We’re experiencing a little winter here with daily snow and temps ranging in the 30s (F). We’re hearing that several feet of snow has fallen in the Hills, but we only have a 2-3 inch covering here in the foothills.
The forecast is iffy... storm warnings for tonight, with snow depths anywhere from a few inches to a few feet!
We talked with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) this week, and heard that our Notice of Intent on the Friday Gulch placer project has been received. They haven’t looked at it thoroughly yet, so no progress report there.
This is an important phase of the permitting process. We will learn from this application whether there are any special, exceptional, critical or unique lands impacted by our mining plan. Fingers and toes crossed… this has a lot of impact on the time frame for the permitting process!
We want to take a moment to applaud Roberta Hudson of DENR, who is handling our applications. She works very hard to establish and maintain a good working relationship. Our Iron Creek placer project is still in the permitting process and the phone call regarded steps she is taking to assist in acquiring information to complete the permit.
Equipment is the other priority. We’ve already adjusted the Iron Creek permit to reflect use of a trommel and/or shaker screen. There’s a possibility we (partners) have acquired a 50-ton per hour shaker screen. The other option is to build one. It needs to be portable enough to transport on a car trailer. This is going to allow us to determine the most efficient means of processing gravels: trommel or shaker screen! It is intended for the Friday Gulch project, but will ultimately determine which application to use on both projects. It could result in a combination of both!
We’re going to lecture a little here on riffles, which seems to be an on-going discussion/argument regarding placer mining. Expanded metal works great…. but how long does it take expanded metal to bind up and slough off the gold? It could be minutes depending on material! That is why it is critical to have riffles in the sluice box to help avoid compaction with a larger vortex. Expanded metal is only going to hold flour gold long term… larger stuff eventually just washes out!
In an operation where loader buckets are being processed as opposed to 5-gallon buckets, you can fully justify the relatively small expense of installing riffles by comparing to a full-time paid laborer on the sluice! Riffles are both a time and money saver.
Additional equipment in the works are a backhoe, a water truck and tanks, 25 feet of sluice, generators… just to name a few items!
I digress a little… several inquiries this week about Sunset Valley and claims for sale. Please email us if you have doubts about their listed properties! I finally went to look at their Blue Moon properties near Jewel Cave which I had read so much controversy about in various discussion groups. Bob’s first reaction was, “You can’t claim a cave!” They’ve got that covered… they call them limestone lodes and list a variety of minerals. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really explain the emphasis on proximity to Jewel Cave (tourist attraction potential?) or the price tag attached!
But we thought, tongue in cheek, we’d offer to find you a natural cave entrance for a mere fraction of the price listed -- there’s only several thousand available! Let’s see, we don’t really even have to find one; there’s natural caves entrances on some of our existing claims. One even looks as if a mountain lion hangs out there; we don’t suggest exploration of that one! Sorry, Teresa’s sense of humor goes south with the winter months.
So as the wind howls and the snow piles up, we’re doin’ what we’re doin’, getting ready for a summer of mining!
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