Alaskan Pay dirt

[SteveDigsGems]

Earlier this evening I decided to pan some Alaskan pay dirt that I bought from an eBay seller. I bought 1 pound for $15, and it is guaranteed to have gold, because the lady sprinkles a pinch in. I didn't get rich, but I am really happy with the experience I got out of it. I have a lot of friends that want to travel out to my local gold bearing rivers with me to sluice, but before we go, I'm probably going to have them pan some of the dirt in my backyard. It is a good opportunity for them to see how the gold behaves, and it will motivate them for the upcoming trip.





Sorry about the quality, my camera ran out of batteries, this is an iPad picture. I'll get some batteries next time I'm at the store and upload what I found.







-Steve

 

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[ice9]

The time taken to keep us up to date is deeply appreciated. I love reading about your mining! I admit to a certain curiosity as to how many ounces you're getting; are you breaking even? Can't wait to hear what you find next!!!

 

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[elkie13]

Here we are guys, back in action.

Can't really complain about the weather or the early spring, though there have been a few days where those chemical hand and toe warmers have really come in handy. The start of the season is always a mix of excitement and frustration, and I have to say that sometimes, the little devil on my shoulder tells me to give it all up and go for the more "average" life. You know, work for the man, cash a paycheck, watch TV, repeat.

Camp is all set up and as comfortable as we can make it. The first day we weren't happy with the sluice box packing up constantly, so we had to take time to dig it out and reset the angle. While we were at it, we used an old grizzly we had welded up and used that to make a safer more comfortable place for the excavator and operator to stand and load the trommel, it worked great and we patted ourselves on the back for our thriftiness.

We then had replace the starter in the backhoe. I don't know why, but this backhoe spits out 400 dollar starters like a pez dispenser. Shortly after getting it up an running, we lost a hose in that same hoe- thus another trip to town.

And then the trommel got one of those large flat rocks jammed in it (dubbed by our friend Steve as "gatekeepers") and tore up the lovejoy connection that spins the shaft for the trommel motor. And it's not fun to replace one of those.















After all that, it seemed like we ran really good, dirt was flying through the trommel, and we ran more in a day than we normally run in two. We were able to do a clean out.

















So our results were a little disappointing.

Though we are still running overburden from what we knocked in at the end of last season. For safety reasons, we knock in the high wall when we call it for the season, just so some crazy person doesn't hurt themselves poking around when we're not there. Also, we're not back to the hot spot we were working last fall., We've discussed just throwing the overburden out, but it runs hot and cold in our digsite, with the overburden sometimes having really good gold, hard to know what to do.

Lastly, our friendly neighborhood backhoe developed some break issues that we couldn't let slide and was more than we could address out in the sticks on our own. We're down for a little bit while the pros take a look at things for us. We did take a little time to do some exploration and hiking around the other side of the creek, but I'll post more on that later.

Sorry about the gloomy tone of the post. Mining is a fickle master, some days it's really great, some days its like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer because it feels good when you stop. Despite what the little devil on my shoulder says, I still wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

[Jeff95531]

Always good to see you elkie13. I'll see if my buddy can straighten the pics you posted. I can do one or two but...
Great looking gold btw. Bigger than before...no?

And by the way...your mining reports are something I really look forward to as it's the "real"of reality gold shows.

 

[DizzyDigger]

Elkie: Sorry to hear about the early season challenges, but persistence
pays off, so hang in there!

Fixed up those pics a bit:

 

[elkie13]

Thanks for fixing the photos it was driving me crazy!
Yes some of the gold has a little more heft to it. Also I found this one the tailing pile. It sure looks like gold to me, but I'm not a hard rock miner, maybe someone on here can tell me.

 

[Crabs]

Elkie13:

Go ahead and send that pretty rock in the 1# bag of paydirt that I just ordered off that site who's name we shall not mention :-)
It'll look good on my desk....
Keep the faith and stay on the gold.

'Crabs

 

[elkie13]

Hey guys, got the backhoe all repaired and we are back in action. Problem is, we can't seem to get back on that streak we had the end of last season. We've been running this nasty, sticky black stuff we go into, I can tell you that there's not a lot of gold in it. We have been running into a lot of these silvery-grey nuggets of stuff. Anyone have any ideas what it is. It only slightly reacts to nitric acid (after about an hour the acid gets a little yellow). I'm thinking of sending them out to be analyzed, in case we are throwing something valuable away.
Also, we've decided that it may be time to be a little more scientific, I'm looking into getting a Magnetometer survey done. Maybe, it would help us narrow down the dig spots a little. We have a lot of ground here, digging holes doesn't seem to be cutting it anymore.

 

[elkie13]

View attachment 1321786

Hey guys, got the backhoe all repaired and we are back in action. Problem is, we can't seem to get back on that streak we had the end of last season. We've been running this nasty, sticky black stuff we go into, I can tell you that there's not a lot of gold in it. We have been running into a lot of these silvery-grey nuggets of stuff. Anyone have any ideas what it is. It only slightly reacts to nitric acid (after about an hour the acid gets a little yellow). I'm thinking of sending them out to be analyzed, in case we are throwing something valuable away.
Also, we've decided that it may be time to be a little more scientific, I'm looking into getting a Magnetometer survey done. Maybe, it would help us narrow down the dig spots a little. We have a lot of ground here, digging holes doesn't seem to be cutting it anymore.
View attachment 1321787

 

[elkie13]

We're back! After little deductive reasoning and a lot of luck, we have started getting back into the yellow stuff! Color is getting better every day, and we're riding this high as long as it lasts. Here's some photos from the test runs. It's not enough to retire on, but maybe we're on our way.

 

[elkie13]

gold getting better every day. I think I need a bigger trommel...

 

[Jeff95531]

I'd like to have a problem like that!

 

[ConceptualizedNetherlandr]

View attachment 1327856 gold getting better every day. I think I need a bigger trommel...

You found a quarter !!

 

[russau]

New gold , New quarter! simple as that!

 

[elkie13]

The quarter was in my pocket, the gold was in the dirt...I would love to have a quarter mine!

 

[russau]

A quarter mine would be fine BUT a dollar mine would be great!

 

[elkie13]

Not sure how to how to catch dollars in the sluice box...

 

[gold tramp]

dang i was hopin to see you hit it big,

 

[elkie13]

Seasons not over yet....mag survey starts tomorrow.

 

[Jeff95531]

mag survey

 

[elkie13]

Were having a magnetometer survey done. We realized we could dig holes in this 160 acres for years and never find the good stuff, or just miss it and not even know it. Time to get some science up in here!