Its Spring!

It was -28C / -18F over night, but sunny today and -14C / 6.8F. I have the day off after working a Saturday shift, so I took a little drive out Bonanza.

As typical for the pre-thaw weeks (months), Bonanza Creek is frozen but high and making glaciers over the road in a few places. At this spot, a big excavator helped clear the ice out of the creek and along and off the road.

We haven’t had any melting yet, which seems a bit behind our previous March’s. But water can seep even in the coldest parts of winter, making these glaciers.

Bonanza is plowed out nicely down past the free claim (where tourists can gold pan in the summer) to Eldorado. The spring wind and sun has taken the snow off the trees in the hills. There are animal tracks everywhere.

My friend Tarie takes pictures of the bird houses put up along the road, so I thought I’d do the same. And I see spring buds!

Many gold miners are back at it already. Those who left the territory for the winter (probably most of them) are back to do their 14 day Covid quarantines in our hotels (great for business!).

The roads to the mines are plowed out and I saw machinery at different stages of repair, tracks getting replaced, buckets removed. Soon they’ll be stripping snow off of their claims, if they haven’t already started, so the sun can start to work and start melting the ground.

Here’s the big ol’ Dredge #4 that was restored by Parks Canada. It’s so beautiful.

And a whole bunch of sparrow houses.

Isn’t funny how the snow is sticking on one side? Impressive it hasn’t fallen off yet.

I came back into town. The street stripping started today in the downtown area. This time of year they remove all the snow so it doesn’t melt and make this town a mud bog in a few weeks. The grader piles nice windrows that are scooped up into dump trucks and taken to the edge of town. It makes it tricky to get around town since you can’t drive through some of the intersections.

Our spring Thaw Di Gras festival was this past weekend and most of it went ahead as usual. It’s so nice to be out in the sunshine! We were invited up to our friends’ gold mine yesterday for a birthday lunch and a great bonfire.