Opinion: Retreating ice reveals riches
Environment: Ore deposits once hidden by glaciers are now being discovered
The retreat of glaciers, such as the Salmon Glacier near Stewart, allows geologists and prospectors access to previously untouched land.
The effects of climate change on my hometown of Stewart, north of Prince Rupert, are a poignant example of change over my lifetime. The winter of 2014-15 is a record-low snow year, and for the first time in any local’s memory, there wasn’t any snow on the ground at Christmas. My buddies who love snowmobiling have been crying the blues. It certainly wasn’t always this way.
Growing up in Stewart during the 1970s, it was routine to have over a metre of snow fall overnight, and school was always open. The big employer in town was the Granduc copper mine, which held the world record for annual snowfall for several years in the 1970s.
I followed my family tradition of entering the mining industry, studying geology at the University of British Columbia. At the time, the study of climate change was in its infancy. We studied glaciology, geomorphology, as well as economic geology, and my hunt for gold mines has blossomed into a 20-plus-year career. Following graduation, I came back to Stewart, in the same mountains that my father Ian and my uncle Don McLeod worked as underground miners. In 1993, I started working as a geologist for Lac Minerals, drilling the Red Mountain gold property 15 kilometres east of Stewart. Two years later, Lac was acquired by mining giant Barrick Gold, and the project was essentially abandoned for the next 20 years.
In 2014, as CEO of IDM Mining, named in honour of my father and uncle, I signed an option agreement to acquire the rights to Red Mountain and complete the unfinished business of putting the deposit into production.
When I returned to the property, I hardly recognized it. The hanging glaciers that are the major outlet for the giant Cambria Icefield had retreated as far as two kilometres. If there is any benefit for global warming, it is to exploration geologists such as myself. Here was an opportunity to prospect newly exposed bedrock, never before seen by a prospector or geologist.
In mineral exploration, most of our efforts involve looking for ore deposits that are hidden under overburden, such as glacial till, desert sands or Arctic tundra. If a mineralized occurrence is outcropping, odds are that it would have been already discovered. It is quite rare in North America to explore rocks that have never before been seen by another prospector. The rapid glacial retreat has led to multiple recent discoveries in northwestern B.C.
In the Stewart area, Pretium Resources is developing its Valley of the Kings deposit. This spectacular deposit of gold and silver mineralization was discovered in the last decade due to retreating ice. I believe that Valley of the Kings will be one of the richest mines in history. The giant Mitchell deposit owned by Seabridge Gold also melted out from under ice cover during the past 20 years.
Back to Red Mountain. I came across a website with research led by Dan Smith, a geography professor at the University of Victoria. He studied the retreat of the Bromley Glacier, on our claims south of the Red Mountain deposit. I was under the impression that the glaciers of northwestern B.C. had been progressively retreating since the Wisconsian glacial maximum, over 8,000 years ago.
Dan’s team collected samples of preserved wood from mats within the glacier’s lateral moraine. Advancing glaciers would bulldoze trees on the adjacent valley walls, later preserved under covers of moraine. Over the past 2,500 years, the Bromley Glacier has repeatedly advanced and retreated significantly four separate times.
As a scientist, I acknowledge the research suggesting our current period of anthropogenic global warming. Certainly on the negative side, some of the majestic glaciers of my youth are shadows of their former glory. The Bear Glacier sits adjacent to Highway 37A into Stewart; as a teenager, I would windsurf in the lake at its towering terminus, dodging icebergs. Bear Glacier has retreated up its source valley. Probably when my children are grown, it will be gone.
My expertise is as a prospector for gold and an exploration geologist. I am lucky to be one of the few to benefit from climate change, and hopefully my hometown of Stewart can benefit too by building a new gold mine at Red Mountain.
Rob McLeod is an exploration geologist and the chief executive officer of IDM Mining.
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