Tag Archives: alaska

Back in the Saddle

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Things are heating up, and I don’t just mean the weather!  After the last week or so’s dismal returns, a little deductive reasoning and a little luck have put us back on the trail of the gold.

The color is getting better everyday, and we are elated.  Never know how long it will hold out, but I guess that’s why they call it prospecting right?

For now, I’ll enjoy the wins.

 

 

 

 

Here’s a few test pans, it’s starting to look good.

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In the meantime, we’re getting this stuff bagged up for you guys so you can try some of it for yourselves.  That’s all for now, I’ll update more later.

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The Test

Hey Everyone!

Thought I’d give you all a quick update on the operation.  Spring has finally sprung and we’ve started staging to start the season.  I was pretty nervous about the test run as we had the trommel completely re-worked this winter and had never field tested it.  I’m happy to say that with some tweaking, everything ran pretty flawlessly.

Ran a few hours, mostly overburden, just to test, and was happy to find about an 1/8 ounce of gold.  I was really surprised, maybe its because the trommel is running so much better?

We’re still in the set up phase and not really operational, but I’ll keep you posted!

Ready, set…

 Welcome to the start of the 2016 mining season!
Unusually warm temperatures have allowed us to get moved into the claim a lot earlier than normal.

 

  
   
With the help of a friend and some tire chains we managed to get the sluice box and wash plant up in the canyon.  Meantime the rest of us worked on setting up the camp.
It’s probably another week air so until any processing happens, but it feels really good to have it mostly set up, and in April to boot.

Springtime Visit

Don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned that Super Bowl Sunday is a special day for us at the mine.  Years ago, we snowshoed into the claims on a Super Bowl Sunday and decided right then and there to buy them.  Ever  since its been kind of an anniversary for us, we visit, roast hot dogs, hike around.  This year, because of a scheduling conflict and the fact one of our team is a Bronco’s Fan, we did it the following weekend.  There are definite signs of spring, even a wild violet decided to sprout.

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The Creek is open, the water is really low.  I was tempted to jump in there and check out some of that exposed bedrock and creek bed.

 

 

 

IMG_1164Though the glory hole and the staging area are not quite ready to get our operation going.

 

 

 

 

We did manage to get a few buckets of paydirt from our stockpile, lots of folks got dirt for Valentines day this year I think and we were running low..  Not quite ready to start the mining season, but had a great day nonetheless.

 

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Lets get ready to MINE!

Hey guys,

Its early for 2016 to be updating the Blog, I know. The sun is shining, there’s hardly any snow, and I want to get ready to mine!  I think we’re in for an early season.

2016 prep

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We pulled the trommel out of the ice and snow, and took it down to our friends at Adams Fabrication.  Rich is always ready to fix what we broke last year and implement our crazy ideas.  He built our new sluice box last year and we couldn’t be happier.

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Going up to the claim tomorrow to see what needs to be done to get ready up there.  We’ll keep you posted!