K River 8/17-8/18

[Jason in Enid]

HEading out at 0800 in the morning. See you there!

 

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[Jason in Enid]

Looking at the gauge data, it looks like Antlers is about a day behind Clayton in water flow. Hopefully the water isn't running at 5 feet this weekend

 

[okbasspro]

It should drop this weekend if not the deep pool doesn't flow real fast. Look for me there here is a pic of the rig I'm bringing this time.

 

[okbasspro]

Got to make a side trip broke my trailer ball off at 65. Dredges safe will put new ball on get the trailer and be back on road.

 

[okla. prospector]

How did you guys do?

 

[Jason in Enid]

How did you guys do?

We moved many yards of gravel through our combined 4 dredges! Bass pro got running on Friday in the only spot slow enough to anchor a dredge, but he had to wear 40 pounds of weight to keep from getting blown out of his spot by the current! I tried to set up by him but I found my belt was loose on my air compressor so I had to pull the dredge back up so make repairs.

Saturday, all of us were running. I found my hole from the last trip was still there, so Mike and I combined efforts to rip it open more. We expanded the hole over the hardpack as much as we could. End of day test pan showed a few colors so it's promising. I think Mike had some as well.

Sunday started with me hard-rock single jacking under the river. Holy cow that was some work! But I got the hard pack opened and we chewed through it. Close to the end of the day Mike finally reached bedrock! 4 feet of overbuden and then 4 feet of hardpack. I couldn't even see the bedrock, I could only feel it because it was compleatly dark at the bottom of the hole. The water flow had slowed enough that basspro moved over in the inside bend, just down from us. My test pan showed a single color which is very discouraging.

I haven't had time yet to process my cons, but I did store them seperate so I will know once and for all if it's worth my future time to keep working hardpack to bedrock.

Oh, one last thing.... Once, I came up from the hole to shovel some tailings away from the box and I saw a metal glint near the top of the tailings. I knew is was a ring and I called my son over to pull it out. Sure enough it was a BIG stainless and black cross ring. I knew it must have fallen into the bottom from the top somewhere because the hardpack is too old to have any kind of man-made items in it. Turns out it belonged to Mike's son! He had apparently lost it while working Mike's dredge and didn't even realize he had it on. I think it was just "meant to be" as it was far to dark to ever see it in the hole, and a few more minutes of gravel sucking and it would have been buried and lost. He's a good kid and I'm glad he got his ring back.

 

[okla. prospector]

Thanks for the reply, sounds like it was a interesting trip. Wow that a lot of overburden to move! That's great that you found the ring okbasspro son lost.

 

[MikeMike]

It was actually my oldest son that lost his ring.

It was a real good trip with everyone.

I haven't been able to process the cons, yet. I've been working 12-14 hrs a day. But like Jason said the cons that came off of the bedrock didnt look great. Even my cons didn't look very good off the bedrock ( otherwise they would already be done )

 

[okbasspro]

Here's my take a lot of -70 it's all from overburden the hardpack had zip

 

[Jason in Enid]

Looks good!

I have finished working my hardpack cons and I only got about 3 pieces about 50 mesh and about 15 -100 mesh. I have only worked the 20+ cons of the overburden so far. Zero big gold there. Hopefully I can finish the smaller overburden stuff tomorrow.

 

[okbasspro]

My theory is its all new gold hasn't been there long enough to make bedrock.

 

[Jason in Enid]

My theory is its all new gold hasn't been there long enough to make bedrock.

And it never will without a historic level flood event that is capable of not only moving 4 feet of overburden but also busting apart feet of hardpack to let the gold get to the bottom.