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?

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...

Blue clay

Hi guys,

Ran two runs today, still running the cons.  

We came upon this neat clay layer in our dig.  Smelled like swampy gym socks.  But, we've never really found as gold as much in it as on it.  Tough to dig, we wanted to where the bedrock was but we couldn't get through it.  Water coming out had an oily sheen on it...

I have a picture of our gold so far, somebody dumped it on to of the morning run before I could get a picture for you guys.

Also have a picture to show you it's not all work and drama.  This is grandpa signing Mexican lullabies for the kid.

Super Bowl Weekend

We went up to the mine on Super Bowl weekend. Teresa needed more dirt for her Panning kits and bags of Paydirt, so with the help of this little machine we were able to make it up the mountain. We had to break up the frozen mound of Paydirt with the bull dozer.
We did end up staying the night at the bunkhouse and believe it or not we just about cooked our selves out. Our little electric heater really puts out the heat. The hot dogs were forgotten but we were able to manage.

Can you tell me?

Alaska is an amazing place to live, work, play and raise a family it.   Every day is full of new experiences.   There is almost no way to describe the wonders every day will bring.  You could go outside on the deck and find that a mother moose has calved twins and get to see them take their first wobbly steps in this fantastic place.  You could be driving home at night and have to pull your car over to park so you can watch the northern lights dance through the sky.   When the trees have the hoarfrost on them and they look like they were pulled out of some fairytale book, you just have to stop and admire.  The photo in this post I was just driving to town to pick up some groceries and I had to pull over and take a picture, if you look close you can see the double rainbow.  Go ahead and write a comment about your favorite things that you experience where your from.

What is a Gold Miner?

The Gold Miner is not always searching for gold.  There are things much more precious to him.  Those precious things require much more attention than the ground under his feet.  In this photo a little girls feet left the ground while in a flat out run, ending in a very painful fall.  The Miner is first and foremost a father, then a husband, a son, a brother.  The gold miner may have hard hands, but they are comforting hands, hands that heal wounds and will pick you up when you fall.   A Gold Miner is a friend for life and will always be there if family or friend is in need.  I am a gold miner.

BRING ME A SPOON!!!

Everyone once and a while our friends will accompany us on our outings.  Well this is my buddy, Dom.  He is playing in the waters of the Resurrection creek in Hope.   This is a little blurb about him and the spot he is in.  We were here for the 4th of July weekend, and as those of you know running a dredge is cold hard work so it is nice to be able to take turns with people.  Well it was Doms turn to run the dredge and the rest of the group is up above him at camp relaxing around the fire when we hear Dom scream, "BRING ME A SPOON, I NEED A SPOON!"  So of course we all go to see what is going on.  Dom was very insistent on needing a spoon and at this point we still did not know why he needed a spoon.  Well the reason Dom was so frantic was, as he was dredging he uncovered a piece of gold about the size of a rice grain,  He could see it from above the water and he wanted a spoon to pick it up with.  He wanted a spoon quick because he thought it would wash away in the current,  well the current in the spot where he was working was not really that swift.  I gave him simple instructions, "Just reach down and pick it up."  He looked at me kind of skeptically, but did it, I believe that was the first large piece of Gold Dom found.

A Story to Remember!

My Father in Law Just Published a great book Where the main character is my daughter, Woohoo!  Its a gold mining story, some truth in it, some not so truths.  A little bit of history, and alot of excitement.  Those of you who know me, you will recognized some of the names in the book, some of the places.  I have included a link to the store and intro to the book below.  If interested the book may be purchased on Amazon, the name is "Talking Ice."

Here is the intro:

Lyra Winter the main character in the Novel and she is the Author’s grand daughter, three years old at the time Talking Ice was published. It is an actual account of small scale mining methods on working claims and the story is set twenty two years in the future. The Action/Adventure, Fiction is the story of a young woman who inherits mining claims on the Kenai Peninsula and all the dangers of mining and those who would do anything for the price of Gold. 

Locations on the creek, named by previous owners after special events or earlier gold discoveries have been carried through the years along with some history of the claims. Placer Bluff is at the opposite side of the main camp on the first claim, in an area that was mined by hydraulic methods. Three hundred yards up the trail is Mastel’s Dig, a large area of exposed large rocks and boulders and gravel where the most recent previous owner mined two half gallon jars of “wheat size,” gold, prior to 1990.

Dead Dog bluff is a location just past the Mastel Dig, on the right side of the trail, overlooking the creek, still using the creek, left or right designations as a reference, where a previous owner buried his dog. Midway into the next claim going north is Seven Hundred, an area on the left side of the trail on the first shelve where seven hundred ounces may have been mined using placer methods with machinery and possibly even high pressure pumps.

No records were found to authenticate the existence of the Chinese mine, but as all legend goes, it may have existed and might have been buried rather than continue the risk of a cave in. The large deposit of black Slate where the mine may have been located is so unstable, it would have been dangerous work to keep it open or even dig. The fictional account of the Chinese mine in this work of fiction was a result of conversations around a late night campfire and speculation about where the mine may have been located. The "Talking Ice," is located on the lakes West of the Authors home. The ice resounds in the deep of winter and brings images of eerie shapes and wisps moving over the ice. The sounds can be heard in the bedrooms at night and have been known to influence dreams.

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.

Have you seen our tools?

 Here is a good front back and side view of our wash plant.  Antonio did an excellent job constructing this gold finding monster, he also made our trommel, bunk-house and he wrote another book(which is available on amazon) called "Talking Ice."  All this he did last winter so we were ready for the next season of mining as soon as the ground had thawed.  We did not want to break it so we loaded the gravel very slowly most of the summer, till we found out that it can handle a full loader bucket from the Kubota.  After that we flat moved some dirt, Very useful tool!

I'm King of the World!!!

That is what my Daughter would be yelling out if she had ever seen that dreadfully long move Titanic.  This is when we first placed the wash plant.  Everyone wanted their pictures with it........It was SO COOL! It is still super cool.  Anyone who wants to come up a visit we will take your picture with the wash plant too, free of charge.  It took a whole weekend with the 480D and Kubota to make a flat spot for the wash plant then a raised area for loading the wash plant.  There also had to be enough room to stage gravel to run in the wash plant, so the loading area had to be fairly large.  We had some trouble with the plywood restraining wall collapsing on the wash plant (It still worked was just a bit more of a pain to dig it out at the end of the season).  We will be constructing a steel retaining wall this winter for use next year.

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.

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.