Update: Losing my shirt

Losing my shirt:  up the creek now with one paddle left!

"Follow your passion in life and don't get too complacent. Every now and then, it's important to take a blind leap"

Okay it is time for an update.

Sunday July 17th 

I arrive at the site with 2 (50 inch v belts) to connect the generator to the pump ready to rock and roll.   As I walk down to the pump I see Les has completed his path that he built yesterday. I think no big deal as it will be good for backup.  We put the new belts on and fire up the pump and it flows all the way to the trommel!

The hose has a few minor leaks and the water pressure is ok.  Les wants to get rid of the hose that leaks the most and have and put one of the new hoses at the pump for consistent water flow. I finally agree to this and spend the next couple hours moving hose to his new path. It ends up being 800ft (8 sections of hose) which is 100ft shorter than the other route. We are pumping water up an incline of about 100ft.   While I am moving hose Les is digging a ditch for the pond to run off.

Game on we can now start running dirt through the trommel.  We start the trommel and finally start mining.  After a couple hours of running we decide its time to stop and see what we found. After cleaning the sluice we find only a little bit of yellow (about $25 worth).   Les thinks we find so little because we ran quite a bit of overburden and that the sluice box was not catching all the gold. 

O.K. fine by me.... We make adjustments to the rock chute and call it a day.

Monday July 18th.

I get up exited for a full day of mining and how much yellow we will find.  I arrive at the site and we decide to re-arrange sluice box to hopefully catch more gold.  We start mining and process dirt for several hours.  The trommel is working like a charm and everything appears to be going smoothly.  After the pump runs out of diesel we decide to give the sluice box a clean and see what we have.   We expect alot more gold since we have ran double Sundays time and are not running overburden.  After clean up and panning we find about the same amount of gold as Sunday.  Very disappointing :(    Les thinks since we are dealing with fine gold it must be running out of the sluice and our rubber matting is not catching it.  He says we need miners moss and then we will know.

Tues July 19th (today)

I arrive at site a little later than normal with some miners moss. I picked some up in Prince George on my way out.  The stuff is expensive $200 dollars later.  We proceed to cut a 7ft long section by 15 inches wide the length of our sluice.  After this is done we start mining right away.  After just over 3 hours we shut it down and give the sluice box a clean.  Things are looking up right from the get go as I can see little specks right after we take the grids out of the sluice.

BUT... after panning we discover we have only a fraction more than the previous 3 days. BAD NEWS.

3 days of mining and about $70-$80 worth of gold. This will not cut it. 

Tomorrow we will move and go down the bench closer to the river.

If we do not find more gold soon we will have to shut down.

Not giving up yet!

All the best

Gold Miner James

P.S. Thanks for all the comments and emails. Please keep them coming.