Steve's 2014 Alaska Gold Adventure

[Tim & Jerilee]

Steve,

It was nice to see you and meeting your brother Tom in Chicken. We have made it back home to Soldotna. We admire you for living in the tent while on your Chicken gold adventure and have enjoyed reading your postings. Wishing you the best of luck. Tim & Jerilee

[Gold Seeker]

Steve, thanks for the "ride along" on ya'll adventure, I sure hope ya'll hit a big nugget or ten, it would make for a nice trip!!

[Steve Herschbach]

Hi Tim, nice chatting with you and Jerilee. Glad you made it home safely. As for tents seems like normal stuff to me. Tom and I have a good six man tent to ourselves, cozy cots, dry awning area, and outhouses nearby. Even a shower if I want and internet access! Pretty deluxe living for two dogs like us.

Two Prospectors Attacked By Giant Alaskan Skunk!! This cross between a skunk, grizzly, and Bigfoot has totally doused these two guys with skunk juice and the stink won't come off! Weather cleared today and supposed to hit near 80 tomorrow before it cools off again and the rain comes back. Another guy on the creek recently snagged a couple 13 dwt nuggets and all we have so far are crumbs. Such is the nature of hunting tailing piles. Lightning can strike at any time or not at all. Hopefully our fortunes change with the weather. It certainly is not for lack of effort. We have been hunting primo areas and digging targets galore, but nails, bullets, and rusted ferrous crap is the order of the day. Still, we get up each day thinking "today is the day!"

My brother taking a rest on a large tailing pile that so far has only produced one nugget for me last year. Got to be more there!

[fredmason]

Hey Steve, be careful the wolves and coyotes and probably bears love the scent and taste of skunk...the smell will certainly conceal the need for a shower...HAHA.

I doubt you can buy it around there but Skunk-off used to work for me when I was a real mountain man and trapper...

 

find a big one!

fred

[Reno Chris]

Maybe when I get there it will change your luck - of course it might be a change for the worse!

[Shelton]

Snakes, wolves, coyotes, whole ZOO want to eat you. But remember you can eat them too!

[klunker]

 Shelton- you forgot to mention the mosquitoes. I have been told that in Alaska they are big enough to cut up and barbeque.

[fredmason]

When I went to Moore creek in 2005 when I got out of the plane  I thought I was floating-it was the mosquitos lifting me up and carrying me away...

 

fred

[Steve Herschbach]

A shower at Chicken Gold Camp is quarter operated. $3 gets you 5 minutes and $4.25 gets you 7 minutes. Great water pressure so 5 minutes was good for me but you need a timer as shower has none. I was quick afraid water would quit, then had time to spare.

Found out there are no laundry facilities in Chicken. If Mike had a washer and dryer I would be happy to pay $10 a load, but as it is we will wait until we go to pick Chris up in Fairbanks to wash clothes.

Had to fill the truck up again in Chicken, both locations are now at $4.79 a gallon (diesel $4.99).

We got a couple days of nice weather then back to rain last night and today. Gold luck continues to be very poor. Last year I averaged only a nugget a day but the size was much larger with pennyweight to half ounce nuggets to be had. Or bigger. This year I have 18 nuggets so far but only one hitting a pennyweight. Tom is doing exceptionally bad with only three small nuggets.

In an act of desperation we tried tossing rocks off piles that produced nuggets previously. It seemed worth a try but trying to make detected piles produce more targets this way is lots of labor for few targets. Still, the SDC 2300 scared up a couple tiny pieces doing this. I also got a couple more nuggets with my GPX the old-fashioned way. Bottom line is it was worth a try but we decided we much prefer outright detecting as plenty of targets are to be had in potentially good locations. We just need to get over something with some size.

We also could be going for sure thing small gold on bedrock and would have more gold now if we had done so from the start, but scraping up a couple pennyweight a day of small stuff is not why we are here. We are big game hunting and pounding shallow bedrock with the SDC and Gold Bug 2 is not going to do it for us. So we will continue to roll the big dice, win or lose.

You may be surprised to hear we are in good spirits and having a good time. I just love wandering locations where I know a big nugget lurks digging targets. The number of trash targets I dig each day makes a good solid handful of nail, various bullet parts, and misc ferrous stuff. But each could be a nugget and every day could be the day. My brother is holding up very well and is therefore proving to be a good detecting partner.

Speaking of which his SD2200v2 crapped out yesterday. Good thing we have the SDC 2300 along! We just finally isolated it down to a weak power wire on inside of box. No way to solder right now but a little wiggling made the connection and hopefully it holds until such time as a permanent fix can be applied. Otherwise he will use the SDC as we both have been doing off and on. I am very happy with that detector for multiple reasons but that can wait for my next Treasure Talk blog.

Well, raining again. The internet goes from poor to bad when it is cloudy so I will post this now and then see if I can get a photo to post afterward. That turns into a battle even after I shrink them down for speedier upload. If you have not already go back to the first page and check out the couple photos I added there. Great grizzly photo in particular.

Not much bear sign around here. A track here, and little scat there. Nothing to get excited about. Lots more moose than last year, most cows with calves.

Well, new week, new month, new start.

[Tom Harris]

Sounds like your having a great time out there, hope the bugs aren't to bad yet. I was wondering Steve if you have tried your vlf

on the tailings piles, or have you been using strictly PI. 

I was in Chicken the year before they had the pay to mine operation going, and thought I would have been back by now but hasn't happened. Super nice people. 

I feel a big nugget coming Steve. Keep digging those nails.

 

Tom