Tag Archives: Sample

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.

It Finds Gold.

Trommel, tray, loading, gold, washplant Trommel, pullys, belt, gold, wash plant
Trommel, loading,tray trommel, expel, discharge tray


This here is our little trommel wash plant that we use to run samples in. It a bit clunky, not quite round, but hey nobody is perfect and it works just fine just the way it is. How it works, we will set it up at base camp and after I have dug a sample Hole I will fill my backhoe’s excavator bucket up with the dirt of interest, carry it back to where the trommel is located and then shovel the dirt from the bucket into the trommel. Once we have run the whole bucket through the trommel the we perform a clean out, it is never a lot of gold, but what it does is give us a snapshot of what the ground contains, gold wise, and depending on what we get out of the trommel we will decide to dig or not to dig?……Boy, that seems like a recurring question in this blog. This trommel seems to have very good gold recovery. We did have some grounding issues when we first started operating, if you would touch the trommel you would get a nice electric shock from it. As you all know electricity and water does not mix well. We have since solved that issue because getting shocked every time you touch the machine, just won’t do. These photos are prior to having any of the pluming installed. I will try to find a picture of the complete unit to show off.

How do you KNOW there is GOLD there.

Gold, Striation, Glory, Hole, cut, dig, site

Well knowing that there is gold somewhere is actually just some educated guesses, lots of small sample holes, and a pinch of luck. In reality it is not much more complicated than that. This hole here we were processing the material on top of the clay in a line perpendicular to how this hole has been dug when the gold just stopped, so I moved the equipment back to a point that we were producing gold from and started making this cut up the hill from that Point. As we were moving up the hill the concentrations of gold were getting higher and higher. Then guess what?…..Our season ended. At least we have a starting spot for next years search for the glory hole!

Dreams of finding “PAY DIRT!”

This is a photo of me in a sample hole I dug inspecting my handy work and collecting samples to run back at camp.  There was hardly any gold in this hole.  I found out later in the season that the reason I did not find any gold here was because I dug to deep/not deep enough.  The gold in this seems to be in one of two places, we find it sitting on a clay layer and we also find it sitting right on the bedrock.  This hole I dug just past the clay layer but not to the bedrock.

To dig or not to dig?

Just down the hill from the Quartz vein that we found, it looks like at some point in time someone dug a very deep sample hole by hand.  Its a kinda creepy looking hole I was planning on digging it up next year with the backhoe to find out what the digger was chasing.  You don’t dig a hole that big by hand if your not finding anything.  It looks like one of those holes you would see in a scary movie, you know the cursed ones that everyone in the audience says don’t go in there stupid, and they do anyway.  Hopefully next season I will be able to report a mother load find in this spot, and not a Zombie.