Welcome to May Everyone!
Well, the spring mining season is off to an exciting bang!!
The month of April has so far yielded our members 3 nice nuggets from 2 different sets of claims. The first was found on the weekend of April 18th on of all places the Little Bit claim right next to a road some of us have been down numerous times and have never prospected along it. It could well be historically the largest nugget I have ever heard coming out of the Freedom, Phoenix Gulch, or entire Summit area. It is approximately 8.4-8.7 GRAMS. The indicators that led our member to dig there was reddish colored dirt combined with a lot of Miner’s Trumpet plants. Personally, I have tried metal detecting and drywashing around the plants and have never seen a difference, but it sure worked this time. Congratulations to our well-deserved member and we will hear about the find and get to see it at the meeting. It was a combined effort between metal detecting and drywashing that turned it up. The other 2 nuggets came from the Hall of Fame outing on the weekend of April 26-27. The first solid gold picker nugget was found in the first hour of digging on Saturday morning. The second a few hours later and showed in the riffle tray, was quartz and gold and was 4.5 GRAMS. It cleaned up beautifully and is a really pretty specimen piece. Everyone else was harvesting coarse flakes and fine gold to the tune of $10 per round. We had 14 participants on Saturday with 6 of us staying until Monday and 2 staying until Thursday. It was a great trip with the exception of the wind Friday during the day, Saturday afternoon, and Sunday afternoon and night.
This month’s outing on the weekend of 17-18 is back up to the Freedom claim and will be the last of our desert trips as the temperatures are about to spike into triple digits, it has already touched the 90’s a few times. For the summer we will be back up in Big Bear and I plan on looking for a new and better area there. It is very pleasant camping in the pines with 85-degree days and mid 50’s overnight with lots to see and do besides mining.
See you at the meeting or outings.
Jerryk