Blue Hawk Mine is a

gold mine Gold mining is the extraction of gold by mining. Historically, mining gold from alluvial deposits used manual separation processes, such as gold panning. The expansion of gold mining to ores that are not on the surface has led to more comple ...

located on the east slope of Blue Grouse Mountain, on the west side of

Okanagan Lake Okanagan Lake () is a lake in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada. The lake is long, between wide, and has a surface area of 348 km2 (135 sq. mi.). Hydrography Okanagan Lake is called a fjord lake as it has been carved o ...

. The mine is just a few kilometres from Downtown

Kelowna Kelowna ( ) is a city on Okanagan Lake in the Okanagan, Okanagan Valley in the British Columbia Interior, southern interior of British Columbia, Canada. It serves as the head office of the Regional District of Central Okanagan. The name Kelowna ...

in the

Canadian province Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North Amer ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. The

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging *Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun M ...

consists of several

adit An adit (from Latin ''aditus'', entrance) or stulm is a horizontal or nearly horizontal passage to an underground mine. Miners can use adits for access, drainage, ventilation, and extracting minerals at the lowest convenient level. Adits are a ...

s operated for a single year, 1934, and has been virtually abandoned ever since. British Columbia's Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources refers to the mine as "082ENW002",British Columbia's Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources
and states that 5 metric tonnes of

ore Ore is natural rock or sediment that contains one or more valuable minerals, typically including metals, concentrated above background levels, and that is economically viable to mine and process. The grade of ore refers to the concentration ...

was mined yielding 560 grams (18 oz t) of

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

and 156 grams (5 oz t) of

gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...

. The total horizontal length of the mine is approximately 90 metres. The mine is known to many Kelowna locals, and a gravel road leading past the mine is regularly maintained. The entrance to the mine often contains pooled water, but the interior is relatively dry and contains many undisturbed geological formations (

first First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...

). The location of the mine according to British Columbia's Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources is . Several Kelowna locals have reported the entrance to the mine to be at the alternate coordinates of , at an elevation of 965 meters.

History

* 1930s: Blue Hawk Mine, surface trenching and pits * 1965 through 1980: Dawood Mines Ltd explores the property with surface trenching, linecutting,

grid preparation Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...

soil sampling Soil, also commonly referred to as earth, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water, and organisms that together support the life of plants and soil organisms. Some scientific definitions distinguish dirt from ''soil'' by restrict ...

, and

magnetometer A magnetometer is a device that measures magnetic field or magnetic dipole moment. Different types of magnetometers measure the direction, strength, or relative change of a magnetic field at a particular location. A compass is one such device, ...

survey. F. Marshall Smith's Assessment Report also mentions "minor scaling of the main adit walls and roof", though the exact year this was undertaken is not recorded.Assessment Report on the Kurtis Property (Bluehawk Claim)
/ref> * 1980 through 1986: Neall Curtis Lenard completes limited prospecting, mapping and sampling programs * 1986 through ?: Pinewood Resources performs additional drilling, trenching, soil sampling for gold, and completes "a 5 hole drill program in the area of the existing adit"Geological Report Blue Hawk Project
/ref> More recent history of the property and rights is unclear, though the most recent owner of the property seems to be Armac Investments Ltd. of Vancouver, BC. The claims to an area covering 3 km² -- including the Blue Hawk Mine—may have been sold by Armac to Southern Pacific Development Corp. of Vancouver, BC, in 2004 or 2005.

Adit map

Page 13 of F. Marchall Smith's Assessment Report (dated December 18, 1994) contains a detailed map of the area around the mine, including the adit. Recent exploration of the mine has shown that the ceiling has collapsed and is now impassable in the adit beneath "Trench 5". An annotated copy of the map is available with the approximate location of the collapse indicated in red.

References

{{reflist Gold mines in British Columbia Silver mines in Canada Underground mines in Canada Tourist attractions in the Okanagan