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Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 8:56 am
by C-17A
Greetings Gold Dredgers,

Well, hadn't been down to the Arkansas River in quite a while...

....so, went yesterday afternoon to take a look and try some river sluicing for fine Colorado flood gold.

We've had several days of summer monsoon moisture and quite a bit of rain in the previous 2 days, so I was not surprised to see the river was actually up from the last time I was there.

The water was pretty clear, a nice thing, but gushing along like a big dog. It was challenging to find a spot that would be safe enough to sluice, and not have my sluice wash away when my back was turned and close to a spot I wanted to dig/run river bed material...

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I finally settled on a spot in the shade next to a BIG boulder. My sample pans of the gravel and dirt compacted around the boulder showed some color, so that was the spot for a few hours.

I spent a good 20 minutes finding & pitching rocks into the river in order to build up a nice, solid rock table, just under the rushing water to setup my Le Trap sluice. Finally...........I got it close enough. The water was flowing a little fast thru the sluice for my liking, but everything I tried to slow it down...rocks, sticks, combinations of both just upset the water flow, so I opened it up and ran it deep as possible to let the water at least flow smooth, in a non-turbulent fashion.

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O.K. I dug sand & gravel & dirt from around a big boulder with my pry bar and shovel. This was slow and tough going. I could tell due to the compacted nature of the "dirt" and how hard it was to dig this was old time material... So, maybe it had a good showing of fine flood gold, built up over the years? Only time would tell...

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The day was awesome. I got there about 11AM and started sluicing my first pail about 11:30AM as pod after pod of rafters & kayakers floated by my position.


There were so many rocks in this material, plus being wet & clayish I didn't even try to use a 1/2 inch screen....just dug, pitched out the bigger rocks and hand washed everything handful after handful in the flair using my blue PVC coated gloves. This worked out well, but is a little slow and tedious. :?

There was good black sand in this material, which gave me hope, but most would wash out due to the slightly higher water volume & speed. I hoped the gold, if any, would remain in the drop riffles...as it always has in the past.

I sluiced until about 1 PM, had a sandwich and a bottle of water and admired the day. Cool, sunny, light breeze, no bugs, blue skies and a few white puffy clouds here & there over the 14K mountain peaks.

Back to work diggin' around that boulder. There a good amount of material up on top of that flat boulder, and I imagined it could have been acting like a false bedrock over the years as flood waters & gold washed over the top, so I focused on cleaning that material real well. When clean I splashed buckets of water to wash it off real well and dug up all the material around the sides and sluiced that, hoping to get any "good" gold it might contain. :wink:

About 3PM I was tired, the sun had moved around on me now and I could see a little fine gold in each of the top 3 drop riffles when I came back with another bucket of material, so I knew the water speed wasn't so much that it was washing out the gold. IF it was holding in the first 3 riffles I was confident it was absolutely staying in all the down sluice riffles.

I did a cleanup and packed out about 3:15PM. I noticed that in the 3 1/2 hours I had been there that the river had actually come up about 2 inches on me... My sluice was way under water at cleanup time and the water was now actually flowing around the base of the big boulder I had been digging around. It was high and dry when I showed up... The Ark will probably start dropping down here shortly, as the rain ended a day ago and the forecast is for several warm, sunny days ahead.

I unloaded my equipment back home, panned out mu cons and was VERY pleased to see a nice little amount of very fine flood gold for all my rock pitching, rock diggin', gravel & much washing efforts. :P

Ended up with 7.1 grains or .46 grams of gold:

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So, another successful outing on the river. Hope you get out soon too!

Randy "C-17A" :D www.goldadventures.biz

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 11:47 am
by russau
Randy your pictures are looking sooooooooo inviteing!

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 1:13 pm
by golden optimist
The river looks great!

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I'd love to see how a dredge does out in the middle of the river here. We haven't dredged it in the past and we have the permits to do it. This is upstream from the GPAA claims and upstream from our High Hopes claim. About a mile or so upstream is where I found my 3/4 pennyweight nugget. There is a huge camping spot about 100 feet from there.

John Hart is planning on being down on the arkansas around the first week of august. I may show up for a few days of camping and socializing. We have 3 claims there so there are plenty of places to go.

Leonard

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 6:45 pm
by OKJohn
I hope to be out around Aug 2nd for a week or two. My son and I will be dredging/camping several miles upriver from where Leonard is talking, and will be on a claim I am very protective of. Anyone interested in camping should work with Leonard to arrange when he (and maybe Dave?) will be on the river. They are the social butterflies. I tend to spend all day in the river.

Looking forward to meeting anyone who shows up.

OKJohn

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:00 pm
by nebraskadad
My wife and I will be out their next week.. Shuttling over from Lake George. With wants to do the Cog Rail and some touristee stuff this time. But I am bring the sluice and stuff.. Hope to see someone around..

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 12:39 pm
by russau
haha,Rex, most of us are round!:)

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 12:43 pm
by nebraskadad
Heading to my folks in the morning then Sunday AM heading west. we are so needing a vacation,
Randy will call when we land in BV, look for a New 2013 Silverado 4x4 LTZ Creme/White with Nebraska In-Transits. I will probably be on High Hopes, the Fairplay Beach
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Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 5:02 pm
by russau
Nice truck Rex! wish i was with you all out there! maybe come the first of September???? ive been putting off to many things lately!

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:02 pm
by C-17A
Rex,

Wow............NICE wheels! :P

I have a muddy red 1996 Jeep Cherokee 4-WD, love it, perfect for prospecting. Maybe we can meet & go sluicing up at cache Creek next week?

John,

I plan to stop by your operation, say "Hi" and bring my Gold Cube with Topper and show it off... Maybe we can have a side by side comparison? You suction dredging, me shoveling gravels/material... Cleanup at the end of the day. :P Ha.

Would love also to stop by Leonard & the gang too dredging on Splash and see what they can pull from the river. Maybe another Gold Cube demo there as well???

Drive safe everyone on the trip to BV and the river!

Randy "C-17A" :)

Re: Randy Sluicing Arkansas River, CO -- 16 Jul 13

PostPosted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 4:00 am
by russau
Randy, i know Leonard told me he is looking forward to watching a demo of the Gold Cube. i told him he needs one for himself!