GhostMiner

I have a good friend who lives in Edinburgh Scotland and he goes out prospecting from time to time. He does quite well. There is good gold there. He actually came to our mines in northern California to work with us for a few days back in 2019. 

July 25   2002     Part Two

   I did a little more scraping and the beam from the flashlight illuminated the area. There were two wooden rails capped with iron strapping. Jacob said it appeared there was some kind of operation going on down here. They must have been digging tunnels into the base of the mountain and using mine cars to remove ore and debris. Jacob told me it would have been done most likely by human labor and possibly work horses as well. We had some old reports on this area but there was no mention of this activity. It may have been done in secret or someone got paid off to keep their mouths shut. Hard to tell but we were both anxious to follow the rails into the mountain.

   Jacob began excavating the old tracks and following them north. By the end of the day we had gotten within 50 feet of the mountain's base. We were losing daylight rapidly and knocked off for supper. We really didn’t want to quit but figured we could get some answers tomorrow.

   After supper Jacob was gabbing away about what the old operation might have been like. He said they would have hand dug a drift into the mountain and hauled the ore cars out to process gravels at the creek. He figured it might have been a pretty good sized operation with quite a few men doing pick and shovel work as well as dynamite for the heavy ground. This had always been a placer operation with no sign of hard rock mining as far as we knew. There was no sign of a stamp mill in the area so Jacob figured it was a buried placer channel gravel they were following. He said it must have been rich for them to go to the trouble. I couldn’t wait to see what those old timers had been chasing. 

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

   Something I never wrote in the journal  :  One night up on the mine Jacob & I were sitting by the campfire talking about all kinds of things when he told me a story. He said it was a few years after he had left the mine and was up in Oregon. He said there were a conglomeration of characters living up on a mountain. They were scattered about in cabins and tents. A mix of loggers, prospectors, ranchers, & drifters that all lived within a few miles of each other. On occasion, they would get together at an old barn one of the ranchers owned. Usually it would be a Saturday night. They'd drink home made whisky and after awhile get pretty drunk. Then they would organize a wrestling match. Jacob was in a number of them and said it could get wild. Sometimes it turned into a big brawl or a fist fight but they always remained friends after it was all over with.

   He told me about one night when one of the roughest guys in the bunch challenged him to a fight. A no holds barred fight which meant anything was legal except for eye gouging. Jacob said the guy was a young logger and knew Jacob was a gold miner. That always meant trouble according to him. Jacob told me the logger was a big, burly guy and was a good wrestler and fighter in general. Jacob was also young but wiry and was uncommonly strong for his size. They went at it and the fight lasted for nearly an hour. Jacob claimed he got the better of the logger but paid for it with a broken knuckle in his right hand and a broken nose as well. He said he beat the logger to the point where he couldn't get back up on his feet but the guy refused to quit. Finally, some of the other guys who were there put a stop to it. Jacob told me he and the logger became close friends after that fight. He said the logger was killed several years later when he had taken a fall out of a tree.  

  July 25   2002     Part One     WE MAKE A DISCOVERY

   We got up before sunrise and had ourselves what Jacob called a Mountain Man’s Breakfast. It consisted of Two or three eggs, sausage, home fried potatoes, and biscuits with gravy. With it we had coffee laced with double shots of Irish whisky. What a way to start a work day. We were free spirits and answered to no one. 

   After breakfast and just as the sun came up the air temperature was still nice and cool. This was the part of the day I liked before the intense heat took over. We were determined to find where the gold was hiding and set about digging more test holes. Jacob was running the excavator and after about an hour or so he stopped and motioned me to go down into a 15 foot deep pit he was working on. The ground was sloped and I was able to walk down into the bottom with a shovel. Jacob said he had hit something hard down there but it didn’t look like rock. I saw something thin and long heading north towards the base of the mountain but it was still partially covered over by gravel. I started to scrape back the ground in order to better uncover the mystery. After a few minutes of work I could see what it was. I hollered up to Jacob to have a look at what I was seeing. He climbed down off the excavator and peered into the hole while shining his flashlight down there. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he exclaimed.  

   TO BE CONTINUED ............

5 hours ago, GhostMiner said:

   July 24   2002

 

   It has been a confusing day for us. After opening a new pit and checking the gravels we have not seen much of any gold. Certainly not worth mining. The pit we opened adjoins the first pit to the east. There is no bluestone and only a few fines. We found bedrock at 19 feet. So we closed up that hole and moved over to the west side of the original pit and found bedrock at 20 feet. There was no bluestone and no gold. We continued to work our way east from the original pit by digging test holes and still found nothing of value worth mining. Had we just gotten lucky with that first discovery? We spent the entire day until 6:00 PM digging in the floodplain with no good results. Jacob is now wondering if we just happened to find the only spot down here that had any gold. It would have been pure, dumb luck. Jacob is cool and collected but I am not very happy as I write all this. We will continue to poke holes in the floodplain at 10 ft spacing until we either find gold or look for the buried mine shaft in the mountain. We also have the old tailings dump to work if needed. Gold is a fickle friend as Jacob has stated many times.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

Hang in there 'cause this is about to get interesting. 

   July 24   2002

   It has been a confusing day for us. After opening a new pit and checking the gravels we have not seen much of any gold. Certainly not worth mining. The pit we opened adjoins the first pit to the east. There is no bluestone and only a few fines. We found bedrock at 19 feet. So we closed up that hole and moved over to the west side of the original pit and found bedrock at 20 feet. There was no bluestone and no gold. We continued to work our way east from the original pit by digging test holes and still found nothing of value worth mining. Had we just gotten lucky with that first discovery? We spent the entire day until 6:00 PM digging in the floodplain with no good results. Jacob is now wondering if we just happened to find the only spot down here that had any gold. It would have been pure, dumb luck. Jacob is cool and collected but I am not very happy as I write all this. We will continue to poke holes in the floodplain at 10 ft spacing until we either find gold or look for the buried mine shaft in the mountain. We also have the old tailings dump to work if needed. Gold is a fickle friend as Jacob has stated many times.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

On the subject of the old tunnel. we are not talking about a shaft but a drift or tunnel going into a mountain. This may also prove to be a combination of tunnels and shafts. It was worked in the late 1800's after Hydraulic mining was stopped or limited by the Sawyer Decision of California in 1884. This court ruling sent the big companies packing and the ground left as well as the tailings was worked by small, independent crews on a much smaller scale with most of it being pick and shovel labor.

   July 23   2002

   Today’s gold weigh was a good one with 23.2 ounces. The gravels here are looking very good. We will fill in the pit today and begin to open up a new one. If the ground continues to hold these values we will pass our 1000 ounce goal easily. 

   Jacob and I are also talking about digging into the lower portion of the mountain down here at some point. We have some very old maps that show there was a drift tunnel cut into the lower mountain and it looked to be just east of the tailings dump. This would put it at the very easternmost portion of that claim. Over the years it has been covered over by sluff and storm debris so finding it will take a bit of work. I have learned from experience that when the old timers hand cut drift tunnels they were usually onto something good. Often times they were stopped out far before all the pay gravels were taken. I think the lower mountain area has been worked heavily but we will cut a few trenches for a test. We would sure like to find that old tunnel as well. We probably have enough floodplain gravels to last us into early August. Jacob is always thinking ahead. The mining process has become fairly routine now. It’s all about running material at a steady pace. The more exploration.

   TO BE CONTINUED ................

This was the time when Jacob & I decided we could actually get 1000 ounces. It became our goal on that day. We were over halfway there but had limited gravels in the new location. We would need that tailings dump area to be productive as well. 

   July 22   2002     Part Two

   We worked the rest of the day only stopping once for lunch. By 7:00 PM we had processed 245 yards of gravel. We had excavated a big hole right in the middle of the floodplain that was about 20 - 25 feet deep. The pit was chock full of the bluestone. We checked the mats on the sluice before we pulled them and the top third of the run was loaded with gold. Heavy gold.

   Jacob was in a really good mood after supper and we cracked open a bottle of Bushmills. We were on a nice pay area and the mining was fairly easy. The only thing was we knew it would be a limited amount of gravel here but it should hold up long enough to make us rich. That’s what we are thinking. We also have all the gravel in the big tailings dump to run. That will be our last project down here after we finish with the floodplain material.

   Jacob was saying that there probably won’t be any significant rainfall until Late September or early October Maybe even later. It is doubtful that we will be running the upper mountain mine again this year but we have not ruled it out completely. Hopefully we will get enough gold down here at the lower creek that it won’t matter and we can head back home sometime in September. Tomorrow we will do the cleanup from the total of the two day run which amounts to 380 yards.

   One thing I found out about having our camp set up down here at the lower  year ‘round creek is that we are going to have to deal with more critters, especially at night. We had two bear come down the mountain just to our east. They nosed around the perimeter of our camp for quite awhile until Jacob fired off a burst from his Thompson. That sent them scurrying away to the east somewhere. There are also a lot of bobcats that come through in the middle of the night. You can hear them screeching to each other from a long distance away and eventually they are at our camp. It may be hard to get a good night's sleep I think. Jacob also cleaned out a rattler nest down near the creek. It was in an old wood pile. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ................ 

8 hours ago, Tahoegold said:

What I've read is that Serpentine contains microscopic Gold. And, when the hot liquid that forms quarts came up through the Serpentine, it allowed the gold to drop out and form on the bottom of the crack in the liquid. 

   Of course this is overly simplified. However, that's how geologists have explained gold being around Serpentine and in the quarts.

It makes sense to me. Thank you. I'm going to try to find someone to take a look at it.

2 hours ago, Ken Walls said:

Its very common to find gold along with that blue colored material in the area your located.

Do you know what it is? Someone here might have an idea?

1 minute ago, GhostMiner said:

   Here is a photo of a small slab of what we called Bluestone. More of a blue/gray. Thoughts?

When we first encountered this material we had quite a nice cleanup from the gravels sitting on top of this stuff. It will be in the upcoming journal entry. As stated, every time we found this "Bluestone" we found nice gold. 

   Here is a photo of a small slab of what we called Bluestone. More of a blue/gray. Thoughts?

   On the topic of the blue/gray stone - We never did know what they were so we simply called them bluestone. I have a few smaller ones that I brought home and they are covered under an ivy cropping. I will find them and take a picture and post it. Maybe someone will know what they are. All I can tell you is that every time we found them we found good deposits of gold. The future entries in the journal will tell you how much. Just sitting there for Lord knows how long just 20 feet below the surface. I will have more to say about this at some point. 

   July 22   2002     Part One     A Significant Discovery

   We got an early start today. We were determined to run a record amount of gravel. The heat out here is relentless. Working in the middle of the floodplain is putting us in the full force of the sun. There is rarely a cloud in the sky. The humidity is very low but the temperatures top out in late afternoon anywhere from 95 to 115 degrees. There is no amount of water that I can drink in a day that will quench my thirst. I have begun to mix Gatorade and water 50/50 in an effort to keep my electrolytes at a proper level. I think it is helping. Jacob seems immune to the ovenlike heat. He never mentions it and drinks water from time to time. Most of the work day he has no expression on his face and I never know what he is thinking. His face is weathered and grizzled.

   This afternoon while Jacob was running the excavator we seemed to hit  bedrock. However, on closer examination we had encountered large slabs of stone which were somewhat flat but with rounded corners. These slabs were about 12 to 18 inches in width and about 2 to 3 feet in length and 4 to 8 inches thick. They were fairly smooth and somewhat blue/gray in color. They seemed to stump Jacob as he said he had never seen these on the mountain at the higher altitudes where the old crews had worked.

   We scraped them as clean as we could with the excavator. They were encountered at a depth of about 18 to 22 feet. I climbed into the bucket on the excavator with a pan and then Jacob carefully lowered me down to the bottom. I scraped off some of the gravel that was lying on them and he brought me back to the surface. I gave Jacob the pan and let him do the honors. The material was chock full of coarse gold. I hollered Eureka loud enough for the next town to hear.

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

Time to run gravels.

   July 21   2002

   We did a few quick adjustments to the trommel this morning and started digging right in the middle of the floodplain. All we needed to do was dig out a settling area for the fine sluice tailings to settle out before the water returns to the creek. We are feeding the trommel with the excavator because we are digging close enough to it. This allows the other person to remove coarse tailings from the end of the sluice with the skid steer. The reject rocks from the feeder/hopper grizzly bars are dropping off into a pit we dug out. We intend to just move the trommel as we move the dig area a little at a time from week to week. The trommel sits on an off road trailer and is mobile. I think we can operate like this for the remainder of the mining season.

   After several stops and starts and getting everything functioning to our liking we broke for a quick lunch. We had run about 10 yards of material and Jacob checked the sluice box. There were plenty of fines in there and no gold in the tailings so we knew the sluice was set up correctly. Jacob and I talked things over as we ate some sandwiches and he figured this was going to be a smooth operation.

   We ran easy as apple pie and ice cream until 6:00 PM and shut everything down. The box was brimming with fine gold and we also were seeing some coarse in there as well. We had processed 135 yards for the day which wasn’t bad for a start. We’ll run a full day tomorrow and pull the mats for a cleanup. I’ve got a good feeling about this spot. Hopefully we can go on cruise control and finish the season like pros.

   TO BE CONTINUED ..............

   July 20   2002

   We spent the entire day moving the trommel and the rest of the mine setup as well as our camp. It is nearly dark and we are both pretty tired. We have the trommel set to Jacob’s specs and tomorrow we will test run some gravel to see how it does and make any adjustments needed to the sluice.

   One thing that occurred to me is the fact that our pump is now set just 75 to 200 feet from our operation depending on where we are digging. We no longer have to worry about hooligans messing with our water supply because we can see everything from where we are working. Jacob is heating up canned stew and cornbread for supper. Neither one of us had time to eat much of anything as we were so busy so we are both hungry. I’m going to have a couple of shots and beers with Jacob after we eat and turn in. We are excited to see what these lower gravels will give us. 

   TO BE CONTINUED ...............

   July 19   2002

   We did our gold weigh at 3:00 PM and got 24.9 ounces from the last two days labor. Not bad but the ground is beginning to fade a bit. We checked our water supply and it has not replenished. There is barely enough for us to run another half day at best. We have decided to button up our project at this site for the season. We are going to call it an early day and tomorrow we will be moving the entire operation including our camp down to the lower site. Jacob is confident we can get some good gold out of that area and with no water issues to boot. The mining will be fairly easy and lower cost as well. Tonight we are getting some good grub in us and a good night's sleep as well. Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day for the two of us.

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

  July 18   2002     Part Two

   The first pans showed some fine gold so we figured we might be on the right track here. Jacob told me to take some gravel from about 15 feet higher in the tailings pile. We scooped some of the gravel out of the excavator bucket with our pans and went over to the tub. This time there were fines but also some coarse gold as well. It wasn’t as good as up on the mountain but there was definitely gold in the tailings. 

   Now Jacob directed me to dig halfway between the tailings pile and the creek. This was smack in the middle of the floodplain. Our permits would only allow digging 50 feet or more away from the creek. Where I was digging was about 75 feet from the creek bank. 

   Our first test was taken about 5 feet in depth and there was fine gold. We went deeper and at 10 feet we took another pan. The results were the same. At 15 feet the sample showed more quantities of fine gold and some coarse gold as well. At 18 feet we hit some bedrock and scraped the bottom for a good sample. There was even more fine gold and a little more coarse combined with a couple of pickers in the pan. Jacob gave me one of his grins and a wink. We had ourselves a new dig site to work with no water concerns. 

   TO BE CONTINUED  .................

   July 18   2002     Part One

   We decided to shut down early today. By mid afternoon we had processed 150 yards and the water supply was extremely low. We may have one more day left before we run dry. We pulled the mats and took the concentrates over to the cleanup area. Then Jacob surprised me with yet another idea.

   He told me that where the mountain dropped off in a steep decline to our south there was a large tailings dump deposited there by the old time hydraulic companies. There was a 300 foot drop and a big cut in the mountain where the old timers had shot water and tailings down the mountain. The lower year ‘round creek was down there and the tailings were separated from the creek by a distance of about 150 feet of floodplain. 

   Jacob wanted to take the excavator down there and poke some holes for testing purposes. He figured that there might be enough gold in the tailings to make a mining operation that would last into the Fall.  If the numbers were right we could set the trommel up about 100 feet from the creek and process the old tailings as well as dig in the floodplain itself. Supposedly the floodplain had never been worked since the initial gold discovery back in the 1850’s. There likely were tailings covering the old bedrock of the floodplain and he wanted to try to find it and see what it held as far as gold.

   Now this idea got me pretty excited. It was a bit of a treasure hunt but the mining would be low cost and relatively easy. Actually, I’m not sure why we had never thought of this plan before. There was actually a good possibility of two operations going at the same time for next season if this worked out. One down at the south creek and one up at the current digsite. 

   We drove the excavator down the mountain along the side of the old mine road to the west until we got to the lower creek. Then we followed the floodplain to the east for about half a mile until we got to the old tailings pile. It was massive. The old reject material was stacked up against the bottom of the mountain and into the floodplain area. The height of the tailings near the mountain had to be 60 to 70 feet. Jacob said the tailings covering the original floodplain gravels had to be 15 to 20 feet deep or maybe more. We were hoping for a large amount of fine gold in the tailings and some nice coarse gold once we found the bedrock between the mountain and the creek. I started digging along the base of the deep pile. We brought a big tub and set it up on some old stumps. Then we set a small pump in the creek and used it to fill the tub with clean water. This would be our test panning station. Jacob and I took our first samples over to the tub to see if there was any gold.

   TO BE CONTINUED .................

July 17   2002     Part Three

   We got a somewhat late start to work because of our unplanned morning conversation. I went up to start the pump and headed back down to dig gravels. Jacob wanted to feed the trommel today. Seeing as we got a late start we worked straight through until around 6:00 PM and called it a day. We processed 175 yards of pay. 

   Jacob was doing test pans about every hour or so while we ran and he told me the material was starting to lose value. He wasn’t sure how much but he said the pans weren’t showing nearly as much coarse gold as before but there was still an abundance of fine gold so we should be ok. We’ll run another day and pull the mats on the trommel’s sluice and then we’ll find out how much gold we are getting. Jacob said if it fades too much we will move the dig west once again. He wants to high grade as much as possible until the water supply is gone. This makes sense to me. We might as well get what we can up here before we move the trommel or shut down. I didn’t say anything about water today but we are close to going dry. Jacob knows our situation and there is no need to harp on it. It would be nice to have a couple of big cleanouts before we stop or move. That’s not looking too likely right now.

   TO BE CONTINUED ...................

2 hours ago, Mike Furness said:

My only concern with closing for the rest of the summer into early fall is the possibility of riff raff showing up while you are gone. High grading could be very profitable to them if only on a short term basis while you are gone! However having a rest of a few weeks before giving it hell for a few weeks before winter snows shut you down could be beneficial to both of you. And then there is the mater of the equipment while you are gone. If left on site I see someone potentially destroying them or at least doing major damage with a couple pounds of sugar. I'm sure there are other considerations that factor in to your decision but if it were me I think I would leave when the good water dries up. If I wasn't going too far off site for the rest time I might intermittently check on the mine at odd times to protect my interests. I am interested to see what your final decision will look like!

   Yes, there was a lot of back & forth before we decided.