Shake, shake, shake

Saturday officially opened the prospecting season for us… Alex said to be sure and say he was sitting on a rock, not in a snowdrift! We did a little sluicing on our lower elevation claim which had open water and some areas free of frost in the ground! It was 70 degrees Saturday, back to rain and possibility of snow on Sunday. Gotta love the Black Hills!

But we need to back up one day, because a drive-by this claim introduced us to some prospectors from Colorado uncertain of claim boundaries J and wandering up the gulch… Bob politely pointed them in the right direction but he was sympathetic of little running water for sluicing. Run-off is still minimal due to deep gulches not receiving any sunlight.

So the season begins… same places, new faces!

Guess the question, as always, is “did we get any gold?” The answer, as always, is “of course we did!” When you know where to dig…

We had promised a few weeks ago to talk to Jim, the fabricator, and get a little more info on the trommel he is developing. First of all, excuse me if this is occasionally stated as trammel – my fingers can’t seem to remember the “o”, some subconscious quirk in my brain!

Bob took some photos and this week we will feature the “grizzly” part of the operation. The grizzly features ½-inch spacing on a vibrating grizzly to free rock debris and is further enhanced by high pressure spray.  Jim has incorporated his own design to make this a highly efficient first phase of processing. Two vibrating systems, the subsequent on the trammel feed, will assure maximum recovery of black sands and reduce the load in our main sluices.  Jim plans to market this design… both on this scale and a smaller recreational scale. We’ll put you in touch with Jim if you’re interested!

Tying back to the claim jumpers already encountered… we are seriously considering an association for Black Hills claimholders geared to informing them of their rights as a claimholder and an information network that would allow us to look out for each other! We do take note of license plates when we encounter obvious claim jumpers, and would share that information one way or another to fellow claim holders… and you! It is fairly obvious that outside of the “tourists” we encounter, there are a number of local offenders that make their season migrating from one claim to the next.

I guess the gold is always brighter…

Have we got a plan!

          We awoke to snowfall, made a trip to Rapid City in fog and snow, returned to the Northern Hills to find the snow had abated only to have it start snowing big, fluffy flakes most of the afternoon.  The temps are moderate, however, hovering in the 30s.

          We were happy to receive feedback from our contact at the U.S. Forest Service today (Monday).

          Before I go into the feedback, let me state that Bob had a pretty good idea what not to try for in this mining permit process.  That left us with a pretty feasible plan and avoided all sorts of pitfalls in the permit process.  We’ve seen a few applications throughout the years, both large and small scale.  We knew that to try for a permit this year, we had to keep it simple.

Our feedback was stated as questions regarding “map showing areas of surface interests.”  Specifically, it addressed a buffer zone around the creek, ATPs (culverts), known plant occurrences, potential plant habitat and a known snail colony....

A lot of this Bob already knew and we had addressed in both the Notice of Intent to D.E.N.R. and Plan of Operation to the U.S. Forest Service.  We avoided trying to mine in the creek, chose an area with few trees and limited varieties of plan life… the snails were a surprise but their habitat was not within the proposed disturbance area, so did not change our plan.

So, other than a buffer zone around one culvert and its drainage, we’ve got a good Plan of Operation.  Next step is completion of an environmental analysis and hopefully, final submittal of the Plan of Operation.

A plan... hold that thought!

          The weather has finally decided to be spring-like in the Black Hills, so we ventured out Sunday to do a little claim inspection. 

          It didn’t surprise us to see that four-wheelers have been out and about.  They are able to access areas that are still snow-bound.  We were inspired about another permitting possibility on another of our claims but will have to do some exploration holes before we reach a conclusion.

          So we need to pursue an exploration permit and see what is involved in that process.  We know a Plan of Operation with the Forest Service is necessary, which brings us to discussion of our existing submittal to the U.S. Forest Service.

          But before we go there… we’ve researched a new claim or two and are in the process of getting ready to stake… if we can access them in the near future.  It’s amazing that Bob can sit down with a map, we do some background research and he comes up with 2-3 claims that are available to stake!  We have at least 10 claims that "look good on paper."  Several of those we investigated last fall and Bob has come up with at least 5 more that we need to check out when access becomes available.

          Monday -- A phone call to the U.S. Forest Service office tells us that our contact is gone on leave of absence, so we have no info to share today.  We will update this blog when we get further information.

          I was curious about our application to Department of Environment and Natural Resources and called them also.  We are pleased to be informed that our (take a big breath) Request for Determination Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique Lands and Notice of Intent to Operate (whew!) has been declared complete and we will now be publishing a legal notice and scheduling an on-site inspection.

          Tuesday -- Still no contact with Forest Service office today, our contact being at a meeting.

          Friday --  Talked to Forest Service contact who had questions as a result of March 15 meeting which were to be forwarded by email today... no sign of the email Saturday morning.

Test run... trommel

          The weekend here in the Black Hills was enough to quicken the heart of any prospector… balmy spring weather (at least for South Dakota) has snow melting and creeks swelling!  Flood warnings are issued for the plains area of the state and today they are forecasting a possibility of rain, which would further thaw the winter’s accumulation of snow.

          We satisfied our spring prospecting enthusiasm with a test run of the trommel Jim has built in his shop for our summer mining project.

          The test run consisted of a small quanity of his panning tailings from the Tinton region and a bit of our Iron Creek tailings.

          Bob was impressed by separation of fine material on the vibrating screen and great classification for any type of material which can be accomplished by this dual-barreled trammel built by Jim.  This system would be great for any clay-rich area such as Rockerville, known for its clay-rich bench gravels.

          We were further assured of the system’s efficiency by recovery of a small piece of gold! 

          Jim is going to be accepting orders for all types of prospecting equipment, primarily sluices and trommels, in the near future.  This trommel will be available for inspection and demonstration in his shop setting quite soon.

          Great care has been taken by Jim and Bob on riffle design, based on Clarkson’s gold tracer article.

          We should have further news regarding the permitting process later this week and will relay that information in next week’s blog.

         

Prospecting equipment -- the sluice box

          The sluice box is the next step above a gold pan for recovery of larger quantities of gold.

          We’re not going to get into sluice box set-up extensively because there are so many variables involved.  What we will address are the various features offered in sluice boxes and what we see as positive and negative features of each.

          First of all, the sluice box is only as good as its operator.  Here’s where set-up and technique play a huge role. 

You have to have sufficient water to wash material, but too much water is worse than too little.  The most common mistake we see is too steep a gradient with a large water flow.  Time and again we’ve seen “a worthless sluice box” tossed aside while our sluice is used in the same location, adjusted to allow a sufficient flow of water to eddy over the riffles.

We have a 10-in. x 4-ft. sluice box from Keene Engineering that we use often.  The positive features of this box are heavy-gauge steel that can handle large flows of water with a riffle design to optimize recovery in this scenario. 

We interject here to refer back to the sieve and a 5-gallon bucket.  A little time spent “screening” the large rocks out of your material is the best bet to maximizing production with a sluice box.  You hopefully know the size of gold contained in the area and can use a sieve sized to maximize production and minimize quantity of material.

That scenario is not a good one for wet material, which we’ll be dealing with in the early spring.  We have gone so far as to fill a bucket with water, insert sieve and wash wet material.  That option is a good one for material containing a good quantity of “pay dirt”, but is also a dirty and tiring task.

Our means of determining whether we’re throwing out gold with rocks is to pan several test pans of oversized material and see what we see! 

That principle goes for the tailings coming off the sluce box also.  We often run a test pan of material at the point of discharge from the sluice.  If you see gold there, STOP!  Your angle is too steep or you have too much water running through the sluice, or both!  You can salvage some of that lost gold by resetting the sluice and re-running the tailings.  We’ve jokingly told many fellow prospectors to let us know where they sluiced so we can return and recover everything they lost in the tailings!

Back to sluice boxes… we have an aluminum sluice box the same size as the Kenne which we bought in Rapid City many years ago.  The features we like about it are lightweight and easy clean-up and assembly compared to the Kenne.    

We are huge fans of the black ribbed matting sold in rolls and cut to fit the individual sluice.  The deep-V matting is our preference, and Bob cut it to fit the sluice box flare and tuck under the first riffle. 

We did not permanently attach it to the flare and there’s a valid reason for that.  Throughout a day of sluicing, we do not clean the sluice box until the end of day.  What we do is pull the box out of the flow of water, remove the black ribbed matting and clean it!  We estimate about 80 percent of the recoverable gold is in the matting. Cleaning the matting can be a gold-saving step… if you run into some clay-bound material you won’t lose much if you’ve taken a minute to clean the ribbed matting!

          A friend highly recommends miner’s moss, which we have used and find effective.  We use the black ribbed matting for our own selfish reason… we like to see the gold!

We see a need for a smaller, more portable, what we will term a “prospecting” sluice box.  We’ll mention this to our favorite fabricator, Jim, and see what he can produce!  Ideally, this sluice box would be approximately 6-inch by 2-feet with a flare and black-ribbed matting cut to fit.  Our focus is to maximize the most common Black Hills scenario of small, shallow gulches.  Our tests have shown that with proper set-up, they is little call for more than about 3 riffles.

Let us know, through comments, what sluice box or pan you use and positive, negative features!

We also encourage pro-recreational and any legitimate pro-mining comments about the Black Hills region.  The U.S. Forest Service, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Bureau of Land Management all need to hear our voice when contemplating legislation regarding mining.  Support mining with your comments! 

Prospecting equipment: gold pans

      We’ve stated before that we use different pans for different things, but any pan is better than no pan!

      Guess that would be our first guideline:  always have a pan available.  I don’t know how many times we’ve been out and about, not really planning on prospecting and found ourselves wishing we had anything we could use for a test pan!  I liken it to photography, in which I also have a little experience.  Always have a camera available because if you don’t…

      In the good old days J, the most readily available pans were steel pans.  Now a popular belief is that old-timers used their pan for everything from cooking to recovering gold.  The fault we find with this belief is that one of the most common gold-robbers is grease… whether it be an oily pan or greasy fingers from food. 

      We digress for a second to the subject of grease and gold.  Your hands, pan, sluice and any other mining equipment you might need should be grease-free.  Don’t have a greasy snack and go right to panning, and don’t wash your hands, utensils or dishes upstream from the sluice!

      Back to panning… These pans are bought looking pretty… shiny and all.  If you are “breaking in” a new pan, metal or plastic, they need to be roughed up with some water and gravel that will take off the factory finish and give you a pan that will actuary hold your gold, not send it on downstream.  New pans are pretty, good pans are the scuffed up ones. 

      Teresa finds a metal pan a real pain for one reason… they are rusty!  The rust rubs off on clothing (just try hiking into an area carrying a rusted pan and not get dirty), your hands and anything it comes into contact with!

      So our first preference is a plastic pan.  They come in a variety of sizes and shapes from different manufacturers.  They imcorporate molded riffles which are quite helpful but tend to vary with pan design. 

      Bob’s pan of choice is an older 14-inch green Garrett pan. The texture of the plastic is heavier and easier to control and grip.  The texture is also “rougher,” which keeps the gold in place in the pan.  The riffles are designed for easy elimination of “rough” material and gets you down to concentrates quickly.

Teresa’s first preference is a 12-inch pan from Keene Engineering (Keeneeng.com).  My hands are smaller and a 14-inch pan requires two hands to pan because of the weight.  I like the design of the riffles and a lighter-weight pan.  There’s times I pan a dozen or so pans in an outing and strength in my 5 ft. 1 in. frame is limited, to say the least!  I really like the riffle design in Bob’s Garrett pan, but again I’m two-handing it and tire quickly.

      For a test pan Teresa will use any pan available.  Highly portable because of their size are a quantity of cheap 10-1/2 inch black pans our daughter acquired a few years ago.  These are the pans you often see at pay-to-pan sites and you can actually get a fair quantity of material in them.  A test pan is just that… a test!  I always pan carefully, but once the material is saturated and the heavier materials have settled I can pan it out quickly to look for evidence of gold-bearing material.  This is indicated by black sands, nodules and bits of quartz.

      A friend of ours has what we call the “monster pan,” which holds a lot of material but is tiring to pan.  By the time you get to concentrates, you’re too tired to pan carefully.

      Andy, a follower of our website and blog, emailed to say,

"I use a 15" Garrett Super Sluice. It's a big boy, but I like it because the riffles are steep and have an inverted angle, its almost impossible to lose any worthwhile, gold in my opinion anyway.. (I've actually panned out gold in it that was light enough to float on the water surface! Might I add, for $10.95 and tax, it was a thrifty buy for the quality job it does!"

      We have no experience with some of the more trendy pans: square and hexagon shapes.  They come in a variety of colors, as do round pans.  We haven’t been motivated by the shape or the color to make an investment, but if someone wants to send us a free sample to try out, we’d be happy to comply!

      Andy's comment also made me think we hadn't mentioned anything about price!  Pans cost from $3.95 up to the $20 range... so if you calculate that you get a decent show in your first pan, YOU'VE PAID FOR IT!  That's what $1400/ounce gold prices return.

      The best way to get a good sample is to use a classifying sieve, or what we call “screens.”  This eliminates the larger rocks allowing more material in the pan.  We usually screen everything we put into the sluice box also, but that’s another blog…

      A snuffer bottle uses suction to remove gold from the pan.  Bob prefers using a snuffer bottle, I just transfer using my fingers.

      So if you’re a greenhorn looking for your first gold, we recommend bringing along rubber boots, a pan, a gold vial to display the gold you find, sieve, No. 10 shovel and maybe a rock pick, a 5-gallon bucket that doubles as a carrying device, drinking water and greasy snacks!  While you’re at it, bring along a sluice box because you’re all set up to sluice! 

     

     We’ll talk about our sluice boxes at a later date… happy panning!

Do you have a plan?

       This past week, as promised, we met with a ranger of the local U.S. Forest Service office.  It was a preliminary meeting to discuss our Plan of Operation for a small placer mining permit.

       

We were pleased that everything seemed to be in order for submittal, as we spent about ½ hour answering a few questions regarding where we plan to mine, what kind of equipment and our ideas on what constitutes an environmentally-friendly operation.  Bob’s experience in all aspects of large-scale mining is applicable to this project.  It doesn’t matter the size of the operation, the same principles apply… minimal disturbance, efficient reclamation, and a vigilant eye to maximizing production while minimizing impact.

        So we feel the meeting went well with some helpful comments from the ranger.  The permit will go to various parties for feedback in their area of expertise, with another meeting on the Plan of Operation in March.

        We’ll discuss in a future blog a comment by the ranger that parties are buying claims on Ebay, getting the impression they are real estate.   It’s something we find a common misconception that needs attention.

        So our permit is progressing and we have a “partner” whose role in this operation is developing the equipment we need for this small mining permit.  He’s been very busy building a trammel to process the gravel.  We’re pretty impressed with the result so far. 

When we started looking for equipment it was hard to find anything to process a small-scale operation.  A multitude of options were recreational scale, then jumped to 250-yard per hour equipment.

He has developed a grizzly to separate out large rock which will be reclaimed, the “ore” feeding into a multiple-stage trommel for various degrees of separation.  Black sands, which are plentiful, are mineral rich in this area and will be reserved as concentrates. 

It’s great to have a partner who has mastered so many of the trades necessary to fabricate equipment.  We’re anxious to see a demonstration once everything is in place!  Our partner plans to develop and sell these trommels, so drop us an email if you are interested…

        Our contact information can be found at http:/blackhillsgoldmines.com as well as mine photos, historical information, claim information… we’ve got it!

Permit me... permit you!

A February thaw is an unusual thing in the Black Hills.  We’ve experienced 50+ degrees over the weekend and the mild temperatures are expected to last until Thursday. 

Forecasts show us back to the 30 degree range for high temps after that, but us old-timers J know that by mid-February the brunt of the winter cold is behind us!

Now if you’ve ever spent a winter in the Black Hills, you are probably hooting and hollering, “Winter’s not over until April or May!”  You’re right about that… I was talking strictly about the days when the thermometer doesn’t reach “0” and Rusty, our prospecting truck, groans to a start even tho nobody wants to get up and go!

We’ve re-scheduled our appointment with the Forest Service because we were all homebound with the flu last week.  We’ll blog about our meeting next week and sorry for the inconvenience to both the Forest Service and our readers!

In the meantime, we are seeing a lot of interest in our permitting process… something we expected but maybe not to this extent??? We expected interest in general… after all I work in the public and having been in that position for most of my life, a lot of people know us and are interested in our personal life.  Most of this interest is in the vein of wanting to visit and see a small placer mining operation at work. We’re hoping to be able to provide that opportunity yet this season.

The next level of interest would be those who either want in on our operation or want to start one of their own!  The permit isn’t even public information (except for you all, of course!) and already we have multiple investors interested.  We hadn’t looked on the project as anything but a personal income source, so we’re a little baffled by who, what, when, where and why we would want to open the project to investors?

Small-scale, by our standards, would mean exactly what we are proposing.  That would be enough gold mined each year to provide an income and potentially fund the next year’s project.  We are middle-income people, living a middle-income life in a middle-income home in a middle-income neighborhood… our expectations are not grand or large-scale! Our ultimate goal is to retire comfortably in a middle-income style.

Can we help others get a permit?  No doubt about it!  Is their project a good candidate for a small-scale placer mine?  If you expect to get a mining permit to support disturbance in a creek… that probably would not happen for the approaching season.  Heavily timbered areas; run-off; water right; discharge permit; or designation as special, exceptional, critical or unique land can be a time-extensive permitting process.

These are issues addressed in a small-scale mining permit.  Interested? Contact us through http:/blackhillsgoldmines.com for more info!  We’re here to help with your permitting process based on our experience with this permit and the extensive help of a mining engineer and mining attorney.

Gold for the pickin'....

We talk a lot about placer mining because that is our recreation.  We spend an equal amount of time, however, searching for lode gold.

It’s a different type of prospecting, but employs the same basic principles… discovery, file a claim and mine the gold!

There is a tremendous amount of gold just lying on the forest floor waiting to be discovered.  Historically, the dirt and rock on the streets of Rochford panned out $300 worth of gold.  The source of the gold in that area is quartz and schist of the Rochford formation, mined at the Standby, Montezuma, Standard, Yellow Bird and King of the West mines, all following this geologic formation. 

Veins traverse the forest floor, erosion has worn the outcrops and you can find what is called “float” rock that has been liberated from this formation.  Not all quartz is gold bearing, but experimentation will tell you which is a gold bearing quartz.    

Processing is a more complex issue in lode mining.  The gold bearing ore must be crushed and then pulverized to a powder consistency to liberate the gold.  We have a friend interested in investing in a portable mill that would reduce the ore to concentrates.  It would be a very efficient way to sample and explore deposits to recover a little gold.  We’re recommending that he provide a service to claim holders to evaluate free-milling quartz ores.  It’s a service we would appreciate at our six lode claims.  In fact, when the weather breaks, we will collect a pickup load of ore from each and have him process it to determine gold quantities.

I guess our goal here is to dispute traditional thinking!  Homestake Mining Company and general publications on the minerals of the Black Hills have a history of discouraging lode mining, claiming that all the gold has been mined out!  About 9 out of 10 people we talk to make the same comment, “Homestake got all the gold!”

If that were the case, why are the placer creeks still being replenished annually?  If that were the case, why do we see what is obviously gold-bearing quartz at multiple locations? One answer to that question would be the current price of gold making mining much more feasible… when Homestake closed their Lead mine the price of gold was around $250 and cost of production about the same.  That does not constitute a profitable operation.  The cost of production has probably increased, but the price of gold has skyrocketed and doesn’t show sign of leveling off in the immediate future.

We highly recommend you prospect or employ us to prospect for lode gold before gold prices bring big mining companies back to the Black Hills.  The gold is there and we can prove it!

Permit me!

Winter in South Dakota equals “down time” for prospectors, at least physical prospecting!  Now we want to be clear, we still get out there and sample, have been known to haul ore home to sluice on a nice day, have even panned (brrrrrrrr) in some icy creeks!

There’s a lot to be said for research and it’s a great (warm) way to spend those winter months.  That is how we usually while away the months of January and February; researching and pinpointing prospects for the spring season.  We lined up a block of great claims in the Central Hills before the real winter hit, so if you're interested you might want to contact us now.  Our website, http://www.blackhillsgoldmines.com/ has all of our contact information for some very good, historically proven nugget claims. 

This year, however, we are immersed in what is a large-scale project for us, called a small scale placer mining permit.  We think we’re doing pretty well, but time is the real test!

A friend of ours was discussing placer mining with an individual who works for the U.S. Forest Service.  The word we got back is the focus of our discussion today.

Anyone who knows anything about gold prospecting in the Black Hills is aware that South Dakota law does not allow mechanized mining without a permit.  There are a lot of prospectors who “fudge” a little on the issue; that is not the focus of this discussion.

The feedback from the U.S. Forest Service is disturbing;  loaders, backhoes, tractors stockpiling ore for sluicing.  The Forest Service staff has encountered a lot of this, from what we are hearing, and is forced to remind them they need a mining permit for mechanized mining.  These parties then show up at the ranger station expecting to fill out a form and be handed a permit!

Now if that was all it took to have a mining permit, ourselves, our family and friends would all have pockets literally lined with gold and no worry about retirement!

So let’s talk a little about the permitting process.  There are two elements to a small mining permit on an unpatented claim:  the state (in our case South Dakota) and the U.S. Forest Service.  Both entities have to be involved in the permitting process, each on their own timetable.

We started with a phone call to South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).  They recommended a draft of the “Request for Determination of Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique Lands”.  Let me state here that the staff member we talked to was cordial, informative and very helpful.  The reason for the draft was it does not start the 60-day review process and allowed us feedback on the draft application before submitting by certified mail to various agencies. 

We prepared that application, a six-page document, and submitted it to DENR.  We were very pleased that it took only one week for the reply.  Two items on our application needed modification.  We are extremely pleased about that… both our efforts and a heartfelt thank you for the efforts of a family member who is a PE mining engineer consulting with a mining attorney on some of the more critical elements of the mining plan.

The letter from DENR also reminded us that “the process to obtain an approved Plan of Operations from the Forest Service could take up to two years” and encouraged us to get that process started.

So we’re on our way, getting ready to submit a Request for Determination of Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique Lands to all entities required while coordinating submittal of a Plan of Operations to the U.S. Forest Service.

Whewww… so much for filling out a form and being handed a permit!  We have up to 60 days to wait before we can even file for a permit! That’s okay, because we need that 60 days for permit preparation.

We expect to learn a lot throughout this process.  It’s been a study just to get the applications all going in the right direction at the right time and to the right agencies! A legitimate estimate of time involved would be about 100 hours to this point; another 100 hours devoted in the upcoming weeks.  We still have, after those hours, several more application forms, advertising, hearings and inspections!

You can read along with us through the process, and/or we would be happy to consult on our specific experience in the permitting process with interested parties.  We could save you several hundred hours with what we’ve accomplished so far, so we would suggest that only serious applicants request consulting, a fee-based service.

Our whole emphasis here is to make it clear what we have stated before; do it the right way!  Sure, we could sit around and bemoan the fact that it’s a relatively complex process, but that process will help filter out a lot of (dare we say it!) amateurs who have no respect for the forest, environment and Mother Nature in general!  We applaud that effort.

Robey, now 9 years old, is our oldest
grandson and a more experienced  prospector
than most adults we meet! Quartz and calcite
crystals are his specialty. 

Now let's take a look at amateur prospectors as referred to in "Anatomy of a Mine" General Technical Report INT-GTR-35 by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service.  

"Amateur Prospectors -- In recent years, as full-time professional prospectors have almost disappeared from the scene, amateur prospectors have become far more numerous. To many outside of the mining business it is difficult to distinguish between the two.”

The Black Hills gold rush brought thousands of amateur prospectors looking to find nuggets for the pickin’.  Early newspaper articles repeated time and again that rather than follow to the newest “rush,” prospectors might be well advised to stick it out on a paying claim. 

We see this same principle in modern-day prospecting… the historically popular placer creeks are rushed, swarming with would-be prospectors.  Now we don’t blame anyone for prospecting where there is proven placer, but just the sheer number of prospectors should point to the fact that “easy” gold might be found at less known drainages. The popular placer creeks are, however, a good place to study how and where gold might be found.  The flip side of this would be that we’ve seen the same prospect hole dug and re-dug and there still is no show of gold!

What indicates to us the difference between what we call a “greenhorn” and a professional would be, first, observation.  How do we know when we go to our claim and see diggings whether it is a casual panner, a greenhorn with a new metal detector, or a serious prospector looking for good pay dirt?

Every gold panning guide gives virtually the same advice… inside bend of creek, ripple areas, black sands behind large boulders… you know the drill.

A good example would be our Boulder Creek claim.  Every time we go to that claim we see evidence of claim jumping.  It is usually indicative of the amateur prospector following a panning guide book… scratching behind large boulders, inside bend of creek, ripple areas.  That’s our first clue that someone is a greenhorn, both in exploration and ignorance of mineral trespass!

The indication that someone is a little more knowledgeable shows up when they have created a hole (disturbance) within the creek boundary.  At least they’ve figured out you have to scratch more than the surface to find pay dirt! 

The unfortunate fact is, however, it takes time and hard work to establish a good hole.  If you are guilty of mineral trespass, the more time and effort you exert the more obvious it becomes!  You might be lucky enough to go unobserved for a limited time, but every tick of the clock, every shovel of dirt brings you closer to being found out! 

To some there is a sense of adventure in mineral trespass… but we not only respect a claimholders’ rights, we don’t like watching over our shoulder all the time!

Our claim on Boulder is a true test of amateur vs. professional miner; each spring brings a flood of some magnitude.  The creek swells with the spring thaw.  The spring flood usually washes out the crossing to some extent.  The crossing has sometimes washed to a point where there are 6-foot cut banks.  We actually watched a pickup try to navigate during flooding; it floated downstream!

That may be one of several floods each season.  The point we’re trying to make is that this seasonal flooding re-distributes huge boulders as well as in-creek gravel bars, trees, etc. It may expose bedrock that was previously buried under feet of overburden, or it may bury bedrock that was previously exposed! A really good flood can re-route the water channel!  A greenhorn would find this to be like putting together a puzzle missing key pieces!

Bob loves this natural phenomena… observing currents and small eddies to determine how the creek deposits gold.

This is called, in general, reading the creek.  It’s most awe inspiring during flooding, but can be done with physical observation of any drainage. 

To us, this would be one way to distinguish an amateur from a professional… can they “read’ the creek?

"The publicity, sometimes highly distorted, given to rushes..., the convenience of modern off-road vehicles, and the increasing amount of leisure time available to so many, have combined to produce tens of thousands of amateur prospectors.  Some of these individuals make great efforts to equip and train themselves, and they are capable of finding prospects worthy of exploration and development.”

The above statement strikes a chord, but there is so much it doesn’t say! The phrase “equip and train” is often left trailing at the word “equip.”  A fancy 4-wheeler gets you there; a bunch of expensive equipment looks good; but if you can’t pan and set up a sluice box, what good is any of it?

Our first judgment of a gold panner would be the pan itself!  It doesn’t matter what brand or what material it is made of… a shiny new pan screams greenhorn! 

We have maybe 10 gold pans.  Teresa usually uses the little cheap black pans for test panning… I think we have about 4 of those.  You can screen the material (if it is dry enough) to get a larger sample or rough pan which is what we call panning everything.  Why the cheapo pan?  A test pan is just that… the cheap ones are small and extremely portable and you’re not panning to recover a quantity of gold, just see what’s there.  The material in the pan when it is washed is as much an indicator as the gold you do or do not find!  Is there black sand, is there evidence of quartz… gold is a bonus in a test pan! The other pans we use for various reasons… the one quality they share is a well-worn appearance! If you can’t pan, don’t make any further investment. Everything you do, short of a commercial operation, ends with panning.  We probably have a couple hundred dollars invested in equipment over a period of 25 years, none of it is shiny or new and we recover gold just about every time we prospect!

So our second judgment would be based on whether the test pan can be interpreted to be a good prospect?  Teresa is a knowledgeable panner, but usually shows test pan results to Bob for interpretation.  He is a better judge of what the test pan might mean.

“However, the majority of the amateurs are poorly motivated and so lacking in the most rudimentary knowledge that they create difficulties for those seriously engaged in prospecting and exploration.”

That’s a pretty fair summary of a lot of grievances… but most of our statements so far dwell on what we consider a professional placer prospector.  There’s so much more, but we need to address lode prospecting as well.

First of all, a good grasp of geology is necessary.  That’s to Bob’s benefit; he was mentored by about 15 degreed geologists in his mining experience… they appreciated his grasp of the subject and compensated with shared knowledge.  It became office amusement to test new geologists against Bob! He has also read extensively on the subject.

The Black Hills have a unique geology, such as does every geologic occurrence.  Several of those degreed mentors specialized in gold occurrences of the Black Hills and made an effort to share that knowledge. 

Knowledge of gold occurrences in the Black Hills is a specialty that few appreciate.  There’s a reason you see geology teams from various colleges in the Black Hills… it’s a geology education in itself!

"The amateur's common lack of consideration for the rights of land owners, his abuse of laws and regulations, and his ill-conceived bulldozing of the surface have become so offensive that there is mounting pressure for drastic restrictions on all prospecting and exploration activities.”

Offensive to us, as evidenced by past blogs on mineral trespass, claim etiquette and mine safety. On the other hand, it is also offensive some of the  dramatic measures taken to prevent prospecting!  This brings us to the final excerpt of the statement…

  “A great deal of wisdom and fine judgment will be required in finding ways to regulate the recreationist-prospector while not unduly restricting serious prospectors and geologists upon whom the Nation depends for future mineral discoveries."

We don’t know if there’s another “Homestake” out there, but current politics does not encourage large gold companies to explore the Black Hills.  We think the Hills are a wonderful prospect for professional prospectors of small operations… that is why we are in the permitting process for a placer operation and have staked several lode claims with the intent to permit them also!

What is mineral trespass?

Every year, without fail, we encounter multiple cases of mineral trespass.  They range from casual panners to groups digging extensive holes on our claims.

The majority of those guilty do not understand the full extent of their actions.  How many of us would willfully commit a federal crime?  That is exactly what you do if you remove minerals from a registered mining claim.

Another form of mineral trespass is the subject of this week’s discussion.  Do you recall in a previous blog an issue where placer claims had been overstaked by both individuals and a company?

I chanced upon this discussion on the “Nugget Shooter” Forum.  It addresses the issue of staking a claim over an existing placer or lode claim.

The forum states, “No you cannot locate a claim of any kind on land that is already claimed without notorized written permission of the senior claims owner. Any portion of a junior claim extending into a senior claim is null and void regardless of type.”

People make mistakes, and we are tolerant of that because we have made mistakes ourselves.  We are becoming less tolerant all the time… the Lawrence County Sheriff’s office has already escorted one group of diggers off our claim.  That's relatively minor action; we could have pursued each on trespass charges and demanded resitution for damage and any gold they had mined.  

We have photographic evidence of one overstaking effort… hmmmm, what to do, what to do?

The next excerpt of the forum creates even less tolerance on a big scale.  It states, “If a group of junior claims extend into senior claims the entire group of junior claims are void.”

We do not find any further validation of this statement, but it raises some interesting questions.  The company that staked a lode claim over our placer has voided their entire block of claims?  If the mining companies' claim block is void, our neigboring claim owner still has a right to his claim but no right to overstake our boundary?  How would the courts rule on this one? 

The forum concludes, “Any prospecting, mining or metal detecting by the junior claim owner on senior claims is criminal trespass and subject to prosecution and civil suit for damages.”

We’re a little tired of the whole business:  We see evidence of digging on our claims; we have evidence of parties staking claims over a registered claim; we get phone calls from people that they or their ancestors had our claim “once upon a time” and therefore they have a right to be there!

A new season approaches.  Ttechnology which allows us to monitor activity on our claims is relatively inexpensive compared to gold losses at today's price.  Faces, license plates, activity will be videotaped in the new season.  Maybe we’ll post some of those photos here!  Is mineral trespass worth it?

gold prospecting the Black Hills of South Dakota: Placer pit design

gold prospecting the Black Hills of South Dakota: Placer pit design: "You’ve found a good prospect! The test pan shows a piece of gold, or two, or as one test pan we chanced to run showed 18 small piece..."

Placer pit design

You’ve found a good prospect!  The test pan shows a piece of gold, or two, or as one test pan we chanced to run showed 18 small pieces of gold!  Experience has taught us to expose several feet of a lateral face to determine the depth of the pay zone, then work horizontally.

Why?  Anyone who has some digging experience, whether post holes or trenches, even digging a garden, has found out how much easier it is to break ground and expand from that broken ground.  A vertical exposure allows you to work forward, which is a lot easier digging than down! A vertical exposure allows you to roll out a good-sized rock that you wouldn't have the strength to lift!

Invariably, as was the case here, weather or the end of the day calls a halt to developing what might be a good prospect.  We’re not young and invincible :) and have way too many obligations to just block out the world and mine! This time it was dusk on a Sunday evening followed by a day of rain…

The delay was a mixed blessing.  It gave us time to discuss and develop a plan of action.  That is the point we’re trying to get across here; make a plan.  Bob worked in different gold mines, and office chatter quite often turned to the gold deposit buried with waste, or under the mill and lab…  We want you to plan better than that, not only for yourself but for the environment!

Let’s go back to the 18-piece test pan prospect.  We had exposed enough to know there was a nice band of gravel and it was probably the source of gold.  Ore exposed was 6-8 inches deep.  Our plan was, obviously, to remove some overburden and run that gravel! 

The nature of the deposit was such that we would remove overburden as we mined into the hill and deposit waste behind us, filling our old workings as we progressed into the deposit.  The rationalization of this would be to never have to re-dig the same material and create as little disturbance as possible. 

I will explain what we see a lot -- throw your rocks and topsoil wherever seems easiest which is often on the bank in front of you!  Think about it… do you want to move that material time and time again?  Do you want to dig the same old rocks back up and move them because you deposited/rolled them where it was easiest?  As you widen your hole, do you want to re-work the waste you’ve already dug once? 

I had called the dusk encroaching and a rainy day a mixed blessing.  As always, there is more to this saga!  We returned two days later to our prospect.  Remember that we had exposed the lateral face to get a jump start on mining.

I can’t even begin to express what we felt when we saw the large hole that had been excavated!  The lateral face was now exposed about 5 feet deep and 12 feet wide!  The dirt and rock they had excavated was, gratefully, piled behind the hole.  They had dug below the pay zone but left a huge amount of overburden to be removed before we could work safely.  We also had to knock down and smooth over their waste pile so we weren’t waist deep in a hole with 5 feet of excavation in front of us and 6 feet of waste piled behind us.  The waste pile  also blocked aceess to the creek, so we would be climbing out of the hole over waste to sluice at the creek about 25 feet away.

We learned several lessons in this experience.  Don’t expose any more than you might work that day… and try to disguise your workings with some fill; we like to arrange some good-sized rocks in the hole to discourage others but also give us an immediate notice if someone does dig in our workings.  Some downed tree branches would serve the same purpose.

This constitutes a good pit design:  Look at your prospect; decide where to deposit waste in relation to future mining and creek access; expose a day’s work and camouflage it when you leave.  You might be able to realize a good day's pay without “giving it away” to everyone else!

A trick we have found helpful.  A digital photo of the lateral exposure can, when downloaded and viewed, give you a better defined view of the workings!  Another helpful tool is to view the workings when they have had a chance to air dry.  This is most helpful in identifying a clay band, it solidifying and oxidizing to expose a defined zone.