Well, I had the honor & privilege of hosting my little sister Susie and cousin Linda for a week here in High Colorado recently.
Between all the sightseeing, shopping, eating and such, I was able to get them both out for 2 "Gold Adventures"...one on the Arkansas River sluicing for fine flood gold and one up at Cache Creek trying for some chunkier, larger gold... Here's the story:
Friday, 30 September -- I decided to take them up to the Arkansas River and sluice for fine flood gold. I knew the gold would be fine, but also the water cool, and the day was superb and so off we went. 50 degrees for the llow at 7 AM and the high probably about 72 degrees.
Arriving at a spot I hoped would be good, I got the big Wolf Trap sluice setup out in some faster water for my cousin Linda and the Le Trap sluice setup close by in some slower water for my sister Susie.
I spied a good spot for gold-bearing material in some close by boulders/rocks and so I endeavored to dig, roll and pitch rocks to clear off a spot to dig slicing material from...
Our dig spot:
After about 15 minutes of work I had the girls' first buckets of wet material delivered to their sluices. It was my job to do the digging, the delivering of buckets and the cleaning out of sluices.
Here's Linda & Susie sluicing:
Linda demonstrates the hand washing technique in the flair:
We planned to spend just maybe 3 hours there, so I had to keep them fully stocked with buckets to hand wash in their sluices so that we could have a decent gold showing at final panning...
The day was awesome, partly cloudy, the water gushing along wet & cool. There were some birds out & about and a neat hummingmoth flying around too, looking for wild flowers like a hummingbird.
The girls sluicing more good dirt:
When it looked like their sluices were just loaded with black sand I'd do a quick cleanup into my tub. After a while we had sandwiches & chips for lunch, along with bites off of one HOT Jalapeno pepper, just for kicks.
I kept digging the best material possible:
Back to the sluicing and digging and washing that mucky, wet material for maybe another hour longer... About 1:30 PM it was time to do a final cleanup on both sluices and pack out back to the Jeep. Back at home I did a panning of the cons for the day and hey.......we got .91 grams of nice fine Arkansas River flood gold!
Back at home, Susie & Linda were more than ready for some wine, crackers and some R & R on my East porch, enjoying the late afternoon summer breezes...
On to the next "adventure"..........
Sunday, 1 September -- Time to go for possibly some larger, chunkier gold by panning & sluicing up at cache Creek, West of Granite, Colorado. I drove them up there about 9 AM, showed them the Granite Cemetery, the East diggings, the West diggings, explained a little of the past history and then we drove up to the Placering Area parking lot.
Arriving there we suited up and loaded up and made the 1/4 mile hike out to my favorite little spot. Yep, with the feeder creek close to the parking lot now endlessly bone dry, folks have been venturing out into the valley like never before and "my" spot was showing signs of BLM signage and others' digging in a big way...
O.K. So, we set up our Le Trap sluice in a spot with enough water to run it well for Susie and I set up a Tee-Dee mini-sluice a little further up for Linda to sluice with...
Here's Susie's Le Trap sluice spot:
Here's Linda sluicing:
To the pit we went and again it was my job to ID the best material, sample pan for color, pick, shovel and carry buckets for the ladies...
Here's the recovery taking place out in the past hydraulicked areas:
Off we went, about 10 AM with one pail of dirt after another... What fun!
The technique with this heavy, orangish clayish material is to set the pail at the sluice, use a pan to flood it with water. This started softening up the clay, material and make it soft and easier to scoop out by hand. Using blue PVC coated gloves the girls would scoop & hand wash the material against the flair, freeing up the rocks, sand, gravel and gold.
The best part of this spot (besides the gold) is you get to hide from the sun, being under the trees for shade, making the whole day much nicer, cooler, enjoyable. Also, this late summer/early fall weather means almost all the mosquitoes were gone. Nice...
We shared the creek/pit with a fairly new gold prospector, Justin, from here in Colorado. Justin was a really nice guy, and we sample panned, talked about layering, the past Cache Creek history and in general, just teamed up all day to get everyone the max pails of the best dirt available. He had his Keene A-52 sluice going as fast as he could, and collecting his cons for panning out later at home.
At lunch we had sandwiches, chips and water. Yum..... Just the energy we needed at 9,500 feet!
Back to digging and because of all the black sand and slower than desired water speeds, I was cleaning up after every 3 pails. This meant a goodly amount of cons to take home after our 3 hours of digging, sluicing.
By 1:30PM the clouds had built up, the skies turned dark, the usual afternoon thunderstorms started rocking & rolling and yep.......we got rained on lightly on our hike back to the Jeep.
Back at the house I Gold Cubed up our cons and panned the 1 cup each from the 2 trays... Hey, we got .58 grams of nice, bright chunky gold. Sweet....
So, in summary, I had a blast having my little sister & cousin visit for a week from Kalifornia (People's Republik of) and get away from all the noise, heat, smog, traffic, crime, etc. We had a GREAT 2 days out in the hills prospecting for gold............and we didn't get skunked, far from it.
Hope you too get motivated, get out and find some color for your own and create a neat prospecting memory...
Cheers.
Randy "C-17A"
www.goldadventures.biz