Second straight weekly decline puts pressure on $22 million season
Dominion Creek, Yukon. Parker Schnabel’s gold season is in danger of coming off track. Fourteen weeks in, the 31-year-old miner has banked more than $22 million in gold, but his weekly totals are falling, and a costly breakdown at Dominion Creek this week made things worse.
Schnabel, who has taken a more hands-off role this year, is running four wash plants, an operation he admits is “crazy” but still has “a long ways to go.” He is spending about $100,000 a day, close to $1 million a week, and cannot afford a further slide.
Numbers slipping
Last week’s haul was the worst of the season so far. This week brought little relief: the operation produced 433.4 ounces, down from 453 ounces the week before. That is the second consecutive drop. Season production now stands at 6,742.3 ounces.
Two of the plants, Lucifer and Big Red, working side by side in the Golden Mile, delivered 236.4 ounces between them, worth more than $820,000.
“It’s a little disheartening. It’s a bit scary,” Schnabel said of the slump. “Things have definitely slowed down since the beginning of the season. We started really good. We’re kind of going downhill.”
Ground running out
The operation is also running low on pay dirt at some sites. At Kenan Stewart’s, pit one is nearly mined out, and Schnabel wants a second pit, twice the size, finished by season’s end. At Dominion, the wash plant Bob has half of the massive bridge cut left to mine. Lucifer and Big Red are only a third of the way through the Golden Mile.
Schnabel’s message to his crew was blunt. Asked whether he was telling them to find better ground, he said he was trying to do it nicely. A crew member replied that it was too late for that.
New hire, big problem
The week’s biggest setback came when Lucifer’s super stacker jammed, causing the generator to surge and smoke and shutting the plant down. The unit was bought earlier this season with 20,000 hours already on the clock.
The plant was under the watch of Rick Raymond, a new hire who had defected from Tony Beets’ crew. Raymond had been given the important job of feeding the plant, loading pay into the hopper, which carries it up the 120-foot super stacker. Earlier, he had been warned over the radio to aim for the center of the hopper because material was spilling over the back.
“It looks like it was running for a while and the kid didn’t notice,” said a supervisor. “So now we got to go do a whole pile of shoveling.” Crews estimated the plant would be down for about an hour, and the supervisor blamed “electric gremlins” as well. Sean, a crew member, spotted the pile-up in time to prevent worse damage.
Raymond was quickly moved off the job. “Rick just isn’t cutting it,” the supervisor said. “I don’t know what they did over at Beets there, but he’s not really getting the program here.” Sean was asked to take over feeding Lucifer from a loader, and once the plant was back up, the supervisor noted that it “means we’re making money.”
Morale still positive
Despite the problems, some workers say conditions at Schnabel’s operation have improved. One newcomer, hired three days earlier, said the food and camp are better, the people are friendly, “you actually get appreciated for the work that you do.”
Schnabel has stressed the priority is to keep the wash plants running at all costs, which means hiring more people.
“This week, numbers have gone down again and we really need to step it up,” he said. “Good plants, good people, hopefully some good ground. Then we’ll make it.”
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