A day's work...

        Sometimes I wonder what I did all day… well, most days I wonder that!  It would seem that I wake up, help get the kids off to school and then everything is a blur from then on!

        So I kindof thought it through and decided I DO SOMETHING, it just often sounds like not much!

        We’ve talked about what is involved in finding a claim.  It seems simple until you do a thorough job, then it becomes quite time intensive.

        So I’m going to give you a run-down on a typical day at the Fox home… on the surface being self-employed seems so glorious!  It is doing something we enjoy though!

        The kids are off to school. Bob starts out with, “I read about…” or “do you remember anything about…” and the search is on!

        Out come the topo maps, a U.S. Forest Service private property map and Terrain Navigator opened on the computer. Bob gets a good idea of what he wants to check out, then we discuss what we remember about physical features of the area (we’ve probably been in the area at least once).

        The next step is BLM LR2000 to research active and closed claims. This gives us a good idea of what claims exist but also tells us who and what kind of history the claim has. Bob can tell a lot by how claims are described on LR2000 and it gives us a good idea if anything is available.

        Somewhere about here we get a phone call or an email; this particular day a phone call from someone who recently purchased a claim and needs further information followed by an email requesting information on lode claims, followed by a drop-in visitor to discuss mining ventures.

        Back to our research… it’s probably past lunch time so we need a break.

The next step is BLM Glo records to confirm private property as shown on the U.S. Forest Service map (this can be a real eye opener!).  There's a lot of juggling going on here, back and forth from map to topo to LR2000...back to GLO!

Now comes the question of picking options.  Bob does a little sketching in claims while I play a game or two on Facebook J. Maybe we have another email, this one wants to visit the Black Hills next summer (we get a lot of these) and talk prospecting.

Bob explains what he’s come up with and we start preparing location certificates to have on hand when we go on-site or in most cases re-visit the area we’re interested in.

If we didn’t know the Black Hills so well, all of the above would be a waste of time.  It’s called desktop prospecting by us and a lot of others. 

We do know the gold producing areas well.  We’re also pretty familiar with access, terrain, established claims and local sentiment toward gold prospectors. Twenty-five years of panning on every creek and a lifetime of driving the back roads of the Black Hills is a definite advantage!

It’s about time to pick the kids up from school and start homework, preparations for their next day and whatever miscellaneous activities are on the schedule.

That’s an in-house day, but we still have to schedule in time at the proposed claim before we commit to it.  Then if it ptoves up, there’s notorizing, filing…

Now that’s a day’s work and we might merit a claim, or on a good day more than one claim.  Usually after we go on-site there are adjustments to be made.  Right now we’re finding as much as we can because weather might halt the whole on-site experience!

The one thing you can count on, seven days a week, is Bob saying, , “I read about…” or “do you remember anything about…”

WARNING!!! 

STOP

We have had several inquiries about buying claims on-line!  We'll make you a deal that could save you thousands of $$$!  Before you buy... for $100 we'll research the claim and tell you if it is a legitimate claim, what we perceive as the gold resources on the claim, access, campsite availability, etc.  Considering that we see claims ranging in price from $1000-$25,000, that's a really good deal!  One contact stated they had been offered "their choice" of another claim after they found out what they bought wasn't legitimate... will their next "choice" be legitimate?  Think about it!

Going underground...

　
This blog is credited mostly to Bob, since it goes into geology that I can comprehend but not communicate!

We’ve talked about the unique and varied geology of the Black Hills. The Homestake Mine, active in the Black Hills for over 100 years and now committed to an underground science lab, worked underground as well as open pit.

We were lucky enough to play host to some geologists who were very interested in the Homestake and thought we would share some of the information we have accumulated on the subject.

Here is a 3-dimensional model of the Homestake formation.
　
We were lucky enough to have an underground tour before the mine closed and are grateful that happened. It’s was awesome, hot, humid and amazing all at the same time! The tour started (after a safety orientation) with a ride down the Yates shaft to near 5000 feet. We continued to the #4 winze shaft which took us to about the 7000-foot level, then walked to below 8000 feet. It was an experience I don’t know if I’d want to repeat, but definitely a chance in a lifetime!

This diagram shows the plunge and complex folding of the underground workings.

The geologic makeup of the Homestake is shown below, but the majority of this is visible in the historic Open Cut as well.

What is equally impressive, though (as portrayed by red dotted line on topo below), is how much underground real estate was developed. We know they went 1-1/2 miles into the ground, but how many surface acres were involved? This map gives you a rough idea, though it is by no means a true model. Work was most concentrated in the Lead area, but progressed to the southeast with depth. Strawberry Hill, if you are familiar with local landmarks, marks what might be the southern boundary of underground activity.

So the open cut, though huge, is just the tip of what happened underground.

We always enjoy talking to the old Homestakers; do they have stories to tell!

Pan it out!

          The creeks are ice-rimmed, which makes me shiver just looking at them.  I’m not about to dip a toe, or a pan when frost-bite is the most likely result!

          So, if you’ve ever spent a winter in the Black Hills, you know there are always breaks in the weather and you might get a 70 degree day perfect for panning!  That doesn’t mean the creeks are … that’s why with each outing this time of year I try to bring home a few buckets of material and throw them in a tub with a lid. Winter arrives, we get a nice day and I’ve got material to pan.  It’s a bit like looking for discovery… you don’t know what’s there until you run a pan!

          Today is a nice November day.  I can’t get to the creek for various reasons, but I can take a break, run a pan and see what I see.  It’s a great reward when you can’t get out there, but need a break from tedious chores!

     The material I am panning is from layers near bedrock on a creek that floods in the spring, then quickly dries up. Amazingly, we do less prospecting there when the creek is running than later.  Flooding moves gold, but it also saturates everything.

          We usually do some “bedrocking” later in the season.  The same principals apply as those in working a gravel bench.  The top layers may have a little recent flood gold, but the deeper you go the more plentiful the gold. 

The best way to approach this is to start digging in the “gut” of the stream where the flow is strongest during flooding. Digging down isn’t much fun, but as you do you can expand the hole horizontally to make the process easier.  I recommend expanding across the stream.

          Sample as you go, looking for black sands or nodules. This will tell you which layers have gold. Bench gravel in the creek is the same as outside the creek. There can be layers of large rock (bigger flood years), layers of grey clay (decomposed rock or forest fire ash), layers of red (mineralized) rock… every stream differs.

          Generally you’ll need to get below large rock and encounter a hard-packed small sized gravel layer to find good gold.  This is the layer I would recommend hauling home for some off-season panning!

          Do you remember the movie made in South Dakota and Nebraska called “Twister”?  They chased tornado(s) and knew they were getting close by “we’ve got debris!”  That’s a good indicator in the creek also… rusted tacks and square-headed nails have been there a long time and are heavy enough to settle to the pay zone.

          When and if you’re lucky enough to reach bedrock, you’ll be able to see the “landscape” left by years of flooding.  Erosion will have loosened layers, eroded crevices and craters… I usually work this area with one of those automotive broom and dustpan sets… letting it dry first if necessary. Keep working back and forth across the streambed, getting an idea where the best gravel dropped out.

          Whatcha gotta love about this is… next spring it will flood and fill your diggings and you’ll be hard pressed to know where you started and Mother Nature left off!

          Congrats to Joel on his new placer claim and we hope Katie and John are enjoying the Black Hills experience... Happy digging!

Creekside...

        The most often asked question by those new to prospecting has got to be, “where do I dig?”

        We’re going to talk beyond the commonly given advice of inside curve of the stream and behind large boulders.  If you’re out to pan one weekend, that might merit you a few flakes and you’ll be content for the rest of your life that you found gold!

        The more likely scenario is that it gives you the bug… gold fever, and you want to find more!  Curiously it is finding gold, the hunt, that strikes a cord with most prospectors.  We’ll repeat… it’s a lot of work for a little gold; we don’t do it to get rich!

So now you’re serious, right?  You prospected as a guest on someone’s claim or paid for a pan or the right to dig.  Someone somewhere started that process by prospecting.

We’re going to explore gravel bars as left by the process of erosion:  freezing, thawing, fire, flood,.. just a few of the elements that contribute to placer deposits. Most of this occurred long before the gold rushers, but each year of flooding adds a new layer.  A major flood, however, can strip those layers and re-deposit them elsewhere!

Each spring when we re-visit one of our claims, we have to reorient ourselves because the spring floods are extensive enough to re-arrange things.  That big boulder that someone dug behind last year might be 100 feet down the creek; our previous year’s diggings may have been flooded and the entire creekbed re-landscaped!

The reason you are instructed to look to the inside bend of a creek is obvious… water slows and drops out the gold.  Now if you are looking at it with the right perspective, that happened not only last spring but every spring since the creek adopted its current route.  If the stream has been at it a long time, a gravel bank has developed.  So where would the quantity of gold have deposited… in the stream or the gravel bank?

        So get out of the creek and wander around, looking if there is sign of old digging on the banks.  Those old-timers didn’t keep digging unless it was worth it! 

        First on the agenda is to remove sloughage… try to get a look at what they were digging for by depth of digging.  That will be a pretty good indicator of how deep they needed to go for good gold.  It’s also a lot easier to dig into the bank vertically rather than horizontally!  This top from someone, who out of necessity, applies herself to digging in the most efficient manner since I don’t have the size or muscle for heavy work!

Now take a good look at what you’ve exposed, then sample, sample, sample.  Recent floods, again, may have deposited in top layers.  I prefer to test pan each layer exposed, but have become pretty good at selecting what will probably pay.  You don’t need gold in every pan… black sands or nodules will tell you if further testing is merited.  Better yet, if sands and/or nodules are present, classify out a bucket and sluice!  It’s faster, and if you use ribbed matting you’ll probably see the gold as you sluice!

One word of warning… if there are clay layers, which will usually be red, gray or yellow, pay attention to if they dissolve in the pan before running it in the sluice box.  If they “ball up” in your pan, they’re going to do the same in the sluice, gathering gold as they go! Here’s another reason we like to use a piece of ribbed matting sized to the funnel of the sluice, but not glued in.  The matting can easily be pulled, cleaned and re-inserted before you run suspicious clay material.  That way you’re not out your previous hard labor!

Once you isolate the pay zone or zones, it’s your decision whether to run all the material or “high grade.”  You move the same amount of dirt, it’s just a matter of how much you want to run through the sluice box.

A final word of caution… it’s easy to get excited and want to mine only the gold zone.  Remove overburden as you go.  We’ve seen too much unsafe undercutting trying to mine out the pay zone.  It’s not safe… Black Hills history tells of several incidents where placer miners were buried in gravels as they tunneled in.  Some lived, some didn’t.  It may not look like that much, but a half ton of gravel falling on you could be fatal.