Well, just got back from yet another fantastic annual trip to California to prospect in the Mother Lode country and visit with family/friends. This year’s trip was 2 weeks, with 2 Fri/Sat/Sun weekends up in Downieville, CA, with 2 different groups of family members. I also had time other than the 2 weekends to prospect as well...and I made the absolute most of every minute of every day! Here’s the extra, extra, extra long “War & Peace” version FYI:
Tuesday 17 Sep 13: Flew out of Colorado Springs and arrived Sacramento, CA, about noon. My sister Susie picked me and my prospecting equipment up at the airport and after dropping her back at work, I ran by Home Depot & Lowes to get some bedrock busting tools I wanted to try this year in the hopes of getting more and bigger gold. I got a nice 10-lb sledgehammer, two 4-lb forged steel wedges, a 4-lb hand sledgehammer and a 12-inch masonry chisel. The goal was to try and find some bigger crevices in harder bedrock others may not have ever worked and see if I could get some pickers and/or nuggets. I still had my 2 big 5 ½ foot 16-lb forged steel fencing bars at her house, but hoped this new approach with the sledge & wedges might go places nobody had ever gone before and places even the bars couldn’t open up...
Wednesday 18 Sep 13: Woo-hoo! First day prospecting up on the NF American River since May, when I visited last. I arrived about 9:15AM at Mineral Bar and headed down river with my sledges, wedges, sucker tube and backpack full of water, lunch & hand tools. Boy, was all that stuff heavy! I arrived at a good looking spot in about 20 minutes and dropped it all on the gravel bar and spied the bedrock and bank walls.
Finding a BIG slab of bedrock wall with a crack behind it, I proceeded to pound my 2 wedges into the crack in the hopes of breaking that slab off. Ha. NO way that slab was coming off, but I did get it open enough to crevice behind it and get some good material/dirt and when I panned it to see if it was worth working it further I was amazed at all the color... Yeah!
O.K. Back to more swinging with that 10-lb sledge and working my wedges higher up the slab in the hopes of getting all the dirt I could out from behind it. I worked up quite a sweat in the sun, swinging that sledge and even used one of the wedges as a foot hold to stand on one footed to scrape/crevice the top of it about 8 feet off the ground.
Pan after pan showed nice color and after about 2 ½ hours and 5 or 6 pans I figured I’d about worked it out. So, I decided to build a little holding pool below it in the sand and splash about 5 buckets of water up/behind it in a last ditch effort to wash out anything I had missed. Was I panned out that washing I did get some last nice flakes & specks.
I made a short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MXdbALh ... LLbPp31xvg
It was time for a quick lunch and some rest, so I ate my sandwich & apple and drank some water in the shade and planned to move further downstream. On the move downstream, I stopped at a large boulder with an interesting under hanging ledge. I pried it off into the water and drug it up onto the gravel bar and washed the material clinging to it into my pan. I hoped for pickers, but only got a few specks...
Further down I spied a large boulder in the middle of the river and climbed on top to look around. Once on top I saw it had a lot of cracks and sections of rock that I might be able to bust off with my sledge and wedges. Maybe in years past the river gushed up some good gold over the top? So, after about 1 ½ hours of hard work in the hot sun I eventually got a bunch of different layers and chunks off and slid into the river.
I ended up with 1 good pail full of dirt, sand and pebbles. Hopes of pickers & nuggets danced in my head as I made my way safely to the river and panned it all out. Ha. Just a few small flakes. What a disappointment! Oh well, that’s how it goes...some of the best “looking” spots have next to nothing and some of the most unlikely ones can be loaded with gold.
By now the day was coming to a close and I had time to work on crevicing out one big crevice full of river pebbles before packing out and heading home. I used my big bar to bust & pry the rocks in the crevice and scraped out a pan full of material and only got a few small flakes & specks. Oh well, it still was a great day! As I started back I spotted this neat old mining relic hiding in the bushes on the high bench:
That steel/iron bucket scoop must have weighed 500 lbs! All I could guess is the old timers brought it in pieces and assembled it on site. I hiked the 25 minutes back up river and unloaded my stuff into the Pilot and drove home. Back home I panned out all my black sand cons in my snuffer bottle and ended up with this nice gold for my day’s effort:
Thursday 19 Sep 13: I loaded up and hit the hills right back to Mineral Bar. I brought all the sledges & wedges and one of my big steel bars. The plan was to double-team some of the better-looking big cracks & crevices. I started out by reworking yesterday’s big slab a little more and then hitting a lot of little flaky holding points on that rock wall. Yep, nice color still to be had...
After lunch I worked upstream to a big exposed bedrock area.
The river was real low, allowing me to get to good bedrock:
It was slow going for the most part, as I swung that 10-lb sledge and creviced that very hard polished bedrock.
By now the day was hot & I had to head home. I had a lot of fun and I did get a fair amount of color:
Fri/Sat/Sun 20/21/22 Sep13: Our first Downieville family reunion weekend with my brother Carey, Susie's 140 lb Great Dane called Big Sur, Susie’s boyfriend Jerry, my sisters Judy & Susie and me all driving up to party Downieville and prospect. We arrived about noon, but since the rooms weren’t all ready we walked over to have lunch at the Mexican restaurant. Then, after unloading our stuff we went over to the confluence of the Downie & NF Yuba Rivers to get in a little crevicing & panning.
Here’s Carey, Susie & me:
The afternoon was perfect...sunny, about 75 degrees, a light breeze blowing.
After about 1 hour of playing around we hadn’t gotten much gold. Susie got the biggest little piece. Carey trying to find a nugget:
The wind came up out of nowhere and blew Carey’s straw hat off into the river, and as it floated by everyone tried to get it but it was out too far & in too deep/fast water. Jerry tracked it WAY down river and ended up swimming out in a large pool to recover it. Way to go Jerry! Here’s Jerry & Carey:
Back at the hotel we chipped & dipped & drank various libations before dinner. Here’s Susie and her Great Dane, Big Sur:
Here’s Susie & Judy:
We heard a big storm was blowing in and we all hoped Saturday wouldn’t be too cold or too wet. Well, as bad luck would have it, I heard the rain start about 1 AM and as the sun rose Saturday morning it was just plain ugly outside....fog, clouds, rain, cold. Glad I had the wood stove inside our rental house fired up and baking us all quite nicely! About noon it stopped raining and we headed down river to a spot we were told we could pan & crevice.
Arriving this location I saw some interesting exposed bedrock and so we spent about 1 ½ hours panning & crevicing. No matter where we tried we just couldn’t seem to find anything more than a speck or two. Lead fishing weights, birdshot, iron debris was our big scores for the day. The skies looked like rain and so we headed back to the hotel, and as we did it started to rain again. Ugh....
Here’s Jerry, Susie Me & Judy in downtown Downieville at a small tourist mining history park:
It stormed & rained until Sunday morning, when we packed out and headed up the NF Yuba River to the Union Flats campground area to prospect. I waded across the river to the far side to bedrock bust & crevice and see if I could find anything more than a speck or two. The area showed obvious signs of heavy prospecting with holes, big bedrock slabs broken off and crevices worked to death. Sadly, after about 2 hours I only had a few good flakes & some specks.
The day was now sunny, warming fast and we decided to head home, but stop at the confluence of the MF Yuba River & Oregon Creek on Hwy 49. Maybe there we could have a picnic lunch and find some better gold. Arriving we saw only one other car and we had lunch and started crevicing & panning down river. The rains on Saturday had the river a bit muddy and higher than on Friday as we drove up. We creviced and panned in some spots we worked 2 years previous and ended up with a few nice flakes. Jerry got the big flake for the day. By 2:30PM it was time to head home, weekend complete. Here’s our gold. Sorry carey we couldn’t find you a nugget this year.
Monday 23 Sep 13: I had planned to hit Mineral Bar again, this time with Spencer, a prospecting friend up from Southern California for 2 days and Jeff, my brother in law’s brother, who lived close by. So, up early and up to Mineral Bar about 8:30AM. I rode with Spencer and Jeff showed up about 9:30AM with all his gear. We were working downstream from the bridge a good ways.
Here’s Spencer ready for a lot of gold:
I had found a few good flakes in several pans working slate bedrock at the waterline, but Jeff said he had a better spot further downstream.
I worked this area for a while, with little success:
He took Spencer as I finished what I had started. I arrived their work area about 1 hour later. Jeff & Spencer were bedrock busting with a hammer & chisel and finding good flakes & fines. Cool...
I spied several prospecting ledges and holding points way up on the rock wall, so I climbed up and started crevicing/working them. The sun was out, it was hot in the open on that rock wall.
I panned my first several pans and was happy to see good color in my pans again!
After I worked a section as best I could I’d carry buckets of water up and wash everything down into a holding point I’d create, then use my hand sucker tube to suck it all up and pan out the last of the available gold.
We worked that area all afternoon long. One of the coolest things was Jeff finding a nice picker after breaking out a section of bedrock. Rare to be able to see visible gold with the naked eye, just glowing gold in the sun! Here’s a close up pic I took before Jeff put it in his snuffer bottle:
Here’s Jeff & Spencer:
It was a fun day....Jeff got good gold, Spencer got gold, I got gold. Here’s Spencer’s gold:
Here’s what I got:
Tuesday 24 Sep 13: Well, can you say carbon copy of the day before? Jeff, Spencer & I basically did it all over again, crevicing, panning and working mostly in the same area. Here’s some of the pics I took. First is Jeff WAY up on the side of the bank:
One of my prospecting sites:
Spencer & one of the spots he worked:
Here’s Spencer’s gold:
Here’s my gold I got:
Wednesday 25 Sep 13: Spencer had to drive home Tuesday afternoon, so it was down to Jeff & me to scour the bedrock for gold. We moved further down river to find fresh areas to work. Not surprising, we often found our best color high on the bench and up on the cliff faces in little crevices and flaky slate bedrock holding points. Got to go where the gold is!
Jeff crevicing:
The river looking downstream:
...and up river:
Here’s some of the area I worked:
I made a short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvNIBV1l ... LLbPp31xvg
Here’s the gold I got for the day:
Thursday 26 Sep 13: Well, Spencer was back home and Jeff couldn’t come out for a 4th day in a row to play, so I was on my own to prospect Mineral Bar. I moved back upstream a little ways and started working the very high bench looking for new spots to crevice. I found some areas way up high, and it took a lot of rock climbing to get up and down safely to pan material and/or carry buckets of water up to use my hand sucker tube to really get the last bit of good material out of a holding point. Here’s some pics:
In the afternoon, I moved down way low and busted some bedrock in the riverbed hoping for something bigger than flakes & specks. I spied an overhanging section of rock that I broke loose and found what looked like good material below it. I then worked hard to bust off 3 more big sections and panned out 3 full pans of material and only got 1 small flake per pan. Bummer... I was sure it would be full of pickers.
Almost time to go home, so I worked on one other outcropping of bedrock, finally breaking off the edges and was able to crevice out some good material behind it and low & behold I got a small picker. Yeah! So, time to head home and call it a great day again on the river. Overall, this year’s weather was much better....sunny, a few high clouds, light winds and temps only up to 75 to 85 on the hottest days. Last year same time I had days in the mid to high 90s.
Here’s my gold take for the day:
Fri/Sat/Sun 27, 28, 29 Sep 13: O.K., it was second weekend time for family reunion up again in Downieville. Luckily, the weather report said no rain and cool temps from 40ish at night to 72 in the day. Yeah... This time it would be me, my two sisters Susie & Judy again, my mother & her friend Bonnie, and my 2 cousins, Becky & Linda. Last weekend was the “man” weekend, this was the estrogen over the top “girl’ weekend!
On the way up we stopped to stretch our legs on Hwy 49 where it crosses the SF Yuba River.
Here’s me, Susie, Mom, Judy & Bonnie:
Arriving Friday about noon again, we had lunch back at the Mexican restaurant and unpacked and heard from the hotel managers that a big gold prospecting party was staying on the other side of the resort. A few of us walked over and introduced ourselves and asked if we might be able to talk to any claim owner that had a nearby claim me might be allowed to prospect on, as last weekend was a rain out and we didn’t have any good place to go... A husband/wife team said that a big group was down river about ¼ mile and would be back that evening and we could come back and talk later. We hung out on the rental house front lawn chipping & dipping and drinking wine, enjoying the afternoon:
After dinner several of us walked back over to the other side of the resort and saw the miners in a group sitting around a fire. We found everyone very friendly and we got invited to sit around their fire pit and shoot the prospecting breeze. As it turned out the claim owner for the claim ¼ mile down river was there and very open to allowing me and all my “girls” to pan, crevice, sluice on his claim that Sat/Sun. How cool is that! Thank God for this blessing, or we’d likely have had 2 weekends of next to nothing to show for it...
After breakfast on Saturday morning we all loaded up and drove over to the trailhead and hiked down river with our prospecting equipment. We had Susie & Judy and Becky & Linda suited up for panning/prospecting and mom & Bonnie brought lawn chairs and books to read while they watched us from above on the trail. I brought the Le Trap sluice, hoping to run a sluice. So, I sample panned all sorts of material....the gravel bar, the higher bench, even in the feeder creek gravels. Basically nothing but a few specks, so the sluicing idea looked to not be a “go” for the day. Susie creviced and found some flakes. Here’s Susie & Becky working hard:
Linda & Becky panning:
Linda panning out some material:
I left the girls to crevice/pan as I worked up river looking for a better spot to have them work. I tried root balls, gravels, bench material, and crevices. Nothing but a few flakes/specks here & there. Hmmm... A pan of material to check for gold:
Me panning for color:
Then I found a decomposing bedrock area that had some flaky shale and got better fine color in each pan and had the girls all move up river with me.
While there I happened onto some exposed bedrock and started working a small crevice with my Keene deluxe long crevice tool. As I busted the rock lip with my big bar I saw it open up and go deeper. Nice. I dug a ½ pan of muck & mud out and panned it and Woo-hoo, got 3 smaller pickers & a few flakes and a lot of lead in that pan! Yeah! I had the girls all come over and help me “go for the gold”. I busted/creviced and ran the sucker tube and each girl helped pan out the material. It was a boom or bust operation, meaning that each pan had a picker or nothing. I kept enlarging the crevice in both directions and we called it “the gift that keeps on giving”...
Here’s a RARE treat....a picker I dug out of the second crevice with my Keene deluxe tool. Fun to see something so big and yellow:
I made a video showing my crevicing technique:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHXjCbvg ... LLbPp31xvg
Here’s a pic of the crevice that we worked:
Once that crevice was pretty much played out I was lucky enough to bust out some quartz and open up a second crevice. Same boom or bust luck there too. After about 2 ½ hrs of hard work we had both crevices basically cleaned out and pan after pan was a bust. So, we called it a day, hiked back and enjoyed chips & homemade guacamole dip and beers/wine on the front lawn of our rental house. What a GREAT afternoon prospecting and all because the claim owner was gracious enough to let us play on his claim.
Here’s the girls partying it up at the Grubsteak Restaurant:
After dinner several of us took a bottle of good wine over to the claim owner and showed him and his friends the gold we got and told him where & how, so he’d know for future prospecting. He was very complimentary and said we’d “done real good” and let us keep the gold too. The girls just beamed with the satisfaction of finally finding some gold bigger than just specks & flakes...
Here’s our nice, chunky gold for the day:
We’d never, ever found gold like this before in any of the previous 5 years...
Sunday morning we had breakfast, warmed ourselves by the fire and packed out. We hit the river again about 9:30AM hoping to maybe find some more good gold. We went back to our old spot and reworked it for a while, but only got 1 smaller picker and a few flakes, so we moved further up river, looking for a new spot. The bedrock was polished like glass and I just couldn’t find another crevice to work so we just creviced in the older mossy areas, finding a few specks & flakes again.
By noon everyone was a bit tired and we needed to get going home, so we hiked back to the parking lot and had a tailgate lunch and drove out about 1 PM for home. Here’s our Sunday gold take:
All in all this Downieville weekend was our best prospecting weekend ever in the last 5 years of doing this family event. Back at Susie’s house I put the weekend’s gold in a small pan and had the girls that prospected and wanted one each pick out a small nugget/picker to take home as a memento in a small Ziplock baggie. What fun, what good gold me and the “girls” got!
Monday 30 Sep 13: Sadly, this was my last day in Kalifornia to prospect, as I flew home to High Colorado the next day on 1 Oct 13. I headed out about 8:45 AM and got to Mineral Bar about 9:30AM. I walked down river and went even further downstream to crevice and pan. I wanted to try the opposite side (East) of the river from what I/we had been working previously. Getting up on top of the bedrock, I pried apart several big slabs, and busted some cap rocks for about 1 hour and finally had a pail full of material to pan. Getting down to the river safely from 20 feet up on that glass-like polished bedrock was a challenge and once I did I only got a few small flakes & specks, not the bonanza I’d hoped for... Bummer.
O.K., time to move. I worked my way down river about 100 yards but the bedrock was simply too smooth, hard, polished like a granite tabletop. I didn’t bring my big 10-lb sledge & wedges today, just a big bar, so nothing looked prospective there.......bummer. I waded across the river back to the West side and walked back up to where I’d worked before. I decided to try working worn channels & cracks in the high benches and not surprisingly started finding flakes & fines again. I worked about 4 different areas, washing & hand suckering them out and ended the day with a decent showing of gold.
Here’s the gold I got on my last day:
I hiked back up river to the Pilot and loaded up my stuff. Back at the house we grilled porterhouse steaks, boiled artichokes, tossed a salad and dined on a feast any Miner 49er would have paid big time to get back in the day.
I have to say by the end of this 2-week prospecting “gold adventure” I was about pooped out and needed a break! Here’s my final gold take pictures with what I came home with... 92 grains or 5.96 grams of very nice chunky to flour gold:
Can’t wait until next year! Hope everyone gets out soon and gets in a little more prospecting before Fall slips into Winter. As I write this in High Colorado we have the Aspens turning yellow, had a low of 32 degrees last night and light snow dusting the tops of the 14ers around my house. Winter will be here all too soon.
God bless,
Randy Witham “C-17A”
www.goldadventures.biz
great tagalong again and decent gold this time too- John