Good evening everyone. As you know I’ve posted many pictures of our placer work but never any gold. There are many reasons why I didn’t and no need to get into that topic at this time. I know most of you have understood why.

Well about 2 weeks ago I went out and did some pre-prospecting. Thats where I go and check out areas with my metal detector looking for good placer gound or nugget patches. Well I think maybe I might have stumbled onto a good spot. So I’ve decided to break my silence and share my GB2 finds with you. The weights are: .10dwt, .20dwt and .25dwt for a total of .55dwt. The bedrock jets right down into the wash. These were about 12 inches above the wash in about 4 inches of dirt.

Hi everyone. I hope that your Thanksgiving Day was a blessed one. Ours was perfect, we were invited over to our only close friends to spent it with their family. We decided that our side of the family was to wacked to spent 2 days with(just a little inside humor) so we were going to go to Applebee’s. After dinner Jeff and I spent about 2 hours trying to get his router up and running on the computer, did I mention that Windows is a real pain in the a$$? After we finished, we did some prospecting and research work while the women for played with the baby.The next day Jeff and I went out to the placer claims, I needed a second opinion, as to what we should we should do. Oue goal was to prove one thing, either we went to far south or the seams have run out. The amount of gold that has come out of this spot is great. Doc has asked that I not share how much I’ve gotten so I’ll keep that promiss(but let me say this, it has paid for more then beans to eat and equipment to buy). Doc decided that we needed the hole larger so we could get a better picture of where we are at. So he and his tractor man enlarged it( apox. 75 feet long by 40 feet wide and 12 feet deep.

After studying all the pictures I’ve taken, I throught that I found my old seam or at least the apox. location of it. Jeff and I ran a total off 125 buckets yesterday from 3 different spots and out of the first spot which is where I throught my seam was, we ran 36 buckets of material and vacuum the whole area. Out of all that we got 4 little pirces of gold. For those of you who know where we are, I have decided that was enouth. Jeff and I moved west about 10 feet and worked out all the calachi and rock from the area that I’ve been working for the last 3 trips out. We again ran 36 buckets and vacuumed everything and got 4 more little flakes. We had lunch and discussed what we should do next. We came to the same conclusion, we went to far south and to deep. This was based on the photo’s I’v taken and the fact that the pile of material that was stacked up(about 3-4 tons) on the side when Ron dug the hole out had very little gold in it(we ran about 12 buckets and got 2 very small flakes). Now for alot of people, 12-14 flakes is alot of gold and it is its also very pretty, but, I’m use to 3-6dwt per trips(opp’s sorry Doc) so this shows me we overshot our mark. The road is in very good shape and I hope it stays that way. Jeff and I are not done, shoot we aren’t even close to scratching the surface. We just got to married to a hole and didn’t know when to quit. That hole has been good to us Doc, Jeff and myself) but I believe we overshoot the whole thing. So even oldtimers can screw up too. So newbie’s, hang in there because your not the only one’s to make mistakes.

Jeff and I are planning on moving up stream about 1/4 mile. We have 3 washes that feed this one and we want to give the connection point a good looking over. I’m going to post a few pictures from start to finish for all of you to get a good idea as to what we have done.

The old 29 prospector in 29

As many of you know, I sustained a pretty bad fall recently while gold prospecting out in the desert. It wasn’t exactly a knockout toothchipper but at the very least a firm warning. I was hiking down an easy incline into a wash, stepped wrong on a rock and lost my footing. I was sidestepping and when my feet came out from under me, I slid at an angle downhill, by pick handle set into the ground and then my ribs came to a firm landing on the flat end of my Walco pick.

Bad news. I knew as I was falling this was going to hurt bad and sure enough it did. I immediately got up and decided to continue hunting. I worked for about 45 minutes digging targets and then made my way back to the truck about 3/4 of a mile away. I talked to Rod for a few and drove home and collapsed on the bed to begin a long 6 to 8 week healing process.

Why did this happen? It’s not like I’m unaware of the dangers that exist. I’ve even published articles here regarding it.

Field Safety

The downtime of healing provided me with an opportunity for some much needed introspection. I had to look at and anylize why this accident had happened and how I could prevent another, perhaps more serious accident. Being a family man with 3 kids, health is an important aspect of my life because others are depending on me. It took some time for me to see what the real problem was. At the time of the fall I had a lot of stuff going on. Personal issues were dominating and as far as nuggetshooting goes, my head just wasn’t in the game at all. A poor diet, a change in metabolism from quitting a lifelong habit of oral tobacco and a job that requires me to sit for several hours every day had caused me to gain weight. I looked in the mirror one day while I was healing and was suddenly shocked by what I saw. I found myself to be overweight and out of shape. It came to me that the reason I had fallen was due to being out of shape, mentally and physically. I hit a crisis point and knew I had to do something about it. It was time to up my game.

In addition to wanting to provide a healthy, living husband and father to my wife and kids and live a healthy life that felt good, I obviously looked at the benefits that it could bring to my hobby. I had thought about this before during the year, thinking I should get in good shape at some point.(whenever the hell that is!) What got me thinking about it initially was Rob Allison’s hunting parnter Glen. How many of you folks remember Glen’s take from Moore Creek earlier in the year?

Quite impressive. A troy pound plus of Alaskan placer gold.

How in the heck did he find that much gold?? Was it luck? Skill with the detector? The right detector? (Glen uses a GP3000) Well, what I heard was this: “That dude is in great physical shape. He just kept going and going. He was the first out and the last in. No one could keep up with him, he’s in such good shape”. Something basically to that effect. Thinking about this explaination for Glen’s success has really been a great motivating factor for me since my crisis point.
Now, when you look at the stats of where I was at that time, it may not look to bad on the surface. The morning I saw how out of shape I was, I got on the scale and saw that I was 196 pounds. So, 37 years old, 6 feet tall, 196 pounds. That’s not the whole story though. At the beginning of the year, before I quit chewing, I was 170 pounds and pretty thin. In a very short period of time I had gained 25 pounds of gut weight. Heck, at 170 I was pretty much out of shape. I probably could have done well to gain 15 or 20 pounds of lean muscle, but gut fat? No way. 6 foot, 196 with a 39 inch waistline may not be obese but it’s definitely in the overweight category.

Find out where you are. <<< Click.
I realized that I was at a definitive turning point in my life. I had the choice to either begin exercising and changing my diet or to continue without change and go to 240, furthing risking health complications like heart disease. I thought to myself, do I really want to be 45 or 50 years old and weigh 250 pounds or more? Or, Do I want to be in the best physical condition of my life and give the gift of health to myself and the people who care about and depend on me? To me, it was a no brainer but if it was going to happen, things had to change.

This all occurred to me a few weeks ago, near the end of my physical healing phase. It’s interesting to note that at this point it became obvious that the accident was a blessing in disguise. If I hadn’t fallen, I might not have come to the realization until quite a bit later in life because the downtime actually made my weight worse than it was. I was already on the wrong track for years with my diet and and active lifestyle just wasn’t enough anymore. Once the metabolism changes, it’s all downhill from there.

So, what have I done so far and where is it all going?

Like a lot of folks, I have some unused exercise equipment. A trampoline, some free weights, etc. It’s just been sitting in my garage doing nothing so I figured I’d use it. I don’t know much about exercise and fitness but I do know some basic stuff like, eat right, aerobics, weight training. Duh. My body was already healing and it seemed that the last few weeks of movement and working around the house had actually helped the process. So, I decided to go for a run. I have a runners frame and I used to run 3 or 4 times per week when I lived in California. Two miles on the beach was a piece of cake. Well, more wake up call. I ran about a city block and found myself sweating profusely, heaving for air and basically, unable to continue. I finished the session off with a walk.

I took a few days off. Maybe drank a few less cokes.Tried to run again and did a little better. After a couple of weeks I got to working out on the trampoline every night. I stopped eating ice cream. Eventually, I cut out all or most sugar (a big step in the right direction) and we got a new exercise machine that I disciplined myself to use 2 times every day for between 20 minutes and an hour per session.

The result after more than a month of this?

Well, I can’t say that it’s all bad. My mental state is/was improving and the discipline was definitely good but the results on the scale and the tape were discouraging. I lost about 6 or 7 pounds but it was fluctuating from about 192 to 189 most of the time and I hadn’t lost even a quarter of an inch off the waistline. What the heck? I ought to be getting something like a real result with all this work, right? Nope.

Time to end the warm-up and go for a real change….

Coming soon: Body for Life.

Well Ken from Los Angeles decided to come out for a 3 day adventure at the claims. The tractor guy opened up his trench a little for him and moved a few big boulders so he decided it was time to see the damage. I got out late friday afternoon due to a doctor’s appointment. I going to post one picture of Ken’s trench and but not of his gold at his request. First thing Saturday morning, I cleaned up what was left from last Sunday when I beat myself up with the big Jack Hammer. Well this time I got smart and brought my Small Jack Hammer. I wanted to make a cut North to South across our hugh pit and see if I could locate anything that might carry gold. Our gold bearing material is very easy to see in the seams. Well I finished the cut this weekend. Made my first jack hammer run mid-morning Saturday and spent the rest of Saturday cleaning up. Got down a whole another 4 inches and got a few pieces of gold. I figured since I got things cleaned up and vacuumed I had time to make another run with the jack hammer. Broke up what looked like a lot of material, and called it quits for the day.
Ken and I enjoyed dinner and a beer and were in bed by 7pm. We were both tired. About 1am the wind started blowing and it got down right cold, I just zipped up in my cold weather bad and decided I wasn’t coming out til the sun was up.
Ken loaded up his gear and headed home, wanted to beat the traffic and I don’t blame him one bit. I stayed out and was going to run 6 buckets and see how it went. well I stayed most of the day and cleaned the cut completely and ran 24 buckets(2 gal.). Got a few more pieces of gold. As you look at the pictices you’ll see what I’m up against. Got another 4 inches Sunday for a total of 8 inches for the weekend. I didn’t get any pictures of the gold this time but it weighed a little over 1/2dwt. The pictures with the humps marked are very solid and my small jack hammer just couldn’t handle them.

O’29er/tired 29er