Old mine, new ways.

• Author: Kell, Lori
• Position: Cambior Alaska Inc. uses new mining techniques in the reopened Valdez Creek Mine - Company profile

Old Mine, New Ways

Improvements at Alaska's largest open-pit placer mine, the Valdez Creek Mine, are increasing gold yields.

Since the early 1990s, the Valdez Creek mining district near Cantwell in Interior Alaska has proved to be an area filled with rich gold placer deposits. But miners have been challenged to economically tap the resources. Now, newly acquired technology is allowing Valdez Creek Mine's owners to realize record yields from the property.

In the early 1900s, gold went for $17 to $18 an ounce, and men worked five to six months a year at wages of $1 per hour. Today, gold prices are approximately $360 an ounce; hourly wages for employees are in double figures; and some placer gold mines operate year-round.

Cambior Alaska Inc., the Alaska subsidiary of a major Canadian gold producer based in Montreal, Quebec, became the operator of Valdez Creek last fall, when the firm acquired nearly 25 percent additional interest in the project. Cambior Alaska now owns 75 percent of the mine.

With production in full swing, 1991 looks to be very promising in terms of gold yield. "We are looking to produce approximately 80,000 ounces of gold by the end of the year," says Alison Knapp, spokeswoman for Cambior.

Last year, operating only from August through December, the mine produced 10,000 ounces. Production at Valdez Creek Mine had been halted because of weak gold prices and the large investment required to divert Valdez Creek so that the gold-bearing gravel upstream could be mined. But in the summer of 1990, higher gold prices persuaded Cambior and partner Camindex Resources Inc., based in Toronto, Canada, to resume mining and move ahead with improvements.

Valdez Creek Mine, sometimes referred to as the Denali Mine, is Alaska's largest open-pit placer mine. Located on the old Denali townsite some 215 miles north of Anchorage and 60 miles east of Cantwell, the mine is in the Valdez Creek mining district on the western flank of the Clearwater Mountains. It lies just upstream from the confluence of the Susitna River and Valdez Creek.

The mine was operated from 1984 through 1989 by Valdez Creek Mining Co. Owned by three mining firms -- Camindex Mines Ltd., Cambior Alaska and American Barrick Corp. -- the Valdez Creek Mine was Alaska's largest gold mine for five of its six years and produced more than 200,000 ounces of refined gold. The property had been obtained in 1983 from Curt Ames and Doug Clark, who had operated the mine on a smaller scale...