Kevin in Colorado...and elsewhere

[KevinInColorado]

Finally got to the finish processing of my cons from a trip last month. The two big piles are -50 mesh gold. A bit over 1/2 gram in total. 2/3 of that produced in just 2 hours with only a gold pan and classifier!

That’s a soap dish btw.

 

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[delnorter]

Really nice gold panning Kevin. Small gold to boot. This thread is certainly one of the most interesting and informative on the T-Net.

Thank you,
Mike

 

[KevinInColorado]

Really nice gold panning Kevin. Small gold to boot. This thread is certainly one of the most interesting and informative on the T-Net.

Thank you,
Mike

Thanks!

BTW I did the math: I had almost $1.50 of gold in every pan! If only there was a bit less black sand in each pan lol! Here’s a typical pan in the hands of my prospecting buddy Dennis.

 

[delnorter]

A lot of black sand. This amount would be somewhat typical of a pan in many areas of the Klamath River here in northwest California where I hunt/prospect.

It looks like retirement is treating you well. Maybe next fall for me.

Mike

 

[KevinInColorado]

A lot of black sand. This amount would be somewhat typical of a pan in many areas of the Klamath River here in northwest California where I hunt/prospect.

It looks like retirement is treating you well. Maybe next fall for me.

Mike

Thanks, yeah retirement is a good thing! Although between the prospecting book I wrote, the trips (Alaska, etc), and moving, it’s been a busy time!

For example I just now got around to panning out all my concentrates from the last few months! Here’s that gold in a soap dish:

The top is from a dig site my club has access to on private property near Blackhawk, CO. The bottom is multiple sampling spots over several months.

Good luck finishing your journey to retirement too!

 

[KevinInColorado]

12/01/19 I was surprised by how iced up the lower Yampa River is but the digging was quite easy. Took 4 pans of unclassified material and got a nice pinch of gold out of it.

Here’s me panning it out in my in-law’s driveway lol

 

[Johnnybravo300]

We are going to Rattlesnake Gulch tomorrow to see some gold and get out of Gunnison and this danged snow for the day. It was a white Halloween and Turkey Day for us this fall haha.

Taylor Park hasnt been fun lately in the ice and snow and it makes it impossible. It's all mostly snowed in there now anyway and my claim is also buried but we want to get out.
Should be 42 and sunny tomorrow and I bet theres no snow. I doubt there will be anyone but us!

I'm guessing that the water will be low with the season we are in and that the gold is small. Should be easy to set up any sluice on that river.
Were you mostly digging surface gravels or did you dig a hole?
I've noticed before that with small gold sometimes theres more gold near the top than in the deeper material. It's a little different everywhere but it's been more often than not like that.
The chunkier gold would be deeper but in some places theres nothing much bigger so I'll just work the top foot or two.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Rattlesnake Gulch this time of year sounds like fun. Please take some pics of the river and your dig sites; I’m curious to see what it looks like right now.

I was just taking surface gravels. The area I was standing and digging is under 4 foot of water during runoff and a lot of fine gold gets dropped there [emoji106]🏻[emoji106]🏻

 

[Johnnybravo300]

It was a super nice day at Rattlesnake. The water was a little higher than I thought it would be but I guess it's still early winter.
I havent done a total cleanup yet but heres a pic of a clean out of my sluice after 3 buckets.
I was surprised to see this much fine gold.
Was a fun day!

 

[KevinInColorado]

I’m surprised by the high water too! I’ll have to ask the folks in my Facebook group about when it is that the water gets really low.

Congrats on the good color. It’s a sweet area.

 

[Johnnybravo300]

A friend from Montrose told me tonight that Rattlesnake was closed. Someone came in with loaders and trucks and made a big mess so BLM closed it and have been hanging people they catch there. He said dont go back and be glad we didnt get caught.
He said they even had cameras up for awhile but didnt think anymore.
He was part of a GPAA club that was being blamed for the incident.

When we pulled up there was a sign with a big map of the area, rules posted and all that. Nothing about it being closed that we saw the entire way in. Maybe it was closed and is open again? I never heard about that.

 

[Goldwasher]

A friend from Montrose told me tonight that Rattlesnake was closed. Someone came in with loaders and trucks and made a big mess so BLM closed it and have been hanging people they catch there. He said dont go back and be glad we didnt get caught.
He said they even had cameras up for awhile but didnt think anymore.
He was part of a GPAA club that was being blamed for the incident.

When we pulled up there was a sign with a big map of the area, rules posted and all that. Nothing about it being closed that we saw the entire way in. Maybe it was closed and is open again? I never heard about that.

How would/could they "close" it

if it is a withdrawl you can still prospect. If it is open they can't stop new prospectors because they don't like what someone else did.

maybe someone could post the order that closed it...that would be a fun think to chase down.

Like snipe hunting.

 

[Johnnybravo300]

It's a public digging area but maybe the BLM owns it like Cache Creek. They dont allow anything mechanical and have certain rules and I think they acquired it from the railroad.
I didnt see any signs of heavy equipment being there and nothing was marked as closed.
Maybe it was another place that he was thinking of.

 

[KevinInColorado]

It’s reacquired land, not merely withdrawn land -so they can make ANY rules they want. As Johnny says, it’s the same as Cache Creek.

And yes we used to be allowed to use power gear there. Until a club from Utah went over the top and left a big mess on a hillside. Serious erosion risk, safety hazards, etc. So the BLM shut the site down for a while, cleaned things up and reopened it for in-water digging only. For a while it was pans only but last year they started allowing sluices too.

 

[Goldwasher]

It’s reacquired land, not merely withdrawn land -so they can make ANY rules they want. As Johnny says, it’s the same as Cache Creek.

And yes we used to be allowed to use power gear there. Until a club from Utah went over the top and left a big mess on a hillside. Serious erosion risk, safety hazards, etc. So the BLM shut the site down for a while, cleaned things up and reopened it for in-water digging only. For a while it was pans only but last year they started allowing sluices too.

makes sense. So, it isn't normal "public land"

 

[KevinInColorado]

The last 2019 gold. Ran a few buckets through my Gold Cube at Big Bend on the South Platte in Denver. Beautiful weather for 12/21 and here’s the gold porn:

0.04 Grams

 

[Johnnybravo300]

So that's what happened at Rattlesnake Gulch then. I figured it was something like that.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Well I just had my 15 seconds of fame lol! That’s about how much made it into the show. The 2/06/20 Reclaimed episode on The Discovery Channel briefly includes me. It was fun to do and I’m very amused by how different “reality” looks on tv

 

[KevinInColorado]

Got out prospecting yesterday. My wife and I were on our way home from Salt Lake City to Silverthorne so we stopped for an hour in Fruita CO. I visited site Q-09A in my book, I even had a prospector friend show up too. Gold in every pan!

 

[cyzak]

Got ya a little flower gold did ya.