M-3 GoldenIrishmans Monsoon Mining Thread

Hefty: Well I'm lucky in that Jan isn't a "Honey do-er". Problem is that I keep finding new projects that I want to do. Work area, sheds, landscaping etc are pretty much all my ideas. Then there are the mining and prospecting equipment projects as well. So it's not like I'll ever have much of a chance to be bored out of my mind. Last on the inside house projects is the office so I can get my mining research all nice and neat again!

Rob: No problem man. The invite didn't come with an expiration date. Been staying cool thanks to the Durango Cooler I installed. It's starting to get a LITTLE cooler here lately so digging season for me is right around the corner. We're also about 10 degrees cooler that Laughlin most days. That river valley holds the heat like nobodys' business! I've now got access to the MPA claims so we'll have plenty of areas to go out to. Also have one area out near Wikiup that really REALLY needs to be hit with detectors. I'll give you the details on it later.
 

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Right after I did the last post I went outside and was treated to this!

Coyote Moonrise.jpg

Moon rise looking towards Coyote Pass (between Golden Valley and Kingman) from the house. Any wonder why I love this area so much? Tomorrow I'm heading out to try to get the shot of the moon rising with "Finger Rock" in front of it. Just hope we have the same kind of clouds. That will make for a great picture!
 

Well Mr. Jeff, I think you have written more words in this one thread than I have read in my whole life. 8-) Counting the days until I am back in SE Arizona, digging until I can't dig anymore. Earl and I are more than ready to hit the road.
 

cshirsch said:
Well Mr. Jeff, I think you have written more words in this one thread than I have read in my whole life. 8-) Counting the days until I am back in SE Arizona, digging until I can't dig anymore. Earl and I are more than ready to hit the road.
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And here I thought you were "well read"! And what's with calling me Mister Jeff ya old fart! Trying to make me feel old or something? Sheesh! Some peoples children! Remind me to call your mom and have a talk with her about your manners!
 

Well another day done and I've now got the office set back up so I can get back to the research. Nice big monitor and a huge hard drive for storing maps and information on! I will also be able to finish up the township and range "cheat sheet" (which is more like a frickin book) that details out each section of the county. Each section of every township/range area will have notes on land management, historical claims, current claims and exactly which map(s) they can be found on. We also have unlimited downloads from our internet provider so I can finish up my raid on the USGS map site and get the rest of the maps for Mohave County to add to my collection. Even if it IS to durn hot to be out digging I can still be making progress towards getting some claims filed for. I already have my eye on some open areas in Gold Basin that need to be tested. I've been noticing a few things on the land matters site as well so Barry, be expecting an e-mail from me shortly so I can gt some clarification on some things I'm starting to suspect.
 

Well I took a little trip back down to Douglas yesterday to pick up the rest of my stuff and now I'm paying the price. 8-1/2 hour drive to get there, 2 hours of loading up the truck and then like an idiot I turned right around and drove yet another 8-1/2 hours to get myself back home to Golden Valley. Now I've got to go unload the truck and find places for all this stuff. I feel like I've been beaten on and then had salt rubbed into the wounds! I'm currently seeking donation of a bullet to be inserted in a vital spot. It MIGHT make me feel better!!!
 

Well Dan, I did it backwards. R&R first and then unload! I wasn't about to kill myself unloading after that drive. Going to have to build another 10X12 shed by the processing area to use as a work shop. I've got so many projects around here that I need to get done it isn't funny. Unfortunately some of these projects are going to cut into the mining time and now that it's cooling down I need to get them done. Turns out that when they graded the pad for the place, they messed up the drainage. This was shown by that last couple of monsoon storms that came through. We have pooling is some not so good places and run off is running into the processing area. More than a little "Tera-Forming" is needed. I could have it done in short order with a BobCat or a Case 580C but that's not going to happen so it's shovel and wheelbarrow time! I can hear my back groaning already.

On another note... Last nights meeting of Mohave Prospectors Assoc was a pretty good one. Saw that joining up with them was a good choice. They're actively searching for even more claims for the group to work and there is a nice feeling of comradeship between the members who have welcomed Jan and I with open arms. Lots of nice prizes in the raffle as well as .445 Gram nugget as the door prize for the night.
 

goldenIrishman said:
Well Dan, I did it backwards. R&R first and then unload! I wasn't about to kill myself unloading after that drive. Going to have to build another 10X12 shed by the processing area to use as a work shop. I've got so many projects around here that I need to get done it isn't funny. Unfortunately some of these projects are going to cut into the mining time and now that it's cooling down I need to get them done. Turns out that when they graded the pad for the place, they messed up the drainage. This was shown by that last couple of monsoon storms that came through. We have pooling is some not so good places and run off is running into the processing area. More than a little "Tera-Forming" is needed. I could have it done in short order with a BobCat or a Case 580C but that's not going to happen so it's shovel and wheelbarrow time! I can hear my back groaning already.

On another note... Last nights meeting of Mohave Prospectors Assoc was a pretty good one. Saw that joining up with them was a good choice. They're actively searching for even more claims for the group to work and there is a nice feeling of comradeship between the members who have welcomed Jan and I with open arms. Lots of nice prizes in the raffle as well as .445 Gram nugget as the door prize for the night.
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Im in the process of building a 10x10 using pallets that work throws away. i use it for the wall supports then throw plywood on the outside of them and the floor same thing.
 

LOL... Georgia Engineering at it's finest Ducky! better to use them like that than to see them tossed into some landfill. In truth I'd like to make the shed more like 12X16 ft in size but 10X12 is the largest they allow without a permit. At least they don't limit the number of sheds you can have. I've got an open 50 amp breaker at the meter and will be running some 8 gauge wire to a sub-panel which will allow me to have a 20 amp circuit in both sheds. That's more than enough to run the power and lights. I'll be making the top of the new shed almost flat so I can set up a medium sized telescope up top to take advantage of the night skies around here. I'm going to get as much bang for my bucks as possible.
 

goldenIrishman said:
LOL... Georgia Engineering at it's finest Ducky! better to use them like that than to see them tossed into some landfill. In truth I'd like to make the shed more like 12X16 ft in size but 10X12 is the largest they allow without a permit. At least they don't limit the number of sheds you can have. I've got an open 50 amp breaker at the meter and will be running some 8 gauge wire to a sub-panel which will allow me to have a 20 amp circuit in both sheds. That's more than enough to run the power and lights. I'll be making the top of the new shed almost flat so I can set up a medium sized telescope up top to take advantage of the night skies around here. I'm going to get as much bang for my bucks as possible.
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Love the telescope idea! im stuck in the woods so can barely see the sky at all most of the time. ive got a small clearing in the back yard where i do my gardening but thats about it. Planting some peach trees next year i hope. thought about tapping into the dryer 20amp to run to my building but it would have to be under ground which would really suck... not sure if power is even an option at this point.
 

Yeah... I used to live about 20 miles south of Macon near Warner Robins AFB. Trees kept me from seeing the sky a lot of the time and the haze that was always around made a telescope pretty much worthless. The trees also made taking part in my other hobby hard. I fly radio control sailplanes and do cross country flying. Get into one of those tree tunnels along the roads and you loose sight of your plane! Only problem with a telescope here would be the wind which never seems to stop blowing. Winter skies here are crystal clear but the wind will cut right through you.
 

Anyone get that license plate #?

Well today is going to be a break day from working around the house and I feel it's well deserved. Soon as I finish up the morning coffee it's time to throw some buckets in the truck and head out to the Griffith claim and get some materials to run here at the house as I have time.

Right now I feel like I was run over by a semi and then they backed up to see what they had hit. This is thanks to the current project I'm working on. Trenching for water lines by hand really sucks! Hard packed soil with lots of rocks and having to dig right next to the skirting for the house is making it a real pain to get done. If I could get in close enough I'd have rented a ditch witch to do the work but that wasn't going to happen. Once I'm done with the sections next to the house, I'll be able to break out the heavy equipment. I still have to do the trenching for water and electrical out to the sheds and that's a couple of hundred feet of trench that will have to be done. At least everything will be up to code when I'm finished. For electrical I'll be running a 50 amp circuit to a sub panel and then breaking it down to three 15 amp circuits. This will handle all the power for lighting (4 ea 500w halogen floods) the processing area , shop power and lights and sluice power with ease.

I'm also seriously considering running all the materials I've dug out through the sluice before I use it to back fill after the new pipe is installed. We've already found gold on the property so it only makes sense to me to clean the gold out of the dirt before putting it back in place. I'll have to move the sluice closer to the materials so I don't have to haul it twice to run it. I'll lay the pipe, run the materials through the Le Trap and dump the tailings back into the trench.

Well I'm off to find the Aspirin and get loaded up to hit the claim. (Or am I just off in general?)
 

Well weather here has been screwy lately and I feel guilty about leaving work unfinished. We did get out there and grabbed 4 buckets worth of materials that we classified down to 1/4". Lots of larger cobbles with tons of small gravel packed in between them. We weren't in any hurry and took out time with the digging. I have to admit that it was nice out there without the dogs and the only sounds being the occasional train in the distance. For those of you that don't know this area, Kingman has a LOT of trains going through it every day. Once we had our buckets loaded, we check out a couple of areas where others had been working and then headed back towards the frontage road that gives us access to the area.

As we neared the frontage road, we heard another train coming down the track and decide to wait for it to pass before going under the trestle to get to the road. We waited.... and waited.... and waited and the train just kept on going by. I think the driver of the train was a guy named Casey Jones or something because he was flat out hauling a$$ down the tracks. Three engines in the front of the train and it ended up with two more at the end pushing. That and being on a slight down hill section had me hoping he had some really good brakes on that thing!

Still have to run the materials through the Le Trap to see what we got for our efforts. I topped the buckets off with water to give the little clay balls a chance to soften up some before running them. At least now I have some materials to run when I feel like taking a break for the joys of home ownership. (Please note I did NOT call them "Honey-Do's". That would imply that Jan had set these chores before me and these projects are my own ideas. She just likes my ideas is all...)
 

Nice day of exploring some new areas...

Yesterday Jan and I had to go to "Lost Wages" for a luncheon and on the way back we did a little exploring on the Nevada side of the river. Instead of heading home to Golden Valley on Hwy 93 we took Hwy 95 and made a few detours to check some areas out. I had never been on 95 and found it to be long, straight and boring until we got to the turnoff to Nelson. Nelson is an old mining town that is located near the edge of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. (LMNRA) It's a cool little town and the area seems to have been hit hard by our current economic times. Not many signs of current mining being done and I think the only thing that keeps the town alive is the traffic heading to and from Lake Mohave. Seemed to be a lot of people stopping there but we didn't stop because of all the tourist traffic. A future weekday trip is called for though so we can enjoy the area without having to fight wall to wall people.

Once we got to the lake, we followed the signs to an area called "Placer Cove". (Gee... I wonder how it got its name) The road out there was a narrow two lane with very few pull offs along its length which I found frustrating because there were lots of areas I wanted to stop and check out the geology. On those few areas that I cold stop at, the washes showed many MANY distinct layers of alluvial build up over time. At one location, you could see where the water had left a group of "spires/columns" standing on their own while everything around them had been washed away. Unfortunately, all the exploration was not going to do me any real good because the great looking alluvial fans were on the LMNRA lands. While I'm pretty sure the fans would be as nice on the other side of the mountains, we just didn't have time to check them out closer as we had a lot of ground to cover yesterday.

We continued south along 95 to Searchlight (almost missed it because we blinked) and down through CalNevAri to Christmas Tree Pass road which we took to get back over to Laughlin. The road going over Christmas Tree Pass was in very good shape for a dirt road and once we got out of the flat lands along 95 and into the hills my attention turned from driving to examining the terrain. Lots of washes coming down from the hills were calling to us to "detect here". You could see the mineralization in the hills very clearly and in places on the road you could see ribbons of black sands. At several points along the road, you could easily see down into the washes and they looked prime indeed.

At one point I happened to glance up the side of the hill to the left (north side of the road) and proceeded to slam on the brakes because I had spotted several tailing slides just above us. There was a little side road that went up to the area so we took it and got as close as we could to the slides and after parking the truck, we hopped out and took a little walk up the hill to check it out. Jan pretty much stayed by the truck while I hiked the remaining short distance up the hill where I found a pair of grated off audits. The mines had been sealed off in such a way as to allow small critters like bats to be able to gt in and out, but there was no way a person could fit through the grate. I noticed some tags had been welded to the top of the grates that said "U.S. GOVT PROPERTY" and then some kind of code had been welded on to the bottom sections. CL-35 and CL-35A. I have no idea what the heck it means but I have a feeling that the mine portals had been sealed by the government to keep people out (not that I'd enter an abandoned mine anyway!) and the tags and codes were to show that the sealing grates were actually government property. After looking at the rocks around the openings and in the tailing piles I was thinking sulfide deposit that had quickly played out. The tailing piles were not very extensive and the audits were small and didn't seem all that deep.

It wasn't long after this stop that we passed back into the LMNRA lands (Why do they have to be so extensive? We were still several miles from the actual river/lake at this point.) and since I knew that we couldn't touch it I paid more attention to my driving. Even so there were still several areas that caught my eye and had me drooling over them. It wasn't long before I noticed a car behind us and he was doing a good job of keeping up. It was a brand new Dodge Challenger and I couldn't help but think to myself "What kind of fool would take a ride like that on these roads?". I got my answer several minutes later when we came across a full (or is that fool?) sized Dodge pickup that was stuck up to the axle in the sand. Having been in the same situation from time to time myself, we of course stopped to see if we could help the guys out. I hadn't loaded the off road kit up in the truck before we left because this side trip home from Lost Wages was on a whim. He had no rope or chain and neither did we. The guy that had been behind us also stopped to help and during the course of conversation we learned he was from Wisconsin and the Challenger was a rental car. (I didn't think anyone would take a new car like that on those kinds of roads if they were still paying for it but ya never know with some people) I only had some 1/2 inch nylon rope that we use to secure the groceries with in the bed but we gave it a try anyway. No good as the guy that was stuck had no sense of the teamwork of towing. The rope ended up popping and I wasn't about to get us stuck as well. So the guy in the Challenger offered to give one of the guys in the stuck truck a ride back into town and we continued on our merry way home.

We made a quick stop at the "Gas & Grub" to get some water ( We had left what we had with the guys in the stuck truck) and then headed past Heftys favorite rock formation (Finger Rock) to an area that I've been researching the last couple of weeks so I could show it to Jan. After verifying what I had seen on the aerial views as far as access goes we headed home.

All in all it was a nice day. We managed to get eyes on some new areas with good prospecting potential, tried to help some others and verified access to some possibly good mining areas as well.
 

I have since checked out that areas on LandMatters and it looks like we just might have to go do some detecting in some of those washes that are off the LMNRA lands! Mining history...check
Land status...check (BLM) including Master Plat status
Claim locations...check (only 2 current ones)
Access...Check

Just want to wait till it cools off a bit more before we hit it with a vengeance!
 

Well after a LOT of research, doing our due diligence, and of course consulting with Clay on some of the finer points, Jan and I are ready to load up the buckets and start gathering some samples in an effort to identify the best area(s) to claim that are close to the house. So far we have have found over 10 quadrants that are within a 20 minute drive from the house. None of these quads contain any claims (so far), are in a high mineral zone and while access may not be easy, they can still be gotten to without having to result to investing in pack horses and mules to get to them.

For the most part, all of these areas are close enough to the house to make it an easy commute and I'll be able to turn mining into "my day job" at long last. I'll still be looking in the Gold Basin area for a claim or two of course but these close areas will be great for the hotter times of year. I'll still do 2 week trips out to the Gold Basin area once we find some ground to claim out there, but the closer claims will allow me to keep mining full time.

It's been a long haul to get to this point. Without the MyLandMatters site as well as Clays timely input on occasion I'd never have gotten this far this fast. We are now poised to file on several 40 acres parcels should they test out. Stay tuned over the next few weeks for more reports on test results and progress on filing the claims. We're still holding off on giving out info on exact locations of course and we will be doing the filing(s) late on a Wednesday and heading to the BLM state office in Phoenix the next morning to hand walk the paperwork thru their system. We will then return to the claim area and post our signage with the claim numbers and place the required paperwork into the monument.
 

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