One more Trip Report:
Summertime is in full swing up here in the Colorado Rockies.....and I've been out a lot lately prospecting for myself and taking folks out on "Gold Adventures" of their own......to pan and sluice for "wild" Cache Creek gold. I hope you're gettin' out and gettin' your share of gold too.
I met Joe and Mason about 9 AM on Wednesday, 23 July.....we drove up to Cache Creek. I shared some of the local mining lore, history.....of Granite, Chaffee County and Cache Creek. We then hit the hills for ourselves to share in that Old Time....Miner 49er experience.
Arriving a favorite spot of mine, we talked about all the hydraulic ops the miners did there at Cache Creek from about 1860 until 1912, when they were finally shut down. We dug some prospective material and proceeded to hand pan some pans of material, looking for color. Yep... Most pans all had some color. Joe and Mason swirled some pans and in no time were getting the technique down pat.
Here's Mason with one of his sample pans:
Next, we setup a Le Trap sluice and started diggin' gold-bearing dirt and sluicing. They were a great father/son team. One would normally be sluicing, the other diggin' and hand panning. We all took turns at the different aspects of our little operation.
Running the sluice:
The day was good, but dang the pesky mosquitoes... Lots of water and boggy areas above us, so lots of them until things dry out, get cooler.
We spent most the morning & early afternoon just talking, mining, having a great time.
Here's Joe digging material to pan & sluice:
After about 3 or 4 hours it was time for our cleanup and see what we'd accomplished. The Le Trap sluice cleans up in seconds with a few splashed of water, we screened out the rocks bigger than 1/8th inch and I panned out the cons in a safety tub...
Yep....GOLD! Not bad at all for the buckets of material we washed. Pretty, chunky, yellow Cache Creek, Colorado gold.
Joe and Mason did real well. "Hard fun" paid off...
Hopefully "you all" will get out soon, have your own Gold Adventure, create a Summer 2015 memory, find some wild gold of your own!
God bless,
Randy "C-17A"
http://www.goldadventures.biz
Sounds like 2 weeks in heaven,hope ya find a ton. Amazing Le Traps sure run in a tiny bit of water for sure. Nice lookn' gold and thanx for the great tag a long-John 
