To Everything..

To everything there is a season.

We’ve been forced to admit that we’ve reached the end of this mining season. The cold has caught up with us, and while we can work through numb fingers and toes, the equipment can’t handle the freeze.

Our decision was helped by the event of getting two flat tires on the dump truck in as many days, we seem to be spending more time repairing equipment than running it. We got a very short run, but managed to get just a little more gold out of the ground before it froze.

Unlike other mining operations, we have to clear everything out when we’re done for the season. This year we decided to use water to dig out the trommel instead of our backs, and it worked pretty well. I don’t know why we didn’t consider it before.

Hoses rolled up, camp broken down, and now its time for the long parade of trips to bring the bigger stuff home for the winter.

Its hard for me this time of year, though at this point I’m almost too exhausted to be sad. I won’t deny that I look forward to long showers, warm wood stoves, and catching up on all the movies I haven’t seen. Also, I get to dream about new digsite we hope to explore next year. It doesn’t look like much, but if the results of our magnetometer survey and bulk testing are any indication, this might mean our next season could be the best yet. We’ve got a lot of planning to do.

We gave it everything we had this year, then we reached down and found more to give.

Thanks for following along with us.

Fall Colors

I would enjoy the beauty of this time of year more, I think, if it didn’t make me so sad to realize its almost over.

Backhoe’s still in the shop, we’re making due with what we have.

Besides, it means I get to spend a lot of time in the digsite manning the excavator. I love looking for big rocks, bedrock, clay layers and other things that spell good gold. Every layer is a new possibility. See that smile?

I have to be careful to pay attention and not get a huge overhang going, its easy to get to excited about a bedrock ledge or something and undercut too much. Occasionally we have to knock it in. Here’s a little video, I just love that slow motion feature on the iphone.

We’re almost to the little anomaly we saw on the mag survey, looks like we will have to move the caution fence soon!

All was well, until, you guessed it, we broke something. A sharp piece of slate hiding in the mud popped a hole in the sidewall of the dumptruck tire. Quite the sound it made.

Turned out we had to take off for a wedding so we had to clean out earlier than we normally would. But the results weren’t bad. Even found a few nice pickers, must have been under that big rock I was digging at.

Just the two of us

The leaves are starting to turn, and thus begins the bittersweet chapter of mining season. With the kid back in school, and most of the rest of our crew gone, its up to just my husband and I to save what’s left of the season. Thanks to grandma for getting the kid to school during the week, we are able to work as long as we have daylight, skip lunch, and get up early.

Mining in the fall is not so bad; less bugs, more bears. Though we haven’t seen a bear yet this season (knocking on wood).

The backhoe is still in pieces at the mechanic’s shop, but we simply couldn’t wait anymore. Time to try out the little dump truck that we’ve had for a while but never taken up to the mine.

It takes a little longer because we first have to use the excavator to load the truck from the dig site. Second, stockpile the stuff at the washplant. Then third, drive the excavator back over to load the washplant. But it worked pretty well. In fact, we might make this truck part of the process for next season and save the miles on the backhoe.

Also, thankfully, we finally got the report from the geologist on the magnetometer survey. There are a lot of very promising prospects including possible some bedrock source gold. I think I’m going to work on the permits to expand the place we were testing last time, as the report agreed with our test results. We really can’t tell anymore about this spot until I get permission to clear some trees and make some road improvements. In the meantime, there’s a couple of small hotspots we’re headed towards at in our current digsite that we hope to break through too soon.

I’ve been fighting with this dang rock for days with the excavator, but I bet it’s where the gold is coming from. I’ll get it soon.

Pretty good results, less than usual because the process is a little slower, but better some gold than none.

Also more of the crystaline gold in this cleanout.

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

With the backhoe still in the shop, we decided to make the most of the downtime and test one of the hot spots that showed up on the magnetometer survey. Its important that we know where we are aiming for next season, so I can start working on the permitting this winter.

We’ve had our eye on this spot since we bought the place. We call it 700, named after the rumor that a previous owner got 700 ounces in one small spot somewhere on our claims. We don’t know where he found it, or if this is really true, but we’ve always joked that OUR 700 ounces would be found here. Its a natural drainage down into the canyon from up hill.

Problem is, there’s so much water and muck coming down this area that it stays frozen through much of the spring. Then, when it thaws, it turns into a soupy mess that’s easy to get equipment stuck in. However, it turned out to be one of the largest hot spots on the survey that we can easily access, so we decided to revisit it. Imagine, all that money we invested in the magnetometer survey only to find out what we already knew!

We got the excavator in there, sure enough, it’s just as I remember. Wet, muddy, clay ridden material. Dug as deep as we could and panned a sample.

We found a few colors, so, decided to run a few buckets.

Honestly, it was fun to work this way. It reminded me of the old days when we first started out. Shoveling, filling buckets, and being thrilled with the smallest amount of gold. In the evening we we’re the kind of tired that only comes from a long day of physical activity.

Pleased with the bucket test, we loaded the small pickup size dump truck and got a few yards up to the trommel. It was slow-going to run, the wet material didn’t want to go through the grizzly, but we were pleased with the results. The gold seems larger and in more concentration than our current digspot. 700 is definitely a contender for next season.

Karma Points

As July comes to a close, I’m not super happy about the yellow leaves falling from the trees and the fireweed nearing the top. I keep reminding myself that its only August, there is still time…

Been a busy week at the mine, still getting better results than we ever have thanks to our addition of more water to the trommel.

We are also excited to see more and more gold in quartz, for those of you that don’t know, this usually is a sign that it didn’t travel very far from the source vein.

But of course, its mining, so we have to break something. First we shredded one of the belts turning the trommel, spent a few hours replacing them, only to shred them again. Looks like we’ll need to do a little more investigation as to why.

AND just for good measure, we went ahead and locked up the breaks on the backhoe, back to the shop. Again.

Its not all doom and gloom though, results of our mag survey have started coming in. I don’t want to bore you with a bunch of scientific terms, basically this shows hot and cold (high and low) magnetism. The pink areas indicate that there’s a lot of black sand (and thus hopefully gold). We are currently doing better than we ever have and we are only in a red zone.

Though I hate to pull the excavator away from the washplant when we are making good gold, we really need to focus on following up this survey data with test pits, that way I can work on the permits for next year.

Lastly, here is dad coming to the rescue of some poor stranded little fish fry that our daughter found. Maybe we’ll get some Karma points for that.

Constellation Mining Company

Gold Mining Blog – Alaska Gold Panning Paydirt for sale

To Everything..

Fall Colors

Just the two of us

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

Karma Points