Exploration rocks Shulin Lake

SHULIN LAKE -- A plane descended from the cloudy skies to land on Shulin Lake Wednesday morning, a quiet sign of ongoing exploration that has three companies reservedly giddy. Exploration that started out as a relaxed Sunday goldmining venture has quickly turned into a hunger for a completely different mineral -- diamonds.

Seven years ago, Carl Tatlow, a former truck driver and manager at Linden Inc. and his wife Janice, a program manager at Human Resource Center, were casting about for a new weekend activity when Janice suggested the couple get a few mining claims and prospect for gold. Today, Tatlow is at Shulin Lake with a crew that will soon grow to about 15. Six of those will begin their third round of test drilling, in hopes of isolating a kimberlite pipe. The others, Tatlow said, will be working to construct a lodge on Shulin Lake.

Tatlow is the president of Shulin Lake Mining, a corporation made up of Tatlow, his wife and son Mark, along with Roland and David Mullen. The group, a few years ago, moved in some heavy gold-mining equipment to their claim near Shulin and worked one summer placer mining. Tatlow said they didn't find much in the way of gold, but some other finds aroused interest.

"While we were doing this, we found indicator minerals," Tatlow said.

Indicator minerals, such as specific types of garnets, chromites and green chrome diopsides are often found near diamonds, as they are all formed within the earth's mantle, at least 70 miles below the surface. The minerals -- and, under very specific conditions, diamonds -- rise to the surface through kimberlitic or lamproitic pipes. Kimberlites are generally carrot-shaped, while lamproite pipes are shaped like a champagne or margarita glass. Both types are solidified volcanic magma often referred to as the elevators through which the mantle rocks, indicator minerals and sometimes diamonds rise to the surface. The pipes and cones are uncommon, but not as rare as their diamond passengers.

Tatlow and a crew drilled in February and again in March in the Shulin area, he said, drilling 1-3/4-inch diameter core samples. Of the 18 samples tested by Ontario-based Lakefield Research Ltd., one returned 16 diamonds -- 15 of which fell into the microdiamond category and one large enough to call a macrodiamond -- taken from a depth of approximately 600 feet.

The find was enough to let Tatlow and other principal owners of the property know they were onto something.

"We are very lucky," said Guenter Liedtke, president of Golconda Resources Ltd. in Alberta, Canada. "We need now to step out and figure out where they came to the surface."

Golconda owns 51 percent of the Shulin Lake venture, with the remainder shared by Shulin Lake Mining and Albert-based Shear Minerals Ltd.

Just because diamonds have been found does not mean Shulin Lake will become the site of an operating diamond mine, however. Jim Adler, geologist and partial owner with On-Line Exploration in Anchorage, a consulting company that has provided geologic and engineering services in the project, said much is yet to be determined.

The diamonds found, which range in size from approximately the point of a pin to roughly half the size of the head of a pin, are not, alone, large enough to make a diamond mine profitable.

"Microdiamonds are darn small," Adler said, "and macrodiamonds … about the size of pencil lead -- that's still darn small. It's going to take a lot of work to find anything that's of commercial value."

Most diamond mines, Adler said, rely on gem-quality diamonds -- measured in carats, not millimeters -- to make the mine profitable. While there is still a lot of use for the smaller diamonds, such as in industrial equipment like diamond blades or bits, it's not enough to survive on.

The fact remains that Alaska has now become the second place in the Western hemisphere where diamonds have been found in the bedrock. Nearby, Canada's Northwest Territories were the focus of the diamond world in the early 1990s, when numerous big-name companies such as De Beers, who controls roughly 80 percent of the diamond market, and even more little-known corporations descended on the area. They followed Australian mining conglomerate Broken Hill Proprietary into Canada's Barren Lands, where more than 100 pipes were found, one of which was recently producing nearly 3.3 carats per ton for BHP.

Mitch Henning at the state's Division of Mining, Land and Water said this isn't the only diamond find in Alaska, but it is being watched by the division. In the 1920s, diamonds were found in bedrock in southwest Alaska, near Goodnews Bay. Other detrital deposits were found near Crooked Creek, but those finds never led to a mine. If this discovery pans out, Henning said, it'll be a first to Alaska.

"We really haven't had any major diamond discoveries in Alaska," Henning said.

While the group has many obstacles to overcome, one can't help but dream about the possibilities. And those could be good for Valley residents -- a diamond mine could mean many jobs..

"It's very preliminary to speculate about those things," Liedtke said, "but if you find a diamond mine, they're generally very big. It is a mining … an earth-moving operation -- that would create a lot of jobs."

Tatlow said while he has already been surprised at how fast things have moved at the property, he, too, is looking with hope toward the future.

"This was just some Sunday-type of prospecting," Tatlow said. "This is what it turned into … It'd be nice to have a mine and some employment -- that's what this state needs."