Harris . . . his dad was a prospector who came up to work on the Alaska Highway and was taught to prospect by local first nation folks. His dad connected with a fellow named Fritz Guder, who first found the hardrock gold and copper in the Freegold Mountain area. Bill’s dad, Glen Harris, worked with Fritz and started taking Bill out in the field when he was about five years old. It was a typical prospector model: stake some claims, do a bit of work, option it to a junior company, junior does a bit more work, maybe drill a few holes. At one point, there were 80 companies in the area that we now have all in one land package. So there was a lot of work done, but nobody would talk to each other. We brought all the land packages together and are looking at them as a whole.
On Freegold’s recent drilling results, which brought the company’s share price from 15 cents in late December to 66 cents:
We wanted to be able to do some resource calculations to show that there is gold in the ground. In the junior exploration market and in the stock market, people respond to resources in the ground that have been vetted by a 43-101 resource calculation. Our goal this year was to do enough drilling to do those resource calculations. We were fortunate that the first hole that we drilled in one of our main targets, the Nucleus Zone (which was a low-grade, bulk tonnage target), hit some high-grade mineralization. In the last while we’ve put out a lot of results that identify a higher-grade trend within our low-grade target. If anything, that will add ounces in the ground.
We will have resource calculations coming out in the second quarter of 2009. That’s what’s garnering the attention in this market.
On the infrastructure around Freegold Mountain:
The existing road, the Freegold Mountain road, is government maintained and runs about 60 kilometres from the highway to our property. To the east of us, Western Copper Corporation [which is developing a copper mine near Carmacks] has just gone through the environmental assessment process and is getting the required permits.
One of the main concerns raised by the people of Carmacks was the traffic passing through their town from both these projects. There have been discussions about building a bypass around Carmacks.
As for power, it depends on what happens to Western Copper. Power may come to them along the Freegold Mountain road or it may come down from the Minto copper mine, which is not too far away. Again, it’s our understanding that Western Copper is talking about power into their project and if that happens, we’re only seven kilometres away. It’s a huge asset.
On coming out of university and into a tough job market:
When I graduated as a petroleum geologist from the University of Calgary, in 1986, there were no jobs so I went back to my hometown of Thunder Bay [Ontario] and worked with the regional government geologist. But after a while there was no work there either so I went back to school – because I could get money to go to school. So I did my master’s degree.
It’s definitely a cyclical business. If you told me when I went in to be a petroleum geologist that I’d end up doing the things that I’ve done, I’d never have believed you, but it’s like any career path these days. You have to be adaptable. I moved to Vancouver in 1990 and got in with a group of folks that had a group of junior companies. They were well respected in the business and I learned a whole bunch of different things from them.
On the best advice for recently graduated geology students who can’t find a job:
Persevere. Be willing to jump in and do whatever. Sometimes you look at a task and you think, ‘OK, this isn’t what I was trained to do.’ But you never know when that skill set is going to come in handy.
And volunteer. I do a lot of volunteer work in the industry and that’s where I’ve made most of my contacts. I co-chaired the Vancouver Mineral Exploration Roundup this year and one thing that had to get done was stuffing the delegate bags. It’s always volunteers doing it. A lot of times my friends and I looked to see the way that people take on the job of stuffing bags. It’s not a fun chore, but it needs to be done. If you watch people and they get it done, you think, ‘If they’re going to approach that task that way, hopefully when they’re in the field they’ll approach things the same way.’
On her first year as co-chair of Vancouver’s Roundup conference:
I’ve been involved with several organizations, including the Yukon Chamber of Mines and the Vancouver Mineral Exploration Group. The Roundup committee at AME BC [the Association for Mineral Exploration of British Columbia] is one of the best I’ve ever been on. There’s a template to follow, the people on the committee are very professional, and there are staff from the AME to support it. It’s a great conference, and the hat has to go off to the whole committee.
On the sense she got from this year’s conference:
We’re clearly in tough economic times, but the Roundup emphasized for me that geologists are eternal optimists. It was much more upbeat than we expected. Our attendance was higher than expected. We ended up with 5,800 registrants (last year there were about 6,800, but this year was on par with two years ago). To me, it emphasized that the technical talks and short courses and the core shacks and map tents were of high quality. To those of us putting on a technical conference, that’s what we want to hear.
