Barren lands
Subtitle: an epic search for diamonds in the North American Artic
By: Kevin Krajick.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: W.H. Freeman
Published: 2001
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 442
Subjects: Diamonds -- Northwest Territories -- Gras, Lac de, Region
Description: "In the late 1970s, two men set out on what would prove to be a twenty-year quest to find a North American gem mine, along a fabled path that had defied sixteenth-century explorers, Wild West fortune seekers, and modern geologists. They are an unlikely pair: Chuck Fipke, a ragged, fanatical prospector with a singular talent for finding sand-size mineral grains, and Stew Blusson, an ultra-tough geologist and helicopter pilot.

Inventive, eccentric, and ruthless, they follow a trail of clues left by predecessors - and a few actual gems - all the way from backwoods Arkansas up the glaciated high Rockies into the vast and haunted barren lands of northern Canada. With a South African geochemist's secret weapon, Fipke and Blusson outwit rivals, including the immense De Beers cartel, and make one of the world's greatest diamond discoveries - setting off a stampede unseen since the Klondike gold rush.".

"A story of obsession and scientific intrigue, Barren Lands in also an elegy to one of the earth's last great wild places, a starkly beautiful and mysterious land alive with great herds of caribou, primeval rock formations, echoes of a violent past - and endless present danger. Now that the barrens are "open for business," what is in store for the far north?"--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 389-424) and index.