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View Full Version : Cononish Gold mine, Tyndrum – December 2008



wolfism
06-11-2009, 12:33 AM
Cononish is special – because Scotland has never been a major gold-producing country, and there are few modern hard-rock metal mines here. We never told the story of how we first discovered and explored the gold mine, because others found out about our discovery by reading private messages, and posted it in public. We were sickened, and put off posting on forums for a long time.

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I’ll begin at the start. Pincheck always chuckles about my list, the sheet of paper which is added to as fast as places are crossed off. In the run up to Christmas, I mentioned the various mines in the Tyndrum area that I’d been researching, and we debated which would be the most likely to be explorable. We agreed to go with the hunch that the gold mine at Cononish, mothballed for several years, would be worth a three mile trek from the nearest road into the mountains. The sky was cloudy on Hogmanay 2008, but rather than being mild, the glen was freezing cold, and the burn was fringed with a crust of ice. We parked up then hiked along a farm track past peat hummocks and straggles of blackface sheep: it was well into the afternoon by the time we climbed up the side of Beinn Chuirn and reached the mine’s main portal.

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Outside, there are a couple of Nissen huts sitting on a platform of mine arisings, plus a fan of narrow gauge railway sidings; downhill from the portal, there are three settling ponds which are there to deal with the mine tailings. The huts are used to store the 15 kilometres of "drill core" that the previous owners spent several years – and £100 a metre – removing from the mountain to find proof of gold and silver. On the sheer rock face to the north, the waterfall of Allt Eas Anie was completely frozen – but inside the steel gate, the adit still had running water: trickling, dripping and lying between the narrow gauge rails. Like most mine adits, the drive at Cononish runs at a gradient so that the mine drains itself. We edged past a rake of rusty tipper wagons, then made our way into the gloom, the adit gradually turning westwards then back eastwards again, with a couple of short spurs, and a shaft leading upwards, around 350 metres in, which connects to an old lead mine.

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I say Scotland has never been a major gold-producing country … but it has a continuous history of gold mining stretching back for nine centuries. The first record was a title granted by King David 1st to the monks of Dunfermline Abbey in 1153. Alluvial gold was discovered at Durness in 1245, and a little later, a Captain Nicol found a malleable mass of gold whilst out shooting with the Earl of Breadalbane “some nine miles south of Glencoe”. This places his discovery near Tyndrum, exactly where we stood in the darkness of the adit, listening to icy water dripping steadily onto the rocky floor. And our cameras. Most of Scotland’s gold came from the Leadhills area of Dumfriesshire, and much of it was used to make the Scottish crown and royal regalia: over four hundred miners worked there during the reigns of King James 5th and 6th. By contrast, gold in Breadalbane was often found by accident in lead or copper mines. – small quantities that were never economic in themselves.

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The mountains near Tyndrum contain several veins of base metals, and the richest of these was exploited in the Tyndrum lead mines, which were opened up in 1741 and continued in use intermittently until 1858, by which time several thousand tonnes of lead ore had been recovered. The last attempt to re-open the mines was in the early 1920’s, after which they were abandoned. Of course, where there are base metals, precious metals are also found … and geologists sampled the Tyndrum area in the early 1970’s, marking the rock as probably being gold-bearing. When the value of gold rose high at the start of the 1980’s, several teams of geologists scoured Scotland for mineral opportunities. In 1984, a gold vein was discovered at the site of the East Anie lead mine, by Ennex International, an Irish firm who set up a subsiduary Fynegold Resources to go prospecting in Scotland. It turns out that the East Anie mine was excavated by 19th-century lead miners who missed the gold seam by a mere ten feet!

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The waterfall of Allt Eas Anie, immediately behind the mine, was completely frozen when Pincheck and I visited on Hogmanay … but somewhere above it are a couple of precarious entries into the lead mine. The Eas Anie mine exploited a vein accessed by two adits driven into the cliff-face, and Ennex’s rock sampling near the old mine’s portals spurred them to begin drilling south-westwards along the strike of the lead vein. By the end of 1985, gold was encountered in all ten holes down to a depth of 50m, so Fynegold kept working and eventually proved the deposits could produce just under five tonnes of gold and about 25 tonnes of silver. The deposit was delineated by diamond drilling carried out between 1985 and 1988, and a new adit was driven from 1989 onwards, eventually reaching a length of 1100 metres. In 1994, the mine was acquired by the Caledonian Mining Co, which intended to put the mine into production in 1997, winning 25,000 ounces of gold each year. However, a downturn in the gold price saw the project placed on hold in 2000, and the mine was sold on again the next year. The new owners filed to close the site in 2006 when their planning permission expired.

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Since then, the mine has sat, largely ignored, with mining equipment left where it was last used. Fynegold spent millions on the infrastructure: but when Cononish mine and other exploration licences were sold once again, this time to Scotgold in 2007, they had to raise millions of pounds before they could start work. Firest of all, they would need to deal with groundwater. The adit was driven in a series of lazy curves and zig-zags, and water has formed a series of shallow scours and puddles between the railway sleepers. As we found, the cast iron pumping mains are still clipped to the adit wall; and a fabric air suct hangs limply from the roof. In a series of short spurs, steel tubs are parked, timber sleepers are piled up, and a small Eimco “622” loader is rusting away. As we went further in, the rockfaces streamed with moisture, and I kept thinking – we’re a kilometre inside the mountain. Millions of tons of schist and quartzite rock lay above our heads. It was a sobering thought …

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The mine was mothballed when gold prices were around $250 an ounce, around $100 short of the price which would make mining economically viable. Although the main adit is a kilometre long, half of which was driven on the vein, Scotgold would need to extend it by a further 3km if it went into production. The main haulage adit would need to be widened and heightened to a roughly 3 metre x 3 metre cross section to allow load-haul-dump vehicles (LHD’s) to trundle through: they would push blasted ore out of the stopes and into adit, where dumptrucks would take it to a set of crushers built inside the mountain. Although the usual method of extracting gold from the crushed ore uses cyanide, Scotgold may well use gravity extraction, where the gold is separated by floatation. That concentrate would then be smelted, perhaps on site, then the remaining ore may have to be shipped to Poland for smelting.

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With gold prices having reached $1,000 an ounce recently, Cononish has become economically viable again, and the motherlode is being studied carefully. The vein at Cononish is described as a pyrite-rich galena-bearing quartz vein: apparently the precious metals are found very close to the vein of quartz, but the gold is mainly in the form of electrum and the silver as tellurides. There will be very few nuggets of native metal … We certainly saw large quantities of iron pyrites (fool’s gold), although just a few tiny sparkles that might have been something else? The economic concentrations of gold are some 400-500 metres down the tunnel, according to Scotgold, but the tell-tale sulphides are present all along it. As and when a commercial mine is developed, the reserves would be mined at a rate of 70,000 tons over an eight year period: one tonne of Cononish rock will yield about 10-11 grammes of gold, at current prices worth roughly £80m.

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After an hour of photos and clambering, we wound our way back towards the portal, boots splashing through the water. Once we reached the wagons, we realised daylight had gone, and we were standing in the last blue twilight before night fell. We started down the mountainside, and before long it was pitch dark: the kind of total darkness you never experience in towns or cities. Almost as dark as it was inside the mine itself. Forms loomed out of the night – sheep had gathered by the track, evidently thinking that food would be forthcoming.

Sheep are like that. They follow you if they think you’ve found greener grass. Baa! http://www.planetsmilies.com/smilies/animal/animal0076.gif

BB
06-11-2009, 12:33 AM
Very nice! Great pics there :thumb

skin
06-11-2009, 12:55 AM
As far as I know the Caledonian Mining Company was set up by a conglomerate of investors purposefully for this adit and it was a major problematic hurdle for them the use of cyanide at that location for some reason.
I visited this place back the when Caledonian had it - back in the days when I did geology and had aspirations on Geotechnics.
The valley down towards Tyndrum contains some of the remains of the lode rock which was ripped from the valley during glaciation and a few nuggets of gold have been "panned" from the streams there.

Very nice report

boxfrenzy
06-11-2009, 09:12 AM
What a great report guys, really like this. The pictures are very good too. Very nicely reported. I am struggling to believe that anyone would think it is ever ok to read someone elses PM's and then post them in public.
Good job indeed :thumb

lost
06-11-2009, 01:35 PM
Aye it's really shoddy behaviour.
Nice to see a write-up and photos at last. :) I like the closing line...

sqwasher
06-11-2009, 02:03 PM
It's a shame when people take advantage & read things they shouldn't! (It's happened to me too on 28DL) I can't see that happening on this forum though. I'm glad you guys have shared this here because the photos & historical accounts (plus your mammoth expedition!) are superb! At the current price of gold i'm suprised they're not trying to restart this asap! Top job wolfism & pincheck! :smclap

Tumbles
06-11-2009, 02:16 PM
Lovely report, shame about what happened.. fully understand your viewpoint about not wanting to share things anymore.

evilnoodle
06-11-2009, 05:04 PM
Very interesting, informative and well written report. You set the scene so well. I could almost feel the cold and hear the dripping water :smclapGreat pics too :thumb

Runner
07-11-2009, 10:08 PM
Cracking report guys, really enjoyed reading that, thanks for sharing.
I've often wondered about that place, first spotted it the Munro book (it's on the way to Ben Oss)!

Cuban Bloodhound
07-11-2009, 10:27 PM
:smclap at the first paragraph Are these recent pics Wolfie?

wolfism
07-11-2009, 11:58 PM
Thanks everyone for your comments, and understanding where we're coming from. :thumb

Cuban – these pics are from Dec '08, our original visit.

RichardB
08-11-2009, 01:38 PM
I like the last bit. :D

Are these lines spray paint and do you know what they are for?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3367/3569751891_b551088e3d.jpg

lost
08-11-2009, 09:50 PM
I see access details have been posted on the other side.
Nice job.

wolfism
09-11-2009, 09:37 AM
Richard, yep, the lines are spray paint and I guess that they're marking out veins? Skin will maybe have more of an idea ...

skin
09-11-2009, 10:00 AM
The red paint seems to me to be markings from mapping out the adit for either purely measurement purposes or possibly they were looking at adding steel arch support.
The blue paint does indeed look like a visual marker on quartzite veining.

wolfism
09-11-2009, 11:28 AM
Thanks mate. :)

Were they still prospecting when you visited - I'm just curious about how they followed the quartzite vein. Would the trial drillings fan out from the end of the drive in different directions, or is the trend of it predictable enough that you know that it's running say NW/SE at a dip of 30 degrees? For example, we thought the drilling rig from Chile would be inside the mine somewhere, but discovered that it was tucked away on the hillside above.

doozer
09-11-2009, 06:10 PM
Very, very nice. I'm sorry you got stung by some ill-intentioned people, but pleased you think enough of us to post it here.

skin
09-11-2009, 07:11 PM
Thanks mate. :)

Were they still prospecting when you visited - I'm just curious about how they followed the quartzite vein. Would the trial drillings fan out from the end of the drive in different directions, or is the trend of it predictable enough that you know that it's running say NW/SE at a dip of 30 degrees? For example, we thought the drilling rig from Chile would be inside the mine somewhere, but discovered that it was tucked away on the hillside above.


LOL - now thats a question and a half - not something these mine geologists share easily - the Dalradian Metasediments this mine is in are notoriosly faulted - Id guess the quartzite was injected along weakened fault plains and map the fault = map the quartzite which can be done to a reasonable extent - other than that could be like the Lead Zinc mines at Navan in Ireland where they follow the mineralisation direction purely from the rock wall - by the way thats the deepest mine in Europe and its fun driving about under there in land rovers 100s metres underground - urbex and a half. :)

if your interest I found this real good bit on Navan

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2WCiM4HaId0C&pg=PA251&lpg=PA251&dq=navan+mine+depth&source=bl&ots=oE8dlKWEHn&sig=d9-VDW4D6iMJVyLM6ieu3AVcUTw&hl=en&ei=D134SqGoC8v14Ab96dzRAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCQQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=navan%20mine%20depth&f=false

wolfism
10-11-2009, 06:05 PM
Cheers - I'll have a read through that lot tonight. I have another mine idea, or should I say "an idea of mine" - will give you a shout when we start planning it. ;)

Meantime, as DCG has helpfully pointed out on the SubBrit mailing list, the Guardian has just published a story about Cononish. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/08/gold-mining-tyndrum-scotland-scotgold) :thumb

skin
10-11-2009, 06:11 PM
seems they are still up against it in the ore extraction side of things - nothing changes - hope they arent "bigging it up" drill a bit - prove some "guesstimates" then stick it on the market - again !!
well as long as gold prices stay up - if they dont well its shut shop and watch your investment return naff all.

Cuban Bloodhound
16-11-2009, 08:52 PM
Here's a few I made earlier :D
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3400/3558669993_1db23f93d5.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3340/3559479844_59d2ac2b5e.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3651/3558669801_3f25cbcece.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3300/3558669781_232a474568.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3341/3559479596_62fdf8d9c9.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3306/3559479564_0d7e25a922.jpg

wolfism
17-11-2009, 09:38 AM
Good stuff - they came out crisply, and I must admit I missed the "Mule".

lost
17-11-2009, 02:07 PM
Someone ought to tip the mine cart buckets back over.

Miss Metallic
19-11-2009, 10:14 PM
What a great report and fascinating photos. Thanks for sharing!

Kevsy21
19-11-2009, 10:22 PM
love the pics and report,great stuff:thumb