Well...........one more glorious trip out to share...
Decided to go up to Granite, Colorado, and just West on FR 398 to the open to the public BLM Cache Creek property. 2,160 acres of open area, previously worked as a hydraulic gold mine from about 1889 to 1911. The were shut down because of a lawsuit against them for all the runoff/silting/mud in the Arkansas River, NOT because they ran out of gold.
LOTS of huge cobble piles, lots of rocks and places to try and find some lost gold from their rude/crude hydraulic and Long Tom sluice box ops. I hear that if you can luck into places where the Long Toms dumped out there's good gold to be had that simply washed right on thru...
So, rather than rework the dry gulch below the cemetery I went to the placering area out the 1 mile dirt power line road, park in the approved parking and head out to find a new place to work...
I was really surprised just how many people were packed into that area! Approaching the parking area there's spots/areas to camp & the place was packed with RVs, motorhomes, tents, campers, and people. Wow! Looks like everyone's setup for the entire summer... The parking lot was about 1/2 full as I arrived at about 9 AM. After chatting with the GPOC Host, I suited up and headed out.
I worked my way over, thru the trees, brush, cobble piles, etc., to Cache Creek proper, which is actually South of the parking area a goodly ways. Most folks stay close to parking, dig in the open holes in the cobbles/trees on a smaller feeder stream into Cache Creek. The open areas are slowly recovering from the hydraulic ops.
I finally found a spot that interested me, way out in the middle of nowhere, as I spied a big dirt pile others had been diggin' in and sluicing on the creek close by... After some sample pans of the orangish, clayish dirt, I saw decent black sand and some fine gold in each pan. O.K. Time to sluice!
I setup my Le Trap under a close by tree to be in the shade as much as possible, as the day promised to be hot, like mid 80s, very sunny with the UV index off the charts up at 9,500 feet elevation.
The material was so wet & dense and mucky, that I had to stop hand feeding it into my Le Trap and change tactics... I would 1/2 fill my pail with water, then dig 1/2 a pail of dirt, carry it to the stream, the I used a tree branch to stir the bucket into a soupy slurry, to break up the clay balls and such and free the gold. Then I'd slowly pour in small amounts into my sluice and repeat...
The day was warming fast, so I was VERY glad I could hide out under my tree, except when diggin' dirt from the hole. After about 8 2 1/2 gal pails curiosity got the best of me, as I could see good black sand in my sluice riffles and wanted to know if I was doing good or wasting my time, so I did a cleanup.
As I backwashed off the last bit of black sand in my finishing pan I saw some real nice color.....and a few chunky little pieces too! Yeah!
I made a video, posted on YouTube, here:http://youtu.be/F0leKH1q-IA
So, back to more buckets, and after about 1 1/2 hours I did another cleanup and saw about the same amount again of nice fine gold. Funny, almost none was flat. 99% were all little balls & chunks that rolled and washed REAL easy in my pan, so I could see why the old timers lost soooooo much gold in their fast & furious operation in years past.
After lunch I decided to spend the next hour plus simply sample panning all over, looking for whatever I could find. Tested top soil, rocky material, creek material, different layers, etc. Most all had lots of black sand, but few pans had any color.
I spied a small dry wash of sorts, where the snow melt had caused some limited water to flow and panned the material, hoping for some good color, as it supposedly should have been collected in the bottom of that little cry creek bed. Nope....black sand but no color. Odd. I dug deeper. Nope. I dug deeper... About 10 inches to 1 foot down I hit a good dark orange layer right on top of a thick, gray clay layer. YEP! Nice color in that thin 1 to 2 inch thick orange/gravels layer. My dig hole here...
So, I dug off the foot of overburden by hand, having only my crevice tool and hand shovel with me, and sluiced out about four 2 1/2 gal pails of mostly that material and did a cleanup on my sluice, as I was pooped out by now and ready to hike around some, sample pan more, and work my way back to parking.
Le Trap ready for a final cleanup.
Again, I got a decent amount of fine gold from those few pails of material.
My total cleanup on gold here:
After packing up all my equipment, I decided to hike upstream to the power line road and the extreme Southwest corner of the property, where they stopped hydraulicing back in 1911. The brush, muck, willows and such made hiking cross country, country tough...got snagged, scratched and poked as I went. I stopped in several places and sample panned, but nothing but a speck or two.
Go to the corner I was looking for after about 45 minutes of walking. Slow going in the heat/sun. Sample panned at Cache Creek as it crossed under the dirt road, but not a speck. As I headed back to parking I met up with 2 prospectors that were diggin' in a hole back into the trees. They were from Texas, up for their summer prospecting at Cache Creek. We chatted about gold, Cache Creek, and life as he walked back to parking...
So, as I drove home I was pondering the day, the gold and my next trip back to get more.......oh, and a couple really cold beers waiting for me at home. I was muddy, hot, tired & thirsty!!! Yes, the beers were great!
Hope you get out soon, find some gold too.
Randy "C-17A"
www.goldadventures.biz