KevinInColorado
Gold Member
- Jan 9, 2012
- 7,037
- 11,370
- Detector(s) used
- Grizzly Goldtrap Explorer & Motherlode, Gold Cube with trommel or Banker on top, Angus Mackirk Expedition, Gold-n-Sand Xtream Hand pump
- Primary Interest:
- Prospecting
0.70 grams of mercury/gold amalgam, a 0.16 gram picker and 0.60 grams of fine gold...all from a few hours in an amazing and beautiful spot in the Colorado mountains. A new personal best for me for largest single piece and for most gold in one afternoon!
Here's the whole story:
First I arranged to take the day off work believing I was going to join a few other guys who I'm working with to preserve a historic gold dredge sitting in the mountains of Colorado half forgotten but still in good shape. I figured we would also do a bit of sampling since a couple of the guys is looking to acquire a federal mining claim. The meeting about the dredge fell through but the prospecting...
Play by play it went like this:
6am out of bed ...what is this a work day? Drive about two hours from Denver up to Park County and call the other guys (they had arrived the day before and spent the night) as I got close. They were south of Fairplay on 4 Mile Creek heading toward a spot they wanted to sample to test an existing claim which is up for sale. I caught up just as they walked back to the road from the creek....declaring this claim a dud.
10am at a second spot. We all assess the creek, pick a spot to sample and before you know it 6 shovels are getting wet in 6 different spots. Most came up empty, I found around 20 very small colors in 3 sample pans. This claim was also declared a dud!
12 Noon have moved our circus quite a distance to another claim up for sale. This one has two spots to camp on the claim and a clear route to back a truck right up to the creek...easiest place I've ever seen to get a dredge in the water! One of the other guys grabs a pan first, takes some surface material off of an inside bend about two feet from where you'd put your dredge in and finds impressive gold!! Now we are all excited and jump in to sample as well. Soon we are all finding gold and by now you are figuring out that this is the spot where I got all that great gold
I picked a spot just upstream of that first guy's sample pan where the rocks were bigger. I had to spend a little while moving rocks before I could dig but that is almost always a good sign in a gold bearing creek as you know. I was able to move those big rocks in such a way that I could set the bazooka up just a shovels length from where I wanted to dig. No bucket hauling for me today-yay!1pm First clean out of the Bazooka...did several clean outs during the day to support our efforts to learn more about the creek. Found nice gold, although rather stained as you can see in the right hand vial. Also found a couple small balls of mercury in my pan. I figured there was at least some gold in that merc -meaning it would have to be retorted so I just tossed it all in my sealed concentrates container (a plastic Folgers coffee can). Time to keep digging!
2pm or so...getting hungry so time for another clean out. Wow look at that! (The big picker sitting there in my pan) one of the other guys looks over when I exclaim and says "is that really gold?" (This guy has been prospecting for over 20 years, he knows what gold looks like!!!) This picker looks so big in the pan that he doubts his own eyes!!! Also more merc in the cons so that big picker gets stowed safely away in a special spot to avoid any mercury contamination...the rest of my cons go in the Folgers can. Next a quick lunch, break, round of shots (Wild Turkey Honey...yum!) or maybe two then back to work.
4pm, spent the last while digging as deep as I can get to see how the gold is deeper down. Find a false bottom of sticky clay -yuck. Scraping it yields decent gold and merc tho so who am I to complain? I keep digging but all the rocks are wearing me out and I notice the others are slowing down too...well except for one guy who brought his dredge. He had put his 4" in the water right after lunch and he was really going at it! I saw enough of his results at the end of the day to say he was smart to go to the trouble of getting it in the creek even though he only had about 2-2.5 hours of dredge time. Anyway, after stumbling and plopping down in the creek a couple times, I decide I'm too worn out to be safe and do my last clean out of the day. Not as good gold as the prior clean outs but I was probably moving slower at that point in the day...did I mention this site is at about 11,000 feet elevation? That does catch up to you after a while!
I pushed my big rocks back in the hole and climbed out of the water. Everyone else was wrapping up too...except our dredger! Just about had to drag him out of the water!! By 6pm we were all loaded up and heading downhill.
Great day for all. We had a dredge, a gold cube, my Bazooka Prospector and my Angus Mackirk Expedition all going thru the day. The guy on the AM also found a nice big picker...not quite as big as mine, not that we are competing LOL!
This location was also about as beautiful as you can imagine...mature pine trees, aspens, a nice wide canyon/valley and a great county road running nearby. Yes, our dredger is buying the claim, can you blame him? Absolutely the best gold I've ever seen in Colorado and classic Colorado scenery...wow!
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