Well, I had a nice 1 1/2 day visit with Mike Pung, "Red" Wilcox and Wiley as they made their was back home to Denver/Oklahoma from the Las Vegas Gold Show. They were out demonstrating their Gold Cube and Goldbanker Units to the masses and looked me up here in Buena Vista, hoping for a little prospecting fun and gold.
Thursday afternoon was thankfully the last of 4 straight days of strong, cold winds and Friday proved to be a awesome Spring day......sunny, light breezes, clear, and only a low of 32 and a high probably 65. Perfect weather to be "washing dirt" on the Arkansas River...
We hit a spot they knew about and they took their Gold Cube with Goldbanker (highbanker/topper) unit, battery and stuff while I opted to "go light" and just operate my Le Trap sluice. The Ark is WAY up from where it was several weeks back, so most of the places I would have liked to sample/dig were all under the fast, ice cold water due to lower elevation snow melt already going on. I can't wait until late May/early June to see what the REAL snow melt will do to the river. I bet it will be a gully washer like we haven't seen in 6 to 8 years, as we're about 120% of average annual snowpack up on the 13ers and 14ers, with the chance for some late May, heavy/wet snow still to come.
Red & Mike sample panned different spots to see where the best location to set their Gold Cube up might be and I did the same...
They settled on an "in stream" location on a gravel bar behind a huge boulder, having got decent "color" there, and I settled close by on the tail end of a long gravel bar. Nothing big in my sample pans, but with the river up as high as it was and other spots showing nothing to less, well it was the best I could do...
Here's the Ark and my sluice spot:
We got running about 10:30 AM and worked along side each other and enjoyed the simply awesome day. Violet-green swallows all over the place and we even saw an Osprey flying overhead pretty low with a nice trout in its talons! Very cool. They are crafty fishermen and how they can see/catch trout in that fast flowing water is just amazing.
Wiley & Mike Pung runnin' material:
I dug material from the gravel bar, but it tough to say the least........with way more rocks & cobbles than black sand/gold bearing gravels. Still, I was able to dig & hand wash about eight 2 1/2 gal pails and then took a break with a roast beef sandwich and some cookies. While I ate I checked out Wiley, Red & Mike's first Goldbanker nugget trap & top tray cleanup. Nice. They had some decent flood gold and some larger flakes too. So, their spot was producing, despite the hard diggin'/shoveling required.
The Three Amigos....Wiley, Red and Mike:
I took a walk up the river with a pan & shovel and sampled numerous spots, hoping for a better spot to move to and run after my lunch, but what was available above water offered up little more to me than black sand and a few tiny specks, so back to my current spot to keep runnin' material.
The day was just great, the prospecting friends even better and the gold was being found, just not a bonanza. About 2:30 PM Mike said they needed to stop, clean up, pack out and hit the road, so we did just that. I cleaned up and quickly panned out my cons. Well, like I said, no bonanza, BUT I didn't get skunked either.
My Le Trap ready for cleanup:
Here's my gold take for about 4 hours of on/off sluicing:
The guys did a cleanup and added up their gold and probably got 1 to 1 1/2 grams of nice flood gold in total. Well done... It sure shows the difference of productivity the Gold Cube w/Goldbanker unit can offer vs. a sluice. Plus, they weren't bending over, hunched over hand washing their material as I was, they were standing upright!
Back at the cars we loaded up our equipment, said our "good byes" and each hit the road. It was a really fun time...
I made 2 short YouTube videos to enjoy. First one here is after we setup on the river:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvVdk3m ... e=youtu.be
My sluiced gold:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePFHh57 ... e=youtu.be
So, hopefully all you Gold Adventurers will get out soon on an adventure of your own, make a memory, find some color too.
God bless,
Randy "C-17A"
http://www.goldadventures.biz
