Quote from: imallie on June 14, 2024, 11:32:52 PMHey Lori -
First of all - so cool that a) you do that and b) you get such a kick out of it!
So can I ask a couple of questions which are, I'm certain, pretty ignorant... but they're just because I'm curious?
These mining sites --is it a law of diminishing returns? I assume the more they are mined, the more difficult it is to mine subsequently both in terms of quality and quantity of stone, yes? And unlike, say rooting for truffles or something, they aren't in a constant cycle of growth, right? So how do you combat this?
Second, does the rain or any foul weather play into this in a positive way? I know it certainly can make a pleasurable experience unpleasurable... but I mean, does erosion ever refresh a site or an area?
Just curious how the mechanics of all this works! Seems fascinating!
Love,
Allie
Hi Allie,
The simple answer... it depends. In hard rock mining where they carve rocks out of a mountain, it depends on the vein they are mining. It might be small and become huge, or start huge and dwindle to nothing.
I have studied the Empire Gold Mine here. It was one of the top gold producers in the county back in the day. In places, the shaft is 500' underground and over a mile of tunnels. The veins of gold they were following started at six feet wide, but got thinner and thinner until they disappeared. They dug a lot of prospecting pits hoping the vein continued so they could locate it, but never did.
What I do is placer mining. I collect gold that has already eroded out of the mountain. Here again, the answer is... it depends. If five ounces of gold erode out of the mountain and wash down into the stream, and I find five ounces, obviously I have collected it all and would need to move on. But we have no way of knowing how much is in the mountain, or how much has eroded out over the past 1,000+ years.
For this reason, I do a lot of sampling. I look for drop zones and use my metal detector to locate hidden drop zones. I then sample those and record the results. Once I determine where the gold is, where the paystreak lies (the gold is deposited in straight lines), and at what depth then the fun begins. In some cases, I didn't find anything, or so little it did not catch my interest. The spot where I am now continues to pay off. In 2018, my mining buddy and I changed the flow of the river and dug up the whole bottom of the creek to knee-deep and an area of about 20' across by 40' long.
While researching the area, I found a copy of the very first map ever drawn of this area in the "Dakota Territories". It was surveyed in 1898-1899 and the map was published in 1900. On that map was drawn a survey of "my spot" where someone already had a gold claim. I believe the claim was filed as early as 1878 and was part of the gold rush that started when the Custer Expedition discovered gold on French Creek far to the southwest of here.
The fact that this area continues to pay off (for over 100 years), tells me that there is a large source that is slowly eroding into the creek. I believe I have located the vein that the Empire Mine lost track of. I don't know its exact location, but I believe that is the source that is eroding out. I have checked every inch of these mountains in a mile radius and the source is not on the surface. Perhaps it is in the creek bottom, or near enough to it that the Spring floods replenish the supply each year.
As to your second question, yes bad weather can have a good outcome. Heavy rain can erode the lodes faster and wash the gold downhill into the creek. The flood waters have more energy so can move gold downstream more easily, and erode the bottom to expose new gold, or old deposits that were too large to move in the past. Even a forest fire can burn hot enough to fuse tiny specks of gold in the soil into larger detectable flakes.
The obvious downside to severe weather is the danger of high water flooding and strong currents. It also forces me to wait, sometimes more than a year for the water level to drop to safe conditions. 2020 was like that. The creeks and rivers were still recovering from a flood in 2019. Then COVID happened, so 2020 was a year that I never got out to the creek. I had stockpiled pay dirt from before the flood. I would set up a Gold Cube in my garage so I could continue through the winter. I had enough to keep me occupied for most of the summer too.
If you are fascinated by how all this works, I have written some articles and posted them on my website at
Lori-Dee.com. I intended to make tutorials and I am in the process of rewriting them to improve clarity and make them more useful to those who are interested. I have a couple more that I intend to write when I have more time, (usually in winter).
