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Open Stope Mining in Canada

Conference Paper · January 2000

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 OPEN STOPE MINING IN CANADA

Yves Potvin and Marty Hudyma

Australian Centre for Geomechanics

ABSTRACT

Open stope mining is the most common mining method employed in underground, hard
rock mines in Canada. It is characterised by relatively small, single lift stopes (20,000 to
100,000 tonnes), and fast stope turnaround times. Host wall rock mass conditions, which
are typically poor to fair, are the controlling parameter in stope dimensioning. Rock mass
stability is maintained by designing all stope surfaces at a stable dimension, and through
extensive use of cablebolting for stope backs and frequently stope hanging walls. Dilution
control is a high priority.

The typically small, high grade, deep and irregularly shaped orebodies are incrementally
developed, usually in a bottom to top direction. In many cases, high stress is encountered
due to the depth of the orebodies. Overstressing of pillars and hanging pillars are avoided
through the use of pillarless or early pillar recovery mine sequencing strategies. Stopes
are invariably filled, and in higher grade and wider orebodies, cemented fill is commonly
used.

This paper generalises many of the similarities found in Canadian open stope mines.

1 GENERAL CONDITIONS

Canadian metal mines are following deeper and more challenging orebodies. Gone are the
days in which orebodies outcropped and were mined on surface, followed by shallow
underground workings. Further complicating the situation, first nation land claims,
permitting and environmental regulations are impediments that make lower grade orebodies
less desirable. To compensate for these factors, there has been an evolution of open stope
mine design parameters.

2 STOPING PARAMETERS AND GEOTECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS

2.1 Rock Mass Conditions

Hanging wall rock mass quality is often the controlling factor in open stope dimensioning.
Canadian open stope mines typically involve orebodies of good rock mass quality, but
hanging walls of only poor to fair rock mass quality. In a study of 34 Canadian open stope
mines, Potvin and Hudyma (1989) found that the orebody rock mass quality was good or
better in 85% of the operations, with a modified NGI classification Q’ > 10 (Figure 1). In
contrast, 50% of the operations had a hanging rock mass quality of fair or worse, with a
modified NGI classification Q’ < 4 (Figure 2). The relatively weak wall rocks necessitate
relatively small open stopes. For many mines, the typical open stope varies in size from
20,000 tonnes to 100,000 tonnes.

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Moss et al. (1992) makes the same conclusion in a summary of the ground conditions in ten
mines in Northern Manitoba. “Typically, the orebodies consist of massive sulphides
encased in thin schist wall rocks…This juxtaposition of strong competent ore rocks with
highly anisotropic poor quality hanging wall and footwall rocks has led to a number of
specific ground control problems….”

2.2 Stoping Direction

The implications of stoping direction can have a large impact on the development needed to
exploit an orebody. Transverse mining dictates that extensive waste development is needed
to access open stopes (Figure 3). If longitudinal mining can be successfully employed, the
majority of development needed can potentially be driven in ore (Figure 4). This
opportunity is maximised in many Western Australian underground mines.

The stoping direction is largely dictated by width of the orebody, however, rock mass
quality also plays a role in determining the stoping direction. Figure 5 shows the
longitudinal mining width compared against orebody rock mass quality (Potvin and
Hudyma, 1989). If the rock mass quality of the ore is fair (Q’ < 10) longitudinal mining
has been employed in mining widths up to 15 metres, however, 75% of the operations had a
mining width of 10 metres or less. If the rock mass quality is good (Q’ > 10 and Q’ < 40),
longitudinal mining was employed in mining widths of up to about 20 metres. It is worthy
of note that some operations reported back instability and occasionally failures at mining
widths greater than 15 metres. It is interpreted that longitudinal mining in orebody widths
larger than 15m has an increased risk of instability and rock falls. There were very few
operations that employed longitudinal mining in orebodies wider than 20 metres.

Transverse open stoping is utilised in orebodies with orebody rock mass qualities varying
from poor to very good (Potvin and Hudyma, 1989). However, there were no instances in
which transverse mining was used in mining widths less than 15 metres (Figure 6).

2.3 Stoping Parameters

With the size of open stopes limited by weak wall rocks, the opportunity for large multiple
lift open stopes is uncommon. Traditional open stoping, in which there are multiple lifts,
and one specifically designed drawpoint horizon on the bottom have been employed in the
past in large operations such as Kidd Creek (Bedford, 1981) and Geco (Schwartz, 1978).
Figure 7 shows a traditional multiple lift open stoping operation. However, in the 1980’s
and 1990’s the trend in Canadian open stope mines is “short” stopes (single lift or double
lift) with fast turnaround times eg. Williams mine (Bronkhorst et al.), Kidd mine (Tannant
et al., 1998), and Golden Giant (Bawden and Reipas, 1989).

In the smaller orebodies, it could be argued that the capital cost for the development
required for multiple lift stopes cannot be justified if similar production rates can be
achieved from smaller stopes.

Many larger mines, which have the infrastructure development in place for multiple lift
stopes, have nevertheless made a transition to “short” stopes. The large stopes generally
have higher risk of uncontrolled failure than small stopes, and the larger the stope, the more
difficult it is to arrest the failure. Scheduling large stopes can be a challenge, with all
aspects of the mining cycle taking longer. A longer primary stope cycle time means that

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mining of adjacent ore reserves are delayed until the primary stope is mined, filled and the
fill has set.

The trend to “short” stopes has some profound operational consequences. One of these
consequences is that after the first lift, stopes have a flat-bottom. There is little opportunity
to “shape” the draw area to increase the amount of conventional mucking. Remote
mucking in flat-bottomed stopes can exceed 50% of the total stope production. Small
pillars could be left to remedy the flat-bottom situation, but these pillars would be
unrecoverable and significant ore losses in high grade orebodies are not desirable. Figure 8
(redrawn from Bronkhorst et al.) illustrates a typical cross-section of a single lift stoping
operation, with the resultant flat-bottom stopes.

2.4 Use of Cablebolting

Another consequence of “short” lift stopes is the need to support stope backs at each lift to
prevent significant failure. Systematic cablebolt support of stope backs is a very common
practice, with most stope overcut development supported on about a 2 metre by 2 metre
pattern of 6 to 8 metre long, twin strand cablebolts. While there have been notable failures
through cablebolted stope backs, for the most part, stope back cablebolting ensures the
desired stability.

Cable bolting of stope hanging walls is also a common procedure. Most hanging wall
cablebolts are installed at the top drilling sublevel of the open stope. The purpose of these
cablebolt is not to provide stability of the hanging wall, but rather to prevent any instability
from propagating to the up dip stope (Figure 9). If a hanging wall failure occurs in a stope,
normally it is very difficult to prevent this failure from propagating to the next lift. Pattern
cablebolting of the drilling horizon can choke substantial failures and prevent the failure
from propagating to other stopes. Figure 10 shows hanging wall cablebolt patterns used at
Kidd mine to control stope hanging wall instability.

Uniform cablebolting from a hanging wall drift, to provide pattern reinforcement of a

hanging wall surface is not a common practice, but numerous operations have occasionally
used this approach (Kidd mine, Tannant et al., 1998; Golden Giant, Anderson and Grebenc,
1995; Brunswick Mining, Garland, 1994). An example of uniform hanging wall
cablebolting is shown in Figure 11. While this is an expensive practice because of the cost
of the drift, it has been a successful approach because most of the hanging wall can be pre-
reinforced and the cablebolt orientation is near optimum.

An interesting variation on the full hanging wall drift is to use short stub drifts (Sands,
1990). The Winston Lake mine had a dilution problem from a weak, chert hanging wall.
One of the factors causing the hanging wall dilution was that the access to the open stopes
was from the hanging wall. The mining of the crosscut accesses was preconditioning the
hanging wall. However, the hanging wall accesses were also an opportunity. Rather than
drive a full-length cablebolt drift between access crosscuts, two 12m long airleg stubs were
driven from crosscuts parallel to the orebody at a distance of several metres into the
hanging wall (Figure 12). Cablebolt fans were drilled from the stub drifts to achieve a 2
metre toe spacing between cables, and a 2 metre spacing between rings. This cablebolting
was very effective in controlling hanging wall dilution at Winston Lake.

Page 3
While extensive hanging wall cablebolting seems cost prohibitive, it needs to be justified in
terms of the real cost of waste dilution. Anderson and Grebenc (1995) documented the cost
of dilution at the Golden Giant mine. The direct mining, milling and administration cost of
handling the mine’s 13.6% dilution was $5.4 million, or $29 per tonne of dilution (9% of
this dilution came from the hanging wall). The typical direct cost to mine, haul and process
one tonne of rock is $20 to $40.

Nickson (1992) found that the installed cost of cablebolting in Canadian mines varied from
approximately $19/metre to $36/metre, with an average of $27/metre. Effectively, the cost
per metre of cablebolt is roughly the same as the direct cost of one tonne of dilution. In
other words, each metre of hanging wall cablebolting pays for itself if it eliminates one
tonne of waste dilution. In 20,000 to 100,000 tonne stopes, 20% hanging wall dilution is
4,000 to 20,000 tonnes of dilution. There is plenty of opportunity for well-designed
cablebolts to pay for themselves.

2.5 Dilution Control

Dilution control has become one of the most important ground control issue in Canadian
mines. In a survey of Canadian mines in 1988, 40% of the mines reported that dilution
exceeded 20% (Pakalnis, Poulin, and Hadjigeorgiou, 1995). Moss et al. (1992) highlights
dilution control as one of the main ground control concern in all 10 northern Manitoba
mines. Moss’ conclusion is supported by Yao et al. (1999) who performed a dilution study
on 39 stopes in a northern Manitoba mine, and found an average of 23% hanging wall
overbreak.

“When you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in
numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it,
when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and
unsatisfactory kind.” Lord Kelvin.

The development of a laser stope survey system or “Cavity Monitoring System” (CMS)
was a major step in the quantification of open stope performance and identifying the
location of dilution (Miller et. al., 1992). Until that time, dilution estimates had been based
on the tonnes drawn from a stope. While this is an indication of stope performance, the
location of the overbreak could not be determined, and quantifying underbreak was at best
an estimate. Through the use of a cavity monitoring system, Anderson and Grebenc (1995)
were able to identify the quantity hanging wall waste, footwall waste, backfill overbreak,
pillar overbreak, and ore underbreak (Table 1). Measuring the problem is the first step
towards mitigating it.

Clark and Pakalnis (1997) find that the factors related to dilution include:
• Irregular wall geometry,
• Undercutting walls (with mine development, or as a result of overbreak from
an adjacent stope),
• Blasthole deviation,
• Blasthole layout (fan drilling versus drilling parallel to stope walls),
• Blasthole offset or standoff from the final stope wall,
• Stope life (time open), and
• The number of blasts used to extract the stope.

Page 4
 Planned Mined H/W F/W Backfill Over Ore % % %
Stope Tonnes Tonnes Waste Waste Mined Break Bench Dilution Recovery Overbreak
450-Q5 75,025 67,786 873 1,059 9,171 2.58 87.78 0.00
450-Q6 76,922 77,740 1,715 2,952 944 2,408 7,201 7.29 90.64 3.13
450-Q7/8 154,114 153,119 6,982 1,145 2,320 45 9,079 6.78 94.11 0.03
450-Q9 70,618 65,693 4,926 267 1,569 11,641 7.35 83.52 2.22
450-Q10 66,877 71,223 4,105 2,646 1,441 4,036 6,314 12.25 90.56 6.03
450-Q11 62,636 68,525 6,717 1,791 12,991 1,433 4,052 34.32 93.53 2.29
440-H2 47,598 54,147 3,888 2,748 798 322 1,206 15.62 97.47 0.68
440-H4 26,793 25,324 505 568 1,753 473 10.55 100.00 1.77
453-2W 80,923 77,008 1,483 440 2,746 2.38 100.00 3.39
460-Q9/Q10 60,514 103,765 41,005 1,790 1,991 3,366 70.72 94.44 3.29
450-Q13 56,934 61,088 6,969 1,407 570 1,132 5,057 15.71 91.12 1.99
450-Q12 58,176 65,944 11,390 654 16 4,291 20.70 92.62 0.03
466-3/4W 116,584 146,203 17,988 1,521 4,629 8,905 3,393 20.70 97.09 7.64
466-0 68,694 60,532 1,632 326 2,753 2,841 2.85 95.86 4.01
446-D1 166,698 201,454 2,633 6,475 27,157 1,480 5.46 99.11 16.29
456-5W 91,785 115,192 6,326 294 5,417 18,092 6,760 13.11 92.63 19.71
450-8W 55,320 54,713 755 1,837 985 4,459 6.47 91.94 0.00
460-Q11 21,327 26,745 1,380 2,689 582 1,041 960 21.81 95.50 4.88

TOTAL 1,357,538 1,496,201 121,272 29,955 33,084 74,119 81,271 13.58 94.01 5.46
% Of Planned 8.93 2.21 2.44 5.46 5.99

Table 1. Stope extraction summary for one year’s production at Golden Giant
(reproduced from Anderson and Grebenc, 1995). There was 8.9% hanging
wall dilution, 2.2% footwall dilution, 5.5% overbreak into adjacent ore
pillars, 2.4% cemented fill dilution, and 6.0% ore loss. The use of a cavity
monitoring system is instrumental in providing this information. Effective
dilution control can only occur when the sources of dilution are clearly
understood.

Stope dilution impacts a mining operation in several ways. There is a direct cost for mining
the waste rock. There is the indirect cost of mining and processing valueless rock in lieu of
ore, which in some cases also reduces concentrator recoveries. There is also an indirect
cost associated with handling of the dilution, which is often in the form of oversize.
Oversize and the additional material lower stope productivity and draw out the stope cycle
time. Anderson and Grebenc (1995) quantify the effect of dilution on the planned mucking
time of the stope (Figure 13). Increased mucking time means that other stopes must be
brought online early in order to meet production targets.

3 Mine Sequencing

3.1 Bottom-up mining

There are a number of operational, scheduling and economic reasons for mining an orebody
from bottom to top. From a geotechnical point of view, bottom up mining is an effective
means of stress management. When mining in high stress conditions, ideally extraction
progresses from the bottom of a mining block towards its top. As the total extraction
increases and the stress concentrates, the extraction horizon moves towards the shallower
levels of the mine and towards the areas of lower premining stresses. As a result, excessive
induced stress and deteriorating ground conditions are better managed. Since many of the
Canadian operating mines are now deep (by Australian standards) and have a high stress
environment, stress management is often a key geotechnical design consideration.

Page 5
Deep mining usually make shaft access more productive and more economically attractive
than declines, especially if extraction is to commence at the lower levels of the mine.
Consequently, Canadian mine infrastructure typically includes a hoisting and man and
supply shaft, and an underground crusher, connected to a network of ore passes and waste
passes, through a haulage level. This significantly differs from most Western Australian
top-down mining operations with decline access. Bottom-up shaft mining requires an
intensive capital program and may delay initial production by well over one year.
Ultimately, it will minimize stress related problems as extraction progresses.

In the case of very large Canadian open stope mines (Kidd, Creighton, Brunswick), the
mines have incrementally deepened over time. This gives an overall top down mining
direction, but individual stoping blocks are extracted in a bottom up sequence (Figure 14).

3.2 Stoping Sequence

The stoping sequence is driven primarily by the ore grade (high grade first), but also by
operational issues (access, ventilation, filling, etc), and by rock mechanics considerations
(stress management). Producing the best possible grade early in the project, along with
consistent tonnage output throughout the project life are fundamentals of a successful
underground mining operation. Consistent tonnage is only achieved if ground conditions
are controlled and geotechnical risks are well managed.

The overall stope sequencing strategy followed by many Canadian open stope mines is
influenced by the high stress conditions of deep mining. The general retreat sequence is
from the central portion of the orebody towards the extremities. This gradually pushes
induced stresses into the abutments. It also avoids concentrating stresses in remnant pillars.

The ideal stress management stoping sequence is a systematic retreat from the centre-out,
without pillars. This pillarless mining sequence was applied in Block 3, at the Golden
Giant mine and named pyramid retreat, as mining progresses in a triangular shape. The
Golden Giant pyramid retreat sequence is illustrated in Figure 15. Although conceptually
sound, the capacity of this mining system to produce ore is severely constrained by the
stope cycle time. Stopes must be mined, filled and cured before the adjacent stope can be
mined. With active mining on a large number of sub-levels, there are substantial
development, scheduling and logistic challenges. For example, to mine Stope #6 in the
sequence (very early in the mine life), seven sub-levels must be developed and operational.
Finally, all stopes must contain cemented fill, adding to operating cost.

A compromise is to keep the general triangular retreat shape but using a primary and
secondary stope arrangement. This system has been used at the Williams mine and is
illustrated in Figure 16. This allows for a number of primary stopes to be mined
simultaneously, increasing the productivity of the mining system. Also, since secondary
stopes fill masses will never be exposed, unconsolidated fill can be used in almost half of
the total volume to be filled.

One of the underlying principles of this system is to recover pillars (secondary stopes) as
early as possible in the sequence. Some basic sequencing rules have been learned with
experience:

Page 6
 • Never mine more than two sub-levels ahead of a pillar before recovering it
• Never mine on both side of a pillar at the same time in high stress

There are variations in primary/secondary sequencing. In low stress, mining every second
stope can be done successfully (see Figure 3). In high stress, the second rule can be
satisfied by mining primary stopes in a 1-4-7 sequence. Stopes 2-5-8 become secondary
stopes with one fill wall exposure; while stopes 3-6-9 are tertiary stopes with fill walls on
both sides (Figure 17 shows a part of 1-4-7 sequence).

Another variation involves mining stopes 1-5-9 as primaries, then stopes 3-7-11 as
primaries (pillar on both sides) and even numbered stopes are as tertiaries (fill on both
sides). Figure 18 shows six steps to a 1-5-9 mining sequence. Some mines have designed
small primary stopes and large secondary stopes in order to reduce the use of cement in the
fill.

When stress levels approaches rock mass strength, mining will be continuously done in
failing ground conditions. The effect of time on the stability of excavations will become an
important consideration in the design, planning and scheduling of activities. “Just in time”
mining will become a critical success factor. The overall process of mining, including
development mining, stope preparation, mucking and filling cycles must be accurately
planed and executed.

3.3 Backfill

Most open stope mines in Canada use backfill as a mean to achieve total recovery of their
ore deposits. Backfill is also seen as essential to provide regional stability and local support
in deep mining conditions. Backfill is required as a floor to work on in “short” lift, bottom-
up mining sequences.

The selection of backfilling systems is driven by operational demands such as:

• fast curing,
• speed, reliability and flexibility of fill delivery,
• availability of low cost material, and
• the capital cost of building the plant.
The final selection must be justified in terms of net present cost being offset by the value of
additional ore recovery.

Cemented rock fill systems were used extensively in Canadian open stope mines
throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. Most commonly, these systems involved underground
cement batch mixing stations under which, trucks full of waste rock or quarried rock fill
would drive, and a cement slurry sprayed over the rock fill load. The truck would then tip
the cemented fill from the edge of empty open stopes. In free dumping, it should be noted
that the cement slurry component typically segregates towards the stope wall under the
dumping point. The backfill wall furthest from the dumping point often has a low cement
content, which may result in stability problems when exposed. Ideally cemented rock fill is
tipped from all of the sides of a stope that are going to be exposed. In Canada, it is not
common to find a cemented rock fill system that tips down boreholes, as shown in the
Williams mine sketch in Figure 8.

Page 7
Cement rock fill systems have high operating cost, with cement content often around 5%
and a dedicated fleet of mobile equipment. However, they offer fast curing, competent fill
(commonly 2 to 4 MPa, albeit there may be a segregation problem), flexibility and low
capital cost. However, the speed of filling is limited by the mobile equipment dedicated to
this operation. The filling schedule can easily become a production bottleneck and the
capacity to catch-up with this type of filling system is very limited.

Many Canadian mines have rapidly taken advantage of new developments in paste fill
technology. The Golden Giant, Westmin, Chimo, Macassa and Lupin mines are examples
of operations that have changed filling systems in the mid 90’s from cemented rock fill and
cemented hydraulic fill to paste fill. This trend is still continuing with Brunswick Mining,
Kidd, INCO and Cambior operations. Other mines such as Louvicourt have been designed
to operate with paste fill from the start of their mining operation.

The attraction towards paste fill can be explained to some extent, by the environmental
pressure existing in North America. There is a significant incentive to dispose of mines
tailings underground. Furthermore, mines will commonly achieve reductions in operating
costs due to:
• potentially lower cement content,
• fewer operators,
• no mobile equipment maintenance,
• faster setting time than cemented hydraulic fill,
• use of the complete tailing fraction (rather than just the coarse fraction in
cemented hydraulic fill), and
• almost no free water draining into the mine working.
The capital cost of paste fill plant, boreholes and distribution system is usually high.

4 SUMMARY

The mining horizons in Canada are gradually moving deeper and into higher pre-mining
stress fields. As a result, open stope mining has evolved during the last 30 years from large
scale multiple lift stopes, to small and fast turn around single lift stopes. The smaller stopes
have reduced the risk of rock mass instability at the cost of increased remote mucking and
more intensive ground support systems. To combat high stresses, a number of mining
sequences have been used to better “manage” the induced stresses around stopes, extract
pillars earlier and maximise ore recovery. The filling systems have also evolved to become
more flexible, with faster delivery. It has also become a requirement for the fill to cure
within a month. Consequently, cemented rock fill and more recently paste fill systems are
now almost exclusively used in Canadian mines.

REFERENCES

Anderson, B. and Grebenc, B. Controlling Dilution at the Golden Giant Mine. 1995 CIM
Mine Operators Conference.

Bawden, W.F. and Reipas, K. 1989 Stope Sequencing at the Golden Giant Mine. 9th
Underground Operator’s Conference, Sudbury, Ontario, Feb 1989.

Page 8
Bedford, J.E. 1981 Sublevel Stoping at Kidd Creek Mines. Design and Operation of
Caving and Sublevel Stoping Mines, ed. D. Stewart, American Institute of Mining,
Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.

Bronkhorst, D., Rheault, J., and Ley, G.M.M. 1993 Geotechnical principles governing
mine design at Williams Mine, Innovative Mine Design for the 21st Century,
Bawden and Archibald (eds) Balkema, Rotterdam.

Clark, L. and Pakalnis, R.C. 1997 An Empirical Design Approach for Estimating
Unplanned Dilution from Open Stope Hanging Walls and Footwalls. 99th CIM
Annual General Meeting, Vancouver.

Garland, K. 1994 Personal communication.

Hudyma, M.R., Milne, D. and Grant D. 1995 Geomechanics of sill pillar mining in
rockburst prone conditions – Phase One Final Report: Sill pillar monitoring using
conventional methods”, Noranda Technology Centre, January 1995.

Miller, F., Potvin, Y., and Jacob, D. 1991 Laser Measurement of Open Stope Dilution.
93rd CIM Annual General Meeting, Vancouver.

Moss, A., Reschke, T., and Greer, G. 1992 Observations on Ground Behaviour in
Manitoba Mines. 94th CIM Annual General Meeting, Montreal.

Nickson, S.D. 1992. Cable Support Guidelines for Underground Hard Rock Mine
Operations. Unpublished M.A.Sc. Thesis, University of British Columbia, pp. 223.

Pakalnis, R.., Poulin, R., and Hadjigeorgiou, J. 1995 Quantifying the cost of dilution in
underground mines. Mining Engineering.

Potvin, Y. and Hudyma, M.R. 1989 Open Stope Mining Practices in Canada, Presented at
the 91st CIM Annual General Meeting, Quebec City, May.

Sands, D. 1990 Cable Bolt Support at Winston Lake Mine. 59th Annual Meeting and
Technical Sessions, Mines Accident Prevention Association Ontario.

Schwartz, A. 1978 Pillar Recoveries Using Consolidated Fill at Noranda Mines Ltd.,
Manitouwadge, Ontario. Mining with Backfill, 12th Canadian Rock Mechanics
Symposium, Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

Tannant, D.D., Diederichs, M., and Seldon, S. 1998 Hanging Wall Relaxation and
Cablebolt Support for Deep Stopes at Kidd Mine. 100th CIM Annual General
Meeting, Montreal.

Yao, X., Allen, G., and Willett, M. 1999 Dilution Evalution Using Cavity Monitoring
System at HBMS – Trout Lake Mine. 101st CIM Annual General Meeting, Calgary.

Page 9
Figure 1. Orebody rock mass quality from a survey of 34 Canadian open stope mines
(Potvin and Hudyma, 1989). More than 85% of the mines had an orebody
rock mass quality of good or better.

Figure 2. Hanging wall rock mass quality from a survey of 34 Canadian open stope
mines (Potvin and Hudyma, 1989). More than 50% of the mines have fair,
poor, or very poor hanging wall rock mass conditions.

Page 10
Figure 3. Transverse blasthole open stoping requires significant waste development
(after Potvin and Hudyma, 1989). The mining method allows for complex
stope sequencing.

Figure 4. Longitudinal open stope mining, or sublevel retreat (after Potvin and
Hudyma, 1989). Much of the development necessary for this mining
method can be kept in the orebody. This is a relatively uncommon open
stope mining method in Canada, but is very popular in Western Australian
mines.

Page 11
Figure 5. If rock mass quality is fair (Q’ < 10), most longitudinal open stope mining
has been limited to a mining width of 10 metres (after Potvin and Hudyma,
1989). For good rock mass quality or better, longitudinal mining has been
employed in mining widths of up to 20 metres. However, several operations
reported back instability problems and back failures at widths greater than
about 15 metres. There have been very few operations that have
successfully used open stoping in mining widths greater than 20 metres.

Figure 6. Transverse open stoping is utilised in orebodies with rock mass qualities
varying from poor to very good (after Potvin and Hudyma, 1989). However,
there were no instances of transverse mining used in mining widths less than
15 metres.

Page 12
Figure 7. Multiple lift open stoping (after Potvin and Hudyma, 1989). Longhole and
blasthole versions of multiple lift open stoping were widely employed in
Canada from the 1960’s to the 1980’s.

Figure 8. A typical cross-section of a single lift open stoping mine (redrawn after
Bronkhorst et al., 1993). The flat-bottom on the mucking level results in
significant amounts of remote mucking, while the flat back at the top of each
stope must be kept relatively stable.

Page 13
Figure 9. Cablebolts are choking the hanging wall failures in the 56-735 and 54-735
stopes (redrawn from Tannant et al., 1998). Cavity surveys show that
overbreak stops at the hanging wall cablebolts at the top of each open stope.

Figure 10. Two hanging wall cablebolt pattern used at Kidd mine to prevent hanging
wall failure. In this particular case, there is a weak fault several metres in
the beyond the hanging wall (Tannant et al. 1998).

Page 14
Figure 11. Pattern cablebolting to control hanging wall instability at Golden Giant
(Anderson and Grebenc, 1995).

Figure 12. Pattern cablebolting of the hanging wall at Winston Lake mine (Sands,
1990). Access to the orebody is from the hanging wall. Mining of these
accesses was leading to instability and dilution in the weak, chert hanging
wall. Short cablebolt stub drifts were developed from the access crosscuts,
several metres into the hanging wall of the orebody. The cablebolt
reinforcement of the hanging wall was very successful in reducing dilution.

Page 15
Figure 13. Variance to the planned mucking time as a result of dilution (redrawn from
Anderson and Grebenc, 1995). The graph demonstrates that with increased
dilution, the planned mucking time increases at rate of 2.5 times. This
increased rate is a result of the slow mining rate for oversize dilution.

Figure 14. Incremental deepening of a large Canadian mine (Hudyma et al., 1995). The
levels from 575 metres to surface were mined first. As mining extracted the
upper levels new main levels were established. In this case, a new, deeper
main level was established every 125 to 150 metres deeper, every several
years. New shafts were sunk and then deepened to access the lower levels.
There is no decline from surface for this mine.

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Figure 15. Pyramid retreat as practiced at Golden Giant (redrawn from Bawden and
Reipas, 1989). The mining sequence starts in the middle of the block and
expands laterally and vertically. Virtually no rib pillars are developed in this
mining sequence. Operationally, this is a very development intensive open
stoping sequence.

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Figure 16. The Williams mine uses a version of the pyramid retreat. Rib pillars are
created, but they are mined relatively quickly after primary stopes. A rule of
thumb is never mine more than two sub-levels ahead of a pillar before
recovering it. This mining sequence was producing 1.0 million tonnes per
year, from each stoping block (Bronkhorst et al., 1993).

Figure 17. Longitudinal blasthole open stoping showing part of a 1-4-7 mining
sequence (after Potvin and Hudyma, 1989).

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 Figure 18. The 1-5-9 stoping sequence at various stages (after Potvin and Hudyma,
1989). Stopes 1,5, and 9 are lead stopes and kept one or two lifts ahead of
stopes 3-7-11, which are also primary stopes. The pillars (even numbered
stopes) are extracted one or two lifts behind the 3-7-11 stopes.

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