Rookie Gold!

[et1955]

Great job, the more places you mine the better you will get. Good call on the coarseness of the gold, in time you will be able tell witch river the gold came from not only by the coarseness but by color too.

[Gold4Mike]

Didn't get this posted right away because my wife and I took off on vaca the day after we dug this. After coming back from the Leavenworth area we got the urge to hit the local stream again and got this in about 3 hours of digging and sluicing. Nothing real big, but it's kind of fun to look back at our first few outings where we were excited about 5-10 specks. Nothing like sleeping on the Amtrak the day after working hard!

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I got out a couple times this past week. We went up to a trib of the Skykomish River with her brother. He said he'd found some gold up there a few years back so we thought we'd go see. Well, we ran probable 4-5 buckets in a beautiful canyon area with some bedrock showing. Only got about 6 or 7 small specks of gold, but we found butt loads of garnets, garnet gravel, garnet sand and garnet soup. This stuff was really hard to process but it was interesting to see all the red in the sluice, pan, etc, and we did find a few larger chunks. Anyone have any suggestions on what to do with garnets?
A few days later we headed out to the Nooksack and ran about 5 buckets and got this. Not a lot, but we were excited to see more of the bigger flakes. We feel we are figuring out where best to spend our time digging.
Sorry if the photos aren't quite where they should be, can't quite figure this program out.

[et1955]

Sounds like you were on the N.F. of the Sky, great job in finding some gold there, next time you are in the area let me know and I will lead you to richer areas. I have been going to that area since the late 60's. Always a lot of garnets in that area not really worth collecting but if you go Rapid river near the town of Skykomish, you will find 1/2 inch garnets. I ran a bucket threw my sluice up there and it turned blood red full of garnets.

[Gold4Mike]

Yeah, it actually was Rapid River. Everywhere we dug there were garnets!

[et1955]

Never was there much gold there, The Sky in the right place has a lot of gold, the pic shows what I got the last time I was there using my electric highbanker

[Gold4Mike]

Well that's certainly nice!

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I were able to get out to explore a new location a couple days ago. It was quite remote and a bit of a hike to get there. Unfortunately, just as we were arriving at a spot to work, I kicked up a nest of hornets which went after my wife. We ran like a couple of greyhounds down the creek and I got off with no stings, but my wife got stung about 8 times. She has always had mild reactions to bee stings, but we were so far away from help that there were some anxious moments until it became apparent that she would only suffer localized reactions. If it had been me, I would have called it a day right there, and trudged our way back out, but she is a trooper and insisted that since we were there, we might as well dig. She did most of the sluicing so that she could keep her lower legs in the cold creek water. We lost some time running from the hornets and waiting for things to calm down, and didn't get to work where we really wanted to, but we did sluice about 3 buckets before we headed home, and got some very interesting looking gold.

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I weren't ready to call it quits to our rookie summer of prospecting, so last weekend we decided to try colder weather digging and went out to the Nooksack. We found we can put up with 45 degrees and digging so that leaves us a lot of opportunities during the winter in the PNW! It was sunny but we were in the shade the whole time. With the river running higher, I was able to get my GGT running well and we were able to just dump unclassified material right from the bucket and the sluice did a good job of clearing most of the bigger stuff out. We only dug for about 2 hours but were able to run about 8 buckets before heading home. We tested out a small bench we had been looking at, just above the current flood level of the river and we were pretty happy with the results. It's got me thinking about a highbanker. We are excited that we will be able to continue to get our gold fix even through the winter months!

[scruggs]

Good gold your finding. I use a Foreman too and a Grubstake for small creeks, love them both. Good luck to you!

[et1955]

Ya those hornets are the worst, once I was testing a new area on the Sultan and while panning I looked up and guess what was a few feet from my face Fortunatly nothing happened. Your new spot looks great, get the highbanker, you will get a lot more gold with it. ED

[Gold4Mike]

Ya those hornets are the worst, once I was testing a new area on the Sultan and while panning I looked up and guess what was a few feet from my face Fortunatly nothing happened. Your new spot looks great, get the highbanker, you will get a lot more gold with it. ED

That one wouldn't have been fun to run into. I'm glad we don't have to watch for winter hornets!

[scruggs]

Hopefully their all gone for this year. Be careful out there and good gold to you!

[Arachnofreak]

The best part of this episode was having your wife with you. Best mining partner you can find.

Agreed! Some of my best memories mining was with the wife at my side.

[Arachnofreak]

Awesome job man! It will become quite the addiction if it hasn't already