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.

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.

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.

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.

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.