It Finds Gold.

This here is our little trommel wash plant that we use to run samples in. It a bit clunky, not quite round, but hey nobody is perfect and it works just fine just the way it is. How it works, we will set it up at base camp and after I have dug a sample Hole I will fill my backhoe's excavator bucket up with the dirt of interest, carry it back to where the trommel is located and then shovel the dirt from the bucket into the trommel. Once we have run the whole bucket through the trommel the we perform a clean out, it is never a lot of gold, but what it does is give us a snapshot of what the ground contains, gold wise, and depending on what we get out of the trommel we will decide to dig or not to dig?......Boy, that seems like a recurring question in this blog. This trommel seems to have very good gold recovery. We did have some grounding issues when we first started operating, if you would touch the trommel you would get a nice electric shock from it. As you all know electricity and water does not mix well. We have since solved that issue because getting shocked every time you touch the machine, just won't do. These photos are prior to having any of the pluming installed. I will try to find a picture of the complete unit to show off.

How do you KNOW there is GOLD there.

Well knowing that there is gold somewhere is actually just some educated guesses, lots of small sample holes, and a pinch of luck. In reality it is not much more complicated than that. This hole here we were processing the material on top of the clay in a line perpendicular to how this hole has been dug when the gold just stopped, so I moved the equipment back to a point that we were producing gold from and started making this cut up the hill from that Point. As we were moving up the hill the concentrations of gold were getting higher and higher. Then guess what?.....Our season ended. At least we have a starting spot for next years search for the glory hole!

Dreams of finding "PAY DIRT!"

This is a photo of me in a sample hole I dug inspecting my handy work and collecting samples to run back at camp.  There was hardly any gold in this hole.  I found out later in the season that the reason I did not find any gold here was because I dug to deep/not deep enough.  The gold in this seems to be in one of two places, we find it sitting on a clay layer and we also find it sitting right on the bedrock.  This hole I dug just past the clay layer but not to the bedrock.

To dig or not to dig?

Just down the hill from the Quartz vein that we found, it looks like at some point in time someone dug a very deep sample hole by hand.  Its a kinda creepy looking hole I was planning on digging it up next year with the backhoe to find out what the digger was chasing.  You don't dig a hole that big by hand if your not finding anything.  It looks like one of those holes you would see in a scary movie, you know the cursed ones that everyone in the audience says don't go in there stupid, and they do anyway.  Hopefully next season I will be able to report a mother load find in this spot, and not a Zombie.