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!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[Gold4Mike]

It was actually my wife's idea. I give her all the credit for that one!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A Handbook of Civil War Bullets and Cartridges - Grab it through Amazon!

[oneguy]

It was actually my wife's idea. I give her all the credit for that one!

yeah... good idea! I've got the Motherlode and it's like trying to set up a sail during a wind storm!!!! Sometimes my RR tie doesn't even want to hold it down..........

 

[Gold4Mike]

Wifey and I tried out a new spot this past weekend. We hiked in about half a mile to this spot. Always hoping to find bigger or more gold, lol. We didn't see flakes as big as we had been seeing in the other spot, but we sure found more flour gold than we have seen. Every medium (big cobble, gravel under cobble, gravel on surface, sand on surface) that we ran through our Grizzly Prospector showed color in the riffles. And yes, the Grizzly catches fine gold. This is from about 8 buckets of unclassified.
View attachment IMG_1528.JPG View attachment IMG_1529.JPG

 

[RTR]

Gotta dig deeper Mike

 

[Gold4Mike]

The deeper we dig, the less we get, lol.

 

[et1955]

There are certain rivers here in western Wa. where there is gold only deposited during certain types of floods, the flood layer is thin but can be rich if you just mine that layer. I know where you are mining but I offer another river as an example, same conditions and that is the Tolt river, back in 1996 gold was every where after the 100 year flood but after smaller floods that flood line has been covered up by more than 6ft of material. Pic of the Tolt River

 

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I made a trek to the Blewett mining area of central Washington over our spring break. We had our sights set on a couple of locations, but snow still blocked some forest service roads. We went to one location but still had to battle snow to get to creek side.
View attachment IMG_1570 (2).jpg View attachment IMG_1572 (2).jpg
We tested a few locations but found a spot with some bigger boulders to dig under and got our best stuff there.
View attachment IMG_1596 (2).jpg
Some of the flakes we got had some interesting texture to them.

A couple of them had an interesting orange color to them. Roosevelt's ear is what we use to compare flake size.

We are already planning a return trip to pry more boulders apart!

 

[RTR]

That gold looks pretty good,(Not too weathered by the elements),The heck with a return trip.Set up camp & hit that area 24/7 good luck.

 

[et1955]

My wife and I made a trek to the Blewett mining area of central Washington over our spring break. We had our sights set on a couple of locations, but snow still blocked some forest service roads. We went to one location but still had to battle snow to get to creek side.
View attachment 1574758 View attachment 1574759
We tested a few locations but found a spot with some bigger boulders to dig under and got our best stuff there.
View attachment 1574760
Some of the flakes we got had some interesting texture to them.
View attachment 1574761
A couple of them had an interesting orange color to them. Roosevelt's ear is what we use to compare flake size.
View attachment 1574762
We are already planning a return trip to pry more boulders apart!

Great job, that orange color is rust, I find it all the time when I get close to bedrock, also the gold in that area tends to have a high silver content.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Been a little slow in getting our adventures posted lately. Daughter graduating from college and moving back to the area has been a draw on our time. My wife and I have been able to get out about once a month during the winter and even more so now that it's warming up. We are coming up on our year anniversary of our first gold flake find! I think we will only be at about a gram of gold found since then, but we've learned a lot and this summer have plans to really get after it! Our Grizzly Gold Trap is our favorite sluice now, but the Angus Mackirk is pretty nice when we don't get enough water flow.
The last couple weeks we've hit some new places and both times broke our record for out biggest flake! So far I'm using the ear as a reference. Hopefully soon I will be using the face or even the whole head!


The last place we hiked in a ways to a historic mining area. Near where we were digging was an obvious placer shaft, now filled with water. The water was very clear and we could easily see the timbers of the supports of the shaft entrance. It was pretty awesome to think back to earlier times when the shaft was dug and what little equipment the miners back then had to use.
View attachment IMG_1841.jpg View attachment IMG_1843.jpg
We've really had fun this past year and hope to do much better in the coming year! We've learned a lot from the many experienced miners on treasurenet.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Wow, so cool!

PS so you are sampling around and it’s leading you to better gold. Hmm so prospecting leads to better gold. Good to know

 

[Gold4Mike]

Wow, so cool!

PS so you are sampling around and it’s leading you to better gold. Hmm so prospecting leads to better gold. Good to know

We've definitely learned that different locations require different techniques, but that's part of the fun especially if there's gold in the box whether you do it right or not. We've only been skunked at one location and we want to go back because we now realize what we did wrong for that spot, lol.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Wifey and I had a good day out yesterday and feel we had one of our best days yet. I had trouble getting my GGT set up because of slow flow near where we were digging. I finally found a spot where it ran well, but had to carry buckets of classified material quite a ways over slippery cobble or we would have been able to do more. Transporting gravel really slows things down. My wife now wants a high banker, lol.

I made a change to my miller table. I had tried drilling a hole through it and then using a vial and cap to be able to sweep gold into, like I'd seen someone else do, but I tried several adhesives including Water Weld, and none of them would stand up to the torque of turning the vial on and off. I ended up sealing up the hole and just drilling a small depression into the surface to use as a well to sweep gold into and then suction it out when we were done. It worked pretty well.

View attachment IMG_1969.jpg

 

[DizzyDigger]

Mike: Your spot on the Nooksack? I know it well...

Probably been there no less than 20 times over the years. Reasonably
easy access, and flood gold that replenishes itself every year.

You're spot-on about the 6-8". Only spot I found it deeper was when
I followed that channel (starts at the top of the bar) back into the
woods a ways, and then dug down into the old gravel. There's
gold there, but it's a lot more work than digging on the bar.

 

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I had decided we would just stay with sluicing, and not worry about pumps, highbanking, dredging, that sort of thing. We just enjoyed being out, the quiet solitude of a remote stream, and a little gold. Well I'm sure many of you know how that turned out, lol.

View attachment IMG_2017.jpg

We got to try out a buddies Gold Hog Piglet a couple of times and now ours will be here Wednesday.

 

[RTR]

Glad your still at it Mike.Slow & steady wins the race

 

[Gold4Mike]

Wife and I got out today with our new Gold Hog Piglet and achieved our first weighable amount! A little over an hour and a half digging and feeding the piglet. Now I need a scale that registers to hundredths.




Happy 4th everyone!

 

[OwenT]

Dang! For me, in that amount of time, that’s awesome. Looks like it was a Good call on the piglet. Let’s see a video of it running

 

[Rookster]

Congrats on the gold strike.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Dang! For me, in that amount of time, that’s awesome. Looks like it was a Good call on the piglet. Let’s see a video of it running

Mining boss says we're going out again tomorrow. I'll try to remember to do some video.