Yep, another Trip Report on Cache Creek.....in "High" Colorado. I hit the creek with my friend Ron who drove up early out of C. Springs to spend the day with me washing some "dirt".
We met at the BLM placering area parking lot about 7:15 AM, loaded up and hiked over to a spot we worked together last year. I was surprised to see how many prospectors were already up at Cache Creek camping, prospecting, as many of the camping sites were full of trailers, tents & even motorhomes. Randy is the GPOC "Camp Host" for the foreseeable future, making sure all's well for BLM and between prospectors. Sadly, the feeder creek close to the placering area parking lot is still bone dry. No water. I don't expect it to ever flow water again...
Arriving our preferred spot out in the valley, we were glad to see nobody else out in that area, yet. We saw the creek was up....WAY up.....flowing high, cold and fast. Snow melt in full swing. Probably as high as I'd ever seen it, out of its little banks, and running around the trees. We set up our sluices, started sample panning. Folks last Fall really dug the pit bigger and the berm smaller. A lot of our past material we liked was now long gone. Hmmm.... O.K. What else was good to run? We dug in the pit, some sandy & gray layers. Nothing. Dug some orangish gravely stuff.....a few specks. Scooped material right off the top of the berm....a little more color. Nothing was showing to be very promising, but after about 30 minutes we decided to work the top edge of the berm and get to "washing dirt"...
My first dig spot:
My Le Trap sluice and setup in the creek:
Here's Ron sluicing with his MacKirk sluice:
The day was perfect! About 50 degrees starting out, a little high cirrus clouds to keep the sun off us, almost no wind, birds chirping and Cache Creek burbling along like nobody's business...
Since the material we were running was more clay based than sand/gravel based we'd scoop up some water in out buckets, then scoop in several shovels of material, carry it back to the sluice, add more water and slurry it all up to free the gold from the clay and then feed the slurry thru our sluices. A LOT of work, er.....hard fun.....but no other good way to get to the gold.
After about an hour Ron & I did our first cleanups to see how we were doing and we both had some nice gold. Here's my first cleanup:
About 10 AM I heard some other prospectors up the creek working away....banging buckets and making the creek water run muddy for a while as they sluiced above us. About 11 AM I saw another prospector below us out in the park carrying buckets to and from some dig spot, sluicing his material. Later, that gentleman with his canine partner Katie, came over and introduced himself as Wayne. We chatted about Cache Creek, finding gold and such. He said he wasn't finding much where he was at, so Ron & I invited him over to sluice & dig with us....and get some gold.
Wayne was a Colorado local, got into prospecting about a year ago and was out to learn, find gold. He moved his sluice over and up above us, carried his previously screened material over and commenced to run it. His puppy dog Katie was having a blast in the water chasing floating leaves and pine cones in the water.
Wayne's sluice:
Ron & I stopped about noon for lunch......sandwiches, chips and water. Yum! I was really hungry, as 4 hours of diggin', hand washing clayish material was energy intensive. Wayne worked away sluicing his buckets of material.
After lunch it was back to the diggings... We sluiced until 3:15 PM and saw the clouds had built up fairly dark overhead, and we were tired and didn't want to get rained on, so we decided to cleanup, pack out and go have a cigar & beer back at Ron's truck. My Le Trap ready for another cleanup:
So, I cleaned up my sluice... Check out the gold in one of my top riffles. NICE to actually see some color!
I then dumped my snuffer bottle into my pan and did a quick backwash & tap to see how I did for the day. Not bad. Ended up with .55 grams of very nice, bright, chunky Cache Creek gold:
I made a short video of my gold take too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFFAeSV ... LLbPp31xvg
Here's a video of Ron & me starting out our great, fun day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJzITO ... e=youtu.be
So, back at the parking lot we enjoyed a cigar & beer, then the light rain that started to sprinkle down upon us... About 4 PM we said our goodbyes and each headed home, another "Gold Adventure" in the books and some gold in hand. Can't wait to see what Ron pans out of his cons bucket he took home from his sluicing. Wayne planned to return the next day and work that spot and hopefully get more gold than he did this day.
Hope you too get out into nature, into the hills and have a great adventure, find some gold, make a memory.
Oh, on my drive back home I couldn't help but snap some pics of the mighty Arkansas River just beginning to flood due to snow melt in the higher elevations. It's been rising fast the last 2 weeks, and will get even higher. It's already a boiling, brownish, angry stream. Hopefully, it's moving a lot of flood gold around for me to get later this Summer!
God bless,
Randy "C-17A"
http://www.goldadventures.biz