At the risk of too much of a good thing, I post another Trip Report up to Cache Creek...this time with a prospecting friend, VA-Jim. Jim came to Colorado all the way from Virginia, and we hit the hills for a fun day diggin gulch material, sluicing & generally having fun talking, having "hard fun" and sluicing for fine Colorado gold.
I got the the gulch first, and there was frost on the grass & creek bushes again, so a bit nippy...but by 9:30 AM the sun was up, warming the valley. It was going to be a great High Colorado day...
Jim arrived about 9:45AM, up from the Cripple Creek/Victor area and we set a plan for the day. I walked Jim up the dry gulch, explained a little Cache Creek history, my exploits there & where I was finding gold. I had just run four 2 1/2 gal pails of dirt thru my Le Trap suice, so we were already finding gold...
Jim got to diggin in the gulch, and classifying and prescreening out the heavy black magnetite, as best we could anyways, using my rare earth magnets in the classifier... By the end of the day we had a HUGE pile of magnetite on top of a big flat rock.
Soon, we were taking turns diggin, sluicing & cleaning up the Le Trap. Plan was to fast feed the material & do a clean up every pail of material, as I felt that got the most material moved in a day, the least fine gold loss out the back of the sluice & I'd be able to do a clean up on all the heavy cons using my new Gold Cube.
The part of the gulch we were in was very prospective, as we kept finding rusty square nails, old bits of rusty iron and LOTS of black magnetite chunks & rocks. With all that "heavy" material collecting in pockets, we just had to find some gold too, right?
One of the coolest things for the day was I dug up a very old pocket knife, completely rusted. I tried to clean the little copper/brass plaque on the side to see if I could make out any name/manufacturer, but the plate was eroded so badly, nothing to be seen.
Anyone recognize it? Maybe from 1930's era miners? Hunters? Older still? Miners worked there from 1860 to 1911.
So, from morning to about 3 PM we "worked", sluiced, talked, had fun. When Jim had to leave I tried to do a crude cleanup of the heavy cons and give him a cut of the gold to take back and show off to his wife/family, but he flat refused. He said the "experience" was his reward, so to speak. Thanks for working so hard Jim!
We did see however, as I backwashed a portion of the cons, a goodly amount of little specks & flakes. Nice. I'll do a cleanup with "The Cube" and cut in the pictures here of the final gold take shortly...
On the last pail I ran I noticed in the Le Trap sluice some nice fine color in the recessed lettering & first riffle. Here's the pics. Very encouraging when you can actually see gold in your sluice.
I also took two short videos & posted them on my YouTube Channel. One of VA-Jim diggin like a pro in the dry gulch & one as a wrap up for the day, and showing some gold in the sluice as I cleaned up. First video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLSPBlF9 ... e=youtu.be
O.K., O.K. The gold recovery pics everyone wants to see as much as anything. I used my Gold Cube to clean up the 22 lbs of cons today. Here's the "money shots" for prospectors:
Lower tray gold catch:
Now, the upper tray gold catch:
A nice array of little pieces, lots of flakes and some specks to 200 mesh!
FYI: Mike & Red aren't paying me a cent, and probably don't even know I am now one of their biggest Gold Cube fans...as you can see, over & over again from my test runs, I'd say 98+% of the fine gold is captured in the first tray. And, let me tell you all, this is some very HEAVY black sand cons, the likes of which specks and especially small flat flakes have a very hard time settling thru... I'd have spent many hours handpanning these cons, but the amazing Gold Cube ran them in just 3 minutes. I am hooked! I have found no better, faster concentrate clean up tool like the Cube in all my years of fiddling with mini-sluices, bowls and such...
As always, hope you enjoyed the Trip Report, and hope you get out soon too before winter hits!
God bless,
Randy "C-17A" www.goldadventures.biz