Tag Archives: hard rock

To Hardrock or Not to Hardrock?

Mining, 4-wheelers, mountian, trail,

View, Mountain, Scenic, mining, claims

Not all of our Stories are at quartz creek.  We had a Partner in a group of claims call the Gilpatric, They were a very historical hard rock play.  I do have a lot of information regarding this claim and the history of the claim that I could put on this blog if anyone is interested.  It is a beautiful area to be mining in, very difficult to get the ore off the mountain.  We never actually processed any of the ore, we did however find a vein of quartz we sent out to be assayed, from very random grab samples and it was very rich with gold.  This mine was really our start into real gold mining, not just hopping from tourist trap to tourist trap panning for gold.  We learned a lot from our mining partner, but in the end we decided that we much more enjoyed the instant gratification of placer mining so we began searching for our own little mine. 

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.