School is back in... Time to work!!!!!

[GarretDiggingAz]

Keith
You going up Saturday? My totes are on last legs. Time for more. Then my buckets of coarse are getting tired. Handles just don't last. Especially when they're plastic. So now I've got to create handles for the straps I'll put on them.

I'm hoping to get the hopper setup with my pumps. Especially since the 1200 gph pump has a 3/4 hose. Just another adapter to put in the run.
Does anybody have the template to drill the holes for the spray bar?
Does the holes get drilled on angles or straight in?
Just playing with ideas on this. Also thinking of a couple slits so there's a couple different types of washing going on.

 

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[AzViper]

Well I arrive at Jeff's and Robi's claim this morning about 8:30 and did not catch up with Jeff and his wife until nearly noon. After a good 45 minutes of BSing we decided to unload my truck. I had taken 7 barrels of water and 24 five gallon barrels. I also dropped off my Vac and gas. I could not stay long as I had to head back to Tucson. I found out that I am still not ready to get back into the swing of prospecting. A few weeks ago I had fallen on my left knee of which has had a knee implant and its still not 100 percent as I have fluid building up in the joint. It will take a good 3 months for the knee to correct its self as your body allows fluid to go into the joint for protection when the joint sustains an injury. Shoulder is doing great.

I ran into the claim owner who owns a lode claim right above Jeff's claim. He has no access and has to carry everything into his claim by foot of which is a good 1/4 mile.

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

Wow Keith. Now your knee. Though it's an oldie. Those tumbles sure take it's toll. Glad your shoulders doing good. I'm hoping to get there later in the day Monday. Depends on when son gets out of work. I'm going to have a full crew. Just hope they don't expect to eat and not earn their keep. Lol. First outing with sons fiancé. She's a good worker. So now I'll see how good a digger she is.
Looks like I won't get to see ya again. Maybe if times willing we could meet up Wednesday. I'll show ya what Jay did to the sluice.
I ran my last 40 gallons of dirt and finally panned the cons. Funny thing was that most to all the gold came from clean out and not the cons. I think in the cons I got 20-30 colors. Ranging from micron gold to pepper size. I thought this was wierd but then I figure the trap that Jay put in literally captured most the gold. So literally panning the cons (at least this time) was a waste of time.
I know Jeff is wanting coffee. Poor guy asked me to bring some. Sure will be glad to bring him some. Just sorry he's got to wait for it.

 

[AzViper]

Wow Keith. Now your knee. Though it's an oldie. Those tumbles sure take it's toll. Glad your shoulders doing good. I'm hoping to get there later in the day Monday. Depends on when son gets out of work. I'm going to have a full crew. Just hope they don't expect to eat and not earn their keep. Lol. First outing with sons fiancé. She's a good worker. So now I'll see how good a digger she is.
Looks like I won't get to see ya again. Maybe if times willing we could meet up Wednesday. I'll show ya what Jay did to the sluice.
I ran my last 40 gallons of dirt and finally panned the cons. Funny thing was that most to all the gold came from clean out and not the cons. I think in the cons I got 20-30 colors. Ranging from micron gold to pepper size. I thought this was wierd but then I figure the trap that Jay put in literally captured most the gold. So literally panning the cons (at least this time) was a waste of time.
I know Jeff is wanting coffee. Poor guy asked me to bring some. Sure will be glad to bring him some. Just sorry he's got to wait for it.

Yeah I turned 57 last Monday and dang the age is catching up with me. Have always been this rough and tumble guy that could take a beating, now I am feeling the aftershocks. About 40 year ago I worked for Standard Oil, using a barrel dolly to move 55 gallon barrels around the dock the hook came off of the top lip of the drum send me four feet down from the loading dock. While laying on the concrete the barrel came rolling off the dock onto my left knee. That was 408 pounds of oil. Did not break anything and I manage to continue to work the rest of the day. The next day my knee looked like a basketball. This is the knee that has had the implant 35 years later. The same knee took a beating in football when I tore both the Posterior and Anterior ligaments. Once that happen my toes could touch my nose. The Meniscus was warn out and I was bone to bone for a good 5 years as I was to young for implant.

 

[elgatodelnoche]

It just plains sucks getting old. Turns out when I lost my sex drive it was a blessing instead of a curse. Now I have much more time for hobbies! I wish it would have happened thirty years sooner.

 

[elgatodelnoche]

Keith
You going up Saturday? My totes are on last legs. Time for more. Then my buckets of coarse are getting tired. Handles just don't last. Especially when they're plastic. So now I've got to create handles for the straps I'll put on them.

I'm hoping to get the hopper setup with my pumps. Especially since the 1200 gph pump has a 3/4 hose. Just another adapter to put in the run.
Does anybody have the template to drill the holes for the spray bar?
Does the holes get drilled on angles or straight in?
Just playing with ideas on this. Also thinking of a couple slits so there's a couple different types of washing going on.

Galvanized tubs.

 

[elgatodelnoche]

Keith
You going up Saturday? My totes are on last legs. Time for more. Then my buckets of coarse are getting tired. Handles just don't last. Especially when they're plastic. So now I've got to create handles for the straps I'll put on them.

I'm hoping to get the hopper setup with my pumps. Especially since the 1200 gph pump has a 3/4 hose. Just another adapter to put in the run.
Does anybody have the template to drill the holes for the spray bar?
Does the holes get drilled on angles or straight in?
Just playing with ideas on this. Also thinking of a couple slits so there's a couple different types of washing going on.

Galvanized tubs.

 

[AzViper]

I headed down south to Jeff's claim to pick up my VAC and just about 300 yards from his camp a pair of Turkeys walked in front of me. They were very good size as seen in the first photo. Once I got the photo a man was standing in front of my truck. Not sure were he came from other than the brush. He said he was headed in the same direction as I was so I told him to stop by camp. Once at camp he said he was hiking the Arizona Trail which begins at the southeast corner of our state by Mew Mexico - Arizona - Mexico and he will have traveled 800 miles once he hits the end of the trail. Turns out he is 1 day ahead of schedule and plans to be in Utah by the second week of May. His name is Joe and he is retired and is 72 years old.

The third photo is Chris who is down from Texas working with Jeff on their claim. His double sluice is feed by an automatic feeder using a 12 volt animal feeder with a traffic cone up side down as the funnel. The pumps are feed from two folding solar panel as see in photo 4. In all it was a great few hours I spent in the area before heading to Lake Havasu...

​

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Nice pics, I love all the wildlife I encounter. Great story meeting Joe. Looks like Chris is having fun.

 

[elgatodelnoche]

I love that solar setup and the game feeder!!

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

I headed down south to Jeff's claim to pick up my VAC and just about 300 yards from his camp a pair of Turkeys walked in front of me. They were very good size as seen in the first photo. Once I got the photo a man was standing in front of my truck. Not sure were he came from other than the brush. He said he was headed in the same direction as I was so I told him to stop by camp. Once at camp he said he was hiking the Arizona Trail which begins at the southeast corner of our state by Mew Mexico - Arizona - Mexico and he will have traveled 800 miles once he hits the end of the trail. Turns out he is 1 day ahead of schedule and plans to be in Utah by the second week of May. His name is Joe and he is retired and is 72 years old. The third photo is Chris who is down from Texas working with Jeff on their claim. His double sluice is feed by an automatic feeder using a 12 volt animal feeder with a traffic cone up side down as the funnel. The pumps are feed from two folding solar panel as see in photo 4. In all it was a great few hours I spent in the area before heading to Lake Havasu... <img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=963861"/> <img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=963862"/> <img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=963863"/> <img src="http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=963864"/>

Keith
Thx for the buckets. I was able take a stack. Just didn't have that much room. I left my water tanks with Jeff and then took 4 others. It seems I never have the time to run all my water. Lol. Hope your brothers doing good. Have some fun up there.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Well it was a good week out at the claim even if it was a tireing one. I've been feeling like road kill
on the highway of life since we got back but I am starting to feel better now....

We got a late start getting out of the house on Saturday so we didn't make it to the claim until
about noon. We had just started to unload the equipment when Keith showed up. It's nice to be
able to put a face to the name and voice now. He came bearing gifts too! Keith was kind enough to
loan us one of his vacuum units which worked like a champ! That thing sucked up everything but
the camp stove! I think Robi is in love with it because of how well it works. I can see on in our near
future. He also brought out a couple dozen buckets as well as seven 15gal barrels of water. After
getting the water unloaded and shooting the breeze for a bit, he had to take off. Next time he comes
out I'm going ot make sure he gets a chance to do some digging!

After Keith departed, we finished getting the camp setup and set up the sluice. As soon as we
could run materials, Robi and I took the vacuum out for a test drive. We went down to the area that we
had been working on the south end of the wash that goes through the claim. We vacuumed up a
couple of buckets worth of materials and took them back to camp to process. Sure enough there
was gold! In fact we got almost as much gold in those two buckets as we had gotten from the area
doing it by hand. We still have plenty of stuff to suck up in that area but it was late and we needed
to get dinner fixed before dark set in.

The next day we decided to try the vac in a different area of the wash. We found an area where the
materials were not real thick, but there were lots of cracks. Once again Keiths "Viper Vac" did a
great job! We were leaving that bedrock almost clean enough to eat off of and when we ran the
materials we got some nice gold out of it. Granted it wasn't ounces and ounces, but it was nice
and chunky. After running the materials and seeing the take, Robi took off back to the homestead
so she could get some things done for work. I set to doing some work on improvements around
the camp and after dinner started laying plans on how to attack the wash during the week.

After I came back to life on Monday morning (St. Patricks' Day) I got out the MineLab X-terra and
set off to follow my plan of shooting the wash to find an area to work. I headed down to the area that
Robi and I had cleared out with the vac the day before, thinking that it would be a good place to
ground balance the detector. As I was doing a quick sweep to make sure that there were not
any targets, I kept picking something up. As the sun wasn't hitting the bottom of the wash yet,
I switched over to pinpointer mode and narrowed down the location of the target. After going 90
degrees out I knew where I had to look. Stooping down I could see what looked like a small rock
wedged in one of the cracks. As I picked it up I could tell just by the weight that this wasn't "just
a rock". As soon as I got it up high enough for the sun to hit it, all I could see was the warm glow
of gold! It was a nice nugget just a little smaller than my little fingernail. Since I had just planned
to get locations to work, I hadn't brought a vial with me so I beat feet back to camp to get one for
this little beauty. The picture below doesn't do it justice since it was taken with my phone. I
"quesstimated" it at about 1.25 to 1.50 grams and I sure didn't want to have to explain to Robi
how I lost it. The rest of the day I spent working some areas of the wash and thinking about my
"Luck O' the Irish" find of the morning.



The next day, Chris and his dog Earl showed up bright and early. It wasn't long before Garrett
also showed up along with his "work force" of three sons and a daughter. I spent a good
portion of the day helping get everyone situated and didn't move nearly a much dirt as I wanted to.
Considering what I'd found so far for the trip, I can't help but wonder how much more I would have
found if I'd moved more dirt.

We also had Shane from Scottsdale show up. Great guy and it was a real pleasure meeting him.
It had been ten years since Shane had done any prospecting and we were glad to help him get
back in the groove. He wasn't having much luck but when he was leaving we gave him directions
to Kentucky Camp. He stopped and grabbed 4 buckets of materials and he sent me a text saying
that he had found some color in them already.

Ted from Tucson stopped by to say howdy and see the claim. We'd met on my outing to Kentucky
Camp and he's one of the few people I know that can out talk me!

On the second Saturday we had another "Texas Chris" show up. He and the other Chris had been
talking on e-mails and he stopped by to see the claim and meet us in person. Nice guy, but what
is it about Texans and big 5th wheeler campers?

One of the highlights of the entire trip was the guy Robi and I met that I will refer to as "T". This guy
was great! He came riding up to camp on a horse with a pack horse and two dogs in tow. He saw
all the drums of water and asked us if we was makin some whiskey. We explained that we were
mining and asked him if he'd like to see the operation we had going. "T" ended up spending an
hour or so with us and we learned that he had set out on the trail from Colorado on Feb 20!!!! Talk
about a long time in the saddle! He was bound for Utah on the trail and then back home. He said
he had to get away from all the "Fracking" going on in his area and wanted to let his eyes slow down
from doing 65 mph all the time. He was one very cool guy and I wish him well on his journey.

There were so many hikers stopping in to see what was going on that I can't remember all of them.
One guy that stood out was Jean-Paul from New York. He was really interested in the mining and
surprised that we could even mine like that in a National Forest. He dubbed Chris and I as his
new heroes, took lots of pictures of us and the gold and explained that his friends back in the city
wouldn't believe him without photos to back him up.

All in all it was a great week out there. I didn't get as much digging done as I would have liked, but
I did manage to get some improvements done, and measurements taken for future improvement projects.
Am I tired? You bet I am! Am I sore? Like I've been beat on with a 2X4. Was it worth it? How can
spending time with friends doing what we all love not be worth it?

I've still got six buckets of materials to run before I can give a final total for the trip. Robi and I
stopped and bought a nice scale on the way home. First thing we weight was the St. Patricks Day
nugget which came out at 1.26 grams. That's going to help the total for the trip a lot.

I'd also like to say I'm sorry for the delay in getting this posted. I've been having some major computer SNAFUs lately and I've really got to consider getting a new computer soon. Once I do... This thing is going to the claim for a little bit of target practice!!!!!

 

[KevinInColorado]

Wow, love it, congrats on the Irish luck nugget! Really enjoyed getting to read the whole story too, thanks for taking the time to share so much about your outing

 

[Jeff95531]

THAT is one GNARLY NUGGET! Congrats Jeff! Late starts seem to be required in our profession. I'M certain the fever is to blame. Something you didn't mention was breakdowns/forgot something...another plus.

The guy on horseback made me think of my dream as a kid of doing the same thing. Kudo's to him finding a way and doing it! A thought tho, I know how friendly you are and all, but you may have just started a new gold rush from NY, CO, TX, (lord knows where else) to AZ
Anyways, be sure to get us at least one pic of the pot of gold you got.

 

[goldenIrishman]

"T" had left form Colorado on Feb 20th. Makes my buttocks sore just thinking about riding for that long! I'd have blisters that would do Godzilla proud!

"T" explained that he had been born in Arizona and then his parents moved to Ohio. His mom used to show him old movies that had been made in the area and so when he was old enough, he moved back, got a black cowboy hat and hasn't looked back. While he might not be a rich man money wise, he's got a treasure trove of memories built up form his days in the saddle. That he's still adding to them only makes him all the richer!

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

There's also a lady hiking the AZ trail from south to north right now. She's doing this to raise funds and awareness for a certain cancer I believe. She was on the news prior to me going out there. She's doing this solo and giving speeches at certain towns along the way. I think I'd rather do it by horse. I've thought about getting a horse just for that. Well that was back then. Now, no way. I think I'd fall off way too many times. Unless I strap myself in to the saddle.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Nice find Jeff!

Nothing like a morning nugget to give you some confidence in your detecting ability. Just one word of advice - that nugget wasn't living alone. He has friends, family, cousins and sweethearts nearby. Don't let him be lonely - go get the rest of them so they can all live in harmony in your poke!

The Arizona Trail has many visitors all with their own story. I've heard many of them, maybe someday I'll have the time to share them. Don't ever be afraid to sit and spend some time with the travelers you meet in life. They are the gold nuggets of our society. The time is always well spent.

 

[Tophunt]

Thanks for sharing guys, glad you are having fun. Nice nugget.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Nice find Jeff!

Nothing like a morning nugget to give you some confidence in your detecting ability. Just one word of advice - that nugget wasn't living alone. He has friends, family, cousins and sweethearts nearby. Don't let him be lonely - go get the rest of them so they can all live in harmony in your poke!

The Arizona Trail has many visitors all with their own story. I've heard many of them, maybe someday I'll have the time to share them. Don't ever be afraid to sit and spend some time with the travelers you meet in life. They are the gold nuggets of our society. The time is always well spent.

Thanks Clay! I'm still kind of scratching my head on how the vac missed that thing. There was zip, zero and nada for other materials around it on the bed rock and that vacuum was sucking up much heavier things all day long. The only thing I can think of is that it got flipped out of the nozzle while clearing a jam. We will eventually find all his relatives including his GREAT GREAT grandfather! I'd never want to deprive a nugget from being with it's family!

That is one of the cool things about the location of the claim. Being right on the AZ Trail we get to meet all kinds of folks. So far we haven't had a bad experience with any of them. I think swapping stories with the people we meet is a great way to pass some time.

I managed to finish up the meager amount of materials I brought back. Without doing any "Shake N Bake" I netted 1.62 grams for the trip. Not all that much, but I did find a very promising area in one of the test buckets. Still it's not all that bad since I only ran about 16 buckets for the entire trip. That's including the stuff I brought back. The area I just tested will be great to work. Under trees and close to the processing area so I won't have to haul stuff so far. If it keeps giving it up like it did in the test sample. I could easily pull 3-4 grams out in a weekend. Maybe more if that nuggets family is hanging out in that bench......

 

[AzViper]

Jeff did you meet Bob and his geologist friend on Saturday?