** Lost Gold At The Dead Man's Mine ** A Miners Journal **

[dig4gold]

Please correct me if I am wrong. So you are out there playing gold miner with your friend. Risking your life daily with hooligans who want your gold. While your wife is home alone with the kids for months on end. Doesn't seem right to me.

D4G

[Ken Walls]

Its not uncommon at all, our Military comes to mind.

[GhostMiner]

On 9/29/2023 at 2:31 PM, dig4gold said:

Please correct me if I am wrong. So you are out there playing gold miner with your friend. Risking your life daily with hooligans who want your gold. While your wife is home alone with the kids for months on end. Doesn't seem right to me.

D4G

You'll nave a hard time making it as a miner if you can't make the sacrifice. There is a big diference between playing a gold miner & being a gold miner. Living alone or with a few people off grid & giving up most comforts. Missing home so bad that some nights you cry. It ain't an easy life. There is good & there is bad. The highs & lows are hard to handle at times. It takes people with an iron will like Jacob sometimes. If you can have your family living with you it can be good or go wrong. It's way too dangerous to even consider having family on this mine. In most cases it's not practicle. I bought & paid for my home & retirement because of mining. No different than being in a touring rock band or on deployment in the military. 

[GhostMiner]

3 hours ago, dig4gold said:

Please correct me if I am wrong. So you are out there playing gold miner with your friend. Risking your life daily with hooligans who want your gold. While your wife is home alone with the kids for months on end. Doesn't seem right to me.

D4G

You are also reminding me of how much I missed while being thousands of miles from home. I actually had a panic attack at 2:00 AM many yrs ago. I woke up alone in camp before the crew was there & was thinking of my wife & daughter at home and 2500 miles away. It hit me that if something happened & they really needed me quickly it would be impossible to get there. Add to that no cell service. Not something I like to think about now. Sure, I have regrets sometimes.

[Old Miner Don]

18 hours ago, GhostMiner said:

You are also reminding me of how much I missed while being thousands of miles from home. I actually had a panic attack at 2:00 AM many yrs ago. I woke up alone in camp before the crew was there & was thinking of my wife & daughter at home and 2500 miles away. It hit me that if something happened & they really needed me quickly it would be impossible to get there. Add to that no cell service. Not something I like to think about now. Sure, I have regrets sometimes.

I for one would never beat someone up and want them to feel guilty for something that they did over 20 years ago.

Especially since that 'something' turned out very successful. You took a gamble and you won and there is no reason to play the "what if" game or look back and feel guilty for that.

[GhostMiner]

   July 11   2002

 

   This morning we were hoping to get back on good pay gravel. I dug back into the hill a bit deeper with the excavator and took a pan for Jacob to wash. There were some fines but no coarse gold. I went down another five feet in depth. Jacob washed another pan with similar results. I could only get another five feet in depth without increasing the footprint of the digsite. Once again there was not much of anything to get excited about.

   Jacob took off his old cap and gave his head a good scratch. He was trying to decide whether to move the dig site over to the west about thirty feet and excavate at the same depth we had been getting the hot streak from. We talked it over and decided to move. It would mean a delay in washing gravels for the morning. We both were thinking the streak lay at a higher level for some reason. Maybe we could highgrade the streak for a spell and then spend some time gambling for bedrock gold at a later date.

   I worked the excavator for the morning while Jacob took pans to the wash tub. Sure enough, when we got down to about fifteen feet the gravels changed. Jacob washed a pan and hollered eureca. I climbed down off the excavator and had a look at the pan. It was loaded with fines and coarse gold. I went up the mountain and got the pump going and Jacob began feeding the trommel with the skid steer while I dug pay with the hoe. We worked until dusk and washed 150 yards of pay gravel. I took a look in the sluice box and there were lines of gold all in the top riffles. Jacob came over and he had a big grin on his weathered face. He said we were back in the channel. He figured there would be a lot more when we found bedrock. He figured to run a bunch of the higher gold first and then spend the end of the season trying to get deep. All the way down to bedrock. He said there might be a fortune underneath the top streak but was not sure how deep it was hiding. We would take the lower cost to mine material first, then go for glory.

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

 

   

 

[GhostMiner]

   At night thousands of miles away and thinking of home.

 

[GhostMiner]

   A side note to the journal : The decision we made to move the digsite was not quite as easy as I wrote in the journal back then. Jacob and I had gone back and forth for a good hour throwing ideas around. I remember really wanting to go for bedrock gold right then and there but Jacob convinced me to be patient. We had plenty of time left in the season. I think patience was the one thing Jacob taught me that was of most value. 

   Bedrock on the mine was all over the place. It was a geologists nightmare. I think it was thrown around at various depths due to the multiple faultlines that traversed that area. Every dig was an adventure. A treasure hunt. It was a time that I will always cherish. 

[geof_junk]

"July 11   2002" ............  post shows the importance of the pan and sampling before going whole hog into a spot.

[GhostMiner]

   July 12   2002

 

   This morning I ran the excavator while Jacob watched and directed me. The plan was for me to get a head start on digging pay gravel under Jacob’s supervision. Once he was satisfied with my performance he would start feeding the trommel with the skid steer. He was teaching me how to follow a pay streak in the mountain. There was a faint change in the composition and color of the gravel and he showed me the difference by test panning two levels and showing me the results. The gravel just below the color change had some fine gold but the material just above contained more coarse gold. Jacob said the streak looked to be about five to ten feet in thickness. I would have never guessed there could be so much difference in values but there it was in the test pans for my proof. Once again I owed everything to my knowledgeable mining partner.

 

   After about an hour and a half Jacob was confident that I could stay in the streak. He said we were now high grading the hill until further notice. I went up the mountain and fired up the pump and went back to digging while Jacob dumped high grade into the hopper of the trommel.

   It sure felt good having him on the mine with me. It seemed like he could handle just about any situation and he had become a real life hero to me. Things ran smooth and we washed another 210 yards of pay giving us a two day total of 360 yards. We pulled the mats and put them in the tubs to wash tomorrow. The concentrates were brimming with coarse gold. I had a feeling it was going to be a big weigh.

   TO BE CONTINUED .............