Welcome to July Everyone!
We are now fully into the summer mining season with the Summer Solstice, Midsommer’s Day, here and gone and the fireworks of the Fourth are upon us. This year a lot of us have been traveling to Northern California and the Motherlode, as well as, Nome, Fairbanks, and Colorado, myself included. I was able to meet my son up north and do some prospecting on the South Fork of the Eel, the North, East and Main Forks of the Trinity, a touch of the Klamath, and Spanish Creek outside of Quincy. One thing I found with the rivers still flowing fast is it is a bit problematic finding water access for setting up a sluice with support rocks and just the right amount of water flow. Usually where there is a nice little beach for panning out the sluice doesn’t work as where there is sand, there is calm water or a back eddy, conversely where there is nice bedrock the flow is much higher, and it is both harder and dangerous to get near or in the water at these points, so you are stuck panning out usually at the little beaches. The best solution is to bring an adjustable sluice rack and possibly even put a header box on it with a pump and make it a powered sluice which can then be adjusted for the right angle and flow either parallel or tangent to the stream. If used streamside this wouldn’t be considered a highbanker and would allow you to process a lot more material. Furthermore, as the next step, you can then use a small battery and solar panel as my 1,250 gallon per hour bilge pump uses just 35 watts, and I have tested it both running direct off the panel and using the battery for buffer. Just some observations for those headed up to the rivers for the remainder of the summer.
For the rest of the summer, we will be back up in Big Bear, but there will be a new map as it turns out the western half of the claim is on top of Gold Digger III, so please use only the eastern 1/3 of the mapped claim until I can make the adjustments. At the time of our filing 2 years ago there was neither a discovery post nor corner posts and the MRLS system had a note of “under review”. I was not able to get the posts moved for the June outing.
See you at the meeting or outings.
Jerryk