M & M Mining the Northern Sierras

[mikep691]

I needed a detox weekend. A weekend away from people. I was on the road four of the five days last week, and everybody from the north coast to Fresno needs to be sited for at least one of these: DWB (Driving while Blonde), DWS (Driving while Stupid) or DWT (Driving while Texting). It wasn't about the gold as much as just not seeing another Human Being for a weekend.

So here's the layout: I slept in Saturday morning, realized my extension cord was loaned out. After collecting my cord, Dora and I finally got to the claim at 9:30ish. The debate began. Are we minin' or campin'? Well, it's a mix. I went about drinkin' my sedative while setting up to mine. This weekend was "Diggin' is my therapy, Beer is my sedative, and the Gold is a bonus"

Game Plan: Bring the gravels from the bedrock waterfall to a level I can shovel:






Remember, I'm not into work by this point, so it's hose the gravels down, and spend as little time shoveling as possible. I basically worked four hours, and drank my sedative the rest of the time. End of Saturday cleanout:




Nothing special about the evening except I got five drops of rain, it had been a wonderful day so far. The tent is up and Dora is in with dirty feet first as always. My work has me up early most mornings, so being wide awake at 4am is no surprise. Get coffee going and wait for sunrise....

As soon as I can see to navigate, I'm off to the creek. Today is all about getting the last few shovels in the Redneck Highbanker, then sucker tubing what don't stay in the shovel. I did several cleanouts just to see where the gold was on the bedrock. Every clean out was decent.





It's time to set up the sucker, and clean some bedrock at this point. Well, it might have been in the middle of those pics. I set up Rockguy's G&S type sucker, and before I couls even get after it, I had six flashers staring at me. Believe me or not, I picked six pieces of gold off that bedrock before ever sucking any gravel.

So, my form of detox is not about drugs or alcohol, but about PEOPLE. I'll post some vids when they finish uploading. All said and done, .99 grams:




There is something to be said about drinking beer from a gold can......

 

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[mytimetoshine]

More chunks,love it! Keep em comin!

 

[mikep691]

Paid for the gas and beer....

 

[bobw53]

Paid for the gas and beer....

From the narrative, he may have paid for the gas... I'm not so sure if he dug enough to pay for the beer.

That looks like a lot of fun...

 

[mikep691]

Here's a couple short vids:



https://youtu.be/1R3A4oDPFZw

 

[mikep691]

This is Sunday morning:

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Looks very nice; low water flow allowing you to see what you are doing as you clean it out...and getting some nice gold!

 

[mikep691]

Long weekend mining/camping. Rockguy was able to break away and join me Friday afternoon. Friday was basically beer, discuss how we'd mine Saturday, and beer. I'm so whooped from the weekend, even my two typin' fingers hurt. Needless to say, I won't go into great detail, just let the pics tell the story. First series is just after the start of the mining day:












I can't remember where the break in the pics is, so the next set is toward the end of mining Saturday. Other than the money shot, I was too lazy to take pics of Sunday's short mining.









And the money shot:





While on my morning ummmm, stroll with the No. 2, I dug this up:



If anybody can identify what it came from, I'm suspecting it's from a pot belly stove, let me know. As you saw in the money shot, we pulled 1.62 grams. There were some awesomely chunky pieces, and the usual buckshot.

Both vid's will be posted when my slow satellite is done uploading

 

[mytimetoshine]

Looks like a productive weekend! That's a really cool piece that you found. If only it could talk... Great gold too!

 

[mikep691]

Here's the videos of the weekend:





Mike panned out our best clean out of the day.

 

[Adventure_Time]

This is Sunday morning:

Everything in me is screaming swing a detector around that creek bed with the water so low and bedrock close given the chunky nature of the gold, may have some potatoes hiding in those boulders.

 

[mikep691]

Everything in me is screaming swing a detector around that creek bed with the water so low and bedrock close given the chunky nature of the gold, may have some potatoes hiding in those boulders.

Actually, Some friends are coming week after this coming, and Kathy loves to detect (as well as dig). I might let her do just that. But I bet a good detector will be singing the Gold song everywhere.

 

[mikep691]

This weekend, I've invited mytimetoshine to join me at the Meat. He needs to see (and get) some gold that has substance. You know, the gold that has some weight to it, and character. The kind of gold that rarely pops up in the AR anymore. Anyway, as I say before hitting the claim, Film at 11.

 

[mikep691]

Here's the first of three videos from last weekend with mytimetoshine:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=ZqNu-oY1l5Y[/video]

I still haven't figured out why my phone gets an attitude and won't always show the vids horizontally so I'll apologize in advance for the sore necks created by the other videos.

 

[mikep691]

Here's the second. Sorry for the abrupt end. I guess I bumped the screen and shut it off accidentally.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=oW50uonADos[/video]

 

[Jeff95531]

Vids aren't working for me...goes to my vids instead

 

[mikep691]

Try this one Jeff: First one


Second one:

https://youtu.be/oW50uonADos

Third one will be up later.

 

[Jeff95531]

Good times and awesome ground to work. Thanks for the guest pass!
I watched them on my laptop so I had no problem with the second one

 

[mytimetoshine]

There we go. Wasn't working for me either.

 

[goldenmojo]

Got the boy workin.......