Yellowknife (July 21/04) - While cleaning litter along the Ingraham Trail on Sunday evening, Marc Casaway noticed something strange: a cord running out of a hole in the granite face near Giant Mine.

A piece of detonating cord was attached to a stick of dynamite in a hole drilled into the granite along the Ingraham Trail.- Daniel T'seleie/NNSL photo

"That looks like a live fuse to me," Casaway said to himself, and called Yellowknife Fire Department.

"It was an explosive that was in a hole in a rock face," said deputy fire chief Darcy Hernblad.

The explosive was probably left over from the summer of 2002 when work was done to widen the highway, according to NWT Rock Services Ltd., the company which had the sub-contract for the blasting.

"What was there I don't think was a danger in the condition it was left in," said Trevor Herd, general manger of NWT Rock Services Ltd.

A blasting cap and an electrical charge would be necessary to explode the charge, he said.

When blasting, several charges are detonated at once. This explosive probably did not blow up because it was not tied into the detonation circuit, said Herd.

Workers likely did not notice because it's effects were meant to be minimal. The half-pound stick of dynamite was only intended to fracture the granite, not blow it up, he said.

NWT Rock Services operations manager removed the dynamite and detonated it in a construction area on Highway 3.