My last outing, A Weekly posting Options

[Woody]

Here is a pic of the Garnets and gold. Nothing great but not too bad for just a few buckets.

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[Denise]

Great Garnets and gold Woody! Looks like you found a sweet spot. Your dog Aspen is beautiful and she looks like she really enjoys the outings with you.

You and those nasty spider stories Woody! Better in your tent than mine though.

[Denise]

Thanks Mrs CP,

That material is what I have been calling Banded Black Fluorite. I get it in one location by the bucket loads. I always thought it was fluorite because it was softer than I would expect from Quartz. I will have to do some more checking and see if maybe I was wrong. Hope you can do something nice with it. I can always get you some more. Later, Woody.

I did a hardness test on that piece and the darker is definately quartz, but the over coating is softer. Im thinking the softer coating is Microcline. I won't be working this piece other than to clean it up a bit more. I love the crystal points, which also indicates it's a quartz crystal.

Now to figure out if its an Epimorph or a Perimorph.... I always get them confused.

[Woody]

Ah yes! Epi or Peri the age old question.


I'm going to leave that to you because that is above my pay-grade of thinking. I get it from an area that has it in abundance. It occures in thin streaks or lines mixed in with the matrex. Occasionally it also has some purple hues to it. I mentioned to Dan that I would send you some pictures of some of my better specimens. The next time we meet, I will set you guys up with some better pieces. Have a good one, woody.

[Denise]

Thanks Woody, that sounds great!!

[Woody]

Hi all,

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks as of late. I filed a claim on Monday and am very excited. There was a lot of work involved and it took me a couple of “at bats” to get it right but I am now much wiser. I shall grant the same privileges to lifetime members that as Swizz does at his claim.

I was up there all weekend long and did some more poking around. I ran about 12 buckets total of material. Some showed good color and others showed nothing. It is a lot of hard work. From my collection point to my wash point is just under a half mile. I screen my buckets to around ¾ mesh at my collection point into 5 gallon buckets. Then carry the buckets about 50 yards to a wheel barrow. Then it is down the trail and off I go. Four buckets of dirt is about all I can handle in the wheel barrow, at times it is kind of steep. The place I am working has lots of thick clay and is a pain in the keyster to wash in the sluice. It takes me a long time to complete the entire process one time. In a full day of working I can make two runs or 8 buckets easy enough but another run to make a total of 12 buckets in one day has not happened yet.

Over the winter I will be building some form of recirculation sluice and it will greatly increase my production. I know winter is just around the corner and my area will be snowed in soon. Before I left, I loaded up 6 buckets of material and brought it home with me. So when that Cabin Fever kicks in and I start going through withdrawals around mid-December I can get a temporary fix. As I mentioned before, not every bucket produces gold, but the pieces that I do get are well defined and chunky.

I am including a picture of some of my best gold to date. I call this picture, “Gold, the other Eye Candy”. Most of this gold did not come from my new claim, but some of it, including the largest flake on the face of the dime, did.

I have many people to thank for helping me along with this filing process. I could never have done it on my own without the help and guidance of my fellow prospectors found here on this website. Special thanks go out to CP and Chris. Thank You, Woody.

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[CP]

That's awesome Woody, CONGRATULATIONS!! You are very welcome, I'm honored to help and glad to hear you got the new filing completed and now you are claim owner!!

Thank you very much for inviting the Colorado Prospector lifetime club members to your claim, very generous of you and sweet gold too! I'm sure there will be some members contacting you in the future for a visit.
Sounds like a unique kind of spot and a bit of extra work maybe needed for the prospecting process but well worth the effort.
I know we'll be up to visit soon as we can again next year.....it's a beautiful spot up there!

CP

[swizz]

Major kudos Woody!
Your persistence, hard work, and due diligence has come to fruition in the form of a productive claim.
Also most generous of you to offer access to CP Lifetime Members!
Feel free to copy and use my existing claim lease form for issuance if you'd like. If you think any changes should be made to it, let me know... otherwise tailor it to your needs.

[colo_heff]

Woody... ditto on the congrats as a new claim owner... that area is definitely an interesting puzzle, thanks for great offer to allow LT members to prospect... I'd like to offer my help on your recirculation sluice, although I've only got up to Chris's claim once to try mine it definitely is a back saver...

[Woody]

Thanks guys,

Looking forward to seeing you folks up there sometime soon. Hopefully before the snow sets in or it sure as heck won't be until around mid-spring. Woody.

[Woody]

Had to stay closer to home this weekend,

So I went up to the local mountains around this area and did some poking around. I was looking for some different areas closer to home that might be accessible during the late fall/early winter months. I have a few places already picked out but it never hurts to find some more.

As I was walking up the mountain I noticed something shinning in the sunlight about an inch above the ground. I looked closer and found that it was wet Pine Sap and it was caught in a Spiders Web. This was a fair sized glob and I was surprised that not only could a spider web be woven so tightly as to catch a semi-liquid, it could also hold a large amount of it. Then I had another thought, one might say this was a Spider Trap, in a Spider Trap.

I continued walking around the mountain side and made a real cool discovery. I found a spot where the Amazonite was laying right on top of the ground. It wasn’t much, only a thin layer of about 2 inches high by about 5 inches long. But I could see that it was the beginning of a seam. I quickly got to work digging left and right of the exposed material and before long I had the seam uncovered for at least two feet. I continued to work that section back into the hill side for a couple of feet. It was very low grade and crumbled easily. It pretty much stayed on the edge of a section of decomposing granite and didn’t harden up any. There was hard rock close by but this material never made the transition into it. Rats!

For a while there I was really excited. That seam could have opened up and became mixed with a harder host rock and that would have been real nice. It is still there, I gave up on it after about 4 hours of working and it was just as crumbly as when I first started. I may come back to it from time to time and work it some more but I don’t think it will ever get better. I was able to find a couple of pieces good enough to take home with me, and I had fun working the seam, so not all was lost. After that I spent around 3 more hours poking around up on that hillside but did not find any more areas to dig. Have a good one, Woody.

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[russau]

Being observant and knowledgeable can pay off at times!

[leonard]

Being observant and knowledgeable can pay off at times!

Here's a picture of "Santa" on a prospecting outting. I didn't get any pictures of him in the water.
Leonard

[Denise]

Congratulations on the new claim Woody, definately sounds like a great score!
Great report! Im wondering what else came out of pic #3 that you just posted....I'm seeing a really cool looking stained up goody just waiting to be pulled out and cleaned! Did you get it?
(To the right of the Amazonite piece in pic #3)


Great picture Leonard! It doesn't take a "rocket scientist" to see that there is a safety issue going on.....
Sooo Santa is going over to tell him to "use this for a chopping block, and get some real shoes on those feet or im going to put you on my naughty list."

Sorry guys, I miss being able to pick on you more often.

[leonard]

Here's a video I made of sitting around the campfire.

http://golddredgervideo.com/prospecting/laborday2011.wmv

Leonard