Signed!!!

Just got some GREAT NEWS.  The Forest Service in DC signed our Plan of Operations on Friday.  God willing, we'll be back to work by May 20th.  Can't wait to see that yellow gold!!!

Did you know our blog has moved?  Follow us at www.alaskapaydirt.com

 

So what's going on in this picture?  Why, I am thawing out a pile of frozen paydirt that's what!  I have a big old tarp and a diesel heater and I'm thawing and screening paydirt to sell.  At the end of the mining season last year, I made a pile just in case.  I never thought to have to do this as we had 1500 bags in my garage, ready to go.  That's what we get for aiming low.  We have been so blessed with folks wanting our paydirt to try their hand at mining in the comfort of their own home.   We sold that 1500 bags by January, so every few weeks here I am, going back for more.  Thank you to all of you for your support for our dream. 

The other thing you may notice is there is no snow on the ground.  While the rest of you are buried in snow in places like Tennessee and Georgia, we have YOUR warm weather up here.  I've lived here all my life and have never seen anything like this winter.  Its gotten up to 60 degrees around here at a time its supposed to be below zero.  Don't know what is going on with our planet, but I say let's just skip this winter and go straight to Mining Season!

If you are interested in ordering the fruits of our labor check out the Get Our Gold!! link.

Ouch!

On their way to Arizona to pick up our trommel, my folks had a run in with a moose.  Everyone is safe and they are en route again with my truck this time.

Look what Santa brought

Hi everyone, look at our newest toy!  We won this on an eBay auction out of California.  We feel super lucky, it's a one of a kind made by Titan Engineering, who builds 300 ton per hour trommels.  This is a smaller, portable version and should speed up our process.  

Thanks to our family who went and got it from California.  Now we have to get it from their house in Arizona to Alaska, road trip anyone?

Autumn bounty

Took the time to pick some wild currents and pigs ear and orange delicious mushrooms.  There's more treasure than just gold at the mine!

Public comment

Please consider supporting our operation by submitting a public comment.  To be considered, comments need to be specific to this proposal only and not include political opinions not relating to this proposal. 

Something like you support the Winter Supplemental Plan because it will allow for mineral exploration and have negligible impact on the National forest considering the size of the Chugach National Forest and the scope of the proposed operation.

Thank you all for your suport!

 Thank you all for your support!

It's bear country!!!

It's bear country up here.  Look who came to visit this morning.  Mother and almost full grown cub.  They were just passing through, didn't bother anyone.

Exploration time

Since the forest service has us effectively shut down until we get our equipment back, we went back to the beginning and dug a few test holes.  Gotta have another spot lined up in case this one runs out.  

Also we washed rocks and cleaned up the last little bit of the good stuff we had.  

We used the homemade trommel and ran backhoe buckets full through it.  First hole, nothing, second we did find some color, doesn't look like much but it is considering that we were not anywhere deep enough and it is only one backhoe bucket worth.  Hopefully you can see it in the picture.  

Here is the kid holding a spruce grouse chick we almost stepped on, his mom was in the trees squeaking at us so we let him go and left the area for a while.

Yes that's a nugget!!!

Because of our areas glacial history.  It's pretty uncommon to find nuggets.  We ding large flat flakes, yes, but no nuggets.  Near that big rock I featured in the last post, we found one!  

Came in at a tenth of a gram, not a life changing nugget but maybe his big brother is in there somewhere.  Here's the picture of our week total and you can see the nugget towards the bottom.

The big rock

We've uncovered this huge rock in our dig.  We are estimating it may be the size of a refrigerator, but we don't have it all uncovered yet.  Paydirt collected from around the rock seems to have a lot of gold and nice pickers.  

Excited to find out!  

We are having some equipment issues at the moment.  So we have to face those before we can move forward...