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.