The Jinx

Why oh why did I brag about how great things were going in the last post?  Its the granddaddy jinx of all jinxes!

Great weather this week, up in the 90’s.  Doesn’t sound like much to you guys in the lower 48 but up here in Alaska that’s miserably hot.  The heat caused a lightning storm like I have never seen.  I was up on the excavator, and the air just to feel weird.  We decided to break for a while as I was sitting in a giant orange lightning rod.  Sure enough, an hour later we had a thunderstorm like I’ve only seen in places like Missouri.  For those of you that don’t know, thunderstorms are pretty rare in Alaska.

Here starts the downward spiral, that storm sparked two forest fires nearby.  We’re keeping an eye on horizon, breathing the smoke, and the starter on the backhoe goes out.  Two of us get up early to head to town to get a new one.  When we get back, the others tell us the new final drive on the excavator we just installed has stopped working.  Further inspection tells us that all 9 bolts have rattled out.  As a result the mounting bolts reamed out the holes and have ruined a brand-new 3000 dollar drive.

So here we are, not one piece of equipment in moving condition and a forest fire on the way.  We’ve had better weeks I’ll tell you.  Luckily those firefighters are doing their job and it looks like they are getting ahead of the thing.  Just ordered another drive, hopefully we can get back to work soon to find gold and pay the repair bills!  These are the days we question if it is all worth it, I tell you.

 

Getting Gold

Hard to believe, I don’t have much to report.  We didn’t break anything, got good gold…  Looking for a piece of wood to knock on…

The weather was nasty and raining, but you hardly notice sitting in the cab of the excavator.  We’ve been getting a lot more gold attached to the quartz, which we find pretty exciting.  It means we may be getting closer to the source.

2015 and we’re off – sort of

We got an early start on the season, we had very little snow this winter, which meant we didn’t have to wait for the thaw.  Armed with a couple of new toys, including a mini excavator and a sluice we had welded just for us.  The sluice  has four leveling jacks, and a nugget trap.

The excavator is the best purchase we ever made, I don’t know how we lived without it.  It loads faster, and has the ability to easily go up in the woods to dig test holes.  We run more material in a day than we used to in three, run the dirt more evenly, and are much less worn out at the end of the day.  We found a new test spot up in the woods that looks promising.

The first week we were going great until the water pump died, back to town, but we managed to rent one at a reasonable price from the folks who were repairing ours.  Next, we had a mishap with one of the controls getting caught on a piece of clothing, and rammed the bucket through the grizzly, sigh.. back to town.

We had our friend the welder weld us a new grizzly like we always wanted with a steeper angle, everything was going great.  This is a short days find.gold

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, I’m ready to move from the digsite to the washplant to start running material, and the excavator wont move.  Final Drive is shot.  Let me tell you, removing the track so we could take the part to town was not fun.  I knew there was a reason I bought that three ton hoist!

broken excavator

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So here we are with nice weather and nothing to do, we decided to try out the hooka and dry suit we got off craigslist and do a little dredging.  There is a short window of time we are permitted to do this so as not to disturb the salmon fry, we’ve never had the conditions be right to give it a go.  If you are interested in dredging, take my advice and try on the suit you are going to buy.  It was too small, it took three people to squeeze me into it, and leaked like a sieve. In these mountain fed streams, I believe that the water temperature is somewhere approaching the liquid temperature of nitrogen.  Got about twenty minutes in before the current and the cold temperatures defeated me.  Its a whole new world under the water, I forgot how much I loved doing that, I just need a better suit.

dredge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now we are waiting on the new final drive, a little broker, a little wiser, but still damn greatful we get to do this.

 

 

Packing up

Fall is here, the freeze is on, and it’s time to call it for the season.    We fenced off the digsite and hauled everything home.

glory hole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have some great plans for next year, new equipment and modifications to our trommel should make for better production.

So until next year yellow gold, we bid you adieu

cleanup gold

 

The Fix

We had visitors while we were at home trying to fix our broken tractor.  This was found down by the river were we pump water.

You will remember in our last update we decided to go home and try to fix the tractor. Our normal welder extraordinaire is out of state, but we gave it a go anyway.  We couldn’t have been happier with the result.

broken piecefixingfinished

We felt there just may have been time to save the last day this week of mining.  We rushed right back up to the claim and got to work.  We managed to get the paydirt we had stockpiled run and got a little gold to show for it.  On the way home, we almost hit a brown bear with our truck.  The sow bolted right out in front of us and the cub right behind our bumper.  Wonder if it was the same bear that visited?

A few days ago we won an auction for a little skid steer bobcat that we are hoping may be able to take over for this poor old Kubota.  It needs work, but we won it for the unbelievable price of 5600 from a local oilfield surplus company.  We may have much less down time next season.

Going back up next week to mine some more, stay tuned.