San Diego Drywashing

[au79ramona]

Purchased a Thompson hand crank drywasher last week. Heading out tomorrow with drywallman to run some dirt through it! Hopefully it dosent rain tonight! If it does i guess we will just do some sampling. We found a pretty promising spot that produced 13+ small flakes from 2 one gallon ziplock bags of dirt. Cant wait to start running buckets! Thanks again Goldenirishman for hooking me and Dan up!

 

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[goldenIrishman]

No problem guy! I hope to be out in Ramona again in the near future to get that buyout business taken care of at long last. As soon as that's done I'll be moving up to Kingman so I'll be needing a good drywasher too.

Getting a drywasher may be a real good investment. If you people don't get some real rain in California soon, drywashing may be the only option for mining! That or getting one of AzVipers "Vipervac" units to vaccum those dry stream/river beds. Those things will suck up pretty much anything that's not nailed down.

 

[au79ramona]

Didn't rain last night! Drywallman and myself are heading out to the digging grounds to test out the new drywasher. We're kinda short on time so we're planning on running 1/4 yard of dirt today to get a decent idea of what the ground holds! Pictures will be posted when we get back!

 

[au79ramona]

Drywallman and myself went out last Sunday morning. We spent 2.5hrs digging classifying and running dirt through the drywasher. We ran 10 5g buckets full of classified dirt. Total take was .3 grams of Gold!

 

[au79ramona]

Right as we finished running the 10th bucket, the rain came!

 

[Hard Prospector]

Well done guys

 

[goldenIrishman]

Wow... That area looks familer for some strange reason... Can't bee too sure though. That glare off Dans' head is making it hard to be sure. GOTCHA DAN!

Nice to see that the little Thompson unit did you guys right. Hope it cools off out there before I head out that way. you guys have been hotter than us lately! Nice cool 90 degrees here.

Edit: BTW... did you guys think to rerun the tailings to make sure ya got it all?

 

[au79ramona]

Goldenirishman, the bald headed prospector is actually me lol. I decided to keep my Marine Corps issue haircut when I got out. We didn't run the tailings this time. They are in a nice pile and I will run them at a later time. The spot we are working is a bench in the middle of the creek bed. It was interesting to me that the gold seemed to get finer the deeper we dug into the embankment. Has that been your experience as well?

 

[goldenIrishman]

You've got to remember that a raised bench like that very well might have run in a differeent direction than the wash runs now. Once they've been burried it's really hard to tell what the direction of flow was to start with.

Generaly speaking most of the benches in that area run east west. They got covered over and then the land was pushed up by the plate motion. Those hills got worn down over time and not always in the same direction. This process takes hundreds of thousands of years so many if not all of the tell tale signs to the direction of flow are gone. I've seen benches that ran almost 90 degrees from the wash they were found in. Best thing you can do is follow the cobbles. Was that the area near the Estates or Dans area near Alpine/Pine Valley?

If both of you have those shiney heads than remind me to keep the sunglasses handy when I come on out!

 

[au79ramona]

Went out again today. Ran 4 buckets through the drywasher.

Goldenirishman, this is the location near the estates

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Thanks hardprospector.. and thanks again Jeff. This will be a good little spot. Yes we need to re run out tailings and if we get any pools of water this year, we will take in a small recirculating sluice and run all those tailings again even!

 

[Hard Prospector]

That Thompson is a good little drywasher built by one heck of a nice fella. I've got the same little puffer and when its not mov'n dirt it stays attached to the pack frame. When pack'n in every oz counts its the right tool for the job for sure! Speaking of dry, I have this feeling were finally going to see a real winter coming soon. I've lived here all my life (San Diego) and can remember certain local trends in the weather. Over the past several decades, I've noticed whenever we have a summer where the trade winds lay down creating persistent unusually warm ocean temps into the mid 70s, stretches of hot humid tropical weather and this is the kicker; FANTASTIC local inshore and off shore fishing it always seems to follow into one hell of a wet winter. These so called "El Nino experts" can't seem to make up their minds anyhow thats how I feel 2015 gonna start out. Then again, it could be I drink too much Buffalo Trace and Coors so what do I know

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Ya i drink to many silver bullets myself, but I've heard the same and farmers almanac days the same. .. we sure could use a wet winter around here.