ARIZAU: The area is workable but not claimable. It's surrounded by many claims both private and club. We were looking into claiming an area about a mile away (as the crow flies) but changes in life made me decide not to file on it.
DAN: At this point it's looking like I should still be in this area come spring time. Granted I'd much rather be up in the Kingman area but at this time it's not looking good for that to happen. If it does happent o work out, soon as I find a good spot or two to file on, you guys are of course invited to come on out and play.
CHRIS:Yeah... it was a lot of work this trip but so far I've been getting pretty good gold out of the materials I got "to go". Gold in every bucket so far. I finished up running the 6 buckets from the main hole and have it drying now. I've run one from the new hole upstream and the gold in that one was the best out of any single bucket. I'm going to run the last five buckets today and then see how the take form them matches up with the six from the big hole weight wise. Before I post the total take for the trip I'm going to crush and bake the black sands. I'm also seeing some micron size pieces with the magnifying glass so that is going to have to be amalgamated. I'll weigh the mercury both before and after amalgamation to get an idea of how much more I get and then put it with the other used Hg that's waiting for a proper retort to separate the gold and reclaim the Hg.
I'm still feeling like death warmed over in a microwave. I'm going to have to find some kind of pad/air mattress for my smaller tent so I'm not sleeping on the ground. My body isn't liking the rocks, lumps and bumps I subjected it to on this trip. Also a bit more time prepping the tent area is going to be called for. It may take a little time away from digging, but in the long run I think it will be worth the effort as I should stay in better shape for digging. It's hard to be enthusiastic about digging when you wake up feeling like you've been beat on all night. (I'm still trying to figure out WHY Chris brought that 2x4 with him...)