The April outing was changed from the Hall of Fame, Golden View, West Channel claims just north of Joshua Tree National Park to our Freedom Claims area due to the Federal Court Orders closing 2200 miles of OHV dirt roads. Even though as Miners we are exempted and guaranteed ingress/egress under the 1872 Mining Law unless it gets amended by Congress, who wants to be the first one to get a ticket that requires you to appear in Federal Court up in San Bernardino. The area between Joshua Tree and Route 62 is now one of the “Critical Habitat” areas and the BLM has not explained how they are going to handle the incursions. It was easier to change to a clear area outside the boundaries and affected zones. I went up on Wed. morning and was digging before sunset. Thursday had wind advisories posted for the day and night and lived up to everything the weather service had forecast with steady wind in the 35mph range with maximum gusts to 50mph. Needless to say it was blusterly digging on Thursday, but perfect for the rest of the weekend. Folks started arriving Friday afternoon with a majority coming in on Saturday morning, we ended up with 13 people present. I finally saw people taking my advice about sampling in different areas instead of the same ol places, and the more different areas sampled, the more nice gold was found. It went from the usual fine gold anywhere to larger, coarser, and more gold. I saw good pans, very good pans, and even an excellent pan over the course of the weekend. The only thing I didn’t understand is that everyone left Saturday late afternoon and didn’t stay over. Brian and I did, and had the place to ourselves on Sunday and drove home on Monday.
I’m already looking forward to May’s trip back out to Freedom. The gold was really much better than even Hall of Fame , some of the best ever to come out of the Freedom claim. While RM 26 up the hill is getting better, the road to the cabin and well head is still messed up and for the first time ever I was not able to get the Subie through. There was plenty of digging in the Phoenix Gulch basin north of the rr tracks.

Jerryk