What Type Of Workings Is This?

[Lead Detector]

1 hour ago, klunker said:

 Exploration. If it was any good then they would still be there mining.

2 cents please.

Visa and master card accepted with valid I.D.

I think your a little steep on your prices for consulting.  ?

[Lead Detector]

1 hour ago, HardPack said:

Some of the smaller rock piles appear to be hand stacked. It may have been a sample site explaining the coring. Check Land Matters for not only current claims but historic claims. 

I've checked landmatters. There are historic lode claims 30-40 yrs ago. No claim numbers for any reference, but I will be making a visit to county recorder and blm to see if they can pull up any information on the past claims in that area.

[Lead Detector]

29 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

It looks like a volcanic ash deposit. If so it could be they were prospecting for quality pozzolan. There is a lot of pozzolan mining in Nevada. Is this in Churchill county? There has been a lot of sampling and claiming of pozzolan deposits there recently.

Quality pozzolan can be claimed like any other valuable mineral. Regular volcanic ash deposits can't support a mining claim. Quantifying and proving a pozzolan deposit is usually done by scraping the surface in the exploration stage.

https://www.concrete.org/tools/frequentlyaskedquestions.aspx?faqid=689

 

 

It's actually in Elko county. I will be doing a little more research on the area. I'll update if the county or blm has any records of usefulness 

[jasong]

That's definitely human disturbance. Wether it was mineral mining or not I'm uncertain. That looks like tufa/limestone or maybe something volcanic, which makes me think they were just after some kind of construction grade or industrial stone, road base for a local 1-off project, etc. No idea, just my impression based off a brief look at a photo/video. If you don't see ore/mineralization then I'd say construction would be a guess. 

There is a drilled hole for dynamite on one rock. Someone probably filed a permit or plan somewhere if they were blasting and it was fairly recent. 

[Clay Diggins]

I was thinking the "drill" hole was actually a fumarole. It looks bigger than 2" in the video. Fumeroles are very common in volcanic ash deposits.

I'm not positive about the volcanic ash but in the video the broken surfaces exhibit the characteristics I've come to associate with ash flows.

Most active mining in Elko is for gold and/or silver although there are large Barite and Limestone mining operations as well.

[Lead Detector]

44 minutes ago, jasong said:

That's definitely human disturbance. Wether it was mineral mining or not I'm uncertain. That looks like tufa/limestone or maybe something volcanic, which makes me think they were just after some kind of construction grade or industrial stone, road base for a local 1-off project, etc. No idea, just my impression based off a brief look at a photo/video. If you don't see ore/mineralization then I'd say construction would be a guess. 

There is a drilled hole for dynamite on one rock. Someone probably filed a permit or plan somewhere if they were blasting and it was fairly recent. 

Alot of that makes sense, since it is close to some rural residential developments that I believe started to form back in the 1980's

[Lead Detector]

9 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

I was thinking the "drill" hole was actually a fumarole. It looks bigger than 2" in the video. Fumeroles are very common in volcanic ash deposits.

I'm not positive about the volcanic ash but in the video the broken surfaces exhibit the characteristics I've come to associate with ash flows.

Most active mining in Elko is for gold and/or silver although there are large Barite and Limestone mining operations as well.

A few pics of the hole I took for size reference.  The hole seems to be about 2.5 inches in diameter from my calculations to the way my fingers look. 

[jasong]

Yeah looks like limestone or maybe dolomite - common for crushing and road base. Around here it's too expensive to haul crushed gravel long distances so the state and the road companies sometimes bring portable crush/screen plants to the project and use rock nearby. So you'll find small pits around remote projects where it's easier just to haul the crusher out instead of the gravel.

That said, NV is one of the rarer places in the US where limestones can host economic metals deposits (Carlin style mineralization), so who knows. Coulda been a prospect pit from those early companies targeting Carlin trends and just kinda scattershot looking everywhere and assaying everything, just to see. The blasting permit should have company info, if it's state land then you can probably find a lease/permit there too. 

[Valens Legacy]

8 hours ago, Ndplumr said:

I think your a little steep on your prices for consulting. 

I for one thinks his price is way to low, on the union scale he is 1/10th the price that he should be charging so pay up.

You are in a common gravel pit for road work, they use rock from the area instead of hauling it in from a 100 miles away. Here in Illinois we have what are called borrow pits when the built most of the highways so they could build the roads and bridges back in the day.