Had a chance to brave the weather/wind and go sluicing for a couple hours last Friday.
Dave & his son were going to drive up out of Colorado Springs to BV and meet me and go sluicing, but early in the morning the weather looked pretty threatening. There was light snow falling in C. Springs, 26 degrees & mostly cloudy outside here in BV with a few flurries and unknown road conditions over the 3 passes between us.
So, Dave decided to slip our "gold adventure" to another day. About noon the weather here had blow on, was mostly sunny & clear, but VERY windy...about 10 Kts constant out of the North and gusts up to 15+ Kts at times. Still, I had planned on sluicing at least a little and so drove over to the Arkansas River to a friend's claim to check it out and try to get in a couple hours. I was pretty well bundled up, including my Russian hat to mostly protect my head, ears, neck.
I arrived and hiked down to the river and walked upstream a ways, looking for a decent spot that offered both good looking material to sluice and a spot to safely sluice in the river. The river was down a good ways now from last month when I was here last, and finding a safe spot to sluice among the big, smooth boulders was almost impossible. Either too deep, or too fast or too slow...
Finally, I walked about 100 more yards up river and spent 25+ minutes carrying rocks and throwing them into the river to build a rock pad on which to set my Le Trap sluice. So, why is it when the cold wind blows on your face non-stop your nose just runs like a waterfall? Who knows....
The upriver view into the wind:
Anyways, by about 12:30PM I was ready to sluice. I sample panned from close by in about 3 different spots and found a gravely little spot behind a big boulder that had good looking material....rounded rocks, gravels, and a decent amount of coarse black sand mixed in...
My final dig spot:
I ran my first bucket thru my sluice and saw it had a LOT of black sand. Good! That usually means fine flood gold too.
The digging was slow and the sluicing slow too. After about 1 hr in that non-stop wind I had 3 pails of material sluiced. Unfortunately, with the undulating river flow my sluice broke free twice and partly washed over/out, but hey, that's river sluicing...
I stopped for a sandwich about 1 PM and decided to do 6 total 2 1/2 gal pails and cleanup and call it a day. So, I did. It was clear & sunny, but the 30's temps and strong wind just made it a little less fun than I normally need to have to stay on the river.
Back home I hand panned out my cons and saw a decent amount of fine flood gold, especially given I'd only been able to dig, carry, sluice the equivalent of three 5-gallon buckets of good river material.
Here's my gold from my 2 hrs and 6 pails of sluicing:
I got 5.0 grains or .32 grams for my effort.
So, overall it was a bummer Dave & his son couldn't make it up to pan/sluice, BUT given the cold/wind, probably it was best to slip the adventure to a day with less wind and warmer temps...
Here's one short video I made after my first pail thru the sluice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58meBsAz ... e=youtu.be
Hope you get out soon. Gold doesn't care how bad the weather is!
God bless,
Randy "C-17A"
