20,000 Ounces Under The Beach

[Capt Nemo]

Went back up to the beach yesterday. The storms washed out the bank I was digging back about 20' into the grassline. This left a 4-8' drop off. Near the top about 3" down there was a 2" layer of heavy black, then about another foot later a pair of 6" bands of darker material. I wasn't going to undercut that bank for safety reasons. On the rest of the beach the black sand was thin hints, but no real deposits. The lower beach was bone dry down a foot or more, and I couldn't see if there was a band under it. That's funny, cause it had heavy rains the day before. Anything worth running was heavily rooted and full of decayed wood that would clog the pumps fast. Pretty much the only thing I wanted to run was...AWAY! It looked like too much work for poor grade material. Also the wind and waves were in a bad direction for that beach, and rips could kick up easy. I'll check back in August to see if things improve. The flies were BAD! In 5 minutes I was so annoyed that I turned around for fly spray. Took a bucket out and prepped the Bug-A Salt gun. If the flies were gold, I'd be RICH!!! Shot probably 3-400 of them as one spot on the bucket really made them bunch up and not want to leave. And if you want firewood, the beach is full of it!

 

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[Capt Nemo]

Decided to hit Nugget Lake again. I got slowed down by some sort of stomach bug and/or the heat. Bout the second bucket, I started clenching back a splatterbomb. It really slows you down trying not to release that in your wetsuit and dig at the same time. Only got 6 buckets run before I couldn't take it anymore. I started a new hole along the side of the hole I dug last time. It's in a little faster water than the last hole, and on top of what I think is the gold line for the stream. Did a couple of test pans of the Flow Pan tailings and found a speck in the second pan. I do work over the same area so it could be spill, but if the FP was loosing gold, I should have seen more. I am seeing proper amounts of gold in the FP cons for the material, so if it did leave the pan, it's God's gold and he didn't want me to have it. The FP does seem to be nailing everything, so I'm not too worried.

Here's most of the gold and a ~BB sized piece of shot.

 

[Capt Nemo]

This morning I'm glad everything went bad at Superior, as I had forgotten to pack the combiner cables for the solar panels. That would have sent me home after a day when I couldn't charge the battery.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Hit the beach yesterday, and found everything the same as my last trip. Did find a nice patch of sand about 12" thick about a half mile down the beach, but it's too far away to haul everything without a cart. Looks like a cart is my next purchase. Did find that the blueberries are in season, and so I picked a whole mess of them, and filled a few buckets of the surrounding loamy sand and took a few plants home for the garden. The forest is crunchy dry even the moss! Fire danger is extreme!!! Did see a black bear in the blueberries.

Only gold for the trip was the heavenly kind. Dropped a waterproof bible off on a trail to a waterfall, and saw a young boy with it on the way back.

 

[Medina Joe]

I have always enjoyed your post.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Forgot the camera...AGAIN!

Got up to the Lake again. I decided to run from the spot I hit on the short trip I made in July. Only about 20' from the waterline made going for water easy. Black sand was about 3-6" in the main band, with another 2" of tiger stripes below, with a bed of gravel below. Had a problem with the charge controller not switching the load on, so I had to run the clamp cable instead. The controller also said I was only getting about 5.4 Amps from the panels. This is about half of what it should be. The new Duracell 35 Ah AGM batteries would run from 13V to 12.2V for about a 20 bucket run. From about 2PM to 6PM I ran 30 buckets and panned the garnet out. Could make about 10 buckets before needing to clean the tub of sand. I have to watch my buckets a little closer! Saw gold in every pan as I cleaned the cons. I then had dinner, and walked the beach till after sundown.

The next day I ran 90 buckets, and my butt was grass! Had a Japanese and German mining engineer stop by to watch the Model 5 in action. Both had never seen a recirculating fluid bed in action. They were impressed by the size range of the gold I was nailing. Next was hit on by a Jewish matchmaker (yes, I have Jewish blood), and taught her 30 year old daughter how to pan. She wasn't bad in both respects! Taught another 5 kids how to pan and sent them home with gold. Had a Californian anti-miner show up, that had never seen a operation in progress, and by the end of our talk, now supports our highbanking and dredging! Again, the cons showed gold in every pan! Wrecked my dinner, and had lasagna soup by adding too much water. Finished the last hour of daylight picking blueberries.

Next morning I was too sore, and spent 2 hours packing the gear for the trip home. Love those 35Ah AGM batteries! Beats that deep cycle boat anchor that I had. Ran the cons through the Bucket Buddy II when I got home, and found that it's only catching 75%. But it's better than the first version! I'm going to try the Gold Hog stream sluice and power head on a low flow mat at 1200 GPH to see what happens.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Well,...The stream sluice and power head pulled a respectable amount out of the tailings, but, I could still pan gold out of the tailings. True, the mats aren't optimized for beach gold, but I thought it would do a better job. I'm thinking about building a mat of UR, Yukon, Mother Lode, and maybe the small Wave.

The action of the low flow mat at 9 degrees had some roostertails off the Talon Mat and some choking on the sides of the Razorback. I'll have to talk to Doc.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Correction!!! The stream sluice and power head did better than I initially thought! The 5 pieces in the pan that I found in the tailings were spill from the UR at the tail when I cemented the mat before cleanout. Out of 15 10" pans, I have only seen 3 pieces so far, and I have about a gallon to go.

Low flow mat, 8 degrees, 1200 GPH should be the ideal settings for beach sand cons.

 

[Capt Nemo]

There was roughly 5 pieces that were deep enough to be losses. There's one almost 20# for sure that left the pan somehow. I'll catch it when I repan without the magnetite in the mix. Did the second cleanout of the magnetite tonight, with two more tomorrow before I do the pandown.

Already processed the miller table tails. Was there ever some fine stuff there! I was sucking stuff so small I needed a 30X loupe to see them in the pan.

Gold porn soon!

 

[Capt Nemo]

Finished panning the cons out. Found that large chunk, but it wasn't gold! It was a ground flat piece of hematite that would look gold at the right angle. Some sort of diffraction going on from it's almost mirror surfaces. Bagged about a gallon of high grade magnetite from the 3 1/2 gallons of cons.

Well anyway, bagged enough to cover the vial bottom.



If I go back, I may go down just a little further and try there. Where you first come down to the beach there's very little to no gold. Where I dug was about 200' from there, and a little further down might be the good stuff again.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Headed back up with my sister. The beach eroded back maybe 10' with a sharp drop at water level. The deposits are about 25' to the water line, so I have to get up there with the bed! Taught my sister how to pan. She's not great, but kept most of it. We each lost nice chunks to the waves, which were running at about 12-18". I ran the Garrett pan as a Flow Pan, and let the waves clean it out while keeping it stratified. It works until you get a big wave that almost knocks you off your feet, and that's when I lost that chunker. We ran about a bucket, and came up with about 30-40 pieces in the normal size range, so about normal. Then we picked rocks, and then hit the blueberry patch nearby, before heading back home.

 

[Toecutter]

Capt Nemo, Im set up to hit the beach, I havent made it up yet this year but plan to soon...

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

“....pieces in the normal size range” what’s pieces in the normal size range? Flour specks...flakes..pickers?
Never beach mined, nor followed this thread. Sounds like you had a good time.

 

[Capt Nemo]

Normal is 50# or less, with a few larger 20# tossed in every once in a while. I've hit about 15-20 of those 20# up there in all my trips.