63bkpkr, Hope you are, or did have a great time prospecting.
I came back two days early because of my gold mining curse. If I even think of gold mining, something always happens to my car, and this time was the same, though not that bad, other than a $70 fee to have my car unlocked. Yes, I got stupid and locked my keys in the car, and had to call out the locksmith. So I just figured that someone was telling me to get out while the getting was good, and I just came home.
But I did have a great time. It started out at 3am Thursday morning with my drive from 29Palms to Coolgardie outside of Barstow, California. The trip seemed much shorter than the first time I made the trip. I guess that you get used to the travel, which makes things seem easier.
I found one other club member out prospecting, and he took the time to attempt to help me set up my camp. Minutes into unpacking the tent he said to put things away, as the tent was not going to go up. The hold down rings and straps had rotted off. That will teach me to check things a week or so before heading out.
So I opted to dig for about five hours, and then traveled to the Motel 6 to set up a five day stay, which of course turned into four. My problems didn't all happen with the car or the tent. I got flooded out in the room, as the tub drain was leaking. I sometimes wonder if I am jinxed.
Anyway, the first day I dug out at the claim, I decided to dig near the camping ground. I did a 5 gallon test, and with help from the kind gentleman who tried to help set up my tent, he pointed out that I probably should keep digging in the same hole. I had just scratched the surface of an old timer tailing pile, and found four specks of gold. By the end of the day, the gentleman was looking at my pans, and telling me I was doing very well, and keep digging in that spot. What I did was try to follow where the flow of water went from the higher ground, and then picked what I thought was a channel in the lower area.
On the second day I was getting lots of small gold, but I was still not down to bedrock, caliche, or clay, whatever you are supposed to look for.
On day 3 I hit clay, and some caliche. There were lots of rocks embedded in the clay type soil, so I chipped those out, and screened everything down the best I could. Jackpot!!!!!. Apparently some of the gold was in the cracks of some of these rocks, and apparently lying under some of those same rocks. I started getting larger flakes, and in larger quantity.
I also discovered to my chagrin that I had been tossing gold away that had leaked out of my dry washer when I put the equipment into the big blue roller tub that contains all my gear. I just thought it was dirt. But on day three I decided just to see if there was anything in it, and panned it out, discovering there was almost as much gold in that little amount of dirt that fell into the bottom of the dry washer, than I found in all of my pans. So I am guessing that on my previous outing and the other few days of this outing, I had thrown away several tenths of a gram of gold. Sigh! At least I have learned that you do not toss anything until you check it. And I am telling you and other newbies not to trust your dry washer to keep everything on the pad and riffles. There's a good chance some of it made its way down under the tray and riffles and into the bottom of your dry washer.
Day four was even better with larger, and more numerous pieces of gold. When I say larger, I don't mean heavy, just larger thin flakes. The largest I think was just under 3/16 inch diameter, but very thin.
And of course, day five, I came home fearing the jinx could end up causing more than just getting locked out of my car. I always fear breaking something while off road, and in the boonies.
I will post the mandatory picture when I process my concentrates. Right now I am drying out the concentrates so I can use a magnet to remove the majority of the magnetite, and other magnetic materials before panning. Do not worry. I will keep that magnetite, and look through it again, but this way I get most of the gold removed from the extraneous material quickly. I was taught this method by the kind gentleman who I met the first day. He has a big magnet he runs though his concentrates before he pans things. He says that doing it this way ensures that the gold does not get sucked up with the concentrates like it might if you used a magnet in wet concentrates. I need to get one of those big magnets. All I have is a tiny plunger type that doesn't always get all the magnetic material.
The weekend was the club outing to Coolgardie. We had about 10 vehicles at the peak of activity, which was a pretty good showing.
I think I talked earlier about our wonderful Senator (name left unspoken) trying to remove the Coolgardie area from recreational mining, and turning it into a National Monument. So far our efforts seem to be delaying things. But a new tactic is aimed at us now, particularly if the Monument thing fails. The BLM apparently is targeting our area for increased claim fees. As far as I know, they are only targeting the Coolgardie area for these increased fees. I was told that they are trying to make it so expensive to file or refile a claim that it will be impossible for most individuals and clubs. Once you lose the claim, they (BLM) will close off the area to further mining, or so I have been told. Needless to say, I am not happy with my government continuing to remove all gold mining areas from public access. I get the feeling they will get these removed, then sell the mineral rights to private companies for a large fee, something they cannot seem to extract from the clubs and individuals
But enough of this ranting and raving. I sure hope that anyone experiencing the same problems will write your Congress people/Senators to complain. both federal and state. It seems the off road people had a similar experience a while back, and they, numbering much more than recreational miners, won. We all need to ban together and fight the government attempts to keep taking from us. I believe our constitution prohibits the government from land grabs like they are attempting.
Thanks for listening. Caley
