Tag Archives: Gold Mining

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.

 

The End of the Rainbow

Fall is in the air.  The kid is back in school.  With grandma watching the kid for the week, we decided to work like dogs and try to squeeze as much out what was left of the season as we could.  We spotted this rainbow, unfortunately, the end is located on a neighboring claim, but hey, gold washes downstream right?

We decided to try a little experiment.  Normally, we clean out the sluice every time we stop the pump, for lunch, or for the night.  Since we were working with a reduced crew, we decided to leave the sluice alone for a few days.  Normally, we see nothing on top of the mats when we stop, but after a few days, we started to see some color.  The yellow matting we use is discarded pipeline insulation material, works great for miners moss.  However its hard to see the gold since it is the same color as the mat.  Look closely, the gold is slightly more orange.

gold in sluiceEverything was going great, equipment working fine, gold in the sluice.  We had uncovered some large rocks in the dig site, always a good sign.  We were disappointed in the rainy weather, but with a full set of rain gear on, we managed to stay warm.  Then minutes into the last run on the second day, we heard a loud   “snap” from the little Kubota tractor we use for loading the trommel.  We had broken the loader for what seemed like the 100th time this year.  This is a great tractor, but not really built for what we are asking it to do.

broken kubota

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resigned, we cleaned the sluice.  We ran the cons though the mini highbanker.  There was so much black sand and the entire black mat was covered with gold.  At this point we were navigating by flashlight, so held the panning until daylight and toasted the end of our season by the light of the fire.  We got somewhat toasted ourselves I might add…

payout

The next morning we panned the concentrates and were pleased by the results.  We called around trying to locate a replacement loader, but Alaska is a hard place to find parts, especially for an early 90’s model Kubota.  We decided to head for home and see if we could fix it ourselves and maybe salvage a day or two of the week.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winding Down

The salmon have returned to the creek.  I could sit down there for hours watching them.  After so many years in the ocean, they return to the very same river the were born.  Nature is amazing!  Seems our mining activities are really disturbing them!

 

We actually got a great video of them with our go pro camera.  The first salmon you see is a king (chinook), rare these days, the bright ruby red ones are reds (sockeye) salmon.

Time is running out in the season, the kid has to start school pretty soon.  Of course we are having equipment problems, again!

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We have a small kubota tractor we use for loading the trommel.  It’s a great little tractor, but not really designed for the kind of work we are asking of it.  We keep having to stop and replace pins, weld cracks, tighten bolts.  Maybe we need to look into a skid steer or something for next season.  And wouldn’t you know it, the pay streak is getting better and better!  It’s infuriating.

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