After removing the rock pile they first faced a 6 m high wall of ice. Once they started chipping through it, strange things started emerging. Two Toyota 4x4 pick ups, a Kiruna dump truck, two Scooptram loaders, one ST2 and one ST5, were buried in the ice. Most of these finds have no more than a scrap or curiosity value, but the ST2 was in a good enough condition to attempt to revive it.
A dump truck buried in the Nunngarut Tunnel the Scooptram ST2 was sitting in the same ice pack.
Amazingly after a day or two of restoration work, it sprang back to life and the workers were driving it around.
It will require more serious maintenance before it can be used for mining but there is no doubt it can be used. Angus & Ross plc is an exploration and mining company registered in the United Kingdom, its main projects are on Greenland, and it has further interests in Brazil and Australia. The Scooptram loader was found in the Nunngarut Tunnel of the Black Angel Mine. The tunnel was created by Cominco in the late 1980s, and during the construction work another highly mineralised area was discovered. Subsequently several hundred thousand tonnes of ore were mined and after the mine closure the entrance to the tunnel was blocked. In 2007 a study conducted by Wardell-Armstrong International concluded that one of the ore bodies still contains tonnes of ore and Angus & Ross started to excavate the mine. This story was originally published in the Black Angel Mine newsletter.