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

[GhostMiner]

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. 

[Ken Walls]

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

[GhostMiner]

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?

[Tahoegold]

To me it looks like it has green on it as well. It could be Serpentine, the California State Rock, with sections of magnetite. Or, it could be California blue green Jade. I would definitely get it checked out. If it's Jade it would be another interesting find. However, my money is on the chance that it's Serpentine.

Jade

 

Serpentine with magnitite

 

[Tahoegold]

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.

[GhostMiner]

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.

[GhostMiner]

   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 ................ 

[GhostMiner]

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. 

[GhostMiner]

   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 ................

[GhostMiner]