Jim_Alaska

Is the host rock Basalt? Nice find.

Beautiful specimen Chris, thanks for posting it.

Thank you Clay, I was not aware of a Federal NOI to "hold". Your post makes it clear that the Federal NOI to hold is a part of what I always considered the annual assessment process which requires either work or payments in lieu of annual work accomplished. I humbly stand corrected, but still stand by a NOI for small scale miners not being needed for working their claims.

Yes Harry, I had thought that the designation might just be an error in terminology. That is why I tried to make the distinction between Federal and State. For all I know Nevada may use the wording the OP wrote about and the state of Nevada may require what they call an NOI for the state's part in the claim recording process after the initial claim is filed with the county recorder. As far as an NOI for Federal purposes goes, I consider it a dangerous practice for a small scale miner to file one. In my political mining endeavors I have always tried to discourage the erroneous idea that small scale miners have to file and NOI. In writing this I went to the state of Nevada website here and found this as a brief requirement to file an NOI for both State as well as Federal BLM purposes: "When Required................. The surface management regulations (43 CFR 3809) incorporate three levels of operation: • 1) Casual use by operator who does negligible disturbance. No notice or plan required. Need not contact BLM. Does not include use of mechanized earthmoving equipment or explosives • 2) Notice - includes exploration activities that propose disturbance of 5 acres or less. A written notice, including a reclamation cost estimate, must be submitted to the appropriate BLM Field Office 15 days prior to starting operations. A sufficient financial guarantee amount must be approved by and submitted to the BLM prior to the commencement of operations. Effective for 2 years. May be extended for additional 2 years with the submittal of a revised/updated reclamation cost estimate. • 3) Plan of Operations - includes all mining and processing activities and exploration exceeding 5 acres of disturbance. BLM approves plan." So, it is easy to see that for most, if not all, small scale miners an NOI is not required. It is also important to understand that any requirement for an NOI is not for the purpose of "holding" a claim as the OP asked about, it is for actually working a claim and then only for larger operations than small scale miners employ. Disclaimer------ I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice. It is solely mining requirements as I understand them.

I am not familiar with an NOI to "hold" a claim, so if Nevada requires one just to hold the claim I cannot advise. Much depends on the land classification; is it Federal or State land? If it is State land I cannot advise you in regard to Nevada since my experience is with California State land. But if it is Federal Domain, Federal regulations prevail. Federal regulations speak to the issue of assessment work that is performed annually, or money paid in lieu of the actual work. There is no Federal NOI required to "hold" a claim on Federal Domain, and as Chris rightly pointed out, there is no Federal form for this purpose, this should speak volumes. Having been down this road in regard to Federal Land I would adamantly advice you to not file a NOI (Notice Of Intent). Any Notice Of Intent is designed for large operations, such as mining companies that employ heavy equipment and will disturb a lot of surface area; It is not meant as a requirement to just hold a claim, that is what your yearly assessment work does, it assures that you will hold the claim. If you are a small scale miner a Notice Of Intent is not required and will only result in the NOI being the trigger that will require a Plan Of Operations, and then the real regulations will kick in in the form of an Environmental Impact Studies, reclamation permits, as well as other land and water agency requirements. So, long story short is, if you are a small scale miner on Federal Domain and will move less than the agency required amount of material, you do not need an NOI. To try to file one will open a can of worms that is better left closed.

I think the moths might object. 😀

I think he meant to pick them up once you have marked the spot and detected it, not leave them there. This war on anything plastic is getting old.

It has been my experience you mostly come home smiling. 😀

Now that would cause me to dig everything, no matter what it sounded like.

I was wondering about that small stream when I saw your pics. It looked like it would be a good place to concentrate gold. A person might do well sniping or even detecting if there is exposed bedrock.

Thanks for the pics Manny. Looks like a wonderful place to spend some time.

All of those trails or roads must make it pretty accessible Manny. What part of the state is that in, north, south? I'm not real familiar with AZ, being in California. I have driven through a couple of times north to south on 17 and some on I - 10 and wondered about where detecting would be good. Lots of desert out there.

That is nothing short of incredible for one trip Steve. Never did an coin or artifact hunting myself.

That would be worth filling more buckets and running them at home. I just got back from a trip to Az. The trip had nothing to do with gold, just visiting friends. But I could not help being amazed at the vastness of the landscape. I wouldn't even know where to begin. I was in the area just north of Phoenix in Camp Verde. I don't know if there is gold there or not, my friend that lives there didn't know either.

Jim is my real name, I added the "Alaska" as a description of where I was from on forums when I lived in Alaska. I still use it only because it is what people have come to know me as, even though I no longer live in Alaska. I guess I have the "old timers" mentality that if I change it at this late date, no one will know who I am.

Now I wish I had known you were in Tenn. George, I went through last November on an extended road trip. It's been way too long since we visited, last time was when you were still in Copper Center. For some reason I thought you had moved over seas permanently, must be thinking of someone else.

Another winner Lanny. Laughed all the way through it.

Steve, just a thought. You might consider changing the subject of the thread so that it doesn't actually say "Apply Here". That would save you having to repeat that it doesn't actually mean to apply on the forum for everyone that tries it.

Thanks Lanny. But if I remember you have had some great success in the past yourself. I remember some of the stories you told back then. I always thought it amazing that you found gold in some of the most unlikely places. My Alaska forum is back up once more in a new format. I'd love to have you visit once again. We need some great stories to get the forum back to what it once was.

There is one other thing I have found in relation to old hydraulic pits that I have not seen anyone talk about. That one other thing is simply this: just because there may not be detectable gold in any one pit doesn't mean that there is no gold there. Two years ago I found a very small hydraulic pit close to home. My detecting efforts, as well as a friends with his GB2 turned up nothing. Normally I would have just moved on to a different location, but in this instance, because of my increasing limited ability to walk I decided to try something different. What caught my eye was that in many places in the hydraulic pit there was a lot of ancient bedrock. As I looked over this situation I saw many cracks and crevices. So I thought this might just be a good place to crevice. I came back with a whole pile of crevice tools, most of which are home made, chisels, hammers and my gas vac. Of course because I am basically lazy, I concentrated on cracks and crevices that could be easily scraped out. The exposed bedrock was not very extensive so it was not long before I had worked it to where the only method left was to hammer and chisel the lager cracks open. This was hard work and it got really hot on those rocks once it hit ten o'clock in the morning, so I usually quit about that time. This kind of mining takes a lot of time, it is not for the faint-hearted or those not willing to work hard for their gold. I even pried apart some impressive slabs of bedrock with a six foot bar and even at times a hydraulic jack. Some of the slabs I couldn't move out of the way by lifting so I had to just pry them aside with a long bar. There is no water to be had close by, so I simply dry classified what came out of the cracks and ran the remainder through a LeTrap sluice in a small creek on another day. So, all in all it was hard work, but I could see with every clean-up that I was getting good enough gold to keep working and keep me interested. I will say that I didn't get rich doing this, but did get what I consider good gold for my efforts.

This is a great tip for those who think that the gold is all gone and those before us got it all. What a wonderful resource forums like this are for those who are beginners or those who are looking to better themselves. George, there is a tip that I learned from you when I was still in Alaska that I have not seen you post about. It is one that can save a lot of time in the field. Any details that I leave out I will leave to you to explain, but in short I'll just say this much that I learned. George and I were on Jack Wade Creek one time early in my detecting life. I didn't have a GB2 but he did. I only had the old Goldmaster V-Sat, which I still have. I was having more fun watching George find and dig one target right after another. His little time saving secret was this: once a target was heard he only dug to where the target was in the scoop; he didn't try to isolate the target and pick it out, he simply emptied the scoop into a small bucket he carried for that purpose. He would then run the contents of that bucket in a sluice at a later time. While it is true that this method doesn't give the instant gratification of seeing what you have recovered, it does serve to save an amazing amount of time in the field. There may be others who have used this method and it is not new to them, but for me it was a "first" and I was thankful I was there with him to see it in action.

I've seen that done JW, but I had no need, my five inch was quite adequate for what I was doing. Soon after this I sold the boat and built an airboat.

This short story doesn't have much to do with gold mining except that we were going upriver to my claims to dredge. I had my five inch triple sluice stashed far upriver. One fine summer day I was going in to my claim to dredge and had a young Russian guy with me that wanted to see what it was all about. We headed upriver in my jet boat, the trip usually took an hour and a half. My friend had never been in a jet boat and was having ball. He was really looking forward to the suction dredging part of the trip. After about an hour going upriver I decided to stop on a gravel bar and have some coffee from the thermos I always had with me. As we sat drinking coffee he was full of questions about gold and mining. Finishing up our coffee I went to start the boat. That's when I found that we had big trouble. As I turned the ignition on all I heard was ruuuh ruuuh...click click click. The battery was dead and there would be no one coming way up here to help. Walking out was not an option, a jet boat can travel a long way in an hour. I had emergency supplies in the boat, along with lots of spare parts, none of which was a battery of course. So we sat down to have a bite of lunch and think the situation over. Evidently the alternator had failed and we had been running on the battery up to this point. What to do; what to do? I racked my brain which didn't take too long since there is not much in there. I've had experience with dead or almost dead batteries before and I know that sometimes if you just let them sit, don't try to start the vehicle or run anything that ran on battery power, the battery will recover a bit. In thinking along these lines I thought, what if I could somehow help the battery by hand? Silly I know, but we were in desperate circumstances. Fortunately this boat was powered by a small four cylinder Chevy. motor and the motor was connected to the jet pump by a short drive shaft. I of course had some rope in the boat and a plan began to form. The plan went like this: Wrap the rope around the drive shaft and tie it to the universal joint. The idea was to try to help pull the motor over after letting the battery rest for an hour or so. I knew I was really reaching for it with this idea, but it was all we had to try. This little motor started easy, so it might just work. There was just not enough battery juice to turn the motor fast enough or long enough to start, when I had tried it before it turned really slow. I got the rope all wrapped around the drive shaft, and knew that if the motor did start there would be no way to get the rope off because I didn't intend to shut the motor off until we got to my truck. I told my friend that we would count to three and on three I would pull the rope as he turned the ignition. Amazingly it worked, on three he turned the key while I was mightily pulling on the rope.....YES, I knew enough to not wrap the rope around my hand to pull better, I just had to grab it. The engine came to life and we immediately left for safety and home. All the way back that rope beat the water in the bottom of the boat into a heavy spray. This gave me visions of what it would have looked like if I had wrapped that rope around my hand. :lol: We got back ok, even though the alternator was dead and we were running the ignition on the little bit of juice that the battery had. All the way back I was praying that there would be enough juice in the battery to get us back, so needless to say it was a very fast trip back. No mining that day to say the least, but it did make for an Alaskan adventure to be shared many times over.

Possibly an aluminum can that got thrown in a camp fire? It looks like it melted over some rock that it sat on while melting. I found a nugget that looked just like that in Alaska, it turned out to be a melted aluminum can. I still have it.

Just be aware of your surroundings. Don't stick your hands in places you can't see into. Other than that, have fun.