Jim_Alaska

Good advice Chuck, you never know when things will change for the worse. I'm not far behind you in age, will be 80 in December. I always thought that once I was too old or incapacitated to do regular mining, I could always nugget shoot; big mistake. I didn't count on something like the peripheral neuropathy that I have, that makes just simple walking difficult and dong it on uneven ground just about impossible. Using a cane and trying to swing a detector work against each other. then there is the getting down to dig, but not being able to get up again makes nugget shooting a thing of the past. So, folks, do get out there and do what you can, while you can, age and infirmities are not "user friendly".

Good, I was wondering why there were so many posts from you with no content or text.

You are too kind Lanny. When I was in Alaska and first found mining forums, you were already there. I well remember reading about you finding gold just about everywhere you went. I have learned a lot from your posts and stories over those years.

Rats!!! If Steve's generation is fading from the screen, mine must be gone. He was just a kid when I lived in Alaska.

Those boots and hand bags probably keep many people from beach hunting there. I don't mind carrying a lunch, but don't really like the idea of being a lunch.

Those aren't Gators, they are salt water crocodiles.

I don't know what kind of shotgun shells are available where you are. But many years ago, here in the US, lead shotgun pellets were banned and we had to only use steel pellets. Then of course, you could no longer buy new shells with lead pellets. This was all done to to protect wildfowl from ingesting them and die of lead poisoning.

Or, you could just live vicariously as I do over here in Northern California. I admit, it's not as much fun and no gold. I love stories like this, especially without the discomfort.

Bobcats are normally very secretive and shy, avoiding people. To get to see one should be a treasured experience, not many are so fortunate. Aside from stories people tell, they are not a threat to people. I trapped Lynx for many years in Alaska, they are twice the size of any Bobcat, and also very shy. Being in the cat family, they, like most cats, make a lot of noise when breeding. I think that is what Jed was hearing when he talked about "the midnight screechers".

Speaking of big trouble brewing; I have been wondering about the title of this adventure and what it could forecast. I am especially thinking in terms of what we have read so far, and contrasting it with an ending more in line with the title of the journal. Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine

340 buckets makes me wonder if he actually had that many buckets, or if they took what they had down to John at the Tom and dumped them on the ground. They certainly couldn't take 340 buckets of material all in one load.

Yes it does, don't even have to worry about refrigeration. Bur human packrats are a whole other story.

I understand that they brushed off the rocks too large to go in the bucket. He doesn't say anything about washing off large rocks in the sluice. But, anything of a size to fit in the bucket, and even smaller, like the size of a baseball, is going to result in lost gold. Classification is king in this game, no classification = poor recovery. If what you got out of the creek is any indication, they lost a lot of gold that size and especially smaller.

It would have been great to work with them; but right now I would be content to be able to re-work their tailing piles and the creek, below where they had the Tom. In 1936 sluicing equipment and methods were very crude and many operations lost a lot of gold. I especially think back to where Jed told about what they filled the buckets with. He said in one place that if it fit in the bucket, it went through the sluice. That is pretty course stuff and basically unclassified. Today we know that classification is extremely important. Also, of great importance was the development of the Hungarian riffle, as well as under-current sluice boxes. Many of those old Long Toms used nothing more than small sticks laid at right angles to the sluice, not very efficient. There is every possibility that they lost a lot of gold due to these factors.

Chris, were you on the California side or the Nevada side of the Cascades? It sorta looks like the California side.