Tag Archives: mining

SLAVE DRIVER!

wife, mining, sleeping, caughtYou know, I can’t help that I am an early riser and like to start my day as soon as possible.  I have a passion for gold mining, maybe its being outdoors all the time with my family on a mission of sorts. Well no matter what it is I like to work as long as there is light, which is quite a while in the summer here.  My family says that I am a slave driver and that I work to hard.  I always tell them they are welcome to stay at camp and I will go out by myself.   They always come with.  Then they say that I work them to death, I say you look like your still walking around to me.   Well the photo here is me catching my wife sneaking in a standing nap hoping no one would notice she was catching a few z’s if she was standing up.  Well someone noticed and got a great picture.  I am not a slave driver!  I cant help if everyone wants to fallow me out in the morning and stay out late, until the equipment runs out of gas.  (They don’t know I sneak extra fuel into the equipment so it will run a few more hours, Ssssshhh, it will be our secret.)

May the Hydro-Force be with you!

Father-in-law, Operating, Hydro-force, hydroforce, mine, bedrock

First off I want to apologize for yesterdays post. It was a bit to far out in left field so I will try again today to make a post that is a little more worthy of re-posting.This Photo here is My Father-in-Law operation a very cool Device, it is a dredge nozzle that allows dredging on the dry ground instead of in the water. It is called a Hydro-force Nozzle. It works great for cleaning the bedrock once you have reached it. It works just like a dredge nozzle except there is a little diverter valve so that you can fill your hole with water and initiate suction. Once you have a good suction going in the water then you adjust the little ball valve on the side so your getting a good mixture of water and gravel going through your hoses while supplying water to the hole to keep the nozzle in water. This proper mixture help reduce clogs. There are quite a few you-tube videos on the use of this device, and all you need to do is type in Hydro-force to see it in action. When My Father in law is operating this tool he will say he needs a break, and let one of us take over. Well his break consist of standing directly over whoever is running the Hydro-force until you feel guilty and give it back to him. Usually he only will take a 5 min break. He will operate that thing for a 10 hour day, exhausting work.

Hydro-Force, Nozzle, Photo, dredging, dry land

A Harring, Whats a Harring?

GOLD, quarter, goldpan, mining

It seems that the story post I made was very popular so I think I will continue to tell the story of the mine through the magic of imagination.   As you all know we are looking for gold up here at Quartz creek Alaska.  What you don’t know is that the gold we find is found in smaller flatter pieces.  The gold was created a couple million years ago when glaciers covered this whole area. Well most people think that nothing can live in a glacier.  Well in this area the only place for things to live was either on or in the glaciers.  Glaciers are constantly moving and grinding up the rock it is moving across.   Because of this the glacier becomes embedded with minerals and very small pieces of the bedrock.  This was the source of food for a creature called a “Harring.”  The Harring looked like the cross between a big horned Beetle and an earth worm, the cross being that the earth worm had the horns kinda like the beetle. The Harring used its horns to borough through the glacier and find food as it went. It consumed the minerals and small rocks that it came across. Using the small rocks it would grind up the minerals for digestion. As the Harring digested, it only used from the minerals what its body needed, the rest was waste that would continue to pass through its body. One thing that I had not mentioned was that the Harring had its own heat source, a chemical reaction that would take place inside its body, as the remaining minerals passed through the body of the Harring it would pass through this chemical reaction, Changing the minerals into an new compound, before the waste minerals were expelled from its body.  This waste product is now valued for its beauty and rarity and people will go crazy trying to get at it.   It is what we now call GOLD!  The reason it is flat is because it had been carried through the glaciers for all those years and worn down to a flattened shape.   As the glaciers thawed the rivers carried the GOLD throughout the area depositing it in very randoms spots.  Sometimes you can get lucky and happen upon a concentration of it, but that does not happen very often.   In the picture above we performed a cleaned out after two hours of operating our wash plant.  There have never been any fossils found of the Harring since once they died the glacier took care of grinding them up to powder.

Gona Get Some Gold!…….Maybe not.

Creek, Quartz, Mining, Thanksgiving, Frozen, gold

Well while we were up at the mine for Thanksgiving, I thought boy it sure would be fun to get the dredge out and find some gold. So I wandered on down to Quartz creek to see if there were any good spots to slip in the water. As the creek came into view I had to thoughts, “Brrrrrrrr” and “Boy I am glad the state does not allow dredging in the winter months.” This photo is what I saw.   Just so everyone knows, I am really only allowed to dredge in the Salmon creek/streams from May, 15 – July, 15.

As Promised

Bunk, House, Gold, Mine, basecamp

As Promised Here is what our new bunkhouse looks like. We brought this in the last month of mining. This is where we had thanksgiving dinner this year. It was awesome. We did have to start a fire under the hinge on the gate so we could open it and get into the mine. Other than that the bunkhouse heated up nicely and we had a wonderful rustic thanksgiving dinner. The bunkhouse has a full bathroom with over sized shower, on demand hot water heater, toilet, full kitchen, dining room, slide out lean-to, flat screen TV, DVD player(for the rainy evenings, we still work in the mine when it is pouring down rain during the day).