This weekend was one of those rare occasions, where I had a helicopter available to me. This gives me a good opportunity to check out several areas that are normally to hard to reach. There are a couple of areas I want to see if it would be worth packing in a high banker. These areas are very inaccessible and I really didn't want to make the hike with a heavy pack, if there wasn't enough gold to make it worth my while. With the helicopter your definitely more mobile. Another great advantage is you get much more time to prospect, because you don't spend all that time hiking.
The weather was calling for Saturday to be sunny, but Sunday there was a chance of rain and thundershower. David and I decided to get in the water and do some dredging and some sniping on Saturday.
This time of year the river has cooled down quite a bit. It was about 9:00 AM when we got into the water, it was a bit on the cold side, but as long as you kept moving it wasn't too bad. We found a nice looking crevice and decided to do a little dredging. We ended up dredging two different spots on the same river about a mile apart. All the gold we found was fairly small and was covered with mercury. We ended up with enough time to do some hiking both up and down the river. I did a little panning here and there, and I pretty much ended up with the same results we got dredging. By the end of the day I was flat beat, I'm so glad I didn't have to hike out. After I got home, I burnt the mercury off the gold, we ended up with 1. 38 penny weight.
I wasn't real impressed with the river, the gravel just didn't look right to me, it just looked to light. It seems as if the gold was in the gravel and not on the bedrock. The problem with that is, you have to process a lot of gravel to end up with any amount of gold. Still the day was great fun. We got the opportunity to look at a lot of new country and we went home with gold!
I did a lot of filming too, if everything works out I will post the video when it's done.
Next week we'll talk about day two!
The weather was calling for Saturday to be sunny, but Sunday there was a chance of rain and thundershower. David and I decided to get in the water and do some dredging and some sniping on Saturday.
This time of year the river has cooled down quite a bit. It was about 9:00 AM when we got into the water, it was a bit on the cold side, but as long as you kept moving it wasn't too bad. We found a nice looking crevice and decided to do a little dredging. We ended up dredging two different spots on the same river about a mile apart. All the gold we found was fairly small and was covered with mercury. We ended up with enough time to do some hiking both up and down the river. I did a little panning here and there, and I pretty much ended up with the same results we got dredging. By the end of the day I was flat beat, I'm so glad I didn't have to hike out. After I got home, I burnt the mercury off the gold, we ended up with 1. 38 penny weight.
I wasn't real impressed with the river, the gravel just didn't look right to me, it just looked to light. It seems as if the gold was in the gravel and not on the bedrock. The problem with that is, you have to process a lot of gravel to end up with any amount of gold. Still the day was great fun. We got the opportunity to look at a lot of new country and we went home with gold!
I did a lot of filming too, if everything works out I will post the video when it's done.
Next week we'll talk about day two!
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