The Mining Blog

Always have a plan B

1/26/2015

On My Soap Box

I truly hate the politics in the state of California. A lot of the people are tofu eating upwardly mobile yuppies that don't have a clue about life in a real world. Taxes and regulations in this state are just plain burdensome. The woods are slowly converting back to the Kings Forest, you can hardly find a open road anymore. It seems like the bureaucrats control every aspect of your life. But in a weird way the gold mining and weather make living in this state tolerable. This weekend was one of those weekends, where the weather made it all worthwhile. 74° in January how can you beat that. We may all die of thirst in August, but for now life is good.

Plan - A

I left early this morning because the creek I wanted to detect was a 2 hour drive. Over the years I have caught a lot of trout and have found a few nice quarter oz. nuggets in this creek. I wanted to check out this area because I have never detected on this creek, only dredged. And I know there's a couple of old mining camps nearby. This area's up fairly high and I wasn't sure if there was any snow in the area. After a hour of driving, I still don't know. They had the gate closed and locked, no way to get in.

Planned B

I decided to head down to an area that was a lot lower in elevation, but I it would be open. Because I was getting a late start now. I decided to try an area that was close to the road. I knew had been worked quite a bit, but the hike in is fairly easy.

I parked my truck, checked my gear and started hiking up stream. I've detected this part of the creek and did some panning here before and found very little. Because of its easy access it has been worked fairly hard. Because of this I decided to stay on the hillside on the way in. Between the brush and the steepness of a hillside the first couple 100 yards was pretty tough going. In the first 45 minutes to an hour. I never got a signal. I was beginning to wonder if my detector was working properly.

Things are starting to look up;

The brush opened up a bit and I noticed a flat area above me. So I thought I'd check it out. About halfway there I came across a fairly decent path that headed up toward the flat. I got a very strong signal right in the middle of the path. Thinking it was an old shell cartridge or something of that sort. I haphazardly dug it up. I was very surprised to discover it was a penny. I picked it up and checked the area again, just about in the same hole, I got another signal of the same strength. It was another penny. I check the date on the first one and it was 1918. The second one was 1909. I thought to myself, things are starting to look up.

I finished checking the area and got no more signals. On the north side of the flat there was quite a gully. I noticed that there was a lot of old river gravel in the gully. I started detect my way around the gully , but I didn't like the looks of the gravel( not heavy enough). I worked my way down the hillside searching for better gravel. As I went down and move north the gravel started to look better, but to this point I still had no signals. I was now only 100 feet or so above the river and the gravel started looking good. The big boulders were probably 4 to 6 foot in diameter and we're very hard and heavy boulders. I started detecting below the best looking gravel. After a few minutes I got my first good signal. I was delighted to dig up my first nugget of the day. At this point it was starting to get late. So I decided to detect heading back towards the truck. I had only gone 20 or 30 feet and found another small nugget. By the time I finished checking the area I had to do some high speed detecting back toward the truck. I found a few bullets and a couple nails but I made it to the truck before dark.

I will definitely be putting this area on my "return to before summer" list. This area is deftly a winter detecting area. The hillside is cover with poison oak and is in full sun. This time of year the poison oak is not a problem and the sun feels good.

After I got home I cleaned up the gold and a pennies. The first nugget I found weighted .7 pennyweight. The second one weighed one pennyweight. The pennies cleaned up very nice. The only disappointing thing was, the 1909 was not the rare one. 1.7 dwt of gold and two old pennies - I'm glad I had a plan B.

2 Comments

high tech tools in a low tech world

1/23/2015

9 Comments

My pack

What is in my pack?

After 50 years of mining I've got my backpack down to the minimal. Some of this stuff I use occasionally. Most of it, I use all the time. There are times where I wish I had another tool or two. But at the end of the day, hiking up the hill I don't miss it having them at all. If I have an easy hike or am flying in, I will take the larger hammer a larger pan a few more things that I think I might need. The equipment in my pack does include tools that are used while metal detecting. I can't remember the last time I went without taking my detector. Doesn't matter if I'm detecting or not, they always go.

Two or three bottles of water and a lunch, all get crammed in the pack with the rest of the stuff. So you need to plan accordingly.

10" Gold Pan;

I take a small cheap plastic gold pan. For a few reasons. It fits in the pack very well. Its light. If I like an area and plan to come back regularly. I will leave the pan there, that way I can pack one less thing. If I bring a friend, I don't have to bring a pan for him and if I don't go back, or it's lost I'm only out a couple bucks. If I know I'm going to do a lot of panning, I will throw and a 14 inch pan.

Rock Pick Hammer;

I don't think I could mine without this tool. Buy a good one, and it will last you for decades. I have a 14 oz and a 23 oz hammer. I carried the small one in my backpack . I found it in the bottom of a hole I was dredging in 1988. And have been using it ever sense. Buy a cheap one, and it will only last a few weeks, if you don't hurt by it first. A small or medium chisel is a another item I can't do without.

Pry Bar;

A GP-18 or gad pry bar, made by Estwing. I think is the best pry bar ever made for mining. I have been using the same one for 25 years now . You can use just about any type of pry bar. But there are few things that it has to do. Fit in the pack, be light, and not bend or break.

Crevice Tools;

You will use these more than any other tool. I use a variety of crevice tools. I have thin blade tools, wide blade or standard, and a long spoon ( huntly spoon) to get way down in the crevice. My spoon is about 20 inches long with a sharp hook on the other end. The flat blade is about 15 inches long. The two thin blade are 12 and 18 inches long. Over the years I had trouble finding a crevice tool I liked. I tried buying tools, I'd tried making tools. I have made crevice tools out of old butter knives and steak knives. I've made them out of windshield wipers and old leaf rakes, and a lot of other stupid things I wont mention here. All the crevice tools in my pack I've made. What I'm getting at is, its possible to make your own crevice tools. That way they will fit your own particular situation. But be sure to use a hard metal, preferably spring steel. Because it's gonna get a lot of wear.

A Snifter Bottle;

This is one of the most timesaving tools you can take a long. When panning, I don't take a lot of time picking out the fine gold. I just suck it all up ( gold and black sand) in the bottle and throw it in the pack. When I get home I dump it in a jar and let it accumulate all summer. Then during the winter, when I have more time I will clean it up. I always take two plastic gold bottles. A small one for most of the gold. And a large one for the nuggets I hope to find.

Miscellaneous stuff;

I carried two pair of locking tweezers, one straight one curved. I also find a seal pick a very handy tool for hooking little piece of the gold and pulling them out of the crevice. A small brush for sweeping out the crevice. A teaspoon bent and ground to a point for scooping the material up. Both are very handy. I find I use a regular slotted screwdriver quite a bit.

A pair of gloves will save you a lot of pain. Picking up rocks and scoping gravel with your hands is very abrasive. It will wear the skin off your fingertips, and trust me from experience, it hurts the next day. I always take a clean dry towel, you will be amazed how much you use it. A pair of pruning shears is very handy for getting root out of your way or getting a limb out of your face. A dozen or so strike anywhere matches in a watertight container. More than once during the winner, I have had to stop and build a small fire to warm my hands up.

If I know I'm going to be working a distance from the water. I will take a 5 gallon bucket to pack material back to the river. I do this very rarely, because packing a bucket back up the hill is a real pain. If I'm going to keep going back all summer I will leave the bucket, that makes the of trouble packing it in and out worthwhile.

Metal Detecting Stuff;

A good pair of headphones is an absolute must. A good strong magnet will save you a lot of time trying to find a small piece of metal. A good strong rake will speed up trying to find that target by spreading the dirt out so you can pinpoint.

Back Pack;

Over the years I've gone through a lot of backpacks. I have tried all sizes and what I've found is, if you get one that is too large you'll end up taking stuff you won't use. When filling your back in the morning think about the hike out in the afternoon. If it is a flat easy hike - go ahead and take that extra stuff. If its a long steep hike in hot weather, you might want to leave a couple of things and take extra water.

This is the stuff I take in my backpack. Most of the places I go are long steep hikes. The type of river and the hike to get their will dictate what type of equipment you will need. After a few trips, keep track of tools you don't use, and what you could use. After a while you will develop the pact that you need.

9 Comments

even seasoned miners make mistakes

1/14/2015

2 Comments

A one penny weight nugget.

     Took a trip up to my claim this weekend. The weather was perfect for some hiking and detecting. Lows in the morning were about 45°, the high in afternoon was about 60°. When the weather cools down it makes for a real enjoyable day of hiking.

      I've been looking for a section of ancient channel and the best I can tell, it should be on west side of the canyon. I've been looking for this section of the ancient channel for 10 years now, each time I check a different area of the hill. I'm only able to do a small area each time because the hill is so steep. Hiking in this area is very tough, you can hardly stand on it. There are couple of gullies I had to cross. One of them was very steep, a foothold I thought was moss covered bedrock turned out to just be moss. I slid down the hill roughly 30 to 40 feet on my butt. No worse for wear, when I looked for a way back up, I decided to detect at that elevation for a while.

     I stopped for lunch about noon . For me one of the best parts of detecting in the hills, is sitting on the side of the mountain with the river running below, just relaxing and taking in the scenery. After lunch I hiked down to the river to do some crevice detecting, I don't want to go home without at least, a little bit of gold.

Lower boom section of our old jib crane. Which is pictured in the mining section.

While hiking up stream, I came across the lower boom section of our old jib crane. It was lost in the flood of 1996 - 97, about 2 miles upstream from where it was laying in the gravel. We had it chained up to a couple of 1 1/2" pins anchored in the bedrock about 30 feet above high water. When we came back in that spring we found the pins sheared off flush with the bedrock and not a sign of the crane anywhere. We found out that we had lost a lot of equipment during the flood that year. We decided to build a new jib crane, because there was no way to dredge the hole we wanted to, without a crane. We decided to build the new one out of aluminum. The old crane work great but it was very heavy and hard to move around. The new one works better and is much lighter. Two people can pack the sections up the river without killing yourself.

I detected for quite awhile before I finally found a piece of gold, it was difficult to detect because the water was up quite a bit. After a couple hours it was starting to get the late and I still had quite a hike ahead of me. Rather than have to navigate the same gully that I slid down, I decided to stay low for as long as I could. But then I had the hike straight up the hill to get over another gully that there was no way to get across. I'm not sure if my way home way any better than the way I took in, all I know was, I sure was glad to see my truck. I ended up going home with a handful of square nails two lead bullets and a one penny weight nugget.

The stuff I found. Square nails lead bullets and a penny weight nugget. All of it I took out with me.

I try to take all the junk I find out with me, so the next guy doesn't have to deal with it. You should always take any lead you find, out with you. Everyone talks about the environment but - miners are the only ones who are cleaning up the river. We need to let people know that!

One thing I wanted to mention, you should always check your gear before you head out. I know this. I tell my customers this. But did I do it - no. I got all the way up to the claim and on the hill before I realized that one of the earpieces on my headphones was dead. So I could have missed some targets because, I couldn't hear that well when I was down by the river. I was only able to hear the very loud targets, most gold targets are very low.

2 Comments

Always have a plan B

high tech tools in a low tech world

even seasoned miners make mistakes

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