1515Art

You cant beat the seafood in Alaska. Commercial fished up there for 9 seasons. Halibut anyone?

 

strick

 

I'm impressed... not to hiJack the thread, but i'll bet there are some great stories in those 9 seasons out there in the waters of Alaska. Along with the fantastic gold and story on this post!!!

Great story and pretty gold and thats a pretty nice group of old lead too!

The motley crew of designer prospecting doesn't look tough but they did pretty good down on the river and running up and down the hills. the lady standing in the center is now a swim coach and also has 3 olympic gold medals and won china's first gold in women's swimming and she is still fast. she was doing the butterfly stroke in the pool at the winery (it was rough out there folks) and not even getting her hair wet.

I had a great time at the golden mountain winery, it's a really beautiful piece of property and the lodge is comfortable. I did very little detecting, at most 3 hours total and only picked up 1 bullet at the winery and another 10 at a property on the river about 4 miles away.  i cherry picked only the light to mid sounding signals and skipped everything loud or with a double signal and then dug only a small percentage of those, I wanted to look around a little on the river property and not just dig trash from a small area.

 

The group picture is of the motley crew of designer prospecting, I'm tall so i always have to stand in the back of the crowd and in case I'm not tall enough i guess i had to hold the shovel over my head to be seen better, my wife in the short dress was in charge of jewelry selection for the day and yes they did go all the way down to the river in flip flops, it a fairly short and not too difficult walk down to the panning area (although no cake walk). a little gold was found skimming gravel from the surface of the river gravel, for some reason none wanted to borrow the pick and crow bar. needless to say keeping pans full took most of my time and I felt guilty about putting on head phones and going off into my own world.

 

Ive got an open door to return and will go back next weekend and detect at the river property some more, the vineyards are more challenging because of the need to be careful around the grape vines avoiding several things that can be damaging. each vine has a steel post that gives the gpz fits, my Vlf was ok with it but showed half as many targets at the winery and i used only the gpz by the river and it was operating fine. no telling yet if these places have nuggets... i have a strong feeling for the river property having detectable gold somewhere on the 280 acres, the vineyards not so much, but again i really haven't proven i could find gold if i was standing on it. 

 

The winery is a great destination, like Napa a long time ago with really friendly people wine tasting flights for 5 bucks, some of the best wood fire pizza I've had. our weekend was comp, so I don't know how much the pizza cost but everything was reasonable there and you can still get a great bottle of wine for 20 bucks. 

 

I talked a little with the manager about the idea of opening some of this property for detecting like some sort of special event and he said he had been considering doing something (special events, bird watchers and the like, not that I'm comparing us to bird watchers) (not that there is anything wrong with that) to promote the winery, so if there was interest and if it has detectable gold in this ground and if it can be put together, might be a fun event and not costly. I told him most would be interested in just a day trip, wine tasting, wine is reasonable and i think the food is reasonable also.

 

so; group picture, winery pictures mostly green and down by the river i guess i was attracted to dry grass and rocks...

 

 

 

not that it means anything and I only had a couple of hours but zed struck out there as well. I checked the wall with a couple different types of settings and only found two tiny pieces of trash. a lot of those areas have been hammered out, they invite a lot of people in there on a regular basis. renting one of their wiz bang things or whatever you call it sounds like fun, sucking in the dirt kind of like dredging.

 

ok wife is calling time to hit the road...

 Nice foot hill gold bearing hill top? wine ? never been detected? An outing with nice people? Private property with permission? undisturbed artifacts? GPX 7000 in hand? NICE MOTHER IN LAW!!??

 

 I'm a non repentant sinner and have to go to the other place.

 

i got a feeling the big guy likes you a lot and he's reading this forum real regular just to see what his friends are up to.

ummm, bacon fried taters...

don't I wish, but if it was possible i think the demand on Steve would be so high he'd have time for nothing else.

 

The owners of the winery are good friends of good friends and the caretaker is a really nice guy I understand, who enjoys a glass of wine or two when company is around. So this trip I'm going to be torn between two lovers, we are of course going up with our friends and my mother in law (she's really nice) is also visiting from China, time will be a little divided. The tough part is going to be trying to stay sober enough so i don't fall into one of those holes I'm digging, the care taker and I are the only non Chinese and he likes to drink... i have no hope. Had a wedding party in China and I only remember the first half, custom is the groom walks around the room and toasts with each guest and there was over a hundred people there... I only know we cut our wedding cake because I saw the pictures. Every dinner with friends in China is accompanied by lots of BiJo (high proof white rice liquor) and you can't say no, you can try... it'll work for a while, but eventually you give in. This trip i hope it's not to bad, oh the hangovers in Shanghai.

 

thanks for the good word, clark

Thanks deathray and thanks strick,

i am bringing both machines I'm sure ill use those and some other things i won't use, that i will need to rearrange every time i try to get something from the car, eventually the entire contents in the car will resemble an unorganized landfill until i unload everything an put it all back in its place... then the dance starts again.

good luck yourself, clark

was the Onida mine that my great uncle almost died in when the ceiling caved in.

Finally got an invitation to prospect on some private property in gold country, i have been waiting for this opportunity since before the GPZ came, it's been a carrot dangling off in the distance in front of me and a source of inspiration. My nose is buried in Chris' s book and a dozen others getting ready and although my skull is thick and the pathways narrow little pieces of the puzzle are coming together.

 

History of the place as I'm told is that it has been a privately owned winery since the early 1950's and off limits to any mining activity and therefore never been electronically prospected. there was mining activity in earlier days and in one old building on the property, in the basement it shows writing on the walls left over by Chinese miners and there are some old mining tools left behind in the basement as well. My friends also tell me the care taker on the property says gold can be easily found in the river on the adjoining private property. the property is a mountain top and gentile hill sides, the area is peppered with quartz outcrops and iron stained gossans and according to the records a history of very coarse gold.

 

I have a couple days to bungle around the property and it's going to be a little personally embarrassing if i don't come up with something good here. But it's a big piece of property and my skills are still new. it will be another fantastic learning experience no matter what i find and another adventure to add to the books.

 

Ill take a few pictures and keep ya posted.

please don't strike me down, but JP's  the god I've been saying my verses to every night before bed... and may JP guide me to the golden light - ta

 

hope nobody finds this offensive (so many years of catholic school to recover from), but we are all like giddy school girls when JP talks of gold and I hope that never stops!

Very cool! Im about 20 minutes from Jackson.

roaring camp in pine grove just a few miles up highway 88 has taken some 15 to 25 pound monsters off their property in years past if i remember correctly from the speech they give on the ride down down to the river. they stop at the county hanging tree and tell you of the history there as well, it's really an interesting tour, but very sad for those who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. they sure had great gold back then if you lived long enough to enjoy it.

Nice!  If only you could chat with great grandpa for a while about his gold mining expeditions....

 

strick

 

you have no idea how much id like that... he died at 33 an inn keeper in the same town. newspaper called it liver disease, but it was sudden, not a lingering sickness. newspapers can at least help me feel i know a little bit about him. his brother was almost killed one day according to the local newspaper in a mine collapse, 40 ton section fell in trapping him in a void. he was basically uninjured and spent the next few days recovering at my great-grandfathers boarding house in center jackson, the newspaper said. few days recovering makes you wonder what uninjured was back in those days (guess it would take at least a few days for me to fully clean my shorts). other newspapers have stories that add some mystery surrounding his death. My grandmother was a little girl at the time and remembered many stories of her dad and life in Jackson, she told them often, yes, it would be very nice indeed...

thought id post a picture of a nugget that has special meaning for me. this nugget was found by my great grand father in Jackson California back in around 1890 when he was a young man of about 22 years and working as a gold minor.

Jasong,

I posted it today a told everyone to be brutal, so far its generating some discussion and not an immediate reject... i am happy about that. I'm learning more for next time so all is good in the hunt and either way i love it. 

 

I might go back to look for more of the zircon brown matrix stuff, there might be a specimen worth collecting to be found and it gives me something else to look for while I'm not finding gold.

Like on family guy when Stewie and Brian glue their hands together in the big box store, don't get it on your hands and then grab the pick handle. although, you can tell the wife you might as well go prospecting the pick is stuck to your hand anyway.

They make some amazing epoxies and such, I used some stuff from west marine on one of my bigger mistakes. I bought this old boat for $300.00 (anyone who has made this mistake knows that you have to add a couple of 00's to the price you pay if you plan to get it in the water) anyway, the wood in old boats as most of you know changes a little over time... the transom in this one turned out to be filled with wood chips and dust. I filled it with this this liquid epoxy and damned if it wasn't stronger than new just by drilling a few holes and squirting two or three paychecks worth of this stuff into the rotten wood. amazing... finally gave the boat to my mechanic and bought a decent one, but oh what a lesson.

nice...

OK final analysis on the supposed meteorite is that it is sadly not, but for the edification of all interested it is most likely rutile with small zircon crystals and possibly some quartz as well... good eye LipCa!

 

 

Was doing some more reading and zircon crystals are frequently dull grey and square as well as rust colored patches and the more gem quality are of course transparent and multi colored. this all matches for a small chunk of zircon crystals possibly some quartz and rutile on a brown matrix and NOT meteorite. This is what I love about this... I'm learning all kinds of stuff you couldn't shove down my throat when I was in school and now I can't wait to crack a book! Thanks again for all the help, now I can't wait to go find something else... ok gold i hope. (gee... the more i look at all this stuff the more it all looks alike)

I see quartz in that rock....

Quartz from what I've read is not associated w/meteorites, I also have read heat damage may alter the crystals although I'm not sure in what ways outside my own experiments with minerals and gemstone in one of my ceramic kilns which produces similar results.

Hi LipCa,

Jury is still out, it has very interesting things going on and it will be fun trying to find out exactly what it is and I appreciate any help.

Hi Fred,

I found this piece late in the day, when the lightning started I got in my car and was going to go home the rain was also coming down very heavy. As I was driving the weather cleared and I began checking new locations. By chance I marked a waypoint on my gps a few feet away because I was interested in returning for other reasons near by.

I hope these are better pictures, they show the fusion crust and two areas where larger crystals have broken off probably during impact, fragments of the crystal remain although heat damaged. you can also see lines remaining on the metal from the crystal in the empty pockets. other pictures show the many small crystals intermixed in the metal, some of the rust patterns are also visible in these pictures I hope, it may also be a lot easier for me to see because I want to... anyway I think it is?

Really nice looking pick!!