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.

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.

The New Bigger Better Plant

This is our new wash plant at the gold mine set in place and ready to run.  Grandma and Lyra are trying it out.  We got about two half days of running in this first three day weekend, we ran into some hiccups but we were able to devise some work a rounds.  I will talk about more of that later.  Lets get to the Meat and potatoes, what you really came here to see GOLD, this lower picture is what we hauled out of the ground our first weekend there.  It is just shy of quarter ounce of gold.

Sneak Peak

This is a sneak peak at our new, improved and bigger wash plant.  The sun is out the snow is melting and soon you will be able to see some photos of this beast in action.  As you have seen, if you have been following the blog, we have been up to the mine this winter.  We have done some snow clearing to hurry along spring melt so we can set up our new equipment.  Stay tuned for 2013 mining season news and photos, ITS ALMOST HERE!!!

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.

The new (not so new) dozer

Well we just picked up the newest edition to our equipment fleet a 1960's John Deere 1010 crawler with a six way blade. It's amazing, runs great, pushes great, hopefully it will do a great job helping us find gold next summer. This photo is Teresa taking it out for a test run.

What happens in the evenings?

We are going to try a post without a picture today.  At the end of the day, after all of our equipment has run out of fuel.   We perform our clean up, eat dinner, then it is time to sit around the fire and talk about events that took place during the day.  My Mother-in-law usually wants to do an evening exploration trip to an area of the mine we have not been to in a while.  When she heads out she usually takes my wife along with.   My father-in-law and I sit around the camp fire and discuss ways to modify our equipment to make it work better, places we think that we need to dig test holes.  We discuss how we are going to run the operation more efficiently with our small crew.   Once my mother-in-law and wife return from their expedition we will then start the wine tasting, the in laws make their own wine.  Most of the time it is great wine, sometimes you just have to spit it back out.  After a couple glasses of wine it is usually time for everyone to hit the hay for the evening, then rinse and repeat, we do it all again the next evening.

SLAVE DRIVER!

You know, I can't help that I am an early riser and like to start my day as soon as possible.  I have a passion for gold mining, maybe its being outdoors all the time with my family on a mission of sorts. Well no matter what it is I like to work as long as there is light, which is quite a while in the summer here.  My family says that I am a slave driver and that I work to hard.  I always tell them they are welcome to stay at camp and I will go out by myself.   They always come with.  Then they say that I work them to death, I say you look like your still walking around to me.   Well the photo here is me catching my wife sneaking in a standing nap hoping no one would notice she was catching a few z's if she was standing up.  Well someone noticed and got a great picture.  I am not a slave driver!  I cant help if everyone wants to fallow me out in the morning and stay out late, until the equipment runs out of gas.  (They don't know I sneak extra fuel into the equipment so it will run a few more hours, Ssssshhh, it will be our secret.)

May the Hydro-Force be with you!

First off I want to apologize for yesterdays post. It was a bit to far out in left field so I will try again today to make a post that is a little more worthy of re-posting.This Photo here is My Father-in-Law operation a very cool Device, it is a dredge nozzle that allows dredging on the dry ground instead of in the water. It is called a Hydro-force Nozzle. It works great for cleaning the bedrock once you have reached it. It works just like a dredge nozzle except there is a little diverter valve so that you can fill your hole with water and initiate suction. Once you have a good suction going in the water then you adjust the little ball valve on the side so your getting a good mixture of water and gravel going through your hoses while supplying water to the hole to keep the nozzle in water. This proper mixture help reduce clogs. There are quite a few you-tube videos on the use of this device, and all you need to do is type in Hydro-force to see it in action. When My Father in law is operating this tool he will say he needs a break, and let one of us take over. Well his break consist of standing directly over whoever is running the Hydro-force until you feel guilty and give it back to him. Usually he only will take a 5 min break. He will operate that thing for a 10 hour day, exhausting work.

Purchase Hydroforce Here (No Affiliation)

A Harring, Whats a Harring?

It seems that the story post I made was very popular so I think I will continue to tell the story of the mine through the magic of imagination.   As you all know we are looking for gold up here at Quartz creek Alaska.  What you don't know is that the gold we find is found in smaller flatter pieces.  The gold was created a couple million years ago when glaciers covered this whole area. Well most people think that nothing can live in a glacier.  Well in this area the only place for things to live was either on or in the glaciers.  Glaciers are constantly moving and grinding up the rock it is moving across.   Because of this the glacier becomes embedded with minerals and very small pieces of the bedrock.  This was the source of food for a creature called a "Harring."  The Harring looked like the cross between a big horned Beetle and an earth worm, the cross being that the earth worm had the horns kinda like the beetle. The Harring used its horns to borough through the glacier and find food as it went. It consumed the minerals and small rocks that it came across. Using the small rocks it would grind up the minerals for digestion. As the Harring digested, it only used from the minerals what its body needed, the rest was waste that would continue to pass through its body. One thing that I had not mentioned was that the Harring had its own heat source, a chemical reaction that would take place inside its body, as the remaining minerals passed through the body of the Harring it would pass through this chemical reaction, Changing the minerals into an new compound, before the waste minerals were expelled from its body.  This waste product is now valued for its beauty and rarity and people will go crazy trying to get at it.   It is what we now call GOLD!  The reason it is flat is because it had been carried through the glaciers for all those years and worn down to a flattened shape.   As the glaciers thawed the rivers carried the GOLD throughout the area depositing it in very randoms spots.  Sometimes you can get lucky and happen upon a concentration of it, but that does not happen very often.   In the picture above we performed a cleaned out after two hours of operating our wash plant.  There have never been any fossils found of the Harring since once they died the glacier took care of grinding them up to powder.

Gona Get Some Gold!.......Maybe not.

Well while we were up at the mine for Thanksgiving, I thought boy it sure would be fun to get the dredge out and find some gold. So I wandered on down to Quartz creek to see if there were any good spots to slip in the water. As the creek came into view I had to thoughts, "Brrrrrrrr" and "Boy I am glad the state does not allow dredging in the winter months." This photo is what I saw.   Just so everyone knows, I am really only allowed to dredge in the Salmon creek/streams from May, 15 - July, 15.

As Promised

As Promised Here is what our new bunkhouse looks like. We brought this in the last month of mining. This is where we had thanksgiving dinner this year. It was awesome. We did have to start a fire under the hinge on the gate so we could open it and get into the mine. Other than that the bunkhouse heated up nicely and we had a wonderful rustic thanksgiving dinner. The bunkhouse has a full bathroom with over sized shower, on demand hot water heater, toilet, full kitchen, dining room, slide out lean-to, flat screen TV, DVD player(for the rainy evenings, we still work in the mine when it is pouring down rain during the day).

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey Day everyone. I put a summer picture of the base camp, because we are having thanksgiving up at the gold mine today(and i kinda wish we were still mining). We are going to forge through the snow, thaw out the bunkhouse and have our turkey dinner. I will get some winter pictures of the mine while we are up there today.  I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday, If you have to drive be cautious of other drivers, slow down, don't be in a hurry and If your drinking during the festivities, get a cab or have a designated driver.  We all want to get home safe.

Is it Winter or Summer

Termination snow, first snow of the season.  Strange that it only snowed on one side of quartz creek.  This signifies the end of our mining season.  Very sad day, but on a high note, it made for some great photo ops.

One day we decided to take a break from digging and do some more exploring of the claim. We decide to walk up the mountain from where we were digging and found a large outcropping of bedrock. At first glance it did not look very significant, other than it was a large shelf with 75 feet exposed, it looked like a giant step. We walked around this outcropping inspecting is closer and as we started to pull the moss off of the face of the rock we uncovered a very large quartz vein with tons of stringers running all through the formation. We kept pulling off moss and kept uncovering more and more quartz. My mother-in-law found a loose piece of quartz and pulled it loose, it was a beautiful crystalline quartz specimen. We are very suspect that this quartz is the source for the gold we are currently finding, The plan is to send out a few grab samples for assay, wish us luck. Who love's rocks.......I do! I do!

Everyone loves Chicken(no, not the animal)

This is a photo from one of our family outings to Chicken Gold Camp.  We had a ton of fun, found some gold visited with friendly people enjoyed the sights and scenery.  I cant say enough good things about the Chicken gold camp.  Anyone who gets a chance to visit chicken should look these guys up they are very friendly, they provide a lot of conveniences at their campground that would otherwise be unavailable to the recreational miner.  Here is a link to their website - Chicken Gold Camp.

To Hardrock or Not to Hardrock?

Not all of our Stories are at quartz creek.  We had a Partner in a group of claims call the Gilpatric, They were a very historical hard rock play.  I do have a lot of information regarding this claim and the history of the claim that I could put on this blog if anyone is interested.  It is a beautiful area to be mining in, very difficult to get the ore off the mountain.  We never actually processed any of the ore, we did however find a vein of quartz we sent out to be assayed, from very random grab samples and it was very rich with gold.  This mine was really our start into real gold mining, not just hopping from tourist trap to tourist trap panning for gold.  We learned a lot from our mining partner, but in the end we decided that we much more enjoyed the instant gratification of placer mining so we began searching for our own little mine. 

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.