My last outing, A Weekly posting Options

[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

[russau]

Twas a good time dredgeing on the Arkansa River with Leonard!

[h20prospector]

I second that ! Good to put faces to seen screen names Had a good time out too.
Pat

[colo_heff]

My daughter and I went to one of our favorite places to hunt rocks yesterday and I thought I'd share what we found.... very diverse in just a short distance...

Pic 1 has petrified wood, picture jasper, smoky quartz crystals, topaz, and amazonite...

Pic 2 is topaz, clear with some impurities but look dark due to the background...

Pic 3 are the quartz crystals, usually worn edges from stream abrasion

And Pic 4 shows the Amazonite my daughter found... I had isolated the layer in the creek bank where the quartz crystals where (probably from the Devils Head area) and showed it to her, she leaned forward and plucked out the Amazonite, pretty wild...

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[Woody]

Cool Finds Colo-heff,
That area up there in Franktown is interesting. A few years back, one of my brothers and I, found a very large section of petrified wood. It was real neat Marbled Agate. I did not know there was Topaz in that area. I may have passed over it many a time thinking it was clear quartz. The Amazonite form Devils Head is very well known. I myself have never found any outcroppings in that area but it has been years ago since I was there. If you ever wish to do some kicking around in this area let me know. I can pretty much guarantee that you will go home with your pockets full.

Hi Leonard, Russau, & Pat,
Looks like you guys were seriously getting after it on that outing. A group of Ol' Pros just hanging out and having fun. I bet there was a lot of young Whipper Snappers stopping by, seeing how it is done, and keeping an eye on you. I would of liked to stop by myself and visited with you guys a while. Maybe next time.

Mrs. CP,
Yep! I grabbed all that stuff. After I cleaned it two days later I looked it over again. I re-evaluated my opinion about it only being low grade. Some of the pieces show fair crystal form and don't break apart easily. I will most certainly be back there soon.

Talk to you guys later, Woody.

[Woody]

Hi everyone,

Sorry about my absents. I’ve been extremely busy for the past several weeks and have not had much time for my postings. Three weeks ago I started prepping and getting things together to take the kids Elk Hunting. Normally I am very good at not pushing that kind of stuff off till the last moment but this year it sure felt like I did. We headed out that Friday after I got off work and did not get to our spot until after midnight. We got up super early to finish getting ready. And for the next two days everything on the earth was once again just fine. All my cares and worries seemed to just drift away. I think that Mother Nature is truly the best medication in the entire world.
I was taking my two step kids hunting. “I hunted Archery so I did not have a tag”. This was the first big game hunting trip for both of them. We rode the 4 Wheeler for about a mile, then hiked for about another mile. I left the 16 year old boy, “Mason”, in a nice spot overlooking a meadow that had a pond and provided quick access to the dark timber that elk so dearly love. Me and the 14 year old girl, “Caitlin”, continued heading down the draw to a place where I had been successful several times in the past. The plan was to walk along about half way up one side of the steep draw and keep our eyes peeled for elk moving in the dark timber on the other.
As we were nearing the end of the draw we started to hear an elk bugle. The elk bugled again and it was obvious he was in the draw and heading up. We began to work our way down into the drainage to a point where we could see better into the timber on the other side. Just as we got to about the right level we saw movement coming up the draw. This hillside was so steep it was very difficult for us to sit without sliding. I sat in front of Caitlin and tried to give her a shoulder for a rest or at the very least stop her from sliding. Finally we got to a spot where both of us were stopped. Caitlin held her composure very well as 3 elk walked past us at a distance of about 50 yards. It was two Cows and a Spike Bull. After they pasted I told her to wait a minute because that spike was not the one we heard bugling.
Just as we were trying to shift to another, more comfortable position, we saw another elk coming right up the same path the others had used. This time it was a legal bull. Caitlin put the 30-30 on my shoulder and waited for the elk to move into a perfect open spot on the other side. The bull was taking his time and in no hurry. I whispered to Caitlin that it was a “Shooter”. I felt her pull the hammer back and take the safety off. Just as the bull stepped into the tiny open area, I felt Caitlin slip a bit. As she readjusted her aim the bull stopped and sniffed the ground. He was very interested in what the tracks of the others might have to say. Caitlin steadied her aim and leveled her gun out and right as I was expecting to hear a loud bang, ….. I slipped a little. Not much, but enough that it messed up her aiming. The bull still stood there, broad side, sniffing the ground less than 50 yards away. As she again tried to steady her aim neither one of us could find a secure position. We probably slid less than 6 inches total but it was little bitty, herky-jerky, movements all the way. And the Bull just walked right out of sight. At first I was worried she would be mad that she had lost such a great opportunity. But she took it very well and for the next several hours she just fed off of that moment.
We continued to walk down the draw and stopped at some nice wallows. We spooked one more elk that day but never seen much of him. Mason also had some luck that day. Just before sunset, he looked up and there was a 4 point bull standing broad side about 60 yards away looking right at him. He tells the story all calm, cool, and collective however his shots were anything but true. It appears he suffered a severe case of Buck Fever. we had to leave on Sunday evening and got back home around midnight ready to start a very busy work week again.
So no more meat for the table from this hunt but I now have two young hunters that are all ready chomping at the bit and making big plans for next year. I can’t blame them.

Good luck to all you guys and gals in the hills this hunting season. Hopefully your hunt and time in the field is enjoyable even if you don’t fill your tags. Woody.

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