Mytimetoshine

[goldenmojo]

Had a great time with both of you and on Friday with SOHR. Just wait til we get that jeep then we will hit some roads.....Here's Friday Saturday and Monday and a little from upstream that was in the snuffer.

 

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[GrizzlyGremlin]

You mean like this?

Yeeee Haww!!! Yezzir! That the juice right there!! I frickin Love those coat hanger cracks! Very overlooked, some people only pick the 1+" stuff, but I've found the width very unimportant, and the depth of the crack to be key!! Beautiful beautiful!!!

 

[mytimetoshine]

Sun:

I had no intention of mining this Super Bowl Sunday,I'm quite the NFL fan. I woke up and just got the itch. The weather was gorgeous and I really had nothing to do until the game at 330 so I decide to set the DVR and hit the river!

Now 2 weeks ago I was panning, the river has been up and there are very few spot for a sluice if any but I noticed where I was panning the flow had created a sluice spot. When I got home I checked dream flows and saw that it was at 2k CFS. So before I went out I checked and it was at a steady 1900 with no release all week. So I brought my Angus Mackirk drop rifle, but it was a waste. The water was up 3-5 ft !!!! What the hell! That site is unreliable at BEST! I was hopeful but when I got to the spot it was all deep underwater.....

Went to work anyway with the gold pan and dumping blacks and into my 2 gallon bucket. After digging for a while I stopped for a breather and guess what I heard?...nothing, the sweet, sweet sound of dead silence except for the occasional bird chirp and current rippling to the other wise calm looking surface. I had one of those moments where you realize why your doing what your doing. Did not see anyone on the river that day. Had her all to my self

Got about 1 hr in then thought just maybe I could rig up a make shift dam for the drop riffle but could not get enough flow and basically wasted 45 minutes.. then panned for another hour.

Got home and with fast forwarding the commercials and timeouts I was live in time to see the Beyonce discrace....err rrrrrr I mean performance. Didn't miss anything and got some gold! Winning!

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Man i haven't been there since turkey day with you. I see its already greening up around there.

 

[mytimetoshine]

I got the jump on things this year! Yea there is going to be more bad weather before spring really sets in, but I'm way ahead of wear I was last year.

So work is busy as ****. That's a great thing but I've been so feverish!

I was supposed to have to make the 4 hr round trip after work on Friday night to pick up my daughter for the weekend. Last minute the ex says she has a half day and is available early. My fantastic mother offered to do the pick up so they could hang out together just the girls... what a life saver! Instead of fighting miserable rush hour traffic for hours I just had to drive to lincoln and the back way has no traffic.

So as the work day winded down I figured if I did everything perfect I could make it to the river one hour before sunset and still get to my parents house at a reasonable time.

Park truck, change into Chest waders and grab the gear. I went to test an area of know gold to see how far it stretches. And oh boy it's large! Yee haw!

15 minutes in and 15 minutes out left me 30 minutes of mining time. 1/8 inch classifier, pan and 2 gallon black sand dump bucket.

Not to shabby for 30 min with just a pan 15 minutes from my house and 15 min from thw truck including gear up and site set up. Winning!

 

[HMiller]

I like your story. Nice shine!

 

[Asmbandits]

I got the jump on things this year! Yea there is going to be more bad weather before spring really sets in, but I'm way ahead of wear I was last year.

So work is busy as ****. That's a great thing but I've been so feverish!

I was supposed to have to make the 4 hr round trip after work on Friday night to pick up my daughter for the weekend. Last minute the ex says she has a half day and is available early. My fantastic mother offered to do the pick up so they could hang out together just the girls... what a life saver! Instead of fighting miserable rush hour traffic for hours I just had to drive to lincoln and the back way has no traffic.

So as the work day winded down I figured if I did everything perfect I could make it to the river one hour before sunset and still get to my parents house at a reasonable time.

Park truck, change into Chest waders and grab the gear. I went to test an area of know gold to see how far it stretches. And oh boy it's large! Yee haw!

15 minutes in and 15 minutes out left me 30 minutes of mining time. 1/8 inch classifier, pan and 2 gallon black sand dump bucket.

Not to shabby for 30 min with just a pan 15 minutes from my house and 15 min from thw truck including gear up and site set up. Winning!

Man you are lucky to live so close to the gold, If i lived that close Id probably be divorced and jobless lol.. Thats a good take for only 30 min! keep up the good work, I know you will!

 

[Aufisher]

Looking good!

 

[goldenmojo]

Water looks a little murky there the other day. You got some color and that is all that matters. For dreamflows accuracy it needs to be running 175-250 cfs to be running at low level. 2000cfs= high flow. Also there is an 9 hour time difference so a 6am release equals flood at 3 pm.

 

[mytimetoshine]

Water looks a little murky there the other day. You got some color and that is all that matters. For dreamflows accuracy it needs to be running 175-250 cfs to be running at low level. 2000cfs= high flow. Also there is an 9 hour time difference so a 6am release equals flood at 3 pm.

Admit it joe.that water comes whenever the hell it feels like. Lol

Murky yes, but I still drank it! Through my filter but, ah! Taste just fine. Nice and cold!

 

[goldenmojo]

You should probably see if you can get an endorsement deal from the filter company after drinking that mucky junk...by the way how is that twitch in your left eye doing.....

 

[mytimetoshine]

Had a ruff day on Friday, i headed to the river for a much needed stress reliever.

Went back to a river I haven't hit for 2 years. The gold is small but its a beautiful place with I guess a still uncertain fate. I don't like to say exactly where I am but they should have named it Quartz river. It really is amazing. Cobble bars 100 yards wide of nearly solid quartz. Even the trails are built of quartz!

Saturday. Got sort of a late start but I knew it would be kinda cold so I aimed to hit that sun window of 11- 2 haha. Hiked for a bit. Got to a spot where I figured nobody would bother me and set up my Angus Mackirk drop riffle. Ran a buckets worth of material and decided I better move it to a lesser flow. There is very little black sand here the sand is literally pulverized quartz and the gold is very small so you have to move material and you can easily blow out gold. I just never feel comfortable not classifying on a drop riffle. So I did and even still I wondered if I was losing some.

Beautiful day. Hand got a little cold at the end. Maybe 3 hrs of digging around some tree roots.

Oh and about noon I hear a chopper come out of nowhere. Just rose above the Ridge right over my head. I stopped and looked up at them but they may not have been able to see me as I was right under them. Then they position the bird so they can fly sideways the length of that stretch of river. Looking for dredges I guess?....

 

[mytimetoshine]

Sunday round 2:

I could have gone half a dozen places and got more gold but to me that's not the point, we'll not always anyway lol.

I knew there was decent gold in that tree roots mass, but how do you get it?... a dredge? Well one can only dream I guess..... =_2=÷××!!!!

Sat night I contemplated my Sunday digs and I thought it best to go back to the same spot and apply what I learned on the previous day to see what I could make happen.

Now I had some advantages. First the weather. Sat was a bit cold but Sunday was perfect. Got more sleep, felt better and got an earlier start.

I had realized the night before that water flow, setup and ease of trail wouldn't be an issue so I could gear up.

Switched out the drop riffle for the Bazooka Prospector and the 2 gallon bucket for a 5 gal plus the 2gal and some branch cutters. Still had to pack the chest waders Wich is a real drag.

Went back to work on the tree root mass. Sat I made a 2 ft wide trench around it and worked the roots a bit. Sunday I decide to use some hillbilly hydraulics. Thanks Mike!

I build a small dam around the low spot of the area. Then i would scoop water with the 5g and in one motion throw it hard against the root mass. Then chopped it up and scraped it some more and repeat. Then scooped out the material in the collection pool. As I went deeper the mass only got thicker and would only be workable further with either a dredge or for me a hand dredge.

The result was a great day. No people, no helicopters and perfect weather. Except for the ice cold water.

 

[goldenmojo]

Nice gold. The diggin looks good out in the water on the other side of the grey moon rock on that little bar. Mini wing dam that bar and dig the downside. That section of river has a peanut butter colored layer between 1 and 2 feet deep that holds good color. The best thing of all is you didn't have to walk 1800 miles from Missouri to get to it...

 

[mytimetoshine]

SAT:

Storm or no storm, I was going to reduce the fever a bit. Got up at 8 and it was fairly sunny and not much wind. Geared up and fueled up and was at the river by 10:30. Wasn't raining yet but could tell it wouldn't be long till it did. Spotted a tree near the water line that also had a half built damn close by so I went to work building up the dam. I was digging dirt by 11 working on a tree root mass and running it through my Prospector.By 12 it was raining steady but no wind. By one it was pouring hard but still no wind. The water was very cold and with no sunlight my hands started to get cold so I called it.

It was really fun, playing in the rain, its just as much fun as when I was a kid!

 

[mytimetoshine]

SUN:

School of hard knocks joined me back at the same spot. We got to the dig site at 930. Built the dam up even more and went to work. I went back at the roots and Courtney poked around and took a liking to a pit someone had dug that was showing some bedrock. At about 11 I decided to join courtney and we attacked the pit. We moved quite a bit of material I'm proud to say. We didn't even get rained on till the very end it was quite nice out actually. Are plan was to dig the pit and expose as much berockrock as we could and then spend the last 30 min scrapping it up by hand.

Our test pans were killer and courtney s sluice was showing good color in the upper black mat. I just fed into my prospector all day. This is the most material I've ever ran through it without cleaning up.. I kept my eye on the trap. Gave it the finger test and it was loose. Every so often cupped my hand underneath the trap and it was still spitting rock, so..

We each scraped up about 2g of material off the bedrock. The material looked fantastic. Peanut butter colored and clay balls with round gravels and some of the angled bedrock that we broke apart. I decided to pan this stuff... it had gold but nothing like I had hoped so I just dumped the rest into the bazooka.... we cleaned up and left at 330 right when the rain hit. It was perfect.

Now I'm a little unsure of what happened because the cleanup was way light... .14.

Keep in mind I only dug for 2hrs Saturday and dug for almost 6 hrs Sunday. Only thing I can figure is the roots had better material but I think there is more too it. The test pans we were getting from the pit were very good. Good enough to lure me away from the roots. Then Courtney scooped up 2 hand fulls of the material right on the bedrock and had a killer pan. Thats when we attacked it hard.

I should have cleaned up .3 at the very least... idk.. maybe I overloaded my prospector? My brain says no cause it was definitely exchanging material but simething happened for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if I put 3/4 of a yard through it. But either the test pans from the pit were deceiving or I was loosing gold.

Oh well it was a much needed outing and I had a great time with School of hard knocks. Let's hope his cleanup came out better

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

It happens like that sometimes

 

[SchoolOfHardRocks]

Yeah man I had a great time too. Thanks for showing me around on a river I don't have much experience on. Contrary to the weather reports it ended up being a very nice day. We even brought a tent just in case it dumped on us. I have a new found respect for Eric because not too many miners are willing to brave torrential rains to find some color- But we were down for the cause and got lucky because like Eric said the rain didn't even come until we were packin' up. It's been a while since I've done some serious sluicing so it was nice but my body is definitely feeling it now. I'll try to get it panned out as soon as possible but I'm thinking I'll finish up on the weekend as I still have to pan out the cons from my second sluice run. I'm a busy bee with my full time job, full time school, and 3 kids lol. I'll be sure to post it up here so we can compare. Thanks for a good day man!

 

[SchoolOfHardRocks]

Looks like the bedrock is a little better, it would probably be even better if theres a deep pocket in that bedrock.

 

[mytimetoshine]

I think I overloaded the bazooka and or did not have it running right. I wasn't out in the flow enough. That was by far the most material I've ever ran without a cleanout. Probably cleanout after a 1/4 yard next time.

I'll have to go back and do more testing. Remember I dug the pit with you most of the day. But you also could have hit a little sweet spot.. Who knows.. I had .10 in 2hrs on the tree roots the day before and the same the week before that so I'm kinda leaning towards the blowout theory.. Especially since your set up was probably blowing out too.

Nice gold, good job man!.You always seem to bring home more when we go out! I got to get you beat one day. Man Wish I was back out there today but got some shopping g out of the way. Picked up new creek sneaks and hiking boots from Bass pro. Was hoping to at least try on some wetsuits but they only had a cheap beginner wake board suit. Didn't even look like they were for men..maybe kids or something

Lol, hey you got the same scale as mee too!