ODDS’N’SODS — The nose knows

In the summer of 1961, a mining company hired me, a summer geology student, to assist Bill Mundle in mapping a property that had recently been optioned from a local prospector and his partners.

The property was situated near Mink Lake in the vicinity of Red Lake, Ont., and had recently been ravaged by a forest fire — an event that cleaned off most of the outcrop we were to examine.

The current investigation was the result of some good grab sample assays the prospector and his native assistant collected from the outcrop, which was near a small pothole lake.

According to the prospector, he had focused on this site because his assistant said he smelled gold there. The four assays ranged from trace amounts to 0.24 oz. per ton, and the sample location had been subject to a plugger and a few sticks of dynamite. The face of the small trench did not look terribly interesting, as there were no quartz veins or silicification.

There was a minor amount of disseminated carbon present as well as a 4-inch zone containing numerous pyrite cubes, but these weren’t occurrences that made gold mines. We thoroughly sampled the trench, however, and investigated the rest of the 6-claim group.

The ground, which had last been worked in the 1930s, boasted a half-dozen bedrock trenches, the largest of which was 14 ft. long, 8 ft. wide and 6 ft.

deep. I was impressed with the size of the trenches and the labor that must have been expended in their development. The trenches were sunk on a quarter stringer system which, even to our untrained eyes, looked hungry. Subsequent observations proved this observation correct. We carried out mapping and sampling on the rest of the property and were soon back at the trench where Bill’s assistant claimed to have smelled gold.

While Bill put the final touches on the field notes and maps, I found myself back in the trench absent-mindedly working at a slab of rock with the pick-end of my rock hammer. The rock, which was exposed in the trench face near the surface, was in a small, 6-inch shear zone that had accumulated a considerable amount of humus.

After 15 minutes of diligent work, I was rewarded with the dirty slab of rock, which I set on the edge of the trench. I was in for a surprise, however, when I blew the humus from my hand — it was covered in fine-grained free gold.

I casually pointed out my find to Bill, and we practically dove for the rock I had won from the shear zone. On its surface, but partly masked by the humus, was some of the best gold leaf I had ever seen.

The largest leaf was about three-quarters of an inch wide and curled like a ram’s horn. There was evidence of similar leaves but they had been damaged by the extraction of the slab. We set to work, investigating the small shear in detail and sampling everything in sight. Our adrenaline pumped hard for the rest of the day.

On Monday morning we delivered our samples to the mine assay office and anxiously awaited the results. As expected, most of the samples from the property came back trace. The samples from the little shear zone, however, registered triple-digit-ounce per ton. We had a property that required further investigation. The guys in the assay office were not pleased with our efforts, however; there was so much free gold in some of our samples that the assay facilities were salted for days.

The property was subjected to further prospecting that fall but no extension of our find was uncovered. The location was drilled extensively for years afterward, but it was eventually dropped. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been explored since.

I still puzzle over whether that prospector’s assistant really smelled gold.

— The author, a consulting geologist, resides in Thunder Bay, Ont.