Nineteen SAS-Jackson and Sullivan students had an interesting learning experience in the Nicola Valley this week.
SD83 and MineralsEd collaborated with Westhaven Gold to show the student the exploration company’s site southwest of Merritt. Westhaven Gold has six exploration sites in the region with its most promising property to be its Shovelnose location near the Clearwater River.
SAS Students started the day travelling to Kamloops via bus and then switched over to four SUV’s to handle the rugged resource roads that would be taken later. In Merritt, students stopped at the Westhaven’s main office and core shack where they were able to learn from company personnel a bit of gold mining history in the region and then went panning for their own gold and gemstones in plastic pools set up with river soil taken from the claim site on the Clearwater River.




From there, the students travelled to the exploration site where they first stopped at the significant gold find that was uncovered by the company in 2019. Students also had a chance to see an on-site driller machine and handle some of the core pipes needed in the drilling process. Finally, the entourage travelled to an exposed rock face loaded with quartz veins where students had a chance to chip away at some rocks with pick hammers to see if they could uncover any signs of gold. All the while, company officials shared information about certain jobs in the industry and what education level was needed to get those jobs.



The Westhaven trip is the final field trip for the SD83 career team this year. It marked a very successful year to which we featured over one dozen events ranging from on-line virtual seminars with industry experts to hands-on field trips in the region highlighting some industries. SD83 Careers is looking for more opportunities to feature different occupations. If you have any good ideas you would like to share, please contact George Richard via text or phone at 778-824-1188 or you can email him at grichard@sd83.bc.ca. Have a great and safe summer!!