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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[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

Made it out yesterday, and told the wife to take some video but all she took was some stills. Here's a couple pics of the action.
View attachment IMG_2189 (2).jpg
We had to wait until afternoon to go out so it was hot and muggy by then and we didn't dig as much gravel as we had Wednesday, but it was still fun.

 

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[OwenT]

Looks like a beast

 

[et1955]

great going Mike

 

[Gold4Mike]

What a difference a year makes! Wifey and I finished our first 12 months of gold prospecting with about .8g. In the last month alone we've added a full gram! The Piglet helps, but we've been able to learn better where to dig. Here is todays take from about 1 1/2 hours digging.


Still trying to dial the Piglet in, and have started using our Angus Mackirk as an extension and also a tester of the Piglet's tailings. We are finding some gold in the AM as we try to figure out the right angle for the Piglet. Hoping Angus is catching everything that is escaping.

View attachment IMG_2233.jpg

Grand total as of today.


May not seem much to those of you who do multi grams a day, but it is a lot of fun watching the total grow and also grow much faster than last year.

 

[arizau]

What a difference a year makes! Wifey and I finished our first 12 months of gold prospecting with about .8g. In the last month alone we've added a full gram! The Piglet helps, but we've been able to learn better where to dig. Here is todays take from about 1 1/2 hours digging.
View attachment 1610670 View attachment 1610671

Still trying to dial the Piglet in, and have started using our Angus Mackirk as an extension and also a tester of the Piglet's tailings. We are finding some gold in the AM as we try to figure out the right angle for the Piglet. Hoping Angus is catching everything that is escaping.

View attachment 1610673

Grand total as of today.
View attachment 1610672

May not seem much to those of you who do multi grams a day, but it is a lot of fun watching the total grow and also grow much faster than last year.

Don't know if you have seen this anywhere for tuning his bankers but Doc suggests you start with sluice too steep to collect material then lessen the slope until it does.

Good luck.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Yeah, it seemed at about 9 degrees the mats were clogging up so I bumped it to about 10.5 but was finding gold in the AM. Backed off to about 9.5 and still finding gold in the AM. Might go back to about 9 degrees and try that again. It seems going steeper than 10.5 degrees is a little extreme, but maybe try that too.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Seems our summer projects keep getting put on hold as the wife and I keep going out digging. Seems the fever is worse now in our second year of doing this. We left the Piglet at home to rest this time and took the GGT. We and a friend of ours hiked about a mile into a creek we like. Got some gold and enjoyed the day alongside the beautiful stream!
View attachment IMG_2341 (2).jpg

 

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I were able to add a solid 2 grams to our vial this summer! We started June with .8 grams. Here is our current total.

Would have done more, but my back finally said enough in late August.
We were able to get out to Canyon Creek (near Ross Lake) several times, Shaser Creek several times, Peshastin Creek and several different spots along the S and N Fork of the Nooksack.
My back is starting to feel better and hopefully we'll get out for some fall digging before it starts getting really cold!

 

[Gold4Mike]

Wife and I made use of the amazing PNW weather this weekend to go out a couple times to different places. We spent Saturday hiking into Canyon Creek above Ross Lake and sluicing for a few hours.
View attachment IMG_3028.jpg

Sunday we made the quicker drive to the South Fork of the Nooksack to run the Piglet highbanker. A lot of fishermen out there and it made us feel a little bit uncomfortable but still got a solid hour of running before we shut the Honda pump down and just enjoyed the sound of the river.
View attachment IMG_3008 (2).jpg
In the end, we got enough over the two days to pass the 1/10th of an ounce barrier! (our total, not the two days)

 

[Gold4Mike]

I haven't posted in a while because the pictures pretty much look the same as before. I guess that's not a bad thing because my wife and I have been able to go out high banking at least a couple times a month even as winter has set in.
View attachment IMG_3321.jpg View attachment IMG_3262 (2).jpg View attachment IMG_3144 (2).jpg

We really had our goal set on hitting the 4 gram (total) mark by the end of the year, but due to rain and fluctuating rivers we didn't go out quite as much as we had planned. Even so, we are sitting at 3.83g at years end so we are excited. We added a full 3 grams since the 1st of June! I am looking forward to adding to our total and eventually melting down a little 1/4 oz bar.



My wife and I wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2019!

 

[Underburden]

Love seeing another husband/wife team. You won't find a better mining partner.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Love seeing another husband/wife team. You won't find a better mining partner.

I love being able to go out with her, and it's pretty sweet that she likes to dig!

 

[arizau]

I love being able to go out with her, and it's pretty sweet that she likes to dig!

Now that lends a different meaning to the term "Gold Digger"!

 

[Gold4Mike]

It's been a while to add to our total due to weather, work, etc so I just felt like playing with our gold the other night. I set up to weigh it (even though I knew what the total was) and knocked the cupcake paper and gold right off my table. Took me a couple minutes to even look down at the floor. I was surprised to see the cupcake paper upright with what looked like all our gold! I threw it back on the scale to find that some of it had escaped onto the shag carpet. Today I vacuumed the carpet under my desk and then panned the dirt and found this: Needless to say I didn't tell my wife until I had recovered my spill and I learned not to play with my gold after I've had a few beers, lol.

 

[et1955]

I remember finding my first ounce of gold and had it in a glass container and while holding it in my hand it slipped and hit the metal rail on my chair, it exploded all on me and the shag carpet below, I froze, what do I do now, any guesses what I did.

 

[KevinInColorado]

I remember finding my first ounce of gold and had it in a glass container and while holding it in my hand it slipped and hit the metal rail on my chair, it exploded all on me and the shag carpet below, I froze, what do I do now, any guesses what I did.

Cut out the carpet?

 

[et1955]

Cut out the carpet?

I did when I moved out, they were going to replace it so I offered to pull the carpet for them.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Lol, I vacuumed again and got more gold. I guess I will keep vacuuming until I come up empty. It's easier than going to the river!

 

[Gold4Mike]

I got the chance this past weekend to appreciate my wife. Not because she came out digging with me, which she does a lot, but because she didn't. I just can't get as much done by myself. Wifey stayed home and I headed out for some exploring. I wanted to check out a creek tributary to our normal Nooksack spot. I hiked up a bit to a spot on the Skookum creek, but with the recent rains it was just too high to try and set up the sluice or do any digging. I did see some spots that I will return to in lower water conditions. View attachment IMG_3742 (2).jpg View attachment IMG_3748 (2).jpg
Instead I went to our usual river bar and tested a couple spots. This is where wifey would have come in handy, digging while I'm sluicing or sluicing while I'm digging. Those of you who do this solo, I tip my hat to you! I was only able to test a couple spots, sluice them, clean them up to finish checking later, before I ran out of time.

Each side of the dime is about 3 gallons of classified. I am thinking of taking the Piglet back to the spot where I got the gold on the left.

 

[et1955]

I would love to get way back there on skookum creek, an old timer told me that he found some nice nuggets there but you need to get way back near MT. Baker. Just a suggestion, when high, test high, I get my best gold way up the bank and also consider testing the moss for gold too.