We checked early in the morning on the "Top of the World Highway". It was still closed with no estimated time for reopening. We weren't sure what to do. Should we try to wait another day and check tomorrow morning. We decided to have hot cross buns in town and think about it. Next we decided to go see Dredge No. 4 and then come back and check again on the road closure.
Dredge 4 was very interesting. It had to sit in water. It had a long arm in the front that had 38 - 2 1/2 ton dredge buckets that would scoop the gravel out of the ground up to about 50 ft deep. The gravel would drop in a hopper at the top and then go through a separator that had holes in it up to 1 1/2" to trap the placer gold dust and nuggets. The rest was dropped out the back as tailings. The material that the separator collected was dropped into sluice boxes where it was scooped up for processing.
After the tour we went back to check on the highway closure and decided that we would leave Dawson City and retrace our steps back to Whitehorse. We hope we will be able to try the Top of the World Highway on our way home in September.
We will try to make the Alaska border crossing tomorrow.
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Wow - that's some dredging operation!
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