Tales from the Field
The Cleft
Shoshone Mountain looking south from Jefferson Summit. The peak is just right of center (2013-08-08). Photo by Scott Kruis.
John Breedlove, CPG-11360
1950s and 1960s, was finally petering out. It was pre-NAFTA and getting work in Canada as an American was not easy. So, in May I pointed the Datsun sedan west and headed for Reno, Nevada, the American hub for many exploration companies where I hoped to find work as an exploration geologist.
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www.aipg.org
I lit out from Bangor, Maine with a folder of resumes in my pack and a Rand McNally Atlas on the passenger seat. I wound my way across the northern tier of the country and then down through northern California, eventually heading east into Reno via Truckee, California. Fishing in the Rainy River in Minnesota, hiking along the Missouri River on a hair trigger looking for rattlesnakes, drinking in Livingston, Montana, camping in the Bitterroot Mountains, driving down the Columbia River in Oregon, sleeping on the beach near Crescent City, California. Married with teenagers now I envy that young guy on his own, just looking for his place in the world.
The first thing I did in Reno was find a phone booth with a phone
book. I tore out the Mining section from the Yellow Pages and the Reno-Sparks street map. With these I planned my door knocking campaign. I camped at Washoe State Park just south of town. In hindsight, it was just an urban, scrub desert campground that was hot as a pistol during the day, but it seemed adventurous at the time. The Sierra Nevada Mountains loomed to the west, and the sharp smell of sage filled the dry air. I told myself I was staying in
hen I finished graduate school at the University of Maine in 1994, there was little to no min- eral exploration work left in northern New England. The 1970s to 1980s Volcanogenic Massive Sulfide (VMS) exploration boom, sparked by the establishment of the Bathurst Camp in northern New Brunswick in the
Nevada and that I wanted to live out West in the Big Country. If I started running low on cash, I was going to get a job at a casino until I found exploration work.
Over the next three days I knocked on doors. As we all know, most
geologists are not only intelligent, charming, and good-looking, but kind and helpful as well. I will never not forget the advice, job leads, and encouragement given by the geologists who let me into their offices and spent time with a guy off the streets handing out resumes. I’ve tried to pass it on over the years.
As luck would have it, on the third day, I scored. Uranerz, USA needed a hand to map, log chips, and collect soil samples. Talk about ecstatic. Not only a job but also a hotel room in an exotic place called Battle Mountain, Nevada.
The work was in the Northern Shoshone range. The claims were in the hills west of the Gold Acres gold mine in Crescent Valley. We would drive across the basin floor east of Battle Mountain, through a cleft in the range front wall, up and over the shoulder of Mount Lewis and to the east side of the range. We worked those claims all summer, mapping, sampling, and eventually drilling.
On Labor Day 1994, I was on my own mapping and outcrop sampling. The geologist from Reno was home for the extended weekend. It was clear, bright, and hot, just like most days in north- ern Nevada that summer. Nearing the claims, I left the road driving cross-country in a Ford Explorer, eventually parking on a line of hills near an old adit within the claim block. I mapped and collected outcrop samples over sage covered draws and hills with scattered cottonwoods lining dried stream beds. I got back to the truck a little early so I could get back to town to watch the novelty of an early Pacific Time Zone Monday Night Football game (Raiders v 49ers).
Jul.Aug.Sep 2024 • TPG 7
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