Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween to you all out there, keep your little ghouls and goblins safe and warm.  Hope the East Coast has a speedy recovery from Hurricane Sandy, our best wishes go out to all of you struggling through the devastating effects.

Introductions and a Discovery

Here is a little introduction, from left to right, Me - Robert, Daughter - Lyra, Wife- Teri.  We are standing in front of an outcropping we discovered this summer with a large quarts vein running through it.  It looks like it may be the source for where we are currently finding gold.  We have taken grab samples from the vein and are going to have it assayed to find out what it contains.  Some of the samples had very nice quartz crystal development, Other samples we could see specks of gold in it, unfortunately the gold was to small to get a good picture of but I will post a picture of the crystalline quartz maybe next post.

Get involved, ask questions, get answers

Feel free to ask questions or comment about our gold mine or other mining or Alaska related topics.

NEW TOY!

Well the wife got this new gold pan on her birthday and we are itching to try it out, looks like it will be an effective concentrate recovery tool. It is called a turbo pan... We'll see about that. We will try to set some time aside next month to test it's turbo ability, I will write a review post once we try it out. In the mean time you can check it out at www.turbopan.com

Just a little father daughter time!

Here's my daughter and me looking for that glory hole!  This spot did have a little gold but not enough to continue digging.  So we cleaned up the mess we made and moved on to the next speculation.  Lyra loves the tractor, she drives and operates it with a little help from dad, Sometimes we even just go for a cruse in it.
Notice the rag hanging from the Hydrolic cylinder on the excavator arm, I had a leak and the rag made it so the fluid would run into containment when it was sitting during the week.  There was a lot more wrong with the tractor so it went from the mine straight to the tractor doctor.  The parts list to repair this tractor was five pages long....Paying the bill was like passing a kidney stone.

The Mining Operation at Quartz Creek

Here we are dropping a load in the wash plant, The wash plant runs off of a two inch pump, the hopper has a vibrator motor attached to the bottom to assist in getting the dirt to slide down the hopper and fall into the sluice box, the vibration also help to break apart clumps and shake the gold stuck to rocks off.  All of our water runs off into settling ponds, you can see part of one in this picture.  We built the wash wash plant, although we will be constructing a larger one for next season, the more dirt you can move the more gold you can find.

Are you looking to get into Gold Mining?

There is a site owned by an Alaskan company "Alaska Mining and Diving," that has a mining claims for sale in alaska column If your interested in getting into mining this is a good place to start.  This is where I picked up my claim on quartz creek.  To take a gander click this link, it will take you straight to the mines for sale page.ALASKA MINING AND DIVING - Mines for sale!

Follow me on twitter too

Visitors can follow me on twitter @arctictechie

Have not talked gold in a while

Its been a while since I posted anything, been kinda busy.  This summer I did find a little over two ounces of gold this summer, that however does not cover the cost of repair on the backhoe.  The above picture is a fallen tree on the trail into the gold mine.  Stay tuned as I will be posting some more Pictures of our Quartz Creek claim and of the gold found this year.