Rookie Gold!

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I got our first gold on the South Fork of the Nooksack today. It's not much, but we only ran about 1 five gallon bucket of gravel classified to 1/8 and run through a Angus Mackirk Foreman sluice. I had trouble getting the sluice to run right so there was a lot of time wasted, so I'm pretty happy with what we got, and yes I did the happy gold dance, which wasted more time. The gold looks bigger in person!

 

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[Au dave]

it all adds up .. and it looks like you need to season the pan a bit more .. the water shouldn't bead like that

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[DizzyDigger]

Congrats Mike...

The S. Fork of the Nookie is always good for some flood gold. Not sure
where you went, but if you drop me a PM I'll suggest a couple spots
I've had some success at in the past.

 

[beekbuster]

scratch the pan up real good, it help a lot when you are trying to separate the gold. either coarse sand paper or gravel, more scratches the better. at the bottom of the pan and the riffles is the best. keep the small stuff from escaping

 

[Underburden]

The best part of this episode was having your wife with you. Best mining partner you can find.

 

[Gold4Mike]

The best part of this episode was having your wife with you. Best mining partner you can find.

Yep, I'm turning her into quite the digger! We went out to the same place again today and got this in about two hours. I got the easy job of feeding the sluice.

 

[No gold in NY]

That pan looks good Mike. Our team works about the same. The wife feeds the sluice and I am the digger.

 

[et1955]

Great job in finding gold on the S.F, not easy, I have been mining on that river since 1996 after the big flood. As you have learned getting a sluice to run on that river is very hard and when you can it is not near where the gold is, as you know the river runs very flat. If you are serious on getting the gold then on that river a highbanker is the only way to go, I get 1 to 2 grams a day there. Also when you classify don't go past 1/2 inch, 1/4inch flakes are common there. This is a good river to learn how to mine, master it before you move on and if need advice ask.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Great job in finding gold on the S.F, not easy, I have been mining on that river since 1996 after the big flood. As you have learned getting a sluice to run on that river is very hard and when you can it is not near where the gold is, as you know the river runs very flat. If you are serious on getting the gold then on that river a highbanker is the only way to go, I get 1 to 2 grams a day there. Also when you classify don't go past 1/2 inch, 1/4inch flakes are common there. This is a good river to learn how to mine, master it before you move on and if need advice ask.

Thanks Ed, we have found it a dandy place to practice, learning where to dig and sluice and it's only a quick 30 minute drive from our house. Thanks for the tip on classifying, we have been going down to 1/8 inch We will certainly change that.

 

[ltd063]

Awesome. Welcome to the club!

 

[Gold4Mike]

Got this in about 6 hours on the Nooksack. Includes our biggest flake so far! Each trip gets a little better and learning new stuff each time.

 

[et1955]

Great job Mike, once you learn all those indicators for where the gold is deposited your days take will increase and require less effort and time. I did go up Sunday to that old hydraulic mine on the Sultan, my new electric bike worked great and made that 3 mile trip in apiece of cake. Got to spend more time getting lost trying to find the trail in there, so over grown but I finally found the place. Decided to do a little fishing first just to cool off, caught a couple nice trout for dinner, Yum. Next I climbed up tp the dig sight, I also found a homemade rocker box, I may get it up and running again, who ever made it hasn't been there in over 2 years since I was last there. This is of the gold I got in 6 pans of unclassified material, , notice the red stain on some of the gold, what does that tell you ? Feel free ask me more questions, ED

 

[mytimetoshine]

awesome!

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[Gold4Mike]

Nice! Looks like the trip was worth it. I like the electric bike idea! The red spots? I'm thinking some other sort of mineral still attached to the gold. A little rusty iron? Does that mean the gold was found relatively close to where it was deposited because it hasn't travelled far enough to have the other stuff worn off?

 

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I got the opportunity to travel to Central Washington gold country this past week. I had a 4 day conference in Leavenworth and we were able to sneak away a couple times to try out a couple of streams. We got skunked at our first attempt on a small stream in the Entiat drainage, but had a good time. Our second attempt resulted in some color from a tributary to the Peshastin! It isn't a whole lot, but we only had a couple hours to play. We'd like to go back with more time. Zoomed in, I noticed the gold is a lot more coarse than our home stream produces.

 

[et1955]

Great job, the more places you mine the better you will get. Good call on the coarseness of the gold, in time you will be able tell witch river the gold came from not only by the coarseness but by color too.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Didn't get this posted right away because my wife and I took off on vaca the day after we dug this. After coming back from the Leavenworth area we got the urge to hit the local stream again and got this in about 3 hours of digging and sluicing. Nothing real big, but it's kind of fun to look back at our first few outings where we were excited about 5-10 specks. Nothing like sleeping on the Amtrak the day after working hard!

 

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I got out a couple times this past week. We went up to a trib of the Skykomish River with her brother. He said he'd found some gold up there a few years back so we thought we'd go see. Well, we ran probable 4-5 buckets in a beautiful canyon area with some bedrock showing. Only got about 6 or 7 small specks of gold, but we found butt loads of garnets, garnet gravel, garnet sand and garnet soup. This stuff was really hard to process but it was interesting to see all the red in the sluice, pan, etc, and we did find a few larger chunks. Anyone have any suggestions on what to do with garnets?
A few days later we headed out to the Nooksack and ran about 5 buckets and got this. Not a lot, but we were excited to see more of the bigger flakes. We feel we are figuring out where best to spend our time digging.
Sorry if the photos aren't quite where they should be, can't quite figure this program out.

 

[et1955]

Sounds like you were on the N.F. of the Sky, great job in finding some gold there, next time you are in the area let me know and I will lead you to richer areas. I have been going to that area since the late 60's. Always a lot of garnets in that area not really worth collecting but if you go Rapid river near the town of Skykomish, you will find 1/2 inch garnets. I ran a bucket threw my sluice up there and it turned blood red full of garnets.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Yeah, it actually was Rapid River. Everywhere we dug there were garnets!