Tag Archives: Adventure

looking for the source

In the last post I explained that while our new spot ended up having spectacular gold, but we soon learned that we were only getting material brought down by small springs over the top of a bedrock cliff.

For the last few weeks we’ve been working on finding the source of that gold on the ridge up above.  In the National Forest, we’re not allowed to simply blaze new trails whenever we feel like it.  We have to work our way through the forest, with as little damage as possible, dig test holes, then go back and apply for permits to build more trail.  Sounds simple enough? Its not. The forest is thick here, so thick you cant even really see what lies ahead of you until you get right up on it.

But we have been trying.  We spent part of a day stuck on a tree where the excavator slid sideways and pinned the tree between the track and blade.  We couldn’t cut the tree, we had to winch the excavator off by hand.

With the wash plant sitting idle, we have been digging holes, getting bucket samples, fill the hole in, and rinse-repeat.  Tedious and frustrating.  The crew’s morale has been low.  We even spent part of a day sneaking into our old dig site and running some of that dirt, just so we could remember what gold looks like.

 

 

I’m sure you are wondering, if there is still gold there, why are we spending time digging test holes?  It’s because we are almost out of paydirt in that spot, we need to identify a new dig site if we are going to continue mining, and we only have one summer to do it.  We can’t do both.

What makes matters worse is just digging a bucket sample isn’t enough.  We’re digging into ancient river benches, just because you dig one hole, doesn’t mean you’ve found the correct spot in the river channel.  You could be digging in the wrong side of a curve, or where the water was too fast to collect gold, or miss the channel completely by a few feet.

We’ve found a spot that we do have access to where the gravel looks good.  Its 100 feet away from the hot spot identified on the magnetometer survey, but we thought it was worth running a few yards through the trommel to see what happens when we get into the bench.  The returns so far have been disappointing, but seem to be improving as we get further into the formation.  Summer is waning, the kid will have to go back to school soon, but all we can do is keep trying.  Gold is where you find it after all.

Its always something…..

So there I was…on the dozer…I ask, “is there gas.”…response is,”Yes, just topped it off.”  As operator I should have looked and since I did not we spent many hours bleeding air and recharging the battery, over and over and over.  It was another wonderful and exciting weekend at the gold mine.  We learned a lot about the old John Deere 1010 Bulldozer and we managed to dig 22 buckets of Pay dirt out of the frozen ground, with the help of a propane weed burner.  You can‘t pay for day of adventure like that!

Introductions and a Discovery

Here is a little introduction, from left to right, Me – Robert, Daughter – Lyra, Wife- Teri.  We are standing in front of an outcropping we discovered this summer with a large quarts vein running through it.  It looks like it may be the source for where we are currently finding gold.  We have taken grab samples from the vein and are going to have it assayed to find out what it contains.  Some of the samples had very nice quartz crystal development, Other samples we could see specks of gold in it, unfortunately the gold was to small to get a good picture of but I will post a picture of the crystalline quartz maybe next post.

The Mining Operation at Quartz Creek

Here we are dropping a load in the wash plant, The wash plant runs off of a two inch pump, the hopper has a vibrator motor attached to the bottom to assist in getting the dirt to slide down the hopper and fall into the sluice box, the vibration also help to break apart clumps and shake the gold stuck to rocks off.  All of our water runs off into settling ponds, you can see part of one in this picture.  We built the wash wash plant, although we will be constructing a larger one for next season, the more dirt you can move the more gold you can find.

Have not talked gold in a while

Its been a while since I posted anything, been kinda busy.  This summer I did find a little over two ounces of gold this summer, that however does not cover the cost of repair on the backhoe.  The above picture is a fallen tree on the trail into the gold mine.  Stay tuned as I will be posting some more Pictures of our Quartz Creek claim and of the gold found this year.