Morning Paul,
I'd say it's on my list of things to consider.
We've got a few other things that are also on the list right now.
Since I'm just waking up to my first cup of coffee, I'll ramble on here for a few minutes and give you a little picture of what we're looking at.
My partner in these adventures, just turned 70 last Spring and although she's very capable ( puts away several cords of wood and a huge garden every year), moving tons of ore and living on the side of a mountain for months at a time is moving into the category of "too much for her". Our junior partner is about 25 and he can keep up with me, both in terms of hard labor and passion for the gold and the adventure. I just turned 54 and can still outwork most people and have a sharp mind and a toolbox full of skills. My role in this is primary labor, permitting, engineering, fabrication and director of operations. Basically, I'm coming up with the where, the how, and the list of what needs built to achieve our goals. I've spent the past 4 years learning everything about prospecting, mining, machinery, processes, geology, fire assay and thanks to this site here, a fair bit about chemical extraction and refining.
We have 17ea 40 acre claims in the Petersville area. There are 2 adits that were put in by a gent just before WW2 and the moratorium against mining in '42. No real effort has been expended since then. The area where the pretty stuff was found was a block of 6 claims and we have since added 6 more NW of the original block.
We rented an excavator for a month last year and built 7/10ths of a mile of road up the side of the mountain to reach the Granodiorite mesothermal pluton that sits at about 3200ft elevation. We also put in a cable zipline to help ferry the ore from the 30 degree face to a workpad where the machinery awaits. There is so much quartz and GD across these claims that it's hard to imagine working it all. The adits are 70ft and 100ft long and considering the 80+ years since they were blasted open, they're pretty solid with very little rockfall.
This place reminds me of "How to eat an elephant". Part of my task is to determine which bites to take and in what order. With that in mind, I've started with the residual placer deposit and the underlying vein structures.
Our current plan with that section is to set up the infrastructure and extract hi grade ore while simultaneously marketing the three claims that are associated with this area. I don't want to let any of this go, but we have big plans and it all costs money, so selling that chunk would pay lots of bills and fund the exploration and exploitation of the several other excellent sections on our claims.
It is pretty exciting to be working on Virgin deposits in an area where there is a massive history of gold production. USGS reports that the area downstream in our valley that was worked, produced a reported 170,000+ OZT of gold. I'm confident that this is a conservative estimate due to the fact that not all gold was reported by the miners of old.
Currently in that area, I'm making plans for upgrades and additions to the processing equipment for that area as well as a little more excavator work to finish the work pads and sort through a 30yd x 150 yd field of rocks and boulders below that have quartz faces with good signals, as well as, the residual placers that are located with them.
The claims also contain over a mile of creek and canyons that are collecting the elluvial gravels that have been cut by the creek or worked their way down the slope over the past millennia and are now concentrating in the creek drainage. I'm working with another retired couple to upgrade their Keene 4" dredge for our needs and we'll be starting a sampling program this Spring to locate paystreaks in the creek and if that proves out, we'll be working to harvest that too. We put in a few days last Summer, looking for the best spots and panning many samples. We found several very exciting spots below the influx of the ore where it's had plenty of distance/time to free the gold. Our goal here is to determine how deep the bedrock is and where the deposits are. This is a hardrock controlled streambed and although I expect we'll do a good bit of boulder winching, I don't think it will be very deep to bedrock...we'll see.
Up above is a glacial bowl with a cirque and several Quartz/Arsenopyrite dikes where the USGS found a 200 oz/ton grab sample. Early in our partnership, She offered up a small (2" x 4") lab sized jaw crusher and several samples that they had hauled down back before her husband passed away. I crushed and panned all of those and found several nice crystalline gold pickers. We're planning to climb up there next Summer and run around those 80 acres with the Gold Monsters. It's a good 3 hour climb, so we'll be collecting all of the samples we want and then having a helicopter come to ferry us and the several hundred lbs of samples back down to the camp 1600 ft below. If that looks as good as I'm expecting, we'll fly a mill and zipline system up there and use the cirque to provide the water needed to run the pilot plant.
Lastly, we have 3 more claims down below in the main creek system were not worked back when the hydraulic mining was being done in the 50's. Lots of old growth cottonwood proves that they didn't disturb this section. USGS reports say that this area has a paystreak that is 2'-6' thick and 20 ft wide. I'm working on a sampling program for that also, but the plate is pretty full for next season, so that will probably be on the schedule for 2024 season.
Admittedly, I did not expect for this "Hobby" to consume every spare minute of my world for the past 4 years with no slowing in sight. I am having a hell of a good time and I can see that this really could be life changing if we play our cards right.
Hope you enjoyed this short trip through my mind.
Sorry if this was too long winded.
Here's a little eye candy to ease your suffering...lol.
I'd say it's on my list of things to consider.
We've got a few other things that are also on the list right now.
Since I'm just waking up to my first cup of coffee, I'll ramble on here for a few minutes and give you a little picture of what we're looking at.
My partner in these adventures, just turned 70 last Spring and although she's very capable ( puts away several cords of wood and a huge garden every year), moving tons of ore and living on the side of a mountain for months at a time is moving into the category of "too much for her". Our junior partner is about 25 and he can keep up with me, both in terms of hard labor and passion for the gold and the adventure. I just turned 54 and can still outwork most people and have a sharp mind and a toolbox full of skills. My role in this is primary labor, permitting, engineering, fabrication and director of operations. Basically, I'm coming up with the where, the how, and the list of what needs built to achieve our goals. I've spent the past 4 years learning everything about prospecting, mining, machinery, processes, geology, fire assay and thanks to this site here, a fair bit about chemical extraction and refining.
We have 17ea 40 acre claims in the Petersville area. There are 2 adits that were put in by a gent just before WW2 and the moratorium against mining in '42. No real effort has been expended since then. The area where the pretty stuff was found was a block of 6 claims and we have since added 6 more NW of the original block.
We rented an excavator for a month last year and built 7/10ths of a mile of road up the side of the mountain to reach the Granodiorite mesothermal pluton that sits at about 3200ft elevation. We also put in a cable zipline to help ferry the ore from the 30 degree face to a workpad where the machinery awaits. There is so much quartz and GD across these claims that it's hard to imagine working it all. The adits are 70ft and 100ft long and considering the 80+ years since they were blasted open, they're pretty solid with very little rockfall.
This place reminds me of "How to eat an elephant". Part of my task is to determine which bites to take and in what order. With that in mind, I've started with the residual placer deposit and the underlying vein structures.
Our current plan with that section is to set up the infrastructure and extract hi grade ore while simultaneously marketing the three claims that are associated with this area. I don't want to let any of this go, but we have big plans and it all costs money, so selling that chunk would pay lots of bills and fund the exploration and exploitation of the several other excellent sections on our claims.
It is pretty exciting to be working on Virgin deposits in an area where there is a massive history of gold production. USGS reports that the area downstream in our valley that was worked, produced a reported 170,000+ OZT of gold. I'm confident that this is a conservative estimate due to the fact that not all gold was reported by the miners of old.
Currently in that area, I'm making plans for upgrades and additions to the processing equipment for that area as well as a little more excavator work to finish the work pads and sort through a 30yd x 150 yd field of rocks and boulders below that have quartz faces with good signals, as well as, the residual placers that are located with them.
The claims also contain over a mile of creek and canyons that are collecting the elluvial gravels that have been cut by the creek or worked their way down the slope over the past millennia and are now concentrating in the creek drainage. I'm working with another retired couple to upgrade their Keene 4" dredge for our needs and we'll be starting a sampling program this Spring to locate paystreaks in the creek and if that proves out, we'll be working to harvest that too. We put in a few days last Summer, looking for the best spots and panning many samples. We found several very exciting spots below the influx of the ore where it's had plenty of distance/time to free the gold. Our goal here is to determine how deep the bedrock is and where the deposits are. This is a hardrock controlled streambed and although I expect we'll do a good bit of boulder winching, I don't think it will be very deep to bedrock...we'll see.
Up above is a glacial bowl with a cirque and several Quartz/Arsenopyrite dikes where the USGS found a 200 oz/ton grab sample. Early in our partnership, She offered up a small (2" x 4") lab sized jaw crusher and several samples that they had hauled down back before her husband passed away. I crushed and panned all of those and found several nice crystalline gold pickers. We're planning to climb up there next Summer and run around those 80 acres with the Gold Monsters. It's a good 3 hour climb, so we'll be collecting all of the samples we want and then having a helicopter come to ferry us and the several hundred lbs of samples back down to the camp 1600 ft below. If that looks as good as I'm expecting, we'll fly a mill and zipline system up there and use the cirque to provide the water needed to run the pilot plant.
Lastly, we have 3 more claims down below in the main creek system were not worked back when the hydraulic mining was being done in the 50's. Lots of old growth cottonwood proves that they didn't disturb this section. USGS reports say that this area has a paystreak that is 2'-6' thick and 20 ft wide. I'm working on a sampling program for that also, but the plate is pretty full for next season, so that will probably be on the schedule for 2024 season.
Admittedly, I did not expect for this "Hobby" to consume every spare minute of my world for the past 4 years with no slowing in sight. I am having a hell of a good time and I can see that this really could be life changing if we play our cards right.
Hope you enjoyed this short trip through my mind.
Sorry if this was too long winded.
Here's a little eye candy to ease your suffering...lol.
