63

The bedrock valley is steeper in the lower part than in the upper, for
just above Antler Creek flat the bedrock is at the surface, whereas from the
results of borings it is known to be over 140 feet below the surface in Antler
valley opposite the lower part of Wolfe creek. The valley is, therefore,.
hanging with respect to Antler creek. The creek is about 14 miles long
and has a fall of 600 feet in this distance.

Some work was done on the creek in the early days when the shallow
ground in the lower part of the creek was worked down to bedrock.
Hydraulicking of the higher ground about half a mile above the mouth
and 200 feet above Antler, was begun in 1901 by the Wolf Creek Mining
Company, of which B. A. Lasell was manager, who had acquired two
half-mile leases extending upstream from the mouth of the creek. Water
was brought on the ground by a ditch from Antler creek. A No. 4 monitor
was used under a head of about 250 feet. Later the ditch and sluice
flume were enlarged and a second monitor and pipe-line installed. Work
was continued by the company until 1912.1 The channel—or rather a
series of rock benches nearly flat in some places but irregular and hum-
mocky in others and rising one above the other upstream—was found to
be 200 to 250 feet wide. The pit was finally extended upstream for about
one-quarter mile, the right rim being exposed for part of the distance. The
bank, consisting of glacial clay underlain by gravels, varied in height
from 40 to 80 feet. A thick body of glacial gravels partly cemented forms
the left bank in the lower part of the pit. In the upper part of the pit
where the last work was done, the bedrock is only about 100 feet below the
ditch, so that only a small head was available for hydraulicking. Here
the bedrock is soft and deeply weathered, the surface in places consisting of
various coloured residual clays formed from the disintegration of the bed-
rock. Glacial clay quite unweathered overlies the residual clay and shows
that the weathering of the bedrock must have taken place before the
deposition of the clay. No gold was found. on this soft bedrock, possibly
because, as noted by the miners at many places in the region, such rock
will not retain placer gold, that is, it does not furnish good riffles for catching
andretaining the gold. Itisprobable, also, that the soft rock did not formerly
form part of the bed of a stream, for had it done so the soft rock would have
been removed by the action of the stream. The gold obtained in the work-
ings is said to have occurred on or in the bedrock, in places where the
rock was hard and creviced, and in the gravels resting on bedrock. It
may be, as held by the miners, that this gold-bearing channel is an aban-
doned bench or old channel of Antler creek, but if so it must have been
considerably eroded at a later time, for the bedrock in the channel as a
whole has a steep gradient. The property had the advantages of a fair
water supply and good facilities for the disposal of tailings, and is said to
have yielded fair returns above expenses for several years. A run of forty
to forty-five days in the spring and about the same in the autumn was
usually obtained and 80,000 to 150,000 yards of dirt were moved annually.
In 1915 the property was under bond to C. W. Moore, who worked it
with a small force. Hydraulicking was carried on in the lower west side
of the pit where a high bank of partly cemented gravels occurs, but the

1Ann. Repts., Minister of Mines, B.C., 1901-1912.
20285—5}