Miners Christmas

[Clay Diggins]

Miner's Christmas

My wonderful prospecting, digging, mapping wife wrote this poem a few years ago. Hope you enjoy.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and Heavy Pans

 

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[Terry Soloman]

Love It! Merry Christmas!!!

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Awesome! Thanks.
Merry Christmas

 

[AzViper]

Barry I wish you and your lovely wife a Merry Christmas and a Gold getting New Year.

 

[Jeff95531]

I don't usually say this but...
OMG I LOVED THAT!!!! I read it out loud to my wife without even reading it first! Thank you! What a great gift!

 

[delnorter]

Nice, thanks. Merry Christmas Clay Diggins.

Mike

 

[goldenIrishman]

Well now we know why she's your MUCH better half! That was a great job of modifying the old classic! A tip of the hat to your lady!

And Barry, I really hope that St. Nick is very good to you and yours for all the help you've given Robi and I as well as all of the great advice you've been so kind to share with everyone here on T-Net.

 

[roadrunner]

Just read it loud to my wife. We both loved it. Thanks, and you and your wife have some great holidays.

 

[SLNugget]

Great work.....thanks for sharing and Merry Christmas to you and your wife Barry.

 

[MinerFortyNiner1952]

It's just perfect and so fitting as well.
Merry Christmas to all with a jingle of bells.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Thanks for all the comments. Ruby is blushing but pleased.

Now for the rest of the story of a Miners Christmas...

We try to spend our holiday seasons exploring new prospects we've been eying. It's our little present to ourselves. This Christmas season once again presented a great opportunity to do just that for 8 days. The weather was great and the crowds pretty much non-existent for our expedition. Perfect conditions for our prospecting!

Some of you are probably wondering why professional full timers in the mining industry would want to spend their holiday prospecting. We do research, map and analyze for miners and prospectors all year round. We love what we do but other than on site assessments we just don't get that much time to explore all the areas that interest us. Traveling and visiting other peoples mining projects and being involved in their planning is interesting but we like to use our skills to benefit our own mining group even more.

We love what we do but boots on the ground is what we miss the most. We love to take on new adventures and discover new territory. No internet, no phone and sometimes no shower and too much sun remind us of why we love mining. Sometimes the gold is found in the rocks and sometimes just finding the time to beat on the rock is gold in itself.

This season we explored one area that we are familiar with but needed more in depth on the ground knowledge. One entirely new area that we've been eager to explore for several years. Then we finished up with a day and a night at our historically most productive location.

The first stop was three days in the Vulture mountains. We've explored this area before and have mapped it privately as well as in our interactive digital prospectors maps. The Vulture mine and it's vicinity have produced very good gold for nearly 150 years. The Vulture mine itself is the best preserved of the southwestern gold mines. The mine operation is being restored once again to begin production of gold ore. From the ore truck traffic we saw while we were there this Christmas it appears to be in full production again.

This time we were interested in learning more about the structure of the mountain range itself. The Vulture deposit is not unique and follows a fairly common mineral benefaction process but things underground are only glimpsed by geological mapping and surveys. The Vulture deposit has been lost and rediscovered twice due to faulting. Understanding the nearby processes that may have contributed to that faulting might lead us to a better understanding of where the deposits have moved over time. We mostly concentrate on placer deposits but every placer deposit started out as a hardrock deposit. Understanding local geological history can really help in visualizing the processes that ultimately created the placer deposits.

Here's a view from our base camp in the Vultures.

​

Beautiful weather! We managed to serve a full Christmas dinner from the mapmobile. A few friends and crew visited on Christmas day and helped us explore and stuff ourselves with turkey and all the trimmings. Life is good.

Next stop (and post) the Artillery range in remote western Arizona.

Heavy Pans

 

[Lanny in AB]

Nicely done Ruby!

I love the desert picture. I miss Arizona, and the haunting beauty of the desert.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Clay Diggins]

I'm glad you are enjoying Lanny. Lot's more to come. What part of Arizona is your favorite?

Our next adventure took us to the Artillery peak area in western Arizona for three days of exploring. We've been interested in this remote area for quite a while but the recent release of the 1:24000 Artillery Peak Quadrangle geologic mapping really intrigued us.

This is a known placer gold producing region with quite a high density of productive hardrock mines due to the extreme mineralization. Very complex localized geological structures pretty much guaranteed we would find interesting signs of deposits. We weren't disappointed by the on the ground reality. This area is rich in many minerals besides gold and is a rockhounds dream.

Here's a view from our base camp on the Alamo lake reservoir.

​

That pointy thing in the right far distance is Artillery Peak and the range to the left (West) is the Artillery mountains. Out of the picture to the East is the Arrastre mountain range wilderness and to the West of the picture is the Burro mountain range wilderness. All of this area has productive placer gold deposits.

This area is obviously rugged and remote but the Alamo Lake State park has good water and more than 200 developed camping spots - about half of those have full hookups. It makes a great base camp to come back to after a rough day of 4 wheeling, hiking and digging. Hot showers are a real luxury we rarely encounter and the showers at the park are clean and well maintained with abundant hot water.

Access to the other side of the lake is seasonally limited unless you take the long way around from the Northwest. With the exception of the road to the park from the little farming town of Wenden 38 miles away the roads are dirt. A 4 wheel drive high clearance vehicle with some good hiking/climbing boots and lots of water are highly recommended if you want to explore this area.

At about 1,200 foot elevation this is not a summer prospecting area. To mine any deposits we discovered it will be necessary to do the assessment and location work this season and bring the crew in to mine it late next fall.

A limited season along with access and supply issues as well as the ever present lack of water is the main reason these small but rich deposits have remained unmined. It's our job to solve those problems and find a profitable way to get the gold out of the ground without endangering our crew members. Sometimes that's not possible and we need to move on to the next prospect just like the previous prospectors did.

We have the advantage over the old time prospectors of higher gold prices and better transportation. Still it's not uncommon to find a rich placer that can't be profitably mined by our group. Spending $20,000 dollars to get $22,000 worth of gold just isn't good business. Combine that with the ever present fact that no matter how well you have attempted to define the gold in a placer deposit it may come up short of expectations. You can see why we need to find deposits with a very good chance of paying well - not just good gold.

I'll be back later with a post on the Rich Hill portion of our Christmas adventure. After that I'll post some of the information we discovered and how this all ties together. Until then...

Heavy Pans

 

[Jeff95531]

Great story Clay. I wish I was 26 instead of 56 AND had your knowledge of finding gold. Looking forward to updates from your spot .

 

[Clay Diggins]

Great story Clay. I wish I was 26 instead of 56 AND had your knowledge of finding gold. Looking forward to updates from your spot .

Heck Jeff I'm older than you! You are never too old to learn - or too old to dig. Only mother nature can keep a dedicated prospector from playing in the dirt.

I'm glad you are enjoying the story of our adventures. I'll try to get the next installment posted tomorrow.

Heavy Pans