Part Two
Day 4 Tuesday The arrival of Chris and Earl
Well Tuesday started off pretty much like all the other days so far. Drag myself out of the tent, get some coffee in me as well as some food and then make a water run to Kentucky Camp. I knew that Chris and Earl would be showing up so I was trying to hurry and get my chores done so I would be able to help Chris get set up and running as soon as possible. I had already made my first trip with water when I thought I heard a car up on the road. I hiked up the road to the gate at the top of the hill to let them in so the gear could be off loaded. When I got up to the gate I found that no one was there. Feeling kind of lazy that morning, I decided to hang out at the gate for a bit to see if they showed up. It didn’t take long before I could see them heading my way. What struck me as funny was the fact that I could only hear the sound of tires on gravel and no engine noise. Here I see this fairly tall guy, a medium sized dog and all this gear stuffed into a Prius! The thought of a can of Sardines came to mind right away. To make a long story short, I led them down the hill to where he needed to park and we got him, his dog and all his gear unloaded.
We started out towards the work area. Chris hauling his backpack and dog and me hauling a 15 gallon drum of water on my hand truck. It didn’t take but a few minutes and we were where I had decided that I’d set Chris up at to start digging. This was an area that Robi and I had done some work at before so I knew that there was gold in it. We dropped off the gear, slipped Earl off his leash so he could run and explore and I proceeded to give Chris the nickel tour. ( I charged him a quarter for it though. JK) Chris was kind of surprised when he saw my setup and the size of the hole I was working. I explained that it was only that large due to Robi and I having worked it for several weekends before this trip out. As soon as I showed him the vial with the two little nuggets in it, Chris was ready to get to work. We got his little Prospectors Choice highbanker set up and ready to go and he was soon digging where I had showed him. I was nice and allowed him to load his system up with water that I had hauled out, so while he was digging I made yet another run to get more water. (Did I mention that I like to have plenty of water?) As soon as I got back with more water I started running my sluice off of the materials that I had built up over the previous days. I like to think that I’m a fairly nice guy for the most part, but if you’re working your own system, you dig your own materials. It didn’t take long for Chris to have a couple of buckets worth of materials classified and ready to run, so that’s exactly what he did. I decided to come down to his dig area to see this little highbanker in action. When I first saw it I was thinking to myself, “Isn’t that cute? I wonder what it’s going to be when it grows up” The part of his system that impressed me was the fold out 100W solar panels he used to power everything. Considering that this thing had fit into his backpack it moved water and material better than I had expected. It didn’t take all that long and Chris had run both buckets worth of materials through his system and was ready for his first clean out in Arizona.
After washing out his mats, Chris set to panning down the cons. I can tell you that I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a look of total concentration on some ones face while panning in a very long time. He finally got it worked down enough to start checking for gold and when he did so I saw his face light up like a hundred watt bulb plugged into a 220V outlet! As a matter of fact, Chris looked like the cat that had just eaten the canary. I took a look in his pan and saw what would be to anyone that has worked the Greaterville area an average amount of gold. Then I remembered that he had been working a river in Texas and it all made sense. (Did I mention that NOT EVERYTHING in Texas is bigger?) Well the color in his pan lit a fire under my new friend and he went back to digging with a vengeance. I went back to my “little hole in the ground” and kept work for the rest of the day. As the sun began to set, Chris ran out of power since the angle of the sun was no longer high enough for his solar panels to deliver enough power to his pump. Chris packed up his cons and the gold he had put into his vial and headed back to his motel room for the night. I fixed up some hot food, checked in with the boss, did a little reading and then racked out for the night.
Day 5 Wednesday
Well day five for me started with coffee, breakfast and a handful of aspirin. This sleeping on the ground isn’t so easy as it used to be when I was younger! The lumps seemed to get bigger every night and I wasn’t sleeping all that well because of them. It didn’t take long for food and aspirin to have their desired effect and I was feeling almost human once again. Chris showed back up and after a few minutes discussing the plan of attack for the day we were both hard at it.
One thing was becoming clear to me as I worked to get more materials classified and run. Simply put, I work better when Robi and I are out there together. It was getting harder and harder to stay motivated for this project. What had taken an hour on the first couple of days was now taking me almost two hours two get done now. Everything seems to go faster when Robi and I are out there “Tag Teaming” that bank. With me digging and Robi running materials through the sluice it makes for a good combination.
Every once in a while I’d hear a whoop coming from Chris as he would test his latest run from his solar powered system. He was taking a tablespoons worth of cons from each cleanout and panning them down. Every time he was finding some nice gold and it was like a shot in the arm for him. He’d go back to digging with renewed vigor and it wasn’t long before he would have enough materials ready to run another batch. This got me thinking. I’ve been running and not doing any panning for most of the day other than my morning test pan. I decided to go ahead and pan down some of the materials from the current run that I was just finishing up. I shut the sluice down and let it start draining while I went down to see how Chris was doing. He had some nice color in his pan and after talking for a bit I headed back to my area to start cleaning out the sluice. I pulled the carpets and rolled them up to get them out of the way while I rinsed the “sweepings” into my pan. Once the sluice bed was cleaned and the tailings dumped I started panning down the “Sweepings”. (I call them sweepings because they remind me of dirt that’s been swept under the carpet) It didn’t take long and I was soon down to black sand. After cleaning out the magnetic sands with my magnet I cleared out some of the remaining blonde sands and started looking for signs of color. A couple of swirls later I found a couple of small pieces which showed me that there was something in the last run at least. After verifying that I hadn’t lost the trail of the gold I dumped the cons into the bucket and cleaned out the mats so I could pan that material down as well. The last mat didn’t give up any color which to me was a good thing. The second had a couple of small colors in it which it about what I expected. When I panned down the first mat I was rewarded with several nice flashes of color before I had even hit the pan with the magnet. I cleaned everything up a little better and did a quick swirl. First thing I saw was a pair of nice pickers that I grabbed out right away and put into my picker vial. A bit more swirling and after seeing how much color was in the pan I dumped it into the cons bucket. Just verifying that I was still getting some nice return for my efforts went a long way towards improving my motivation level.
The rest of the day was spent digging, classifying and running materials with a couple of trips down the wash to check on Chris. Earl decided to come on up and visit me about the time I decided to break for lunch, but for some reason I think the food had more to do with his visit than my charming personality. Maybe next time Chris and Earl are out I’ll see if I can lure Earl away by tying a pork chop around my neck. I seem to remember that working when I was a child.
Chris did his last clean out of the day and headed back to the hotel for the night while I had some dinner before I checked in with the boss yet again. I was lucky in that I had pitched my tent in a place that just happened to be able to get a signal on my cell. As I was talking to Robi, I noticed that the temp was really starting to drop. The sky was clear as a bell and I knew that without any clouds at all it was going to be getting COLD! I’m just glad that my sleeping bag is rated down to zero.
Day 6 Thursday (The great freeze out begins)
Well after a rather chilly night in my tent I woke to find that outside my sleeping bag it was flat out cold! I didn’t want to get out of the bag, but I knew that Chris and Earl would be there soon so I needed to get moving. I bundled up in loose layers like I had been taught by Uncle Sam but soon realized that I had forgotten to bring anything to keep my hands warm. My work gloves I knew would still be soaked from the sluice so my only option was to wear my “Air Force” gloves until things warmed up a bit. If you were ever in the Army, you know what I mean. Lucky for me the stove was already setup so all I had to do was pour some water to heat for my coffee. Just one problem though. When I went to open my canteen I found that the lid was frozen closed! A little twisting and swearing and I managed to get it loose only to find that the water within looked like a half melted Slurpie. I knew it had gotten cold last night but I didn’t think it had gotten THAT cold! Looking around my work area I noticed that there was a film of ice on every bucket that had water in it. Strangely though there wasn’t a speck of ice on my sluice reservoir. I knew that Jet-Dri was a surfactant but never knew it also worked like anti-freeze.
Chris showed up to find the same situation in his work area. Poor Earls’ water bowl was frozen solid and Chris’ buckets were also frozen up. He made the mistake of trying to dump the muck out of his reservoir only to have the entire bottom break out of it both from the weight of the mud and the cold. Chris couldn’t believe what had just happened and after a little thought on how it could be fixed, he decided that the only way he was going to be able to work was to head to Wally-World and get a new one. I headed over to Kentucky Camp to get us some fresh water and found that the water there was flowing freely. I figure that there had to be several degrees difference in temp between our work areas and the Camp. As soon as I returned to our work area with the water and Chris returned from Wall-World, we both got our systems working and tied into it yet again. I don’t know about Chris, but for me the trip was taking its toll on my body. I was hurting to the point that aspirin was really a waste of time and the only thing that was going to get me loosened up again was to get working and get my muscles warmed up. Even so the entire day was not exactly my best effort. I was tired and starting to get worn to a frazzle from the hard work and lack of sleep. My hands were getting so chapped that I could hardly use them.
As the day started to get late, I could already feel the temp starting to drop so I knew it was going to be yet another cols one. I hadn’t managed to get everything done that I wanted to so I figured I’d work late into the night in an effort to get caught up and stay warm at the same time. As I had a large cleared area right next to where I’ve been digging, I built up a nice little fire ring and gathered up some wood before it got fully dark. As soon as I had finished dinner, I got a small fire built in the ring and got to work digging and classifying materials for the next day. By the time 10PM rolled around I was beat and the temp was getting low enough that the fire was not really effective so I headed to my tent and crawled into the sleeping bag for the night. Sometime around 2AM it got REALLY cold and I had to scrounge around in the tent for my knit cap to keep my head warm.
Day 7 Friday (The Ice-Man Cometh!)
Well by this time I’ve pretty much figured out what I came out here to re-discover about myself. Yes… Sadly I have to admit that over the years I’ve gotten soft. When I was younger it was nothing for me to take off into the wilds for a couple of weeks and not think anything of it. Now I have to admit that I’m become what I can only describe as something of a whimp. I wanted an air bed, a cooler and all the things I used to despise others for when I saw them dragging such luxuries out to go camping. I was tired of being cold and sore and pretty much working without any help. Thank goodness that I knew that tonight would be my last night out there since Robi was going to be out to pick me up the next day. Our afternoon was broken up by the arrival of Mickey and company. Yet another pair of prospectors out of the Houston area. (I was starting to feel as if Texas was trying to annex the southern part of Arizona here. Then again, who could blame them for wanting it? ) We chewed the fat for a bit and they showed me their Gold Cube system. I got them hooked up with Fred the caretaker and we showed them were to get water for their system from and they were soon off to an area they had picked out from a map of the area.
Chris had decided that he wasn’t going to be going home today. Instead his plan was to come back out and do a final run through his sluice then pack up and head back to Houston. Have I mentioned that he’s got a BAD case of “The Fever”? Anyone that is so into prospecting that he’s willing to work half a day then drive non-stop to Houston from Greaterville has got to have it bad.
He was having the time of his life and I have to admit that I had really enjoyed having him out with me even if he was whimping out and staying in a hotel. Next time I think I’ll just tie him to a tree at night…..
Anyway, we worked all day and Chris even stayed until well after the sun had moved out of position for his solar panel power system to work. He wanted to try to make up some of the time he had lost the day before with his run to replace his reservoir. He took off for his motel room just before it got dark enough to need a flashlight to find his car and I set to digging and classifying materials to bring home with me the next day. Once again I was working by lantern and fire light until 10PM before I decided I had had more than enough and crawled up the hill to my tent and some well deserved rest. That night I was lucky in that it didn’t get nearly as cold as it had the two night before.
Day 8 Saturday (Homeward Bound)
Well needless to say by this time I was worn out and so I decided to sleep in for a bit. I had been getting up well before sunrise the entire trip and I decided that since this was going to be my last day out there I was going to indulge myself a little. Well my plans were soon shot down by the early arrival of Chris and Earl trying to get a jump on the day to make up some more of the lost time. Since I pretty much already had all the materials I was going to take home ready to go, all I had to do was get my camp and gear broke down and ready to haul out to the pick-up point. I had already hauled the first load when Mickey and company showed back up and offered to help me haul stuff out. I thought that was downright nice of them and gladly accepted the offer to help.
We hauled the stuff that was ready (aka the materials to go) and then I set to getting the rest of the camp broke down. Trying to pack the sleeping bag into its stuff sack should NOT be a painful job. My hands were so chapped that I could barely use them. What should have been an hour job to get camp broke down turned into two and a half hours due to my failing hands. I eventually managed to get everything packed and ready to roll up to the pickup point when I heard Robi driving in. By this time Chris had finished up his last run with the sluice for the trip and was cleaning it out. We decided to tag team the haul out and soon we were both ready to load up and get the heck out of Dodge! I was exhausted but I knew that Chris would soon be in a lot worse shape than I was. Chris had to be back in Houston by 6pm their time to do his radio show. I could tell that he would have much rather stayed and kept digging and sluicing but he had commitments that had to be met.
When Robi saw me, she flatly announced that she’d be doing the driving home and I wasn’t about to argue with her about that. We got everything loaded up and tied down and were soon saying our goodbyes to Chris, Earl and Fred the caretaker. Once we got off of the washboard road that is the only access to the area and hit the highway, it didn’t take long for my eyelids to slam shut on me. It seemed like it had been ages since I had slept without being cold and I was taking advantage of it while I could.
SO…. All in all I feel that the trip was well worth the effort. I rediscovered a lot about myself as well as made some new friends. Would I do it again? Maybe, but I’d much rather have my Robi with me than to be out there by my lonesome. In fact we’re heading back out there this weekend……….
I have finished cleaning up the cons I brought back, run the materials and panned them down. I still have to do a final run through on all the tailings as well as do the shake and bake on the black sands to make sure I've gotten all of the gold out. So far I've pulled just a little over 2 grams out but could get quite a bit more after I do the final processing. Am I disappointed in the take? Of course I am. But that's part of the game isn't it? We hunt and it hides. Sooner or later I'll hit a really nice pocket and it will make up for the poor showing on this trip. 
Actually I've got a plan for using medical exam gloves under some heavy cotton ones. The cotton ones were working well and standing up to the stress of scrubbing materials through the screen in the headerbox, I just need the exam gloves to give me the waterproofing part.
