THERE"S GOLD IN THE GRANITE "GRANITE STATE THAT IS"

[OreCart]

Well hang in there. There talking more snow. Hopefully you can check some of that area out.

Yeah, after a colder than normal winter, we are running into the typical late winter pattern.

Sub-Zero cold for the last week of February, then two weeks of unsettled weather, which is another name for snow, then inevitably there will be a tease of Spring mid-March, then that last snowstorm in April. There is ALWAYS a snowstorm in April, but it is warm then, and falls as wet snow and is gone quickly.

I have got a few outcroppings of rock to check. I got one near me that is 50-60 feet tall, and I have been around it all my life (it being an area that is a son of a gun to log around because coming down the mountain you have to put your feet on the dash to keep yourself from sliding out of the skidder seat), but I never really looked to see what it had for rock. So I want to snowshoes to that soon, but while I joke it is easy being a Trophy-Husband, I have not been able to get a break long enough to go hike out there. Silly kids have been sick all week, so I have been watching them instead of looking for the gold in "them there hills!" (LOL)

 

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[triple d]

Is there a lot of exposed rock. Or is it covered. Hopefully its not covered. It would be easier to check out. The water has been to high. And to cold to do anything in my area. Many people sick around here too.

 

[OreCart]

Is there a lot of exposed rock. Or is it covered. Hopefully its not covered. It would be easier to check out. The water has been to high. And to cold to do anything in my area. Many people sick around here too.

This particular outcropping has a straight face going up 60 feet or so, so I can get samples anytime of year. I have a few other places I can examine the rock as well, but many area streams are just plain frozen. Even then, I will have to wait until after spring run-off of course to sample them.

That is what my father-in-law is excited for; to check out the various streams, as well as check out my gravel pit.

Oh you know how it is: these fair-weather prospectors! They would have never made it to the Klondike...not that I would have made it either though!

 

[triple d]

I guess you could say i really haven"t got. Gold Fever. But I have been crushing some ore. When I get a minute. And have been working. On building a High Banker. So I must have something. The water is coming down. Maybe I can do something in a couple weeks. If the snow doesn"t melt to fast.

 

[OreCart]

I guess you could say i really haven"t got. Gold Fever. But I have been crushing some ore. When I get a minute. And have been working. On building a High Banker. So I must have something. The water is coming down. Maybe I can do something in a couple weeks. If the snow doesn"t melt to fast.

I am pretty sure I do not have Gold Fever either. I have an interest in it, and I love to learn, so it is interesting for me to move beyond knowledge for the sand and gravel industry, and really start to understand mineralization of host rock, and how things were formed. One "bad" thing for me, is that I have lived here all my life, so I never knew that where I lived, was unique.

But I think if I truly had gold fever, I would be more ambitious then I am. In some ways I am ideally set; I own the land where I have found gold, and being retired I have plenty of time at my disposal, but I am not abandoning my family duties to get out in the woods to explore, explore, explore.

It will be fin to go exploring with my father-in-law because we have so little in common. But since he likes gold panning and stuff, and has a daughter with land to do that on, it is something we can do as father-in-law/son-in-law, as well as include my wife/his daughter, and our kids.

 

[OreCart]

We try to get out as a family as much as we can. We go camping...in tents too mind you and not in an RV, but also have done some "mining". I say that because my daughters (four of them) were young, so we "salted the mine" so to speak. I had hiked out earlier that day and placed some bought geostones from a store around this gigantic rock. Then I hiked back with the wife and kids in tow and found the geostones, broke them open with a hammer, and all had fun. It is cheating perhaps, but allows us as parents to show Maine's geology and that sort of thing, so the ends justify the means.

 

[OreCart]

My youngest daughter (age 5) loves "hacker videos" on YouTube, where they chase down clues and find things, but jeesh...that is all made-up and she is sitting on the couch watching television.


Well I got to thinking, when I was her age, my brother and sister and I were out in the woods, and made a time capsule by burying it underground. That was 40 years ago, and yet when we went back to try and dig it up, all those leaves had buried it up and we could never find it. So this Spring after the ground thaws, and the snow is gone, we are going to borrow my father's metal detector and see if we can find it. I know the general area it is at, so maybe we can find it? But as a family, that will be fun.

 

[triple d]

In our neck of the world. Only small amounts of gold silver etc. Have been found. So I think the fever is more about. The search and research. And then finding what your looking for. And of course possibly finding the mother load. And if you can do this with family.Its a real plus.

 

[A2coins]

Good luck hope you hit the Mother lode just dont forget us. lol

 

[OreCart]

In our neck of the world. Only small amounts of gold silver etc. Have been found. So I think the fever is more about. The search and research. And then finding what your looking for. And of course possibly finding the mother load. And if you can do this with family.Its a real plus.

My father-in-law has done pretty good in New Hampshire.

It was funny though because my father-in-law showed me his vial of gold he found in New Hampshire, and it was pretty impressive I thought. My daughter saw it, but did not say too much until yesterday. We were talking about gold and she nonchalantly said she had a vial of gold with "as much gold as Grandpa's." I remembered we had sent her one summer up to my sister's house in Alaska and she had taken her out to the Klondike on her tour of Alaska. So I was like, "Did your aunt buy you the gold at a souvenir shop?"

No she says, they bought a bucket of dirt at those dig-your-own gold places and ended up with a quarter of a vial of gold.

My daughter is so spoiled, she just has no concept of how hard things are to get because everything is handed to her. I told her yesterday me and Katie were going to do "something fun next weekend", and she looked at me and said, "Does it involve a plane ride somewhere?" "No honey, probably not", but she only said that because for Valentine's Day he mother gave her a trip to Paris for 10 days.

She is only 12 years old. (Insert shaking of my head here).

 

[triple d]

Thats to funny. Don"t we wish we were in Alaska. I don"t get that much gold in a whole year. I know a couple dredgers in N.H. That have found enought gold to buy a couple. New motorcycles. But they have been doing it for years. And when the picking was better also.

 

[OreCart]

We were talking with the inlaws last night and they were shocked that the kids did not go to school yesterday, but that was because they only got 2" of snow out of that last storm; we got over a foot. With about four feet of snow on the ground now, that will just be more snow melt to wash all the shiny down into the streams for panning in the summer!

Well a prospector can at least hope anyway!

 

[OreCart]

A few weeks ago we discovered a PBS Show out of Canada called Pioneer Quest which was about two couples who lived like 1870 settlers on the Prairie of Manitoba. The goal was to see if people of today could live just as they did back then, and being farmers, we found it interesting.

But the same producers did a show as well on the Stampeders of the Klondike. I have only watched (2) shows so far, but really like it. I like the series because they are trying to reenact history, and so they minimize drama. They said they miss a lot of "TV Moments" because if two people are having trouble getting along due to being exhausted and hungry, they just stop filming and try and sort it all out.

Is it 100% like the Stampeders heading North? Not 100%, but it is pretty close.

You can find the show for free on Amazon Prime. "Gold Quest"

 

[triple d]

I watched some of it. It is a pretty good show. Not sure I watched it all. Ill have to check and see if I watched in all. Thanks for sharing.

 

[triple d]

Finally got a chance to process. A gallon of crushed ore ive been working on. I got .04dwt of gold.Out of that gallon. If I figured right. That comes out to 4/10 of a troy oz. Or 8 pennyweight to a yard. The only thing the rocks ive crushed. Have come from several areas i prospect. But at least I know what rocks to look for. I think the ore also contains silver. May send some ore out to be tested. Or smelt some myself. Just need to get the equipment. Don't have a lot of ore so I don" know if its worth it.

 

[OreCart]

Finally got a chance to process. A gallon of crushed ore ive been working on. I got .04dwt of gold.Out of that gallon. If I figured right. That comes out to 4/10 of a troy oz. Or 8 pennyweight to a yard. The only thing the rocks ive crushed. Have come from several areas i prospect. But at least I know what rocks to look for. I think the ore also contains silver. May send some ore out to be tested. Or smelt some myself. Just need to get the equipment. Don't have a lot of ore so I don" know if its worth it.

In farming, when it comes to soil testing, I have always said, "It is just a guess, unless you test", but I realize it gets expensive having everything assayed too.

I am glad you got some gold though, that is a good feeling for sure. A person is always rewarded when they get outside and dig in the dirt.

I am not sure what the cut-off is on being worth excavating or not. I read somewhere where it was 1 ounce per ton of ore, but who knows. I am a farmer so I am really good at looking at costs, reducing it down to the bare minimum, and then working it as best I can and making money. I mean farming is the best teacher when it comes to that. What other industry is there where a person buys everything at retail prices, then turns around and sells their product at wholesale prices and still manages to make a profit? That is laughable, but exactly the situation of farming.

 

[OreCart]

I have not done a lot in terms of gold hunting lately though. I got a permit to burn some logging slash piles while we still had snow cover, so I have been doing that. I am sure you can see the brush piles from your house, maybe even from space! (LOL). Winter just does not want to leave though as it is snowing here again!

That will keep the brush piles from starting fires this spring, but I am getting antsy to check out some of the nearby streams and see what they have for gold. In the meanwhile I have been checking out the soil maps and trying to determine where the gravel beds are so I can take soil samples from those areas and plot out where the gold is.

If I overlay soil type, on top of the known bedrock formation, I should get a good idea of where the placer gold is.

 

[triple d]

Thats for sure this winter sucks.And by the sounds it. Will last a month longer where you are. I still have maybe a 5 gallon bucket of ore. So that won"t add up to much. But gives me something to play around with. Keep the faith winter will. End somtime. Your doing good research. So when the weather breaks you can hit the ground running. Maybe those brush piles will melt the snow. For a few miles.

 

[OreCart]

Thats for sure this winter sucks.And by the sounds it. Will last a month longer where you are. I still have maybe a 5 gallon bucket of ore. So that won"t add up to much. But gives me something to play around with. Keep the faith winter will. End somtime. Your doing good research. So when the weather breaks you can hit the ground running. Maybe those brush piles will melt the snow. For a few miles.

Well you are good for me because your post got me motivated to crush up some rock, and send it in for testing. I just back from the post office, so it is on its way.

I kept putting it off until I could build my rock crusher, but it is hard to get motivated on even doing that since I was not sure how prevalent gold is here. I did it right though, and did not "salt the mine" so to speak by any means. If it comes back with gold, it will represent the entire area. But testing is not cheap; nearly $50 with shipping.

I have been looking for a place to just do ICP testing, but have not found a place yet.

 

[triple d]

Hopefully the test comes back good. If so you have the equipment to move some material. And make some money. You also have the land too. Which i don"t have. I can only pick up a few pieces here and there. But i have seen sides of hills that. I would like to bring home a few dump truck loads. But again privite land. Can"t wait to here the results.