Turned out to be a beautiful afternoon; one of those
days you wait all winter long for. Sunny, about 50F and
just a few patches of snow left over from last weekends
storm.
In all honesty, I chose this spot not for it's gold potential
(had no idea if there was gold there, or not) but because
I could drive right out on the riverbank. There's very few
spots along the river up here where vehicles can access
the riverbank, and most of them are rough boat launches,
which this spot is. There is a healthy creek flowing into the
main river, and I was able to set-up right along side of it.
Set the Cube up first, and then got the pump situated
in the creek. The main river flow was just over the sandbar,
but I was actually working material from the incoming creek.
You can see the berm in the pic that separates the two
flows, and 20 yds. down from where I set up the two meet.
Rules here specify that the outflow of the high banker has
to run into a catch basin and not back into the creek, so, I
used my Keene sluice (bare) and channeled the outflow down
a small channel. (added a big rock under the sluice after I
took the pic).
You can also see the yellow handled shovel propped up
where I was digging material. Dug a mixture of rocks/gravel
and also classified several buckets of just the sand. Classifying
with the trommel down to 1/8" is a challenge, and using the
pump/hose to wash it all down helped. Still, there was a lot
of material that should have gone through the screen that instead
traveled out the end still stuck to larger rocks. Next time I'll
just bring an #8 mesh classifier and do it the old fashioned way.
Clean-up was incredibly easy, as I just washed the trays out
in a 30 gal. tub. Have to admit I was a bit shocked to see
such a small amount of concentrate come out of about 10 gal.
of 1/8" material.
This is all the cons:
Yep, less than 1/3 of a cup..and it's
super concentrated stuff....
Panned out the +20 material and found -0- (expected), but what wasn't
expected was all the 60- gold! Each 1/2 tsp. of the -60 cons had at least
8 and sometimes as many as 15 specs. from -60 down to an estimated
-200 to -300.
This Gold Cube gives
nothing back to the river...
Didn't get started today till after 2:30, but if the weather holds
I'll be heading back out there tomorrow morning and have the
whole day (at least till it starts snowing) to feed the Cube...
Loco, don't feel bad as this was just one of those special
days winter tosses us to we don't go completely out of our
minds..snow is coming tomorrow night, and rain then 5 days
following.
