Well..........I finally took a break from working on my hose & all the leftover "move in" stuff and went gold prospecting up to Cache Creek, only about 15 miles from my house.
Arrived the Granite Cemetery parking lot about 7:45AM and lugged all my stuff down the hill to the creek & my favorite dry gulch. It was going to be a beautiful day in the hills!
Was a bit cool, as I left the house it was 40 degrees, so there I knew it was probably high 30s. 
Regardless, as the sun warmed me & I got to work, I took off my sweat shirt in the first 30 minutes and we were good...no bugs, low humidity, wildlife everywhere to see...
First thing I noticed, having not been there for 1 year & 1 month, was how much more the willows had grown up, starting to choke the creek, the view & water flow, as well as the very low & slow water level. I'd never been there this late in the year, and so running my 5-riffle Wolf Trap sluice was going to be challenging, to keep it clean, as it likes fast water. I spent about 20 minutes using wood & rocks to capture all the flow I could & weir up the creek to run my sluice.
I then hiked up the gulch for an inspection of the place...wow...looks like it's become a very popular place in the last year! There were big holes dug in the banks left & right & showed signs of being worked all the way up to where I left off last year, and well beyond. O.K. by me... Good folks are out finding gold & having fun.
I settled on a spot above the big elbow bend, as the bend had all been worked in my absence & was covered in rocks. This spot was already at the bedrock so I could scrape it further & undercut the unworked material to get the "good" deep stuff into my sluice first.
Again, I used my sluice magnet & othe rare earth magnet to pull out as much megnetite before sluicing to help keep the riffles clean. Again, I was just AMAZED how much magnetite there was in every shovel scoop of gulch material. I need to forget the gold & mine magnetite there!
Also, due to the slow flow, I used my 1/4 inch classifier to keep as much large material out of the riffles, as I normally just use a 1/2 inch classifier.Well, I sluiced three 2 1/2 gal buckets and cleaned up. I sample panned a handfull of cons....yep, small flakes & specks of gold. So, not skunked & off & running... My goal was to sluice as much as I could, then take my cons home to run in my new used Gold Cube and see how I did.
I took a lunch break & decided to sample pan in some of the holes & diggin spots others had been working, just to see why they were working so hard. Well, I sampled the orange layers......nothing. I sampled the gravely gray layers......nothing. I sampled other spots.....nothing but some black sand & 1 speck. Hmmm.....then why did they keep digging?
Also, I saw the creek looked to have a LOT of sand/gravel in it, as it's
usually got some freestone rocks as a creekbottom. So, I walked upstream and saw where a LOT of creekbank had benn worked, and where water weirs shoed numerous sluices had been setup, so I surmised a large prosepcting group came and worked hard for days to move that much dirt. So, again I sample panned several spots, holes and layers. Nothing but a few specks, so again, why did they work that hard, that long there? I must have been missing something...
After lunch the wind picked up, a few clouds developed overhead, but it was refreshing. I saw a red-tailed hawk overhead and a little later a Merlin falcon soaring & diving and looking having the time of his life...man are they graceful/powerful fliers. Lots of chipmunks, sparrows, Clark's Nutcrackers & such in the creek area. Love the wildlife while out prospecting!
I eventually had to shift in the afternoon to cleanups after every 2 buckets, as the water flow kept slowing & dropping as the day went on, and the riffles kept loading up too much for my comfort.
Don't want to lose any gold I was working hard for, as the "Cube" can run cons fast. This allowed me to keep sluicing the last hour plus and not stop to handpan out my cons there in the creek. At 4PM I lugged up to the Jeep a bucket with 32 lbs of mostly black sand cons for my Cube... Funny how it got heavier & heavier as I got further up the hill to the parking lot...
I made 5 short videos to help document the day, the fun I was having, my techniques and to help share the "adventure" with you all... Once they are loaded up, I'll come back and post a link to the first one on my YouTube channel here:
So, there you have it..........Randy's latest outing to Cache Creek.
O.K. Now I have my cons run thru my "new used" Gold Cube and boy was that easy! In 3 minutes all the cons were processed, and I let it run 2 extra minutes to clear. I then ran it a minute with fresh water to be able to video tape the disassembly & inspection of the top and lower trays. Mike & Red sure did a great job. So far I love it!
Now to get a solar panel to run the bilge pump and get it out in the field for some field testing... I'd have spent hours & hours hand panning that fine gold from that VERY heavy magnetite & hematite black sand... Here's my Gold Cube set up:
I could see small flakes & specks in the upper tray trough & matting. I could see only a few VERY tiny micro specks in the second tray trough, but nothing in the matting. I cleaned each & panned each separately.
Here's the top tray (below the slick plate) gold catch:
Here's the second tray gold catch:
Here's a close up of the trough & vortex matting:
Here's a link to my first adventure video here, plz check out the others too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuanQyAz ... ature=plcp
Here's a link to my first Gold Cube video, plus 2 others as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATChUiUX ... ature=plcp
Get out, have fun, find some gold, God bless,
Randy "C-17A"
www.goldadventures.biz
-John
