Every winter the snow brings lots of trees down in the trail and every spring we have to get out the chain saw and start clearing the way so we can make it down our trail. Here is a picture from thanksgiving to show that the mess has already begun. You would think that we would get at least one spring that would be free of fallen trees on the trail, but that is so not the case. Mother Nature loves to keep us busy.
Well while we were up at the mine for Thanksgiving, I thought boy it sure would be fun to get the dredge out and find some gold. So I wandered on down to Quartz creek to see if there were any good spots to slip in the water. As the creek came into view I had to thoughts, “Brrrrrrrr” and “Boy I am glad the state does not allow dredging in the winter months.” This photo is what I saw. Just so everyone knows, I am really only allowed to dredge in the Salmon creek/streams from May, 15 – July, 15.
Well knowing that there is gold somewhere is actually just some educated guesses, lots of small sample holes, and a pinch of luck. In reality it is not much more complicated than that. This hole here we were processing the material on top of the clay in a line perpendicular to how this hole has been dug when the gold just stopped, so I moved the equipment back to a point that we were producing gold from and started making this cut up the hill from that Point. As we were moving up the hill the concentrations of gold were getting higher and higher. Then guess what?…..Our season ended. At least we have a starting spot for next years search for the glory hole!
Remember the Post about the LARGE quartz vein we found up the hill from our current dig site. Here is a picture of a grab sample off of the vein, we kept this one because it is a very neat quartz specimen with great crystal formation. This chunk is about 9″ long and about 5″ wide, very pretty. It took a little work to get it cleaned up, but it was worth it. It has now joined the ranks with the rest of my specimens on the shelf.
As Promised Here is what our new bunkhouse looks like. We brought this in the last month of mining. This is where we had thanksgiving dinner this year. It was awesome. We did have to start a fire under the hinge on the gate so we could open it and get into the mine. Other than that the bunkhouse heated up nicely and we had a wonderful rustic thanksgiving dinner. The bunkhouse has a full bathroom with over sized shower, on demand hot water heater, toilet, full kitchen, dining room, slide out lean-to, flat screen TV, DVD player(for the rainy evenings, we still work in the mine when it is pouring down rain during the day).