I'm glad you are enjoying Lanny. Lot's more to come. What part of Arizona is your favorite?
Our next adventure took us to the Artillery peak area in western Arizona for three days of exploring. We've been interested in this remote area for quite a while but the recent release of the 1:24000 Artillery Peak Quadrangle geologic mapping really intrigued us.
This is a known placer gold producing region with quite a high density of productive hardrock mines due to the extreme mineralization. Very complex localized geological structures pretty much guaranteed we would find interesting signs of deposits. We weren't disappointed by the on the ground reality. This area is rich in many minerals besides gold and is a rockhounds dream.
Here's a view from our base camp on the Alamo lake reservoir.
That pointy thing in the right far distance is Artillery Peak and the range to the left (West) is the Artillery mountains. Out of the picture to the East is the Arrastre mountain range wilderness and to the West of the picture is the Burro mountain range wilderness. All of this area has productive placer gold deposits.
This area is obviously rugged and remote but the Alamo Lake State park has good water and more than 200 developed camping spots - about half of those have full hookups. It makes a great base camp to come back to after a rough day of 4 wheeling, hiking and digging. Hot showers are a real luxury we rarely encounter and the showers at the park are clean and well maintained with abundant hot water.
Access to the other side of the lake is seasonally limited unless you take the
long way around from the Northwest. With the exception of the road to the park from the little farming town of Wenden 38 miles away the roads are dirt. A 4 wheel drive high clearance vehicle with some good hiking/climbing boots and lots of water are highly recommended if you want to explore this area.
At about 1,200 foot elevation this is not a summer prospecting area. To mine any deposits we discovered it will be necessary to do the assessment and location work this season and bring the crew in to mine it late next fall.
A limited season along with access and supply issues as well as the ever present lack of water is the main reason these small but rich deposits have remained unmined. It's our job to solve those problems and find a profitable way to get the gold out of the ground without endangering our crew members. Sometimes that's not possible and we need to move on to the next prospect just like the previous prospectors did.
We have the advantage over the old time prospectors of higher gold prices and better transportation. Still it's not uncommon to find a rich placer that can't be profitably mined by our group. Spending $20,000 dollars to get $22,000 worth of gold just isn't good business. Combine that with the ever present fact that no matter how well you have attempted to define the gold in a placer deposit it may come up short of expectations. You can see why we need to find deposits with a very good chance of paying well - not just good gold.
I'll be back later with a post on the Rich Hill portion of our Christmas adventure. After that I'll post some of the information we discovered and how this all ties together. Until then...
Heavy Pans
