The Rottenstone Story

The Rottenstone ore body was never really "discovered". It was always known. You couldn't miss it - a 30-foot high mound (it was sometimes called "The Pimple") of red mineralized rock, high in nickel, copper, platinum, and palladium. It sat at the shore of Rottenstone Lake (which lake, of course, was named after the pimple of rotten-looking rock) on a route followed by Indian trappers and hunters for generations. Finally, in 1965, Rottenstone Mining was formed to recover the ore. During the next five years, the company operated a summer production season and winter haulage. During this time 7,700 tons of concentrate were produced, and shipped to Copper Cliff 17, the refinery of the International Nickel Company of Canada. These concentrates had a grade of 5.55% copper, 8.60 nickel, a tenth of an ounce of gold, a quarter of an ounce of platinum, and half an ounce of palladium to the ton.

Rudy Phillips was in charge of construction in 1965 and said this . . . .

At the time I was employed by a contractor at the potash mine at Esterhazy. He had a bit of a slack period in the spring of 1965 and the company, Schentag Construction, wanted to broaden its operations. So I was elected to go to this Rottenstone project. I'd never been in the North before and had I known what was facing me, perhaps, I would not have gone.

Some of the stories I had heard about fishing and hunting challenged me, of course, and I took the opportunity to go out. It was very fruitful. I learned a lot there. And truly I enjoyed the North, very much.

The first thing, I called on the General Superintendent, Bill Macdonald, and we met with the people from Rottenstone - you (Berry Richards) and Bert Robinson, who was heading the operation at the time. We met in Regina and we went over the plans for what had to be done. I took some drawings along with me and studied them. At that meeting in Regina, everything was set up to go out and supervise the job. I think it was in February. It was fairly early. Everything hinged on the completion of the access road, as to when the job would start. It was going at that moment, but we were not quite sure it would be completed.

About the middle of March, I got up to Prince Albert where the equipment was arriving and I helped unload it. Then, of course, came the job of getting the equipment to the mine site, which turned out to be a tremendous undertaking. I didn't realize it at the time.

The heaviest piece of equipment was the mill (crusher) which weighed about 35 tons. This was trucked in. It took us eleven days to cover the 65 miles of winter road from the highway to the mine. It was a tough decision to make as to how to get it in, but, after finding out about the conditions from the local people, we decided to use a large truck, led by a Caterpillar.

One morning, about the 20th of March, we set out. It was getting rather late. The first few days went fairly well but then we ran into the problem of warm weather setting in and we had to travel at night most of the time. The road was getting slippery and we had to cross several creeks - and build dams. Some of the curves on the road were too sharp, so we had to do extra roadwork which slowed us down considerably.

We had a D8 with a torque converter. It was one of the earliest torque converters put out. It was a brand-new machine. If it hadn't been for that piece of equipment, I don't think we would have made it.

I remember the fellow who was driving the truck, with Eagle Transport. His first name was Bruce. The fellow on the Cat, I can't remember his name. They were good fellows. We put in long hours. We slept and ate whenever we got tired and hungry.

It took us a long time, eleven days. But mind you — 35 tons on the back of a lowboy truck. We had to cross over some ice, over lakes. The truck driver and the Cat operator were not used to crossing the ice. They were rather afraid. I had some experience. As a young man, I had worked in bush operations and done this type of work.

Before crossing a lake we would go ahead and test the ice. There was an Indian who came by, and I gave him $5.00 for testing the ice. Of course, he made small holes, so when we came along a gush of water came out and scared the hell out of the truck driver. Ice floats on the surface, so with the extra weight a geyser came out of the holes. But after a few crossings like that the men became quite confident.

There were no facilities on that trip. We washed in a creek the odd time, but usually just used snow. Most of the time we slept outside. I remember one morning it was quite frosty and the frost was right around the tops of the sleeping bags, but we made it.

Actual construction started in May and we were finished on the 15th day of August. To do this work there were three professional people, three White helpers, and the rest were all Indian people, a total of 15 or 16, and the cook.

The cook was a short Danish fellow, and he put out some wonderful meals. His name was Ed Madsen, a wonderful cook. Joe Schmidt, a trapper, cooked a couple of times when Madsen was away for the weekend. He could put up a pretty good meal too.

Among the Native people we had Lionel Sanderson, D. Joe Ratt, and Sanderson's son-in-law, the red-haired guy, Simon Eninew. They were a nice group of people. We didn't have much turnover. We had, I think, three people that we let go or quit, and the rest of them stayed right through the whole construction job. Some had their families there. The men would eat with us and go home to their camps to sleep. It was a great arrangement.

The Rottenstone Lake nickel-copper-platinum-palladium deposit rises as a red, 30-foot-high dome on the north shore of Rottenstone Lake in northern Saskatchewan. It is located approximately 90 miles due north of La Ronge and was known to the Indians for many years as the "hill of rotten stone." It followed normally for the lake, the deposit, and now the mining company exploiting the hill to be named "Rottenstone."

The deposit was drawn to the attention of white trappers by the Indians in the early part of this century, as nickel came into its own. The first prospectors who took the deposit seriously were employed by The Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada Ltd., who optioned it from one of the Hall Brothers in 1928. In 1929, the Company moved drilling equipment in with horses from Prince Albert, Sask., a distance of some 300 miles. Drilling indicated insufficient tonnage to justify development, however, and the property was dropped.

In 1946, the late Dr. J. B. Mawdsley mapped the area and described the deposit in a report and map. From drilling done by Consolidated Mining and Smelting, and others to that date, Dr. Mawdsley conservatively estimated that the deposit contained some 50,000 tons with about 1 percent copper and 2 percent nickel, and combined platinum, palladium, and rhodium values of about 0.20 ounces per ton.

With the construction of the highway northeast of La Ronge, passing within 35 miles of the deposit, interest again rose in the Rottenstone Lake area and this deposit in particular. Drilling programs were carried out by three different companies from 1948 to 1962, with indifferent results. However, with this additional information available, the rise in metal prices, and the building of the road north from La Ronge - although well east of Rottenstone Lake - the deposit finally presented a practical production proposition. It was considered that the time had arrived for economic development and production. It was evident that this type of small, high-grade, and relatively inaccessible deposit could not be handled in a normal or conventional manner. The returns had to assure the complete write-off of equipment in a comparatively short time. This meant acquiring used but usable equipment. Buildings had to be designed as adequate but not extravagant. Winter operations would not be economically practical. Maximum use had to be made of local materials and available Cree labour. The operation could not be burdened with high administrative and overhead costs. Design concepts and costs had to be practical and minimal. Certainly, the whole proposition would not be attractive to the average large company and its necessarily large organization and overhead.

Mining development, as such, was simplicity itself. The deposit had been well outlined and defined by diamond drilling over the years. Lying like a melon with one end 30 feet above and 6 feet from the lake edge, and the other end eastwards and some 30 feet lower, the west end was entered with a bench in 1965, with this first season's production almost splitting horizontally the exposed portion of the melon, providing two long faces for future production as benching goes below the surface of the surrounding area. The host rock does not indicate that lake leakage is to be expected.

The decision to build a concentrator with a capacity of about 125 tons per day was made just before the freeze-up in 1964. It was planned to push a winter road through immediately after the year-end from the provincial road northeast of La Ronge, and to get all the equipment into the property before the breakup, hoping to get into production in the early summer of 1965. The target date, as established, precluded the use of new equipment. The mill, complete with liners, grates and trunnions, was moved by truck, railway and boat to Quebec City, then by railway to Prince Albert and then by truck over a bush road, a total of more than 3,000 miles. The largest single assembly was over 30 tons.

Once the flowsheet was determined, by the end of 1964, equipment was procured from Quebec to British Columbia, and from the western United States. With details of the equipment available, the mill layout was completed by January 1965. The problem then was to get equipment and supplies in before the breakup.

Negotiating the last 85 miles of the 320-mile road out of La Ronge was a harrowing experience, with the early breakup necessitating night travel only.

The mill unit itself was 11 days on the bush road out of La Ronge, arriving at the property on April 9. Ten days later, the road was impassable. The early 1965 breakup, found much of the equipment along the 83 miles of bush road, abandoned by truckers escaping on night-frozen roads back to La Ronge. By April 20, only air contact was possible.

Reconnaissance of the bush road in the spring utilizing the small company aircraft, a Stinson Voyageur, located most of the equipment and parts. An Otter aircraft landed on the nearest lake, tote roads were cut, and the equipment was hauled out and flown to the mill site. The 48- by the 52-in. door of the Otter determined the size of the pieces shipped; the 34-ft.-diam. steel-bottom drive thickener tank, shipped in two pieces, arrived on site in 42 pieces and was rewelded in place.

All equipment of any size, because of the size of the orebody, was designed to function on semi-portable structural steel frames serving also as skids; concrete pads were poured as bases.

Early in the planning stage, it was decided to operate only during the non-winter months, and it was estimated that three such seasons would deplete this particular deposit.

The concentrator construction consisted of lodgepole jack pine, with the framework built by the local Cree and covered by them with a 20-foot-wide, 10-mil plastic sheet. The power plant, as such, was adjacent to the mill buildings and of the same type of construction. The mill bin was of log construction.

With the transportation problems due to the early breakup, construction and installation were not completed on schedule and the concentrator did not go online until September 2, 1965. Production continued until November 5, 1965, when the temperature fell to -16°F. Rather than endanger future operations by equipment damage, the mill was shut down for the winter.

The job of hauling the mill, filter, and other heavy pieces into the site and of constructing the concentrator and installing the equipment was well taken care of by several employees of the Schentag Construction Co. of Esterhazy. With two foremen and one White man tripling as pilot, mechanic, and loader operator, the rest of the crew was made up of local Cree, resulting in an effective and efficient hard-working labour force. The Cree proved to be cheerful, capable, willing and intelligent workers, ready and anxious to learn to the limit of their education.

The Natives were particularly appreciative and expressive of having work off-season to augment their winter trapping income and proved adaptable to the amenities of civilization available to them as wage earners and trained workers.

The services of B. D. Weaver were secured as the only technical man on the property for a short critical period, including the start-up operations. Robert Le Mieux, on loan from International Nickel, was of particular value in breaking in the Cree even as a flotation operator. Most of the Cree lived in their camps, this area has been the focal point for generations for several family trap lines. These Native workmen ate in the cookery but were domiciled in their camp. There were four bunkhouses, a cookery and a warehouse, all built by Native labour. The caboose, which came in with the mill, was used as an office and as the manager's quarters.

- (Excerpts from Richards and Robinson, 1966)

One of the most trying, and the most dangerous, parts of the Rottenstone operation was the preparation of the winter road. Seldom, and never in northern Saskatchewan, had such a project been attempted - to prepare a winter road through hills, over muskegs and lakes and rocks, so that it could carry tandem trucks with up to 22 tons of concentrate. Josh Slater worked on this heart-breaking job and said this . . . .

The first thing we had to decide was how we were going to go about it, what type of equipment we would use. In the early part of winter, when freeze-up starts, you can't use anything too heavy. So we started with a swamp buggy and a Skidoo. Our main problem was muskegs because the grass had grown in on the road during the summer and it would support the snow and work like an insulation. So we had to break the snow down first.

We'd start, load up our toboggans with camping equipment, all we could pull with a Skidoo. The first skidoo we used was a relic. I think we only made a few miles and it broke down. We spent a lot of time fixing it and keeping it going.

There were four guys at the time - Claude Freemont, Simon Eninew, Alex Sarabin, and myself. We had one skidoo. We tried at first with a Jeep, but that was a big mistake. We'd only done a few miles off the highway and we dropped it into a creek. We spent hours prying it out, using poles and everything else.

We carried a tent, grub, a tin heater, all our camping gear, and bedrolls. We couldn't carry much in the way of clothes because we were limited in space. We'd go a few miles and when we came to a muskeg we'd unhook the toboggan and run back and forth over it to pack it down so the frost could get in. Then we'd move on. When it got late we'd stop for the night. We'd shovel out a bit of snow, set the tent up, cut a few spruce boughs, throw our bedrolls on top, and sleep.

There were about 65 miles of road to prepare. It would take us three days to cover those miles the first time. We'd get into the mine and sort of relax for a few hours and turn around and beat it back out again. It usually had snowed by the time we got from one end to the other, and it was a matter of keeping the muskeg packed.

After the skidoos, we used heavier equipment. It was a nightmare. In the first years, we tried it with the jeep and the swamp buggy. They served the purpose but they were not adequate. The weather was our major problem. The first two or three winters it was very mild before Christmas, when we were trying to prepare the road, in hopes of hauling concentrate by the end of January. We never quite made that date.

Just when things seemed to be going okay we'd find out that we'd lost a Caterpillar in the muskeg.

How do you "lose" a Cat in the muskeg? Easy. You're driving along, and all of a sudden you start to sink, water starts rising, the Cat's going down, and you can't get it out. So you bale out and stand at the edge of the muskeg and watch it sink. Once we lost a little John Deere. All that was sticking out was the blade in front.

After waiting a week for the frost to thicken we tried to get back in and salvage the John Deere. We were using a general contractor from Prince Albert who had a larger Cat. He tried to drive around the little Cat stuck in the muskeg before checking the muskeg to see if it was safe. So the same thing happened to him. So there's the two of them in the muskeg. And farther down the road a larger Cat was coming in and dropped one track in the muskeg. So we had three Cats at one time in the muskeg.

>Cat train of the Saskatchewan Department of Natural Resources. — Cat train of the Saskatchewan Department of Natural Resources en route to
Deschambault Lake breaking through the ice. January, 1946.
Credit: Saskatchewan Archives Board, Photograph no. S-B 3003.

So we waited again until the muskeg got solid enough so we could work around the sunken tractors. We took in another small Cat - that made four in the area - and we cut large poles and made a tripod and with a double block and tackle and half-inch cable we were able to lift the D8, the largest one, first. We put timbers underneath it so the guys could thaw the final drives and get it going again. Then we moved to the other two Cats that were stuck and did the same thing with them. We covered them up right away, because it was freezing fast, and put propane torches under them to thaw them out.

When we got them all out we continued with our trip into the mine. This happened about 20 miles out from the highway. We had no further trouble. Most of the muskegs were frozen solid enough that they'd carry the machines.

Once the concentrate was produced, it had to be transported over the winter road, and down the highway to Prince Albert, where it was loaded on rail cars and shipped east. The most arduous part of the trip was over the winter road, and Josh Slater was again in on the action and said:

When the trucks got rolling there were as many as thirty on the job. Since the drivers were being paid by the ton they didn't want to go out with a small load. At first, the road was "green". It hadn't had much travel, but these guys wanted 20 tons. When we loaded them we'd tell them they should not have more than 13 or 15 tons.

The trucks would come in in fleets, and on the way out would meet another fleet maybe 15 or 20 miles down the road. So I'd get a progress report from the incoming trucks, where they'd met. We were worried about them. They could drop through the ice on a lake, or through the muskeg.

One day I watched a truck with a load of concentrate sink into the muskeg. It was on a new piece of road that we hadn't used in previous years. I had prepared the road and plowed this part out. I knew it was a muskeg, but didn't know it was a bad one. I was following this load out one night with the Jeep. As he drove over this piece of road I watched the muskeg sink. It went down at least three feet. But the truck would keep climbing out of the hollow. So we proceeded up the road to a little skid shack, about 5 feet by ten, with no door - somebody had used the door for a skidoo sleigh!

>Loss of truck and $4,000 worth of copper-nickel concentrate. — **Loss of truck and $4,000 worth of copper-nickel concentrate during haul from Rottenstone Lake to Prince Albert, 1965. Photo from the B. R. Richards Collection.**

We stayed there that night, trucks were coming out. One driver came to the shack and handed me the truck keys and said, "My truck's in the muskeg. Maybe you can get it out."

The next morning we went back and the truck had sunk to where the muskeg was level with the bottom of the box. I made a mark on the box and could see that it was still settling. So I set up the two-way radio and contacted the mine. I wanted some planks, thinking maybe we could salvage the load, worth over $4000.

As I sat there the truck started to creak and sink, and down it went until the whole load was under water. The truck was standing almost straight up and down. We lost that load.

>Trenching by bulldozer, Waddy Lake Resources. — Trenching by bulldozer, Waddy Lake Resources. August, 1963.
Photo by E. F. Partridge.

Smoking - a prospector's solace - but sometimes you run out. That's happened to me quite a few times. I think this is where I developed my good eyes - going around searching for my old butts. I smoke about 70 to 80 cigarettes a day, so there were always lots of them. This business of smoking leaves and ferns, just doesn't work, so you go and find old butts. They are usually wet, so you have to take the paper off, put them in a can, spread the tobacco out and dry it over a stove. Then you get a smoke, you have about two puffs and boy, you've had it - Art Sjolander.