Mark in Southern New Mexico

[Jeff95531]

When you post pics, it keeps every attempt at it...like here. I do it too sometimes...

 

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[mamich]

Thanks I'll give it a try next time

 

[mamich]

Was able to spend the whole weekend working up on the claim. It was a little ugly yesterday but turned out beautiful today. So spent most of Saturday just pulling dirt out of the draw, classifying it and laying it out on a tarp. managed to pull about 20 buckets of 1/4" screened by the time it was all done. Here's some pictures of the area that I've been pulling the dirt out of.


The high side of the draw has most of the gold and it is really good on the top layer in places and not so much as you get deeper but I've been stripping it all the way to the hard clay layer. Here's a one pan sample from the top layer. I wish all the shovels full where like this.


I'll get the final results cleaned up some time this week and post the results, to tired tonight, time to have a drink and relax.

 

[63bkpkr]

mamich,
What an interesting looking site, how did you happen to start prospecting it! I hate to mention this to you but, that looks like a lot of Work!
Prospectors are kinda crazy like that though, we look at a spot and see an adventure where other's would not even consider doing what we do. Thank you for sharing!.................63bkpkr

 

[mamich]

63bkpkr, not sure which way you are asking the question? How did I locate the claim or how did I pick this one spot, so I'll try to answer both. I had worked some draws up in the area for the last year, one claim was a GPAA claim. Then I found an old geological study of the whole mining area on the great interweb. It had random samplings from all over, lode and placer. The paper had about 400-500 different sample locations and the draw I choose wasn't the best in the area (those are already claimed and over claimed, shoot one section must have close to 1500 acres of active claims). This draw was just ok, so I sampled around it for a while after doing some claim research on mylandmatters. It was an active claim up until about 2000. So I located it and filed the paperwork, just another desert draw and I haven't found any indication of hard bedrock. One small area has a very hard conglomerate of some sorts (I need a good geology course) but not much sitting in it I think it's to smooth.
So for the second part, I picked that spot in the draw to start with because it had a bunch of black pebbles and sand sitting on top in the higher areas where the water flow gets disrupted. That pan above is one of those spots, just a shovel full right on the surface. So to expand my understanding of this area I just kept digging down and sideways to see the gold patterns until I ended up with that big opening. Yup, I'm crazy, crazy with gold fever and trying to understand things. In reality if I wanted to get gold fast I know I just need to walk up and down the draw and grab a shovel full here and there where the black pebbles are, there's color mixed right with them. But I just am learning and have more of a desire right now to understand rather than just grab the yellow. I plan to complete my mission and clear out the high side, it has a lot of old flow gravel and rocks and I'm hoping that there are past layers inside of it somewhere along the way. Next time I get up there I'll try to remember to get a picture of these little piles of black pebbles. I hope to maybe get there again next weekend, depends on my drywasher, it needs some new cloth or I need to patch it.

 

[63bkpkr]

mamich,
Thank you for the description how you chose the location as well as how you are digging diagonally across the location to intersect a variety of older layers of potential pay dirt. You've accomplished a huge amount of research as well as work on the ground, my hat is off to you! Then working in the desert must add another measure of difficulty to all the work you are performing there! Thank you for sharing with all of us and the best of success to you!.................63bkpkr

 

[bobw53]

(I need a good geology course)

I remember back in college hearing that somebody was a geology major.. Why Who the heck wants to look at rocks?? Being an accountant sounds more
exciting... Fast forward 20 years and I wish almost everyday that I was a geologist..

just a shovel full right on the surface.

I've sort of mostly found the same thing.. And back to the geology thing, apparently over the past 30-70 million years or something like that, the entire area
has eroded down about 1000 feet.. There is outcropping there, and an outcropping there.. Little bit of green rock here, and a little bit of green rock there..
The vein at some point was above my head.. Sweep the top couple of inches, and there is gold, just sitting on the hillside.. Dig down 4 inches and there is
nothing.

Toss in an arroyo that may only be a few hundred years old, concentrating all that gold sitting on the surface (and maybe digging into some older
deeper stuff along the way), and from what I've experienced in Hillsboro, just like you, the best stuff seems to just be sitting there on the top.

I've TRIED to get skunked just taking dirt from spots that shouldn't have ANYTHING, based on conventional gold reasoning.
I've found some reasonable gold with that method.. I even swept the dust off a dirt road one time, just to see, and sure enough
there was gold in it.. Not a lot, and not big, but I got gold sweeping a dirt road and taking half a bucket.

I think its a fascinating area, the history, the old buildings, the mines.. The geology, at least what I can understand of it... Lot of fun.

 

[arizau]

I envy mamich and bobw53!

To you guys this is ancient history but.......I lived in Cruces for the first 4 1/2 years of the 60's while earning a degree at NMSU (not in Geology) and had little idea of the rich history of gold mining nearby. I and some friends did do some half hearted exploring for a legendary Spanish treasure (lost gold mine?) out by La Cueva but that, playing cards, watching Aggie sports and keggers on the Rio Grande by Stahmann farms was pretty much the extent of my free time fun while I was there. Could have been a different story if I had had a car, the interstate to Albuquerque was in place and the internet had already been invented.

You two have fun and heavy pans.

 

[mamich]

Sounds like you lived the good life here while at college Arizau, I've had 30 plus years of it. Although it took me a few years to get used to the desert, I remember when I would tell my wife she dragged me into hell, and now I thank her. I came from up north, fishing, hunting, trapping and green right outside your door. But once I adventured out about about down here I began to forget about my old home and have been enjoying my new one everyday. There is tons of history and adventure that just keeps getting better

 

[mamich]

Bobw53, the gold sure seems funny that way up there and I agree the history is really icing on the cake. If you every want to hookup out there just shoot me a note

 

[mamich]

Had a great weekend our in the desert, watched quail paired up for their upcoming hatch. Great to see these little birds doing well this year, gotta love that desert wildlife. Topped the rest of the time running more dirt in the drywasher and doing more samples of the area.
Over the last couple of weeks I've been sampling more of the draw, found another spot that looked promising so I hit it hard this weekend and managed to run about 27 buckets of material screened to 1/4". I've been messing with the drywasher settings a thx to some TNet advice I'm thinking it's running pretty good. So I ran the first run through and collected the cons, ran it again a second time to see what I missed and then screened a bucket of the tailings down to 1/8" and brought it home to run through the sluice.
I've always tried to keep things separate to see how well it's recovering, in the past I've been in the 85-90 percent of recovery but this weekend was by far my best. My first run came in at 1.55 grams, my second run was .07 grams and my bucket of fines didn't even weigh in on the grain scale so less than .1 grains. Looking at the numbers it appears around a 95% recovery. Made me smile. On another note the drywasher box at the end of it all held a lot of fines, that came in at .22 grams. So it was a very good weekend for me.
Best of luck to all may your days be filled with gold and memories of the great outdoors.

Pic of the weigh-in

 

[mytimetoshine]

nice work. getting dialed in!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

 

[mamich]

Well the stars finally aligned, the cold front came in and it was a wonderful 95ish day today. We had a little rain last night so the drywasher stayed in the truck and I made the best of it without. The animals really liked it today also, I got to see a pair of quail with their little ones.

Also the rabbits were out playing

And this little guy stayed right beside me while I screened a bucket of dirt to bring home

So in the end I just ran around taking samples and playing with the animals.

The draw I'm in has great places to pan from, I look for what I call little black pebbles or you could say they are grown up black sands. Here's a closeup of a small patch, and what a pan full produces.


So no big haul today but I sure enjoyed myself and got to check out a few different areas on the claim. I'm afraid that with all the scattered thundershowers lately I won't be doing much dry washing for the rest of the summer but I'm working on a 8" sluice and trommel so hopefully I get it finished so and at least I'll be able to run some material without having to bring it home.

 

[Rawhide]

Hey Samich, I know a few areas that may produce for you also. I have buckets and a shovel too. I live in Mesilla. I have a pick up lol. Hint hint hint.

 

[GoldpannerDave]

I remember back in college hearing that somebody was a geology major.. Why Who the heck wants to look at rocks?? Being an accountant sounds more
exciting... Fast forward 20 years and I wish almost everyday that I was a geologist..

[snip]

You know, I often feel that way. I am a chemist. They did not have a geology major where I went to undergraduate school. I took some geology courses in grad school, but wish I had done more (especially field work). But I took the graduate courses at Florida State and there is little geology there and few rocks there to study. You need to go to Alabama or Georgia. But yes, I wish I had a geology degree, too.

 

[mamich]

It's been awhile since my last post but the weather here made things just to wet to be able to drywash and I took out my homemade highbanker but just didn't get the throughput I wanted with bilge pumps so I decided to start another project in between getting myself ready to go elk hunting also. I decided to build a trommel and sluice that I could run off a small trash pump (1.5"). Just enough to move more water and not to big since I have to tote all my water to the field. I finally got it all finished in Sept but then off to the mountains I went to enjoy the outdoors with a bow in my hand chasing elk around the hillsides. Had a blast and enjoyed the heck out of camp with some wonderful friends.
So I got that over with and finally made it out the last two weekends with the new trommel and messed with getting it dialed in and a few moods. Here's a picture of my new toy.


Seemed to work pretty good, sorry no money shot off the weigh-ins I forget to take the pictures but in two days I pulled around 1.5grams. Not to bad considering the limited amount of water I take, can only get about 75gal loaded so that's my next job is getting more water on site.

Good luck to all and here's a memorable picture from the elk hunt.

Loved seeing these guys out munching on the hillside, made for a great time