The territory's heated staking rush has exhausted the Yukon's supply of tags to place on claim posts for the first time in history.

The mineral exploration in the territory has been on fire for the last few years, but the number of quartz claims filed last year blasted through the roof. It also set a mammoth record for the number of claims staked in a single year.

Not even in the days of the Klondike Gold Rush, nor during the staking rush through the Findlayson district south of Ross River during the mid-1990s, did the number of claims staked come anywhere close to the activity in 2010.

As a result, the squeeze was put on the availability of official tags required on each post marking the boundaries of individual claims.

And last week, a local staking company scooped up the last 17,000 tags in one swoop, Bob Holmes, director of the Yukon's mineral resources branch, explained this morning.

In 2009, 16,000 new quartz claims were staked, amounting to an average or slightly above average year.

Last year, there were 83,261 claims recorded.

There are now 158,419 quartz claims in good standing across the Yukon, accounting for approximately 33,000 square kilometres, or about 6.8 per cent of the Yukon's total land mass.

Holmes said as a result of the level of activity and last week's purchase of 17,000 tags, when the doors opened Monday morning there were no tags. Consequently, the ability of companies to get into the field with new tags was halted Monday and Tuesday.

The matter, however, was addressed through a couple of impromptu policies and procedures, and business was back to almost normal this morning, Holmes said.

"What happened last week is we had one or two companies come into the office, when most of us were down at the (exploration) round-up in Vancouver,” he said. "I think part of the reason is they were hearing the good news coming out of the round-up so they came into the office and wanted all our tags.”

News out of the round-up, he emphasized, points to another hot year in the Yukon's mineral exploration industry.

Holmes pointed out of the $150 million spent on exploration last year, it's estimated $30 million was spent staking claims alone.

Some 27,000 tags which had been ordered prior to last week's shortage are scheduled to arrive from Toronto later this week.

The mining recorder's office is now pre-selling the lot, and the number of tags has been limited to 1,000 per individual at the standard price of $2 apiece, Holmes explained.

Another 50,000 or so are scheduled to arrive in the first week of March, with an additional 100,000 coming at the beginning of April.

Holmes said companies and individual prospectors who want to bulk-order still can, and they'll be assigned numbers from the tags scheduled to arrive in March and April.

While waiting for the tags to arrive, the companies will be permitted to stake claims by writing down the tag number and other required information on the claim posts, just like the old days, he pointed out.

The drawback, Holmes noted, is that companies will have to make a second trip into their claims to place the official tags on the post.

"It's better than not being able to stake claims at all.”

He said companies will now have six months to fix the tags to their posts.

And with most companies and prospectors likely to be in the bush in and around the area of the claims anway, returning to attach the tags shouldn't be too much of a burden, Holmes said.

The staking rush, he said, is being pushed primarily by the rising price of gold, and most claims being staked related to the search for gold.

In the territory's last staking rush when some 25,000 claims were staked in the Findlayson district, the driving force was the search for base metals.