Its always something.....

So there I was...on the dozer...I ask, "is there gas."...response is,"Yes, just topped it off."  As operator I should have looked and since I did not we spent many hours bleeding air and recharging the battery, over and over and over.  It was another wonderful and exciting weekend at the gold mine.  We learned a lot about the old John Deere 1010 Bulldozer and we managed to dig 22 buckets of Pay dirt out of the frozen ground, with the help of a propane weed burner.  You can't pay for day of adventure like that!

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.

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.

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.

Crazy Adventures

Okay everyone who is reading and not commenting, If you will comment to this and tell me what your most amazing adventure is then I will share one of my all time favorite adventures as well.  It does not have to be extremely detailed, a line or two about something you have done that you will never forget would be fine.