And then it rained...

 (Steal a K.I.S.S., now featured on our website)

           The map shows our little corner of the world having received 4-7 inches of rain the past week, and it hasn’t let up this morning!

        Creeks are crowding their banks and sometimes overflowing.  We’re looking at another 1-4 inches in the next few days.

        Our moods are reflected by the weather and I apologize right up front, but it’s been a tough month losing both of Bob’s parents.

        The kids are all out of school and we look forward to the weather that should accompany summer vacation!  They all had a great time with my sister on Monday when we were blessed with a partially sunny day.

        The weekend was a bust as far as weather goes… but we did have a little excitement Sunday when another sister made the trip from Rapid City to her home with a “box of bees.”  Bob and I were there for the homecoming (Bob grew up in the bee business) and the little critters settled in without incident.  I’m sure they were busy bees yesterday when the sun came out!

        We did a drive-by at Boulder over the weekend.  The creek was going strong and we noticed the Black Hills Prospectors had an outing despite the rain. 

        A word of caution to those not so familiar with the Black Hills… these mountain streams can swell very quickly and we don’t want to see anyone get stranded!  Many a time we have been sluicing when a storm drives us out of the canyon and to higher ground with the potential threat of flooding!  I remember a couple of years back we pulled into the Camp Five area to take a look at the creek, only to watch a pickup stranded to the hood in water, then slowly be pulled downstream.  That was actually pretty lucky… the driver had time to escape!



Wallace Falls



        Robey, our oldest grandson, also had a lucky escape during post-flood season.  We now refer to a small pond on Boulder as "Wallace Falls" since the day we were sluicing downstream and Robey took a little hike through shin-high water up the creek around a curve.  Grandpa Bob has good instincts and went to check on him.  Robey was floundering in water over his head... grandpa hollered for him to grab on and he did, pulling himself up enough to be rescued.

          We later heard several stories (Robey is great with stories) about him seeing Nemo, a few yellow sharks and I'm sure a lobster or two...  someday we'll get a sign made to commemorate Wallace Falls.

        So we’ll get back to work this coming week; back to the sanity of gold fever!

        We will post some new photos on the website of the mini-trommel Jim is developing for sale… but give me a few days to wind down and get life back to a steady pace.

Boulder this weekend!

          Spring this year in the Black Hills has been a mixed blessing.  It’s been a wet one, which always makes us happy on behalf of the agriculture industry and recreational mining.  The higher Hills snowpack is melting and filling the creeks, topped off by almost daily rain.  We have a flood watch for later this week, 3-4 inches of rain in the forecast.

          The down side of this is very few days at claims unless we want to be hardcore… pretty difficult with a six-year-old in tow.  We’ve also had some personal complications with the death of Bob’s mom one month ago Monday and his dad in hospice.

          So Monday we had a sunny day with wind and that seems to be our best hope for the week!  Phone calls to family members occupied the majority of the day.  We’ll look forward to the weekend, which brings us back to a topic we’ve discussed before but never seem to be able to make progress…

          This weekend we will be at our Boulder Canyon claim (if I’ve promised you a panning lesson, now would be the time!) to keep a watchful eye for those who don’t seem to get the fact that a registered claim is off-limits to prospecting.  We try to post as much information as we can to help awareness.  It doesn’t seem to matter… I can’t even recall how many phone calls we’ve received reporting claimjunpers!  It seems interesting that our phone number can be found (it’s on every location certificate) to report to us, but those claimjunpers can’t find it to request permission!

          So we’re putting the word out to fellow claimholders, report claimjunpers!  We’re tired of our recreation being disrupted by trespass; we’re tired of our diggings being gutted; we’re tired of filling in someone else’s hole before we can start mining.  I, for one, would enjoy going to our claim and enjoying the outing, uninterrupted by worrying who is 4-wheeling to the upper regions of the claim and what kind of equipment is on the back of the 4-wheeler! 

Later today we might get a phone call J from the U.S. Forest about our Plan of Operations.  We’ll fill you in on that as it happens.  In the meantime, we are organizing safe mining with MSHA… a requirement for any surface mining.

NOTE:  The U.S. Forest Service is mapping disturbance area into their map of areas of interest, which will be smubmitted to the state historical society for evaluation.  Another 60-day process, but progress none the less!  A recent wildlife survey is thought to be acceptable for the Plan of Operations.

Too many questions...

　

Mother’s Day dawned bright and beautiful, and it didn’t surprise our children and grandchildren that “grandma” wanted to spend the day sluicing! Temps were in the 70s, the creek water was warm enough to pan a little and bench gravels dry enough to classify… who could ask for more!

We re-visit some points made during the several hour on-site Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) inspection. Discussion digressed to various topics as we walked the claim boundaries and pointed out historic mining activity and the resulting impact.

One discussion regarded a permit awarded to an individual who had secured permission from a placer claimholder only to be denied access by a lode claimholder -- whew!! We have emphasized this point several times… you cannot locate a placer claim over someone else’s lode claim, and vice versa. What we can see from our research (no names were mentioned) is that the placer claimholder gave permission when the lode claimholder was the first claim filed.

So if our research is accurate, the placer claim was invalid to start with!

The real issue was that blasting was part of the permit application, which infringes on the lode claimholder’s rights.  If you contemplate blasting, you're stepping across the line from placer to lode.

The final question in our minds would be, was lode proven? Our information was that the permit applicant had assayed the material to be removed (interest was in landscaping rock) and no minerals were found. Is this a valid lode claim to start with?

What a complicated mess! Too many questions; too few answers.

It was brought up again that persons are buying mining claims and trying to pursue real estate rights… a mining claim gives you rights only to the minerals, not the land! I guess I’ll just repeat this every time I blog…

Another issue discussed was mechanized mining without pursuit of the permit process. “Call us (DENR) and report it whenever you see illegal activity,” we were advised. Dredging was mentioned as evident on Iron/Deer Creek below our claim. There was also some discussion of grievances resulting from larger than usual disturbance and the resulting liability to the claimholder. We usually prefer the personal approach, as we do with claimjunpers… so we’ll have to think a little on that one.

That also brings us back to placer over lode claims… nobody that we can see has the right to placer mine on the claim adjacent to us. Do you recall a blog about the placer claimant re-locating over an existing lode claim? The lode claim doesn’t allow placer activity; the placer claim is invalid!

There’s plenty to think about here… let us know your thoughts!

Self-contained mining...

 

          We’ve mentioned several times the self-contained system being developed by our friend Jim, the fabricator. Jim has informally named it “KISS”, for obvious reasons that we won’t outline here!

          By the way, the sun is shining, temps are in the 50s and it’s gorgeous out there, but roads are muddy from recent snow/rain.  We’ll forego off-road trips today to preserve our forest. Protection of the forest is important to us, and that is why we promote Jim's system.

          Self-contained is our goal and there are multiple reasons to be self-contained.  Jim has followed through and has conscientiously designed a system that recirculates water hauled into the project.

          The first thing we wanted to avoid in permitting was taking water resources from the U.S. Forest.  A water right is necessary to use stream water.  This is not desirable, primarily because it is an intermittent stream that can dry up as early as June 15; there is no guarantee of an accessible source of water.  So our plan included the most sensible, at least to us, alternative of hauling water and avoiding application for a water right.

          The double edge of that environmental sword is discharge.  A discharge permit is also required for any water being discharged into a watershed, contaminating the site.  A self-contained system re-uses available water.  The only loss is to evaporation, thereby minimizing impact on the environment.  This was our plan even before we were informed of the Spearfish Creek watershed.

          How does the system keep water contained? 

          The first use of water is spray bars on the grizzly.  This water flows from the grizzly to the primary shaker screen which feeds into a large sluice, then into a contained tank.  This will be a continuous cycle of recirculation back to the grizzly.

          The second use of water is to the trommel screen(s) with variable sizes of screens available.  Those trommels feed sluices that release water into contained tanks and cycle back to the trommel.  Jim has designed a flexible system that can use one or two trommels, depending on customer demand. 

          All-in-all, we’ve tried to envision (and Jim has created!) the best-case scenario for efficient mining and minimal impact. 

          Jim is developing a line of self-contained individual trommels and sluice boxes to be used in high bank mining.  He will customize to your demand.  Contact Jim by email at our site:  hillshistory1876@gmail.com

         It all reflects our personal regard for the forest, a back-yard playground for us as children!