Winter prospecting...

It’s a beautiful time of year here in the Black Hills. We’ve had two weeks of very mild weather, with temps in the 40s and 50s most days.

It’s hard to stay inside during weather like that… so we didn’t!

We headed for the Rochford area, checking on our claims as we went. Alex had to throw some rocks in Rapid Creek, but we kept him well back. The creek gurgled as it ran from exposed water back under the ice. It kindof sounded like spring here in December! I showed Alex what we call honeycomb ice, dangerous because it has been weakened by freezing, thawing and re-freezing.

Another thing we couldn’t help but notice were huge swaths of bug trees, their red tops scarring the beautiful scenery. They are working hard trying to harvest as much timber as they can salvage from these areas, and we were pleased to see that whomever is cutting on our claim had taken care to preserve our claim post!

We will caution all those venturing into the forest that these bug tree areas are extremely dangerous. Underfoot are downed trees, limbs and stumps. Overhead loom black skeletons of post years’ kill, surrounded by the red tops that fell victim this past year. A quirky gust of wind might bring any one of them down!

On the positive side of things… despite the fact that the ground is frozen, the creek temp is frigid and snow makes navigation a little treacherous, we saw something made visible due to lack of foliage and a slight snow cover. An old trail led us on a little hike to some old workings on the lower part of our Rapid Creek claim! You might be able to discern what we’re talking about… in the grassed area you can just see the Mickelson Trail going across the photo, and above it the snow highlights an access we didn’t know we had!

So if we throw December out of the winter mix, that leaves us with January and February before the longer days of March give us a taste of spring. We might make it yet!

Happy New Year everyone!