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!