Wall behaviours are reported daily to the concerned departments.

No need for more ground support, since the quality of the walls is exceptional.

The gradient of the veins was more acute, forming an angle of 60° with the horizontal.

– Both vein types commonly display sulphide-rich wall rocks; and

Gold mineralization occurs in the veins but also in their immediate wall rocks.

When dykes are encountered, pillars are left to give support to the walls.

The particularity of this operation is definitely the exceptional quality of the walls.

However, they are no longer sub-parallel to today’s weathering surface, but sub-parallel to the walls of the discontinuity (Figure 3).

These veins and their selvages commonly contain disseminated pyrite (<2%) and alteration minerals such as calcite, chlorite and hematite.

These veins and their selvages commonly contain disseminated pyrite (<2%) and alteration minerals such as calcite, chlorite and hematite.

Most of the hanging walls are sub-vertical (55° to 85°), with typically the graphitic Casa Berardi fault at the footwall.

– Gold mineralization is related to different sets of quartz veins and veinlets and their wall rocks, and more locally to metre-scale hydrothermal breccias.

The pyrite associated with the vein is present in millimetre-length veinlets within the mass of quartz and preferably in contact of the vein with the wall-rock.

A better fragmentation is achieved if the centre hole is blasted before the hanging wall and the footwall holes, as opposed to blasting all rows of a section at once.

– Variable amounts of pyrite (1% to 30%) are present as coarse-grained disseminations or centimetric stringers, both forms associated with quartz veining and their wall rocks.

Nevertheless, when the stope length reaches 20 to 25 m (66 to 82 ft), a vertical pillar of 3 to 5 m (10 to 16.4 ft) is kept in order to ensure wall stability.