One more Trip Report to share from up here in High Colorado......as Fall slips slowly into Winter...
I had the good fortune to have Ron, Doug & his wife Bonnie come up from the Colorado Springs area to visit and go prospecting with me on the beautiful Arkansas River, a few miles North of Buena Vista. They have wanted to come up for sometime now, but either I was out of state, or we had snow or like yesterday, extremely high and gusty winds, which would have made the day a whole lot of "no fun". Yesterday was as picture postcard perfect as a prospector could have asked for...basically no wind, sunny, clear, cool, like 50 or better....perfect working weather!
Also, when we arrived at the river about 10AM I could see the river was thankfully way down from 2 weeks ago, and that would let us work in the river bed where I tried to sluice twice in the past, and found decent flood gold, but the river being up so high and fast made sluicing a big wash out. So, after about 3 trips each from the road above I had my Gold Cube and stuff down to the riverbed and Ron had his hand cranked portable trammel and stuff down as well. We looked over the spot I wanted to work and decided that I'd setup up my Cube at the upstream end of this low spot and Ron would setup his trammel at the downstream end and we'd both dig, pitch rocks, roll the bigger rocks and work the sand/gravel in-between.
The plan was to have me shovel material directly onto my Cube Topper unit and hand wash all I could, and Ron, Doug and his wife Bonnie would dig buckets of material, run then thru his trammel and carry their washed fine material up to me to then run thru the Cube as well... This way we could try and "Cube" as much material in the few hours we had to work, before they had to head back to C. Springs...
My Cube setup:
We were runnin' at 10:30AM and off we went...
Here's Ron:
Here's Doug:
One thing that impressed me was the loads & loads of heavy, very large crystalline black sand in this spot....that's always boded well for fine flood gold in the past. The other thing that impressed me was just how hard a workers Ron, Doug & Bonnie were! You'd a thought they were out to find the Mother lode! Ha.
Here's their team having some "hard fun":
Like machines they dug, washed and carried their 2 1/2 gal pails over for me to then cube up... I kept washing all I could between their pails. I had done several sample pans and so I knew we were not going to get skunked...
After the first hour I decided to do the first cleanup on the Cube, and as we inspected the 2 nugget traps we could see a nice amount of little specks & flakes, and after washing the 2 trays out, and I swirled the water in my cleanup tub we could see more little specks & flakes sitting on the bottom of the tub. Nothing big at all, but color... Very motivating!
I made one YouTube video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbvwW2r3 ... LLbPp31xvg
So, back to "work". I joked with Bonnie, who was on here 2nd ever prospecting trip, that it really wasn't "work"...........more like "hard fun".
Our dig spot in the boulders:
We had hard fun until noon, and I stopped for a turkey sandwich and some chips. Don, Doug & Bonnie stopped too and we had a nice little rest on the rocks, enjoying the day. Ron shared a totally delicious piece of Elk pepperoni stick he had made from a bull Elk he harvested early in the black powder season... Yum...
Back to our prospecting I did a second Cube cleanup about 1PM and could see some more flood gold, but not as much as on the first one, so we decided to not dig so deep between the boulders and try and work more of the top 4 to 6 inches of material. Ron did most the material diggin' and Doug & Bonnie ran the trommel most the time at their end of the operation.
Running their hand-cranked portable trammel:
I just pitched rocks & shoveled/washed all I could at my end... After about 3 hours I could tell my battery was starting to run down some, as the water spray/flow on my Topper was less....and less....over time. O.K. Not too much more for me, I was afraid. By about 2PM I was done. The water flow wasn't as fast as I felt I needed to keep the Cube clean, exchanging out, so I did a 3rd and final cleanup. Saw more fine gold in the trays as I washed them out...
We all had had a lot of fun, in the previous 4 hours and no sense pushing it past the "fun" part...We broke down our operation, lugged it all back up the steep river bank, loaded it up in our trucks and drove down the river to a camp site for a end of day celebration of a cold Sam Adams beer and a Swisher Sweet cigar. Man, after about 4 hours of diggin', washing, pitching rocks that beer & smoke were sure good! Surprisingly, we actually saw 2 kayakers going down the river, working the rapids, even as cold and low as it was.
Well, all good things must come to an end, and so Ron, Doug & Bonnie departed for C. Springs and I drove home and had a nice, long HOT shower. I gave Bonnie my cut of the cons, whatever that was, and told her to perfect her panning skills on what amounts to "Expert" panning material.....mostly -50 mesh flood gold in heavy black sand. They will get the cons panned out and send me a pic and weight soon, and I'll cut that info into the Trip Report here for all to see... Can't wait to see what they get!
In summary, a fantastic day out doors, on the river, with friends gold prospecting. What could be better?
Hope you too get out while there's still time and find some "wild" gold of your own....and create some great memories in the process.
Randy "C-17A"
http://www.goldadventures.biz
thanx for the tagalong-John 