This information was published in 2022 and is no longer current.

August 21-27, 2022 is mining week in the Northwest Territories; a celebration of our territory’s foremost economic sector.

Like any good mining project, the week began with the exploration and identification of minerals in the NWT’s rich geology. “Rock Walks” have become a perennial favourite with the public during mining week.

Philippe Normandeau, Surficial Geologist with NWT Geological Survey, was the host for the first of two scheduled rock walks this year; a 3km amble through downtown Yellowknife that featured many visual, historical and factual points of geological interest.

 

Normandeau uses an outcrop of green volcanic rock where jackleg drilling contests used to take place to highlight the capital’s local geology; pointing out the difference between the granitoid intrusions and the greenstone belts volcanic rocks present in the city.

 

A plaque commemorates Yellowknife’s mining legacy which began with the discovery of gold in 1934. Behind it, a diamond drill from the 1950’s.

 

The rock walk stops briefly at a commemorative claim post. The rocks at the base are from various past and present mines and deposits from the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

 

Normandeau does his best impression of a boulder being transported within the ice, water and sediments at the interface between the base of a continental glacier and the bedrock. This specific boulder is a metasedimentary rock from the Burwash formation, present East of Yellowknife and contains a hard mineral called cordierite (the white spots), the cordierite now sticks out of the boulder due to differential erosion during transport as they are harder than the rock in which they sit.

If you missed the in-person guided rock walk this year, you can enjoy it virtually here.