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By Dave McCracken

There can be a lot of gold deposited under and around the boulders located within a pay-streak!

Dave Mack

 

It takes an incredible force of water to move boulders in a river. Once they are moving in a flood storm, they can deposit in low-velocity areas, just like gold does. But, since boulders do not have a higher specific gravity, mass for mass, than most of the other streambed materials, they can be washed downstream just about anywhere in the river during a major storm. So you should not only use the presence of boulders to guide you in sampling. You would be much better advised to focus your attention on the boulders that have been deposited along the common path of gold’s travel.

In shallow streambed material, you can sometimes detect where important bedrock changes are located by noting where the boulders have deposited within the waterway. For a boulder, or a group of boulders, to be found in a specific location along the river’s path, there may be a sudden bedrock drop-off, a large crevice, or some other kind of lower-velocity condition in that area which caused the boulder(s) to be deposited there. Everything in the waterway happens for a reason, even if you cannot always see what it is!

If the boulder(s) is located somewhere along the common gold path, that would be a prime spot to do some sampling. In this situation, I suggest that you do not limit your sampling to the area just behind (downstream) of the boulder, though. Go around to the upstream side of it, as well. Look for any bedrock change which may have caused the boulder to stop there. If gold has moved through that area, that same bedrock change could also have caused gold to concentrate there. Finding the bedrock change that stopped the boulder, and following the bedrock change across the waterway, is a great way to locate the common gold path.

You do not always find boulders with every rich pay-streak deposit. But, it is not uncommon to find many boulders keeping company with a good pay-streak. When you do find them, most of them will probably have to be moved out of your way as you work forward through the deposit.

MOVING BOULDERS BY HAND

There can be a lot of gold deposited under and around the boulders located within a pay-streak. To get most of the gold out from under a boulder and into your suction nozzle, usually the boulder has to be moved at least a little bit.

One of the most useful tools that can help a dredger move boulders is a 5-foot (or longer) steel pry bar. If a boulder is too large to be moved to the rear of the dredge hole by hand, it can sometimes be rotated around to one side so that you can dredge out from under part of it. Then, it can be rotated around the other way to access the remaining gold and material beneath. A long pry bar can be a big help to you in moving boulders around in this way.

The key concern while working around boulders is safety! Loose boulders in and around a dredge hole are the gold dredger’s greatest danger, especially when working alone. Boulders resting up in the streambed material are usually more dangerous than those resting on the bedrock. But, those on the bedrock can cause trouble, too, if they are loose and able to roll – particularly, if the bedrock has any slant to it.

As they are uncovered in a dredge hole, loose boulders should be moved and safely secured as a top priority. They should be placed at the rear of the hole, if possible. But, wherever they are placed, they should be positioned so they no longer pose any threat of rolling into the hole and on top of someone working there. You can place smaller rocks and cobbles under the boulders as necessary, to make certain they will not roll or slide.

If you start to uncover a boulder that is resting up in the streambed material, do not forget about it. Until it has been moved and secured safely, a loose boulder should be foremost in your mind. If it is not yet ready to be moved, and you still need to dredge around it to free it up some more, it can be useful to place an arm or a shoulder against the boulder. This way, you can feel if it starts to loosen up in the material. Do not place your arm, head, or shoulder near the underside of the boulder, however. Because, sometimes a boulder will loosen up and crash down very quickly, without much warning. Physical contact with the boulder is helpful when you cannot keep your eyes on it at every moment. The face mask limits your visual perception underwater – especially when you need to watch what is going up the suction nozzle.

The main concern here is to take all necessary precautions to keep yourself from becoming pinned or crushed beneath a boulder in your dredge hole. If a boulder pins any part of your body to the bottom, it may be difficult or impossible for you to get the necessary leverage to move the boulder enough to get out from under it. And, if you are working by yourself …? I know of two dredgers who ended their careers in just this way.

Also beware of fractured bedrock walls that tower over you. They can fall apart and drop in your dredge hole as you remove the streambed material that holds them in place. I got pinned once by a slab of bedrock that broke free of a wall as I dredged away the material that was holding it there. Luckily for me, it landed on my steel-tipped boot, and that I was dredging with another guy on that day!

The second greatest danger to a dredger usually comes from a cobble falling off the side of the dredge hole and hitting the dredger in some way — like on top of the head. This can finish off a dredger just as surely as a boulder. Or, it may cause some serious pain/injury. Fingers and other body parts can get smashed if you are not careful!

Most trouble with cobbles and boulders can be prevented simply by taking your hole apart with safety in mind. The proper method of taking a dredge hole apart has already been fully covered in my Gold Dredger’s Handbook, so I will not repeat it again here. But, as a point of emphasis, the fastest way to take apart a streambed also happens to be the safest way.

Production dredging goes very smoothly and quickly when you have some area of exposed (dredged) bedrock between the non-dredged material in front of you and the cobbles, boulders and tailings behind you. When you start uncovering a boulder in the material, you should immediately begin planning where you are going to move it, once it is ready.

If you run across an occasional boulder that you cannot move by hand, sometimes you can dredge the material (and gold) out from around and under it without having to move it out of the dredge hole. You accomplish this by moving other, smaller rocks out of the hole to make room for the boulder. In this way, if there are not too many boulders, you can keep moving forward on the pay-streak without the few boulders slowing you down very much.

But, if there are a lot of large boulders down along the bedrock, you will likely discover that at least some of them will need to be completely removed from your excavation if you expect to uncover very much bedrock with your suction nozzle. Some boulders will need to be removed to make room for other boulders as you move forward on the pay-streak. If you cannot remove the boulders from your dredge hole by hand, then you will need some mechanical assistance.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF WINCHES

COME-ALONG: A “come-along” is a portable, hand-operated winching device that can be of considerable help to a small-sized digging program. It can be used to move those boulders that are not huge, but which are too large to be moved by hand. Come-alongs range in size. I recommend a larger version of the better quality, rather than the really cheap, imported models. Come-alongs have a great accessibility factor, because you can carry one just about anywhere. Their operation is somewhat slow. But, they will give you that extra edge when you need to move just a few boulders, and you do not own or want to set up a power winch.

GRIP-PULLER: Several companies make a hand-winching device that rides along on a steel cable. There is a handle that you crank back and forth, similar to a come-along. Each time the handle is cranked in each direction, the device moves an inch or two along the cable. These units also come in different sizes. In my opinion, grip-pullers are a substantial step up from a come-along, both in pulling-power and dependability. I have used these units underwater, but find that the water resistance adds substantial work to the cranking action. Still, when you are working alone, having this device in the hole with you allows you to see what the boulder is doing while you are winching it

Where you can buy winching supplies

USING YOUR TRUCK AS A WINCH: If your vehicle can be driven to a nearby position, you can stretch a cable from the vehicle to the boulder. The proper direction of pull can be rigged up by running the cable through snatch blocks (heavy-duty pulleys) which can be anchored to trees, boulders or whatever is available. Then you can use the pulling-power of your truck to help move the boulders out of the way. Four-wheel drive vehicles work better for this, especially when they are carrying a load to increase tire traction. Suggestion: It is better to connect the cable to something on the vehicle’s frame, rather than just the bumper!

When conditions are right for it, using a vehicle to pull smaller boulders can be much faster than using a come-along. One person operates the vehicle, while a diver is in the water, slinging the boulders. Safety becomes a greater concern when more than one person is involved in the pulling and the slinging of rocks. Communication and coordination between the “puller” and the “slinger” are very important to prevent serious accidents. Suggestion: If you turn the truck around and pull in reverse, you can better-see signals from your partner, and sometimes you get better traction, especially on a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Another suggestion: It is better to keep your vehicle a respectable distance from any drop-offs (like into the waterway), just in case the boulder gets momentum in the wrong direction. I know of guy who got pulled over the side of an embankment by a boulder gone wild!

Larger-sized trucks, tractors, bulldozers, and other heavy equipment can sometimes be used to move bigger rocks with even better results.

AUXILIARY TRUCK WINCHES: Auxiliary automotive winches are also able to move small to mid-sized boulders for a dredging operation with excellent results. Some of those little winching units have a wondrous amount of power. A typical 8,000 or 10,000-pound electric winch will move a surprisingly-large boulder!

If you are going to be using an electric winch, you may want to consider installing dual batteries in your vehicle. It also helps to keep the engine running while you are winching, so the batteries can quickly regain their charge between pulls.

When using a truck-mounted auxiliary winch to pull boulders, it is a good idea to block all four wheels. This precaution helps to keep the vehicle from moving, rather than the rock you are trying to pull. The front tires should be blocked especially well. If there is an embankment to worry about, it is also a good idea to run a safety chain or cable from the vehicle to some additional anchor behind, like a tree or another truck. This will protect against losing your vehicle over the embankment if the boulder happens to roll the wrong way. Sometimes this added measure is necessary just to keep the vehicle from sliding during the pull.

Probably the best kind of auxiliary vehicle winch for dredging purposes is one that can be attached mechanically to the “power take-off unit” on your vehicle’s transfer case, if it has one. With this kind of winch, you can use the full power of your truck’s engine to pull rocks. Not only will this provide you with more pulling power, but you will not have to worry about your batteries running down.

There is also a lot of good to be said for the portable electric and hydraulic winches on today’s market. I know of many smaller-scale and commercial dredgers who use them. They are quite powerful! Portable electric winches can be framed up to (1) attach to a vehicle, (2) be taken out to the dredging site, or (3) even be floated on a platform, where there is deeper water. All that is needed is an automotive battery and a means of keeping it charged up. The portable hydraulic winches can be similarly effective. The winch controls can be extended out on a longer cable and even modified to work underwater, which can be very helpful!

LOG SKIDDERS: Most gold-dredging country is also logging country. So there are quite a few log skidders around that can be leased or hired to pull boulders for you. Log skidders are usually equipped with powerful winches. They can really do a job in pulling the larger boulders! Also, you can drive them into some pretty difficult areas. Hopefully, you can work out a deal that will be ideally suited to your operation; a deal perhaps, where you pay by the hour and have the skidder arrive at a certain time each day, or whenever you are in need of it’s services.

PORTABLE POWER WINCHES: Gasoline-powered, mechanical and hydraulic winches are available in all sizes. Generally, the larger they are, the more winching-power that they produce. But, the added size and weight also makes them more difficult to pack into some of the less accessible areas.

If you find a widespread, rich pay-streak with plenty of large boulders that need to be moved, you should set up on your dredging site the most powerful winch that you are able to haul in there. The more pulling-power you have available, the smoother and faster winching will go.

I never recommend that a dredger buy a portable power winch just because he or she will be dredging. It is probably better to wait until you know exactly what your needs are. I have worked many pay-streaks where no winching was needed at all. And, in many of the pay-streaks that did require winching, a number of the boulders were so large that the small, portable store-bought type of winch would not have been adequate for the job.

You can find some pretty heavy-duty used winches for sale at about the same cost as a lighter-weight, new portable unit. I advise waiting to see what you will need before putting your money into a winch.

Having said that, here is something to consider: Mechanical winches seldom have a control mechanism which can allow the operator to stand away from the machine where all the wrestling is going on (and in the line of fire if a cable breaks). While I have used some wonderful mechanical winches, there was never a time that we were pulling a big rock that I was not worried about something going wrong with all those tons of energy happening right next to me. There is a lot to be said about electric or hydraulic units that will allow you to step away from the danger with the controls in your hand.

WINCHING COBBLES IN DEEP MATERIAL OR SHALLOW WATER

As I have stressed in other articles about dredging, the main limiting factor to progress is in how quickly oversized material (rocks that are too large to be sucked up the nozzle) can be moved out of the ongoing excavation. In deeper streambed material, there can be so many cobbles that there is no longer any room directly behind the dredge hole to throw them. You can run into a similar problem in shallow water, where the cobbles must be lifted out of the water (where they become a lot heavier) to get them behind the dredge hole. In these types of situations, it is common to fill cargo nets with your cobbles and winch them out of your dredge hole in bulk. The following video sequence was taken in an operation where we were removing big lots of cobbles from a deep excavation in just this way:

SETTING UP A HOLE FOR WINCHING

Before you start winching boulders, it is a good idea to first make sure that you have located the lower (downstream) end of the pay-streak. You do not want to winch boulders onto any part of the pay-streak that you will be working at a later time. While the winter storms could possibly move some of the cobbles and dredge tailings which were placed on a pay-streak in error, it takes much more than a winter storm to move boulders from where you winch them. Believe me; it is much better to plan ahead, so you only need to move boulders one time!

BUILDING A RAMP

It takes a tremendous amount of winching-power to pull a boulder up and over another boulder from a dredge hole. The direction of pull is all wrong, and the second boulder will act like a barrier. The winching is much easier, smoother, and far less dangerous, if a ramp is built so the boulders will have an inclined runway to be pulled along. Cobbles can be used to make an effective boulder ramp. Therefore, an important part of setting up your dredge hole for winching is to construct a ramp/runway that can be used to easily remove the boulders, without them encountering difficult obstructions.

It can be really tough to pull a boulder out of a hole without a ramp.

Cobbles can be used to make an effective ramp for winching boulders out of a dredge hole.

One approach to setting up your hole is to dredge around a number of boulders as much as possible to free them up for winching. This way, more boulders can be pulled out of the hole once winching is begun. Then you can come back later to clean up the bedrock with your dredge.

To perform winching effectively, you will need plenty of air line attached to your hookah system. This is because it is necessary for the diver to sling each boulder and follow it to its final destination where he will disconnect it. Then, the sling and cable must be pulled back and attached to the next boulder. Since this process requires a lot of movement, depending upon the distance involved, you may need to attach an extension onto your air line to accomplish this smoothly.

FEASIBILITY OF MOVING BOULDERS

A dredging operation that requires a lot of boulders to be winched is going to move slower than if little or no winching is required. A winching operation almost always requires the involvement of at least one other person, sometimes even two or more. Those “extra hands” will usually expect to get something for their active participation in your dredging project. So you will find that when you need to use a winch, you will be moving slower through the pay-streak, and it will usually cost more to run the operation. Therefore, a pay-streak that has lots of boulders usually needs to pay pretty well to make the additional effort worthwhile.

The following video segment will give you a look at an organized winching program where multiple persons were involved:

Sometimes, you may discover an excellent pay-streak, but find that it lies beneath many boulders that have to be moved. Even though there may be plenty of gold under the boulders, after figuring the time and expense involved in winching, you may conclude that the gold recovery, though excellent, is still not sufficient to make the project economically feasible. Big boulders are not easy to move. Moving them takes time and money; more, sometimes, than the gold is worth. So, to avoid getting bogged down in an unworthy project, keep track of your daily expenses and your daily gold recovery. Then you will have some basis for calculating whether it is financially worthwhile to continue dredging in that specific location.

If your winching helpers are not full-timers on your dredging operation, and if the location is not too remote, you might arrange to have them arrive at a certain time each day to help pull boulders. That way, you can spend the morning setting up the hole to winch as many boulders as possible. Then, when your help arrives, the boulders can all be winched out of the hole at one time. After winching is completed for the day, you can let your winch helpers go, while you go back down and clean up the hole with your dredge. This way, you are not paying helpers to stand around with nothing to do while you are dredging. It can make a difference.

SETTING UP A WINCH FOR OPERATION

When you are using a portable power winch to move boulders in a dredging operation, the winch must be set up on a solid and stable foundation. It takes a tremendous amount of force to move a boulder. Sometimes, the boulder will move quickly. Or, sometimes, the sling will slip off the boulder, causing the cable to suddenly go slack. Maybe the boulder will loosen up and roll the wrong way, causing a sudden, heavy stress on the cable. When these things happen, and they do happen, you do not want your winch bouncing around or sliding off the platform. That could be extremely dangerous! The winch must be stable!

The winch also should be anchored to a solid object behind it which will hold its position much more securely than the boulders that are to be moved. A fair-sized tree, or a large boulder, directly behind the winch platform can work well for this purpose.

Also, the cable or chain being used to anchor the winch must be considerably stronger than the winch’s capability to pull. The last thing you need is your anchor chain or cable breaking while you are pulling a large boulder! This could cause the winch, and the winch operator, to be yanked off the platform, resulting in a serious accident. Undamaged, heavy-duty truck tow chains with the adjustable end-hooks are excellent for anchoring a winch. Make sure you get chains that are strong enough.

Your winch should also be anchored to a point which is lower than it is. If the winch is anchored from a low point, when boulders are being pulled, the winch will be held down more solidly onto the platform. If the winch is anchored to a higher point, during pulling the winch can be lifted off its platform. This can also be dangerous.

Sometimes, you will not be able to find a good location for your winch along the streambank. You prefer a location where the winch can be set up to directly face the boulders to be pulled, and which provides a level, solid foundation with a properly-located, fixed object from which to anchor the winch. But if that is not available, you can almost always find an acceptable foundation somewhere between two large objects along the bank. The platform may require a little concrete work to get it right. The winch can be anchored to one of the objects, while the other object can be used to attach a snatch block (heavy-duty pulley). The cable can then be run from the winch, through the snatch block, to the boulders that need to be moved. One advantage to this rigging setup is that if the cable does happen to break under a great strain, it will be less likely to fly directly at the winch and its operators.

Positioning the winch between two anchors on the bank,
because there is no easier way to get a straight pull with the winch.

When you set up a winch, it is usually best to position it so the boulders will be pulled as much as possible in the desired direction. The boulders will also need to be pulled far enough away from the dredge hole that they will not have to be moved again at a later time. Often, you will not be able to set up the winch in a position where you can directly pull the boulders in the desired direction. For example, you may want to pull them downriver, rather than toward the stream bank. This situation is most commonly corrected by using directional-change snatch blocks. A snatch block (pulley) can be anchored at a point from the exact direction that you want to pull boulders. The cable then runs from the winch, through the snatch block, to the boulder. In this way, you can usually move the boulders in any direction that you desire from a stable winching position along the bank.

Setting up the proper direction of pull by anchoring a snatch block directly downstream in the river.

Directional-change blocks for winching should be very heavy-duty. They need to be stronger than the cable being used, or the capability of the winch to pull. The best pulley is one that can be quick-released from the cable. This way, you do not have to feed all the cable through the block to get rigged for winching. Good winching pulleys are generally available at industrial equipment supply stores and at marine equipment shops. Directional-change blocks can be attached to trees or boulders with the use of additional cable, chokers or heavy-duty chain. You will find that a few extra tow chains (long ones) and chokers will come in very handy when setting up a winching operation. Chains which have the end-hooks on them are best, so you can adjust their length to meet your needs.

To minimize damage to the environment, you can place pieces of wood between the cable or chain and the trunk of any tree that you use as an anchor. When you anchor a directional-change block to a tree or boulder, you are almost always better off anchoring to a low point. This will reduce the chances of rolling the boulder over or pulling down a tree.

When you use a cable to anchor a winch or directional-change block to a boulder, set it up so that the pull will not cause the cable to become pinched (between two boulders or between a boulder and the bedrock) or be pulled into the material underneath the boulder. Otherwise, after the winching, you may have trouble retrieving your cable without having to move the anchoring boulder as well.

At times, you may need to set up a directional-change block, to pull boulders in a desired direction, but cannot find a downstream boulder that is large enough to use as an anchor. In this case, you can run an additional cable out from a fixed object further downstream on the opposite side of the waterway, and attach your directional-change block to the cable. Then, by increasing or decreasing the length of the cable, you can position the block right where you want it.

Setting up a directional-change block by extending it out on a cable from the other side of the waterway.

It is not a good idea to winch boulders with rope, even the smaller boulders being pulled by your truck or a come-along. When you use rope for winching, the rope stretches even if it is doubled-back multiple times for extra strength. And, it stretches. And, it stretches. Then, it breaks. Such breaks can be dangerous when working around boulders. Also, it can quickly exhaust your supply of rope. Rope is just not strong enough for the job. Steel cable is best. You might get a deal on good, used steel cable from the scrap metal yards. Call around to find out who has it when you need it. Scrap yards usually sell it at scrap prices, by the pound, even if it is in good condition.

The cable you use on your winch should always be considerably stronger than your winch’s pulling capacity. The last thing anyone wants to see is a bunch of out-of-control steel cable flying wildly back in his direction. Faulty or worn cable should be replaced immediately and never used thereafter for winching.

Winching boulders involves an incredible amount of force. So does hauling logs by cable. Similar cables are used in logging operations to pull trees to the loading area. I have heard stories of logging cables snapping, flying back, and cutting a man in two. You are dealing with a similar amount of force when winching the larger boulders in a dredging operation.

WINCHING SIGNALS

During a winching operation, it will be necessary to have a diver in the water to set the sling on the boulders. The diver will also need to remove the sling from each boulder after it has been moved, and then return the sling and cable back to the dredge hole for use in moving the next boulder. This process will continue until all the boulders for that stage of the dredging operation have been moved.

Unless the diver is slinging boulders and operating the winch (a very slow way to go, unless the controls to the winch are in the water with the diver), another person must operate the winch, truck or other device that will be doing the pulling. Once you have more than one person involved in the operation, communication becomes a critical part of the process.

If the winch is a smaller one, or if a truck is being used to pull boulders, and the pulling position is in sight of the target boulders, the job might be accomplished with only one winch operator. On the other hand, in a normal two-man operation, if the winch operator is unable to maintain constant eye contact on the area where the winching is taking place, perhaps a third person will be needed to help with the communication. Each situation will be different. Since this need for immediate and accurate communication is a safety matter which requires on-site judgment, you will have to decide how many people are needed to winch safely.

Sometimes a truck can be turned around to pull backwards, and the driver can directly see and simultaneously carry out the diver’s signals. The controls on an electric winch will often allow a second person to be positioned well enough to see what is happening where the rocks are being moved.

While a boulder is being moved, the diver can watch its progress and signal the winch operator to stop pulling and/or give slack on the line so the boulder sling can be adjusted, if necessary, to successfully complete the movement as planned. The main point is that the diver must be able to communicate to the winch operator quickly and without error. The greater the pulling-power and/or speed of the winch, the more important it is that these signals be accurately received and acted upon quickly. Imagine that you are using a powerful winch to pull a large rock with a heavy steel cable and solid anchoring objects. If your boulder gets jammed against something else in the dredge hole so that it will not move, and you continue pulling with great force, something is eventually going to give. And, it might not be the boulder! This uncertainty is what you want to avoid.

If you are using a winch that does not automatically feed the cable evenly onto the drum, the operator will sometimes need to manually guide the cable. Otherwise, on hard pulls, if the cable starts crossing itself and is allowed to pinch itself on the drum, it may become damaged and thereafter be dangerous for further winching. For this reason, the winch operator may need to focus some attention on the winch, rather than on the diver. In this type of situation, it is wise to include an additional person to help relay communication. Someone needs to be watching for the diver’s signals at all times.

Gasoline-powered winches make noise. So does a gasoline-powered hookah-air system supplying air to the diver. The diver also usually has a regulator in his mouth. With all of this noise present, and the diver having his mouth full, verbal signals are usually not very dependable – especially, if there is a substantial distance between the diver and the winch operator. For these reasons, I have often found visual signals to be more trustworthy, particularly when there is a person positioned at the winch to relay the diver’s signals to the winch operator.

In shallow water, hand signals can usually work pretty well. You really only need three of them: “PULL” , “STOP” and “GIVE SLACK ON THE CABLE”. I highly suggest you take a look at the standard set of signals that my partners and I use in our own dredging operation. These can be found in a special video segment included with an article I wrote about teamwork. Otherwise, create your own signals so that they can be quickly and clearly understood, and one signal cannot be confused with another. There is also a section on winching and signals in my video, Advanced Gold Dredging & Sampling Techniques.” You might want to check it out to get some ideas.

At times, you may be faced with the need to winch boulders out of a dredge hole located in deeper water. In this case, the diver will be heavily weighted down to stay on the river-bottom. He may also be some distance from the streambank. In this setting, it may be nearly impossible for the diver to surface to give timely signals to the winch operator. The process of getting up to the surface can simply take too long! When this is your situation, and if the water is not moving too fast, you may consider using a buoy, tied to a rope that is anchored near the dredge hole, to relay your signals. I personally have found the best and safest signals to be: (1) buoy underwater means, “PULL” (2) buoy floating at the surface means, “STOP PULLING” and (3) buoy bobbing up and down in the water means, “GIVE SLACK”.

This method of buoy-signals is relatively safe. If the buoy is anchored a short distance from the boulder, in order to pull the buoy underwater and hold it there, the diver would have to be away from the boulder on the “PULL” signal. If the buoy is floating, the diver can be anywhere, which is why it is the best choice for the “STOP” signal. You need to make certain, however, that nothing is allowed to snag the buoy’s rope (like the pull cable or an air line) which could pull the buoy underwater and cause a false “PULL” signal!

One other safety note:All divers must always watch their own hookah air lines during winching, to make sure an air line (or the signal rope to the buoy) is not snagged up in the cable or rolled over by the boulder as it is moved.

BOULDER SLINGS

When slinging boulders, try to make sure the pull cable will not rub too heavily or get crushed against other boulders. It is always best to protect the pull cable and let the boulder sling take the pounding. The boulder sling is going to be pounded anyway. Because of this rough duty, boulder slings should be replaced or repaired periodically.

One type of boulder sling often used out in the field is a long, heavy-duty tow chain with end-hooks which allow the chain to be quickly and easily adjusted to any length. This system gives you a fast set up. Just wrap the chain around the boulder in the proper place, connect the end-hook to give you the right fit, and she’s ready to go.

Tow chain boulder sling with end hook.

However, some boulders are smoother and rounder, which makes it more difficult to get a good “bite” with a sling made out of chain. Every time you start to pull, the boulder might move just a little and then the chain slips off. You can waste a lot of time working on a single boulder in this way; it can get quite frustrating.

Logging cable-chokers are also useful for making a cable sling that will tighten up on the boulder as you pull. This may improve the situation, but still not work problem-free on smooth, round rocks.

For round and smooth boulders, I have found the best remedy to be an auxiliary “boulder harness.” This homemade boulder harness consists of heavy cable, chain, steel pipe and cable clamps. It is very easy to construct. The sections of steel pipe slide onto the cable to protect it and to keep the cross-chains properly positioned. The harness is set up like a lasso. It pulls tighter around the boulder as stress increases on the line. And, it generally works well in pulling even the most difficult boulders.

How to put together an excellent boulder harness for winching.

PULLING BOULDERS

Some boulders come easy and some do not. A lot of the problem is in breaking the boulder’s initial suction/compaction in the streambed. If your winch does not have the power to pull a boulder the way you have slung it, sometimes you can break the boulder free by using a rolling hitch A “rolling hitch” is rigged by slinging the boulder backwards, then running the chain or cable over top of the boulder. This places the winch’s pulling-power along the most-leveraged position on the boulder. This will sometimes free a stubborn boulder by rolling it.

How to sling a rolling hitch.

When pulling boulders up and out of a dredge hole, you should pull them some distance away from the hole. Otherwise, if there are more boulders to be moved, they may begin backing up along your ramp and block the passage of any more boulders. This could require you to move them all again, which is a time-waster that you can avoid with proper planning in the first place. For example, take a look at the image at the beginning of this article. That is a top view of a winching operation we did on one of our Group Mining Projects a short while ago. See how we were pulling the boulders back well out of our ongoing excavation?

If you are dealing with relatively deep streambed material and a lot of boulders, you may want to set up an adjustable, directional-change block behind the hole. This way, the boulders can be winched out of the hole in several different directions. This will prevent them from backing up so quickly.

Setting up an adjustable directional-change block to pull boulders in several different directions.

Once the dredge hole has been opened enough, some of the boulders can be winched or rolled to the backside of the hole, rather than taking them up the ramp. Winching will start to go faster when you get to this stage. Depending upon the situation, it may be necessary to winch some of the boulders up the ramp and out of the hole to prevent too much jamming. Be sure to keep access to the ramp free and clear. Otherwise, you may get closed in with too many boulders in the rear of your hole. The more boulders that are jammed up, the more difficult it can be to clear them out of the hole.

Sometimes, when you have winched your boulder to its destination, it will end up on top and pin your sling underneath. If you are using a tow chain as your sling, you can usually just unhook it and have the winch pull it out from underneath the boulder. But, if you are using a sling made of cable, you may not be able to pull it out from under the rock without damaging the harness. For this reason, it is a good idea to have a second sling on hand to help move the boulder off the other harness when this happens.

DIVER’S SAFETY

A diver will be safest by staying well away from the area where a boulder is being winched, and the path it will be taking as it is being pulled. The forces involved in winching are more than enough to cause a very serious accident. Since the diver is underwater, the winch operator sometimes cannot see what is happening where the bolder is located.

What can happen down there, though, is when the diver sees the boulder getting hung up on things as it is being pulled along, he wants to move in and help it along with his pry bar. The less power that your winch provides, the more the diver will naturally feel the need to help the boulder along in this way. Never forget that your safety margin is considerably reduced when you get near a boulder while it is being pulled! A safer course of action would be to stop the pulling and reset the harness, or reset the direction of pull, or improve the boulder ramp, or find a stronger winch for the job. Or, you can increase the pulling power of your existing winch by double blocking…

DOUBLE BLOCKING

“Double blocking” is accomplished by attaching a snatch block to the boulder sling, running the pull cable through that block, and then back to the last directional-change anchor. This type of rigging will nearly double the amount of pulling force that can be exerted against the boulder by the winch and pull cable.

Double blocking back to the last directional-change anchor
will nearly double the winch’s pulling power against the boulder.

If even more power is needed, another block can be set up on the line to run the pull cable back to the boulder sling. The pulling force of any winching device can be increased by continuing to double block in this way. There is a disadvantage to all this rigging, however. It takes much more cable to pull boulders any significant distance. Also, it is equally more difficult for the diver to pull the boulder sling and cable back to the dredge hole after each boulder has been moved. With all that cable going back and forth, it can get pretty complicated – especially if you are dealing with a limited amount of visibility. Quick-release snatch blocks are a must when double blocking. This way, you can detach the pulleys from the cable without having to feed it all the way through.

Actually, one double block is not that hard to manage as long as you have enough cable. It is when you double block a second time that it starts getting difficult to keep track of which cable is going to where? But, this alternative is available to you if you need the extra pulling power to move a particularly large boulder.

Directional-change blocks, by themselves, do not give you an increase in pulling power. For a power increase, the cable must be doubled back so that the boulder is moved only half the distance that the winch is pulling on the cable.

 

 

By Dave McCracken

As far as I’m concerned, if you are going to spend a lot of time dredging in cold water, a hot water system is definitely the way to go!

Dave Mack

Cold Water 1
“Photo by Tim Cook”

Can you recall ever standing alongside an unheated swimming pool or just next to the water’s edge on the beach, trying intently to muster the nerve to jump into the cold water? Perhaps you even tried to build up to the big leap by counting, “One, two, three.. .jump!” — only to find yourself still standing at the edge of the water after the countdown and feeling like your body is not quite under your control. This can often be the case when you are dredging in cold water. The key to successful cold water dredging is having the proper equipment — particularly those items needed to keep your body from getting too cold and uncomfortable.

Wetsuits

Wet-suits are designed to allow water to get inside the suit. Your body-heat then warms the water up, insulating you from the colder water that remains outside the suit. In really cold water, the main problem with a wet-suit is that initial frigid shock which shocks your body as the initial cold water rushes into your suit when you first enter the water. This happens again every time you re-enter the water after knocking out a plug-up in the jet tube or every time you take a break. This “cold water shock” has an accumulative affect on the body; and even the toughest people often find ourselves going “one, two, three” on the bank and have trouble making our bodies jump back into the water.

Some wet-suit divers lessen the pain of cold water shock by having a hot tub of water on the bank. They pour the hot water into their suits just before re-entering the water to help bring up their body temperature. Hot water systems that provide a steady flow of warm water into a wet-suit are even better — but we will address that topic below.

There are different types of wet-suits, some which are designed especially for cold water use. Cold water wet-suits are usually made of thicker rubber, have few or no zippers, and almost always have the hood directly attached to the wet-suit top. There is also the “shortie,” which is like a pullover wet-suit sleeveless T-shirt with or without a hood attached. A shortie can be worn underneath or over top of a regular wet-suit to create added warmth. In addition to the added thickness of rubber around your upper torso, a hooded-shortie prevents a lot of the cold water shock from running down your neck and back!

Important note: The more rubber you add for insulation from cold water, the more lead you must add to your weight belt(s) so you can remain firmly anchored to the bottom of the waterway when you are dredging. Also: The more rubber that is added around your upper body, arms and shoulders, the more constrained your arms and shoulders will be. Dredge work underwater is mostly stomach, arms and shoulder-work (movement). Therefore, adding more rubber increases the amount of effort required to get the work done. Effort in dredging is like money in your wallet. You only have so much. So it must be managed as efficiently as possible. Because, once you have used it up, your day is over.

Dry-suits

For cold water dredging or diving, dry-suits are definitely a step above wet-suits (when there is not a hot-water system). A dry-suit is designed to keep all of the cold water out. Basically, there are two different types of dry-suits available on the market: Those that use the rubber or nylon shell as insulation, and those that require additional insulation to be worn inside the suit. Both types work well; it is a matter of individual preference as to which kind is best for you.

Dredging activity is very hard on any type of suit. There are many different models and makes of dry-suits available. Some are designed more for sport diving rather than dredging and hard work. Dry-suits generally are quite a bit more expensive than wet-suits. However, you cannot rightfully put a price on comfort and warmth when you are spending many hours underwater working for a living. If you are cold and uncomfortable, you will not get in as much dredging time; and you will not make as much gold (money). So, my advice is to spend the extra money on getting a quality dry-suit if you are going to buy one.

Dry-suits generally require more maintenance than wet-suits. Mainly, the seals at the extremities and the zipper must be properly maintained. Most dry-suits have zippers which should be coated with bees wax every several uses and sprayed with silicone each time the suit is used. The seals should be sprayed just before each use. This allows them to slip on more easily, and prevents unnecessary stretching. The zipper is the heart of a dry-suit and must be handled with care. You have to be careful not to get sand in it, and not to sit on it or rub it heavily while moving rocks around in the dredge hole. I always glue a rubber flap over my dry-suit zippers to further-protect them from dredging wear and tear. Most manufacturers stress having a second person zip it closed rather than doing it yourself. This is because it is difficult to pull the zipper straight when it is behind you, as many dry-suit zippers are. If you damage the zipper, the suit is no good until you get the zipper replaced.

You will find that even the smallest puncture holes in a dry-suit need to be patched when diving or dredging in extremely cold water. Otherwise, you are constantly uncomfortable with cold water entering the suit from that location.

Hot Water Systems

Cold Water 2As far as I’m concerned, if you are going to dredge long hours in cold water, a hot water system is definitely the way to go! Water is usually heated with a heat-exchanging device mounted to the cooling or exhaust system of the dredge motor. The dredge pump is tapped to provide a water supply, which runs through the heat-exchanger, then through a steam trap/mixing tank, and then down through a hose to pour a constant volume of warm water into the dredger’s wet-suit. Some dredgers are using propane continuous-demand hot water heaters, but most use heat exchangers mounted to their engine exhaust systems.

Hot water heat-exchangers are available on the market. They are also reasonably easy to build. Most homemade exchangers are built with a long length of copper tubing which is either wrapped around the existing exhaust system or is coiled inside a separate housing through which the engine’s exhaust is channeled.

Photo By Tim Cook

The key to a hot water system is to provide an abundance of hot water. If you do not have plenty of hot water for all of the divers working on a system, then you will most likely end up pumping cooler water into each diver’s suit, which can be worse than having a wetsuit with no hot water system.

Hint: You can never have too much hot water — because you do not necessarily have to use it all.

Most ordinary wet-suits are adequate as hot water suits — particularly with the addition of a hooded shortie vest. Dry-suits normally do not make good hot water suits, unless they are modified. This is because the seals prevent the hot water from exiting the suit. After a while, all the excess water inside the suit cools down and makes the diver cold. Removal of the seals on a dry-suit would probably make it a good hot water system (as long as it is a tight-fitting dry-suit) — but this seems a waste of money when a far less expensive wet-suit will accomplish the same purpose.

The main problem dredgers can have with a hot water system is being scalded by extreme hot water or steam. This problem can largely be solved by adding a steam trap to the system. Some prefer to call this a “mixing tank.” A mixing container can be made out of PVC plastic tubing. One of the primary purposes of the mixing container is to be a holding tank for water and steam. So, if extreme hot water or steam is created in the system, it will have a chance to mix with the warm water in the tank before being pumped down to the diver. The mixing container should be mounted vertically on your dredge with the input coming from the top, and the output to the diver being on the bottom of the container. This way, steam is prevented from being pumped directly to the diver(s). Some systems contain a low-pressure relief valve at the top of the container to allow air and steam to release.

mixing containerThe mixing container must be large enough to absorb a shot of extremely hot water, but not so large that it allows the water to cool down before it is pumped to the diver. The mixing container allows the diver to feel the rise in water temperature much more slowly, so that the hot water hose can be removed from the wetsuit before it gets uncomfortably hot. Sometimes, the water can be so hot coming out of a heat exchanger, that a special steam hose must be used. In fact, just for safety, I always use heat hose on the connection from the heat exchanger to the mixing tank.

If the water coming out of the heat exchanger is too hot to pump directly to a diver — which is often the case — a source of cold water can also be tapped from the pump and directed into the mixing tank through a valve. By regulating the amount of cold water, you can adjust the temperature of the water being pumped down to the diver. This also increases the volume of warm water available to all of the divers.

Warm water is usually pumped down to the diver through the same kind of hose being used for air line. The hot water line and air line are usually taped together to prevent tangling and additional underwater confusion. The hot water line can be slipped into your wet-suit down through the neck. I usually poke a hole in my wet-suit near my chest where it is easy to slip the hot water line in and out of my suit.

Or, in extremely cold water, you can devise a splitter system which will direct some of the warm water to your chest, hood, each bootie, and each glove. This is the best way to do it if you are dredging in ice cold water. However, sometimes the splitter system can be avoided simply by having a hot water system which provides so much volume, that the warm water is forced out into these same extremities.

When dredging in ice cold water, if you do not have warm water directed to your hands, it is usually necessary to use three-finger wet-suit mittens. Otherwise, your hands can go numb from the cold. Three finger mittens are bulky; they prevent you from picking up larger cobbles with one hand, and they generally slow you down. With a good source of hot water to the hands, you can often get by with a good set of slightly-insulated rubber work gloves with the openings loosely rubber-banded around your wrists to prevent cold water from entering.

Dredge with snow on the decksAuthor was developing some of the early hot-water heaters on his first dredge in 1981 while working in the frigid waters of the Trinity River in Northern California.

It is necessary to warm up your dredge engine to normal operating speed for at least several minutes to properly set the temperature of the water directed to the divers from the mixing container. Once you get the temperature working right for you, you normally do not need to make any further adjustments on subsequent dives, as long as you are running the motor at the same RPM.

If you stand around for a few minutes with hot water pouring into your suit, there is usually no shock at all when entering the cold water. As a matter of fact, it can be a pleasure to enter the cold water after you run your body temperature up to the uncomfortable stage when you begin sweating.

A hot water system should be removed from the dredge when not being used, like during the warm summer months. Otherwise, the heat and vibration will tend to wear the heat-exchanger out unnecessarily. Also, even when not in use, if a hot water system is attached, water should be allowed to flow through it any time the engine is running. This will prevent unnecessary overheating of the heat-exchanger.cold water 3

Photo by Tim Cook

If you are tapping your dredge pump for a supply of water, be sure the water output is either closed off or underwater when priming your pump. Otherwise, there may be an air leak which can prevent priming.

The nice thing about a hot water system is that it will supply a continuous feed of hot water into your suit. This way, your body’s energy reserves are not being constantly used up to keep warm. As a result, you can be comfortable and get in more dredging time.

Important note: You can also be so warm that your body doesn’t want to work — like being in a hot shower. The solution to this lies in the amount of cold water you valve into the mixing tank, or how far down you zip your wet-suit jacket! Believe me, “too warm” is a much easier problem to solve underwater than “too cold.”

A common question people ask is, “Should I get a hot water system, or a dry-suit?” The answer to this lies in what you intend to do. I suggest having both systems available, depending upon your activity. For production dredging and sampling in extremely cold water, I would use a hot water system. For swimming across the river to stretch a rope, or for swimming down the river with mask and snorkel to look at the bottom in extremely cold water, I would recommend a dry-suit.

Other Things To Know About Cold Weather Dredging

If you are working in freezing temperatures above water, there are certain things that should be done on your dredge each day before knocking off. Your pump should have a drain plug tapped into the bottom. This way, you can drain the water at the end of each day to prevent your pump from freezing solid. It is not a bad idea to bring some hot water with you everyday in a thermos, because sometimes the pump will freeze even with the water drained. Be careful not to crack the pump housing by pouring too much scalding water directly over it when it is freezing cold.

Also, in freezing weather, the concentrates and water must be completely cleaned out of your recovery system at the end of each day. Otherwise, they will freeze solid and prevent the system from working until it thaws out the following day — if it thaws!

If you are not going to process them directly, your concentrates from the day should be stored well underwater to prevent them from freezing on the bank. Your mask, hood and gloves should be brought back to camp each evening and kept warm. Otherwise, you have the misery of putting them on when they are ice cold — unless you have a hot water system on your dredge.

Winter Dredging

Eric Bosch and author displaying nuggets pulled while diving together.

Dave and Eric holding nuggetsEven if you are able to handle most of the cold water problems with the use of good equipment, another factor winter dredgers often have to deal with is higher and faster water. While the higher water will allow you to mine further up on the edges of the river, in many areas it will prevent you from mining out in the faster and deeper water areas-which may provide easy mining during the summer months. If, due to the faster, higher water, you are not able to get out and sample in certain sections of the river, you will not be able to run a full testing program on that section of river; and you will miss pay-streaks. So, it can also be more difficult to locate deposits during the faster and higher water months of the year.

On the other hand, if the river edges are paying, the winter months may be the only time they are available for dredging. The location of deposits are going to vary from one place to the next.

While wet-suits, hot water suits and dry-suits do make for good insulation underwater, they generally provide poor insulation to the cold air above water when you are wet. Therefore, it is good to have a warm winter jacket to wear over your diving suit while taking breaks on the surface.

Tents in the snowAs a side note on this, my commercial dredging buddies and I ate many hurried lunches on deck during the winter months (even while it was snowing) while the dredge continued to run at operating speed (with a rock placed over the suction nozzle to slow the water in our recovery system), pumping warm water into our suits.

If you are mining in extremely cold conditions, it really helps to have a warm and comfortable camp. A person can put up with some pretty cold and miserable conditions if he or she knows there is a warm shower and hot meal coming later that evening. There are few things worse than freezing all day and then going back to stay in a wet and cold camp!

Author’s campsite during his first several years as a gold prospector.

How Tough Are You?

It takes a pretty tough person to dredge in extremely cold conditions. Even with the best equipment, there is still a substantial amount of cold water exposure on your hands and face. You spend quite a bit of time working on the dredge, tying off lines, swimming the river, cleaning up concentrates, making repairs, etc. This all adds up to exposure which can be painful or uncomfortable. Some people are gung-ho enough to dredge in extremely cold water on a short-term basis. Few people are willing to do it long-term.

We all have the potential to be tough enough to dredge in extremely cold water. What it always comes down to is whether or not we desire to be that tough! A lot of people think they are, and then realize they are not willing to do it!

Talk is cheap!

I was mining with several guys in 34-degree water one winter. One of the divers and I were sampling for a new deposit while the other two guys were actively dredging out a rich deposit we had already located. They were recovering several ounces of nugget-gold each day, while we were knocking out sample holes. One day, we helped get the production operation started and then headed out to do our sampling. We soon realized we forgot our lunch, turned around and drove back to where our partners were dredging. We had not been gone fifteen minutes, and they had already gotten out of the water and were in the truck with the heat turned on — drinking hot coffee! These were tough guys; that water was cold!

A partner and I were dredging in Alaska in October when things started to freeze. We’d had a very good season, but I wanted to put more ounces into my bottle before returning home. Ice had already formed on the edges of the river, and my partner had been ready to leave weeks before. I was determined to spend one more week dredging, because the gold was good and I had plans for what I was going to do with it. One day, with a week to go, I could not make my body go underwater again. “One, two, three, go!” — but my body refused. So, it just wasn’t worth it, anymore! I walked over and tugged on my partner’s air line and asked him if he was ready to go — home, that is. We were on the road later that afternoon in a warm truck with the heat blasting. In that area of Alaska, three feet of snow fell that night!

There is a point where the body just takes over and says, “No!” And, this is probably the point where it is smart for you to listen.

 

By Dave McCracken

Finding wild adventure, wonderful new friends, and riches in gold inside one of the most remote locations on the planet!

Dave Mack

 

This story is dedicated to my long-time, trusted friend, Mark Chestnut. He and I teamed up to perform a preliminary assessment of the gold dredging potential in the deepest remote jungles of Borneo, Indonesia. The ultimate success of this mission was largely the result of Mark’s professionalism and dedication to getting the work done under some very difficult conditions.

On his own, Mark led sampling expeditions with his team of Dyak helpers for days at a time into places where I am entirely certain that no outsider has ever been before, living under fly camps with the natives, eating the food they prepared from the jungle, running down through narrow gorges in long boats where the ride was so violent, that all of the boat paddles were broken along the way. I am very careful who I take along with me on these projects. Those that go must be of the highest caliber. Not only would I take Mark with me anywhere, but I would be comfortable in sending him to manage a project. There are only a few people I have worked with in our industry that I would trust with that responsibility.

Indonesia’s 13,677 islands stretch across 3,000 miles of ocean. Only around 6,000 of these islands have been named, and only 900 of those have been permanently settled. The principal islands of Indonesia are Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo).

Three-quarters of the island of Borneo is called Kalimantan, and is part of Indonesia. The northeastern part of the island is owned by Malaysia.

Throughout history, Borneo, which is the world’s third largest island, has been a mythical location of indescribable riches and unfathomable mystery. Early explorers and traders sailed the pirate-infested waters of Indonesia and Borneo for many centuries, trading for prized jungle products, diamonds and gold, but generally staying clear of the forbidden unknown interior, which was known to be prowled by savage headhunters and cannibals.

The natives of Borneo, known as Dyaks, believed that the power of any individual was contained in his head. To cut the head off, and to possess it, was therefore to possess that individual’s power. The power of a head diminished over time, making it necessary to obtain new, additional heads; the more heads, the more power. While most often, Dyak tribes battled against each other, any outsider was also fair game.

Usually, head-hunting raids were well-organized ventures led by a supreme commander, in which hundreds of men would participate. The main weapon was a mandau (machete), which was made by Dyak blacksmiths, working with native ores and primitive forges. Early explorers reported these machetes held an edge capable of slicing a musket barrel in half! Shields were made of ironwood, following the longitudinal grain, so an enemy’s mandau would become wedged deeply enough to become lodged and pulled out of his grasp.

After a war party was fully organized, a Dyak medicine man would perform a ceremony to weigh and balance the different omens. If all was in order, the war party would usually travel by native long boat to a distance which was several hours on foot from the enemy village. Sometimes, the enemy would be pre-warned by their own hunting parties; and they themselves would mount an ambush on the raiding war party. In this case, the ambush was usually begun by firing poison darts onto the unsuspecting enemy with blowguns, and then hand-to-hand combat with spears and mandaus.

Captured women and children from a village were forced into slavery, and the village was looted of its valuables, especially traded goods from China and India. A celebration always followed a successful head-hunting raid. Those who brought back heads were heroes.

Head-hunting was practiced widely throughout the interior of Borneo up until the Second World War. Now, it is a thing of the past.

Because of the impassable mountains and rivers, much of the interior of Borneo is not accessible by automobile. Access to a portion of the interior can be accomplished by riverboat, but waterfalls and severe rapids prevent deeper penetration. Access to the most remote locations generally is accomplished by the use of helicopters. There are some landing strips in the interior. Small planes can be chartered, but quickly changing weather conditions can make even this type of access unpredictable.

Our mining venture was into one of the most remote and least-explored sections of Borneo’s interior. Going in by helicopter, we crossed over hundreds of miles of impenetrable jungle. There were mountains, having sheer cliffs hundreds of feet in height, extending for miles. We crossed over hundreds of rivers, many which were raging white-water. I remember hoping, as I always do when traveling by helicopter, that we would not crash. Because if I managed to survive the crash, I was gauging the magnitude of the effort it would take to return to civilization. It would be next to impossible!

The reason we were in Borneo was to perform a preliminary evaluation to gauge the potential success of a production gold dredging operation. Some base camps had been already built in the area by the company that hired us; some dredges were already on site; and the local natives were using the dredges when we arrived. We spent 30 days in the jungle, living and working with the native miners, learning their way of life and survival in the jungle.

The natives involved on our project were from two different villages. They were all very friendly and helpful. All were in excellent physical condition and used to hard physical work. Most were already familiar with basic gold mining techniques, since they have been mining gold by primitive methods for many generations.

Generally, no matter what else they wear for clothes, the natives wear nothing on their feet. Often, all the men wear is a pair of underpants. On one occasion, I went on a nine-hour prospecting/hunting expedition, where the terrain was so slippery and steep, most of the climbing was done with our arms. We scaled sheer cliffs with narrow, slippery walkways, where the bedrock was so sharp it cut into the soles of my jungle boots. The clay-like ground was so slippery, it was like walking on ice during most of the hike. I like to think that I personally am in pretty good shape. The pace was very fast, but was only a third of their normal speed. They had to slow down to allow us to keep up. I almost wore out a good set of authentic military jungle boots, and I had blisters on my own feet long before the expedition was finished. The natives were all barefooted, and not one had a cut or a bruise at the end of the day!

You have to be careful where you stick your hands at the bottom of tropical rivers!

The native men in the jungles of Borneo have a simple, adventuresome life–the kind that every little boy dreams of in America. Their responsibilities consist of hunting, fishing, finding gold and raising their families. For lack of any exterior form of entertainment, the family unit is very close there. These people create their own entertainment, excitement and adventure.

We found that while they were all very strong and helpful, they were also always fun to be around. Operating gold dredges was a new adventure for most of them, and they were having a good time learning how to do it.

The natives also have a high level of self-preservation, probably because their lifestyle is so closely connected to the basics of survival. On one occasion, after we had shut down a production dredge, one of the divers was bumped off the dredge into fast, deep water wearing a full vest of weights and no air. He was connected to a 100-foot airline. The airline was wrapped around something under the dredge, so no one could get at it. We all stood there and watched while this native pulled himself 100 feet up-stream, underwater, against a strong current without ever coming to the surface. We felt him frantically tugging one pull at a time. It never occurred to anyone that he might drown. When he reached the dredge, the look of agony disappeared into an uproar of laughter as he took his first breath. After that, we all used the same signal of frantically thrashing for air every time we wanted to communicate the danger in dredging a particularly difficult location. We always laughed when using the signal.

On one expedition, it was necessary for our guides to cut down a large hardwood tree to replace most of the paddles we needed to continue our journey.

The natives are also very adept with the use of a chainsaw. They are able to cut down a tree and slice straight boards out, without the use of any guides whatsoever. Compared to other jungle expeditions I have been on, we lived in luxurious base camps, with showers, sleeping quarters, meeting areas, dining areas–all on stilts ten feet off the ground. The base camps were clean, dry and comfortable–put together from lumber sliced out of trees solely from the use of a chainsaw. The long boats we were using also were made from the same lumber.

Because of the steep, rough terrain in the Borneo jungle, almost all travel is done by boat on the intricate river system. Consequently, all of the native men are skilled in the handling of their keting tings (native long boats). These boats are usually around 30 feet long and about 3 1/2 feet wide. These days, they are powered by 4-stroke engines, 8 and 10 horsepower Yamahas were being used in our area of operation. A long shaft mechanism is connected to the engine with a propeller on the end. The boat operator is able to manipulate the long shaft and propeller around like a rudder, but is also able to control how deep the propeller extends into the water. In this way, the keting tings can be maneuvered through
We went down through rapids which, as we approached, I thought the natives were just playing a trick, with a plan to turn around at the very last minute. Rapids with waves nearly 4 feet higher than the gunwales of the boat on both sides. And then, afterwards, we would come right back up through these rapids. At first, I thought this was reckless and chancy. Later, I realized it was routine. In thirty days, we never saw a single boat get into trouble.water only inches deep, even when transporting 1500 pounds or more of personnel, equipment or supplies.

It did not take long for me to realize the long shaft mechanism is the most effective means developed to propel long boats on shallow rivers. These long shaft propulsion systems are used all throughout Asia.

On one particular prospecting trip into the headwaters of a river, we rode these boats down through whitewater canyons so narrow that the sides and bottoms of the long boats were scraping the sides of the canyon on both sides–and we were going faster than a roller-coaster ride. What was most amazing to us, was that somehow, the natives were able to get the long boats up through those canyons! We were personally dropped in at the top by helicopter.

The operation supplied us with bottled water to drink, rice to eat, and the other basics which we needed. The natives had gardens and supplied us with fresh vegetables. There was a hunting team which supplied us with fresh wild boar and deer meat on a daily basis, and fresh fish from the river. Native cooks prepared the food for us, and we could not have found better food in most of the restaurants in Indonesia or elsewhere.

Notice the slash across the pig’s head?

Hunters use dogs to track down wild game–usually the babi hutan (wild boars). Often, a hunter will go out alone with a single dog. The dog catches the scent of a boar and starts barking. When the dog catches up with the boar, the boar will turn on the dog and stand there to defend itself. Meanwhile, the native hunter catches up and will either attack the boar with his spear; or more often, the boar will attack the hunter. When the boar attacks, the hunter sidesteps at the last second, and slashes the backside of the boar’s head with his mandau in a single downward stroke. This is kind of a ritual, like bull fighting in Mexico. The hunters take pride in returning with wild boars having the familiar slash on the back of the head. Most boars that were brought in were killed in this manner. Some hunters brought in two and three boars on a single day to feed the whole crew.

They also brought in payau (deer)–sometimes killed with a spear, and sometimes brought in alive. The natives and their dogs have a method of running down a deer alive, so it can be preserved until the meat is needed.

The natives also hunt bears; but this is usually accomplished also with the use of their blow guns. They weaken the bear with poison darts and go in for the final kill with a spear.

My earlier experiences in remote jungles always involved animal life which was dangerous to us while dredging in the river. I expected no less in Borneo. However, while we did see some very large buaya (alligators), the natives assured us that they have never been known to attack a man. Apparently, they like their meat dead and rotten.

The main river was actually pretty large in size!

During our prospecting, the natives did show us one specific area where the water runs muddy all the time–even when the water is running clear just upriver. The natives explained that the muddy water was either being stirred up by dragons or alligators. Needless to say, we did not bother to sample in that location.

The natives did tell us to be careful of the kujut (huge catfish) at the bottom of the rivers. While we did not see any underwater, native fishermen did catch one catfish which weighed around 60 pounds. It was large enough, and had big enough teeth, to take a man’s hand away. The natives said this was a small fish! Apparently, on the larger rivers, the natives have trouble with losing their dogs to these catfish. Some villages use full-grown live ducks as bait to catch these big catfish. They told us there has never been an occasion where a full-grown man has been attacked and eaten by a catfish. This, however, didn’t make us feel all that much safer while underwater.

We set up fly camps alongside the river when we prospected distant areas from the base camp.

Actually, as far as wildlife goes, it was the pacer (ground leeches) that had most of our attention. Luckily, there were no leeches in the river! But, if you needed to go up on the river banks, or if you were going to take any kind of hike through the jungle, you were going to get leeches on you. They were everywhere! Some bushes had blood-sucking leeches on every leaf–on every branch!

The biggest problem with leeches is psychological. They are slimy, sleazy creatures. You just naturally want to get them off you as quickly as possible. When you try and brush a leech off with your hand, it then sticks to your hand like glue. When you use your other hand to get it off, it ends up on that hand. Meanwhile, there are two or three more sleazing up your legs–or maybe a dozen, depending upon where you are standing or walking. Leeches move pretty fast!

Leeches have a very strong sucker-mouth, which attaches to your skin and sucks the blood right out. It doesn’t take long. In fact, they can attach to the outside of a thin pair of pants, or on the outside of a T-shirt, or on the outside of a cotton sock, and suck the blood right through the garment. It is all pretty slimy business! The nice thing about these leeches is that they do not carry any disease.

When we started, I figured we had it together over the natives with our lightweight long-sleeve shirts, tucked into our thick Levis, which were tucked into our jungle boots. All most of the natives were wearing on the hikes was a pair of shorts or underpants! However, it soon became obvious that the natives could easily find and remove the leeches from their own bodies. Sometimes, we didn’t find a few of our leeches until we got back to camp. Generally, a leech will drop off you once it has had its fill of blood.

“Leeches do not hurt you. What’s a little blood? We found the best way to get them off was by scraping them off with the sharp blade of a knife.”

A small red mark on your skin is left where a leach has been sucking. It goes away after a few weeks. The natives told us leeches are used regularly to suck the infection from injuries in their native medicine.

Overall, the adverse animal conditions were very mild–compared to the crocodiles, piranha, electric eels, African Killer Bees, black flies, mosquitoes, and poisonous vipers we have encountered in similar jungle conditions in the Amazon and elsewhere. I was only bitten by one mosquito in 30 days! A few leeches are not a bad trade-off for not having to deal with truly dangerous critters.

Our guides and helpers were a good bunch of guys to have on the team.

We did have several very amusing experiences having to do with leeches. Where is the worst place a man can get a leech stuck onto him? One day, we were riding upriver in a keting ting. These long boats usually have one person operating the motor, and another person in the bow with a paddle to help keep the boat pointed in the right direction, and to signal the boat driver to watch out for submerged rocks and logs. We had just finished a short prospecting hike, and thought we had removed all the leeches from our bodies. It always seems, however, that no matter how thorough you are, a few more show up afterwards. We were going upstream through a boulder-ridden section of river, when the bow man jumped up and yanked his shorts down. Right there, in the worst place imaginable, was a leech hanging off the man. One of the other natives pulled out his machete to give him some help. Just at that time, the boat rammed into a submerged log, and the bow man flew overboard. We all just had to stop and laugh for the longest time before we could get going again. Needless to say, this was a subject we all laughed about right up until the time of our departure.

During our sampling operation, we spent a great deal of time traveling many, many miles around in the long boats. It was a great way to get a good look at the jungle and the wildlife. In many places, the trees grow out across the river from both sides to make a natural tunnel.

One day, we were traveling by boat along the river’s edge, when a large biawak (lizard several feet long, with sharp teeth and very fast) jumped off a tree limb directly into the boat in front of me. He would have landed on top of the native in front of me, but the native, ever alert, saw it coming. I saw it out of the comer of my eye, but thought it was just a branch falling out of the tree. The native jumped up just in time, and the lizard fell into the bottom of the boat between his bare feet. Then, yelling like a mad man, the native and lizard both danced around quickly, trying to get out of each other’s way. Finally, the lizard went over the side. All this, about three feet in front of me; and so fast, I didn’t have a chance to react! We all laughed so hard that we almost had to pull the boat over to the edge of the river.

One day, while prospecting, we came around a bend in the river, traveling by keting ting, and a million fruit bats took to the air. Known also as “flying foxes”, these are huge bats with wingspans of two to three feet. There were so many that it was like a dark cloud above us as we traveled beneath them on our way downriver.

Mark Chestnut poses for a photo with his sampling team after returning from a 5-day sampling project deep into another world where no outsider has ever gone before or since.

Some of the local natives also hunt a certain breed of monkey, not for the meat, but for a particular healing stone possessed by only one special monkey in each tribe. Apparently, these healing stones are in great demand by Chinese medicine men, and a very high price is paid for them, much more than the price of gold by weight.

According to the local natives, if a monkey becomes sick, the special monkey will pass the stone to the sick monkey until he or she is healed. The problem for the monkey hunters is in determining exactly which monkey is carrying the stone. A sumpit (blow gun) is used to fire a poisoned dart at the monkey. Blow guns are made of a single piece of ironwood at least two meters in length, with a straight hole bored through its center. The darts are made from bamboo, and are dipped in a deadly poison made from the sap of a Tajom tree mixed with the venom from a cobra.

We ran into a few monkey hunters during one of our expeditions. These men hunt for gold during the dry periods when the water is low in the rivers. They hunt for monkey stones during the rainy periods. We noticed immediately that the monkey hunters each had almost a full mouth of solid gold teeth. When I inquired about this, the natives told us the poison used on blow gun darts is so toxic, that just the vapors near the mouthpiece of a loaded blowgun will cause a person’s teeth to fall out after a period of time. Besides, solid gold teeth are fashionable in Borneo, similar to clean, white teeth in our culture.

I noticed that many of the natives had gold teeth. I never did find out exactly how gold teeth are fashioned and how dentistry is performed deep inside the Borneo jungle. Many of the older men and women have tattoos on their hands, legs and arms. We were told the tattoos are made with tiny metal needles dipped in a particular tree sap, or in charcoal, leaving permanent black marks.

The predominant religion in the area of our operation was Christianity. The natives preferred to take Sunday off to conduct their own religious services. This was added to by other, more ancient rituals and customs. For example, after we had arrived and began our dredging activities, the rains started picking up. One of the natives had a dream that the local jungle guardian spirits were angry because of the loud noise of the engines brought in by the foreigners (us). Many of the natives worried over this dream, considering it might be a bad omen. Word reached the main village many hours up river. Within a few days, a whole delegation came down to our base camp led by the village chief.

The following day, they put on a ceremony along the edge of the river, while sacrificing the heads of two chickens to appease the jungle spirits. All of the local natives showed up to participate. All work was cancelled for the day. The following day, the weather cleared up, and operation conditions were improved until the time of our departure. Coincidence? The local natives didn’t believe so. Me? I choose to go along with the local customs of the natives of any area which is providing the hospitality. Who am I to challenge the beliefs of others? The natives believe Borneo is an old land, and that old spirits still linger around to help control the weather and certain events to protect the animals and local people. We found that different villages had this same belief, but had their own rituals for making peace with the spirits.

We had fried chicken for dinner on the night of the ritual. Uhm uhm good!

The local miners are recovering gold from the rivers by panning with their Tulangs (gold pans). These are similar to the Sarukas used in South America. They also use their keting ting motors to wash the streambed material from bedrock, so the flakes and nuggets can be exposed and removed from the bedrock cracks and traps. Some of the natives were using hoes underwater to rake gravel off the bedrock. They would then dive down using a facemask to recover gold from the bedrock traps. Sometimes they hit hot spots and do quite well.

One native told us he recovered over four kilograms (around ten pounds) of gold, mostly nuggets, in several months of hard work by primitive methods. But they don’t really need to recover a lot of gold. The jungle provides for most of their needs. Their villages also produce woven baskets and other products from the jungle which are exported to the outside world. A little gold allows for extra luxury items which improve their standard of living.

Long Shaft System

Local miners are doing very well by blowing gravel off the bedrock using their long-shaft propulsion systems!

I think the thing that impressed me most during the entire expedition was the friendliness of the people. Children ran out and waved at us when we went past their villages by long boat. Adults invited us to stay with them in their homes. The Chief of one village gave me his own favorite blowgun, one which he had personally used for the past 12 years.

Dyak sampling team

The natives were excited to dredge with us, because it was explained to them that we were “professionals, gold prospectors from the outside world.” They pretty-much had taught themselves to dredge from scratch during the two months prior to our arrival. Except for when the water was muddy, they would insist on going down to help us. They wanted to participate also in the muddy water, but we insisted that it was too dangerous, because someone might get hit in the head with a rock.

Just like during any other activity, these natives dredge barefooted. Even the individuals who were wearing wetsuits wore nothing on their feet!

Instead of lead weight belts, they were wearing jacket-like vests, tied together with fishing line, with big pockets. River rocks were stuffed into the pockets to weigh down the diver. It seemed to work alright for them, but I’ll stick to my lead weight belt and steel-tipped rubber boots! Of course, we had to be very careful to avoid throwing rocks on unprotected toes.

And we found gold; lots of it. We intend to return to Borneo with a larger sampling team and do a much more involved sampling program. If this project goes well, the company is interested in our bringing over an even larger team of experienced dredgers to work on a gold- sharing venture.

  

There is a lot of gold in East Kalimantan (Borneo). In the deep jungle, because of a rather steep gradient, the gravel inside most rivers I observed was generally very shallow to bedrock. Just like in California, some rivers had lots of fine gold, and some had jewelry gold–two ounce-sized nuggets, and much larger, are not uncommon. In the areas we sampled, the smaller-sized tributaries all seemed to carry a steady line of nugget and jewelry-sized gold, usually under a foot or two of hard-packed streambed material. Huge sections of exposed rough and cracked bedrock are common all along the rivers and creeks, which have never been prospected with a metal detector. We found gold lying all over some exposed rough bedrock in one area we were sampling. And we found deposits in the main river which could potentially yield pounds of gold or more per day to a production-dredging team. Because of the complete lack of modern suction dredging equipment during the past, many river channels are completely virgin of earlier mining activity and the opportunity is extraordinary.

Because of the inaccessibility of the gold bearing areas, Borneo is probably not a good place for the casual, small-scale dredge operator. However, with the proper infrastructure set up (expensive), Borneo could be a modern gold dredger’s dream come true!

One of the consultants on this project told me he first went to East Kalimantan about nine years ago, He said he has known many people who have never been able to get it out of their system, He himself pretty-much has lived there ever since. He told me “once you drink from the waters of East Kalimantan, you will always need to return again.” There is something about the area, the natives, the lifestyle–measured against the fast-paced rat race of our own lifestyle that makes one wonder… Whether it is because of the adventure, the kindness of the natives, the gold nuggets and great mining opportunities, or the water—or maybe a little of each of these things, I know that I personally will be going back!

 

 

 

 

BY ROBERT MILES

Two brothers, Roger and Richard Bogan, share the dream of striking it rich…together

Theirs is a partnership that is unique, a friendship of two brothers, the kind you would generally expect to exist in a storybook or television script. And on the Klamath River in Northern California they are known as the team who know how to get it….get the gold, that is. Not an easy reputation to obtain, and even a more difficult one to maintain. Gold is elusive, and keeping a partnership viable and working for more than one season means not only putting in long hours under water moving the overburden of rocks, sand, and gravel, it means having the ability to find the pay-streaks.

Their long time dream of putting an 8-inch underwater dredge to work became reality, and in a matter of approximately 31 hours of diving, the Bogan brothers netted $4,000 in placer gold from their very first clean-up. Sound easy? Well let’s take a closer look at all the hard work, preparation and planning that went into making this very demanding and difficult task actually work.

“I had the dream way back in 1982 to start gold mining,” Roger reflected. “Even then, before I ever found a single nugget, I felt a kind of intense excitement. Of course at first it was only a hobby. Then, I got my brother Richard interested in 1983 when he flew to Arizona to visit from Illinois. We took this little prospecting trip with a 3-inch dredge up to Bumble Bee, about 45 miles north of Phoenix. I remember Richard caught the fever right away. In fact he literally beat the water to a froth the minute he saw the first couple of colors. Since that time we’ve found quite a bit of gold, seen a lot of country and had some fantastic adventures.”

In 1984 the Bogan brothers journeyed to Alaska for the summer, staying three months in the back country, 200 miles, from the nearest telephone in an area near Jack Wade Creek on the south fork of the 40 Mile.

“The country was spinetinglingly beautiful,” remembered Roger, “but Mother Nature didn’t cooperate very well. In all the time we were there, we probably had only 18 days when we were actually able to dredge for gold. When it would rain, which it seemed to most of the time, the rivers would rise 5 to 6 feet overnight and it would become a real tempestuous situation. Even though we had a 5-inch dredge that was really outfitted, we just couldn’t dive in those conditions.”

Throughout that summer Roger and Richard recovered enough gold to pay expenses they saw some magnificent country, and were mining only 1 1/2 miles from another hardworking miner who struck it rich with a 54-ounce gold nugget.

After Alaska they decided to try California. “We’d heard rumors about rich rivers and they were true, but you have to really go for it. Even small dredges have the capability to actually bring up the gold, but it al1 depends on how hard a person wants to work. You just can’t sit on the bank and make that gold jump into your sluice box; you’ve got to work! The bigger the dredge the harder the work, but you get more production of course.

“One thing about California, it’s a lot cheaper to mine there than Alaska, so we took a 4-inch, a 5-inch, and an 8-inch dredge with us all at the same time. We figured we could sample with the 5-inch, use the 4-inch in the creeks, and do the real production work with the 8-inch. We spent about a month working the creeks, and that’s where we pulled our biggest nuggets — one was a really nice quarter-ouncer which Richard immediately laid claim to. We also found a lot of nice coarse gold.” In that first month the Bogans recovered 6 ounces, and then decided to move the “big guy” into the river.

“We had picked what we believed would be a really productive spot,” recalled Roger. “We had spent a lot of time talking to the old-timers. They really know the lay of the land and where the gold is likely to be carried in the river during the high flood waters. Those people are great; they have so much knowledge if you just listen to them. We had also taken some mining seminars from Dave McCracken, and we felt we’d hit a pay-streak if we could just keep in mind the old miners’ rule: “If you were the heaviest thing in that river where would you be?”

In the spot they chose, the 5-inch sampling dredge hit pay-dirt, bringing up 3/4 of an ounce of gold in the first set of sample holes. “We knew right then we were on to something, so we turned on the 8-inch and spent the summer doing what we’d been dreaming of doing for years. The dredge we continued to use throughout the rest of the season was that same 8-inch. We had built it ourselves, using a 1600cc Volkswagon engine and Precision machine components. So far we’ve built five different dredges, and we’ve been very happy with our ability to recover both fine and coarse gold.”

The energy I felt when spending time with these dynamic and dedicated miners was nothing short of spellbinding, and it’s definitely contagious. “Our goal for the next six months,” Roger reports, “is to actually recover 500 to 600 ounces. That way we’ll not only cover expenses, we’ll be making a very comfortable living doing what our entire team loves the most.”

 

By Dave McCracken

“Finding gold, and a little too much adventure, in the deep jungle…”

Dave Mack

 

This story is dedicated to one of the best and most loyal friends I have ever had, Eric Bosch. Eric and I started our dredging careers at about the same time. We formed a close, working partnership early on, which we pursued for many years together, from California, Canada and Alaska to the deep jungles of Borneo. Our fantastic adventures together were many and will always be cherished. I’m glad we survived them! Eric played an important roll in helping to start The New 49’ers, and he managed our commercial underwater mining projects and training programs for a number of years. He is the best and strongest gold dredger I have ever had the honor to work with. The best and richest pay-streaks I ever helped recover were always with Eric at my side, often while he was operating the suction nozzle when the gold was first discovered. Eric and his family are the most kind-hearted and dependable people I have ever known. There is no bottom to the amount of enthusiasm they will invest into any program they get involved with. It has truly been one of he greatest honors of my lifetime to share adventures with them.

I had a premonition that something was going to go wrong on this hunting trip. I had hunted wild boar with the Dyak natives before; but they had always killed the boar before I caught up. These Dyaks are extremely fast in the jungle with their bare feet. I could keep up with them for awhile. But when they started chasing their hunting dogs at a full run, almost straight up and down the sides of steep mountains, I was worried about having an accident and hurting myself. I did not want to take the risk of suffering the embarrassment of having the natives carry me four hours out of the jungle, rather than the meat that we came for. Now I was resting at the bottom of a narrow creek bed. All of the natives had run off.

The sound of the dogs was getting louder; they were herding the pack of wild boars directly down into my location!

It all started several years ago when a mining company hired one of my teammates and I to do a preliminary dredge sampling evaluation on some mining concessions they own in East Kalimantan (Borneo). We spent 30 days on that project and everything went perfect. During our time on the concessions, we found rich gold deposits and encouraged the company to follow up with another more extensive sampling project. The company which owns the concessions was more interested in lode mine development, so the dredging potential sat idle for several years. Finally, the company decided to allow a second party to come in as a partner to fund the dredging exploration and development. This was how we got back to Borneo.

  

Eric Bosch and the leader of a Dyak sampling team working on a sampling dredge.

The sampling project was going fine. However, since the Dyak natives have a standing policy to not work on Sundays, and there was nothing else productive to do with our project, I asked if they would take me with them on today’s hunting expedition. Of course, they agreed. The problem was in keeping up with them. They grew up in this hot, humid, thick jungle, steep-terrain environment. Keeping up took all my determination. I had expended a great deal of effort to create a mutually respectful relationship with these natives. I wasn’t going to lose it now by making them slow down or turn back.

We had hiked three and a half hours up a narrow creek bed without any sign of deer, bear or wild boar. The dogs work the side hills. If they locate a deer, they run it down and hamstring it. If they find a bear, they chase it down, surround it, and hold it there until the Dyaks catch up. The natives then assault the bear and kill it with spears. If the dogs get onto the scent of wild boar, they herd the pigs down to the creek bed and drive them at the hunters. As the pigs attack the hunters, the hunters dispatch the pigs either with spears or machetes.

“Never run away,” one of the hunters told me, “When the pigs come down on you, your only chance, your only chance, is to kill the pig. It is not difficult if you maintain a focused determinism. Never throw the spear; never even let it out of your hands. Never turn and run. Wait until the last moment when the pig is in range. Aim carefully for the vital spot just behind the front shoulder. You only have one chance. Otherwise, the pig will hurt you–sometimes very badly,”

I found myself remembering the hunter’s words as the frenzied sounds of the dogs grew progressively louder. They were coming my way fast. I could hear them running down the sides of the hills just above me. I had not planned on this. I held the spear a little more firmly in my hands, pointed in the direction in which they were coming. And I kept wondering, “What do I do if there is more than one pig coming at me?

What the heck was I doing here at this very moment? Was this stupid, or what? You know that feeling? It is complete regret of the present situation! That was the way I was feeling.

The abundant kindness and hospitality of our Dyak guides made it very easy for us to form lasting friendships.

Everything on the sampling project was going as planed. The company built huge, comfortable, fully-outfitted base camps in the jungle They even had satellite TV! Most preliminary jungle dredge evaluations I had done in the past were supported from fly camps. A fly camp usually consists of little more than a tarp suspended over a few branches constructed to keep most of the rain off us during the night–sometimes with a rough platform from freshly cut branches built off the ground. The natives don’t seem to mind the irregular sleeping surface of different sized branches. I prefer an air mattress–or the floorboards from a river boat. But this trip was luxury. We had cooks who created restaurant-quality meals. We had refrigerators and air conditioners. We had beds. There was not a mosquito alive inside that base camp! That was the problem; there wasn’t enough adventure.

Base camp had all the comforts of home!

I need a certain amount of adventure in my life to keep everything in balance. I have always been this way. While my life in California as a dredge miner for gold may hold more adventure than many people would be comfortable with, I have found that it is therapeutic for me to devote some time each winter doing mining projects outside of America. There is something all-encompassing about the jungle environment. A week or two in the jungle, and I find myself wondering if the other life in California is real–or something out of my imagination. Why is this? I think it is because the jungle environment requires all of your attention. The margin for error is very small. There is always some degree of danger. And even when there is little danger, the environment is completely different from the normal life-environment in California. This requires you (me) to focus all of your attention on the present. This releases you from all of the hundreds of other things and problems which normally occupy your attention. Most of your day-to-day normal worries are quickly forgotten in the jungle environment. This puts things back into their proper perspective. Later (as long as you survive the experience), you return home appreciative of the things that you have. For me, it is like a new lease on my normal life every time I return from one of these projects.

But there is such a thing as too much adventure. This is when dangerous conditions become so extreme that you are not sure if you are going to survive–or possibly crawl away with severe and lasting disabilities. Too much adventure brings out the feeling of terror and panic. I was feeling terror as I watched an 80-pound male pig round the bend in the creek bed just up in front of me. He was running for his life, the dogs just behind him. Just as he came into view he turned around and threw himself, snorting and squealing and biting at the dogs. Some dogs backed off, while others moved in on him from behind–as a team. The boar was no match for the pack of dogs. I found myself hoping, hoping, pleading with destiny, that the pig would be brought down by the dogs right there. But just as quickly as the boar turned on the dogs, he turned away and ran down towards me. Around 30 yards away, at a full run, he spotted me–an easy target–and he aimed himself directly at me, snarling, spitting and squealing in a killer rage.

My strongest inner voice was screaming at me to turn and run. I overrode that urge, held the spear tightly, pointed directly at the boar as he came at me…

He came fast and it was difficult to target the exact kill zone behind the shoulder. I felt like I might be better off just to make sure I hit him anywhere with the point. Then, at least, maybe I could hold him off me with the spear. As he came within range at a full run, I aimed the best I could and got him in the hindquarter. This caused him to scream bloody murder. I held him off me while he was goring at me with his tusks and snapping his jaws, trying to reach me, only inches away from my hands.

The dogs descended on the boar, biting him, snarling, in a frenzied attack; and I found myself more worried about being bitten by the dogs. Naturally, I backed off from the violence. In turn, the pig shook himself off the spear and hurled himself at me again. Only this time, in the confusion of backing off from the turmoil, I was in a retreat position and not able to hold the pig off. I was going to get it bad! I had never experienced such violent determination before. The pig was almost on me again as, backing up, I fell over a log onto my back and dropped the spear. I threw my arms over my head to keep from being bitten on the face or neck, expecting to get bit on the arm or the side. But it didn’t happen. Overcoming my fear, I looked up to see the pig only inches away, with the dogs having bitten into its hindquarters, holding the pig off of me.

Enough of this! My fear turned to anger and determined action. What was this lowly animal trying to take my life? I remember thinking, “Quit being a sissy, dude!” In an instant, I jumped to my feet, grabbed the spear, took aim to make sure I did not hurt any of the dogs; and with all my might, slammed the point of the spear down into the target kill zone of the pig. One last convulsive bite at the spear and the pig died. I remember thinking how easy it was to kill the pig when I finally just decided to do it.

Eric was back at camp separating the gold from our final sample results from the little remaining iron particles, so we could weigh and log accurate results and relate those back to the volume of streambed processed in each sample.

I stood there for awhile in a shocked daze, looking at the dead pig, a few of the dogs still biting at it. I had not noticed at first that the rest of the dogs had run off barking at something else. I found myself thinking how it would be to tell this story to my mining partner. Eric was at the base camp overseeing the final gold clean-ups for the previous week’s sampling results. Eric would appreciate the adventure and be sorry he didn’t take part. He likes to hunt even more than I do!

Eric and I had sampled several different concessions during this trip. The first area was a very remote location, requiring helicopter support of our operation. We decided that while the high-grade gold deposits were present, the cost of providing logistical support made it difficult to mount expanded sampling and production dredging operations.

Our Dyak helpers were always ready to jump in and try to do all the work.

  

Consequently, we found ourselves sampling a new group of concessions which were more easily and economically accessible by river boat. This new area was huge and showed excellent long-term potential. Fine gold seemed to be evenly dispersed throughout the gravels, hard-packed streambed strata and loose gravel alike. The fine-sized flakes of gold were present in every sample we took, from bank to bank in the river. We were looking hard at what kind of recovery system we would need to devise to recover this gold on a production-scale using suction dredges.

The company had six diesel-powered 8-inch production dredges located on this concession, along with all of the necessary support gear. They also had two unused 10-yard per hour placer test plants which utilized mechanical classification and jigs for fine gold recovery. Eric and I were feeling quite good about the promising results we were getting. The company could utilize the production dredges and placer plants for an expanded sampling venture and preliminary small-scale production operation. They could do exceptionally well in the areas we had already tested. Eric was doing the finishing work while I was helping our jungle guides put meat on the dinner table.

As I came out of my stupor in the creek bed, I realized that I was just standing there in a daze while the dogs were already herding another wild animal down at me. Could I do this again? Barks, squeals and the stampeding sounds of animals racing down the hillside were getting louder by the moment. It was another wild boar, a small one this time. But he came at me just the same as the first, in a mad rage, wanting the taste of my blood. This time, at a distance from any emotion, I stood my ground, took aim at the kill zone and nailed the pig on the first try. It was really just a baby compared to the first one; no great kill. But he was after me, just the same. And I got him. What a relief!

Returning to base camp in a long boat with the meat from my kill and the hunting dogs

Just that fast, the dogs were gone again, and I could hear the natives yelling and whistling just up the hillside. Then the familiar barking again. Was this ever going to end? Another crazed pig rounded the bend. This one was a female (no tusks). The dogs and the Dyaks were right behind it, yelling and whistling. But the pig never turned. It ran right down on me. I could see the fear and apprehension on the faces of my Dyak friends. They figured that pig was going to eat me alive! But, I had already been through the gauntlet twice. My emotions returned. I stood my ground. In my own killer rage, at the exact right moment, I raged back at the pig, driving the spear into its heart. The pig died quickly. The Dyaks stopped, seeing the look in my eye, the other two dead pigs, the blood on my hands; and that immediately changed their assessment of who I was. Almost immediately, they were laughing and shouting and dancing all around me and the pigs. This was a momentous occasion for all of us.

Ah, California–what a great place. I might not even need to go anywhere this winter, even though I am presently writing proposals for a preliminary evaluation in West Sumatra.

Since returning home with stories of this hunting adventure, my friends and family keep asking if I plan to hunt with the natives during my next trip. My answer is that I may help them hunt for pigs, but definitely not for bears!

 

Note: Oregon Now Has Placed a Moratorium on Motorized Prospecting!

Rogue GoldWell, here’s my total gold from dredging in Oregon — what a blast I had!

My total was 9.5 ounces of beautiful gold!

I had some people from one of the Internet gold forums ask “how” I found that much gold…

Here was my answer:

Well it was prospecting, prospecting and then more prospecting to find some rich pockets. I moved around a lot. I moved around so much that after June, I did not even tie my dredge to shore while dredging. I just dragged it wherever I felt like going with my nozzle while under water — even out into the gut of the Rogue River without a line to shore. I was “free” to prospect wherever!

I tied my dredge off to shore over night.

Basically, if you want a “how to” answer, I learned most of how I prospect from The New 49er’s Club.  So if I have to give credit it will be to Craig Colt who taught me a whole lot while working with him on his 8″ dredge a few years back. And of course the remainder I learned from Dave McCracken either directly or indirectly and other 49’er members.

The 49’ers are so valuable at learning gold mining, it would be hard to be without the membership and the members.

So out of the 90 days that were available in the season, I dredged about 70 of them. It would have been more if it were not for a death in the family (flew back to Atlanta), and I also lost some days when they removed the Gold Ray Dam.

Its really all about finding high-grade gold and mining it and then moving on to find more when it is exhausted.

It was a wild Summer in Oregon for sure! Got to heal up for next Summer.

I hope to see you guys out there!

Alan Mash

 

by Marcie Stumpf/Foley

As I rolled over, cold air rushed down my back, and I inched closer to my (ex-) husband, Bill, to get some warmth…Ouch! A sharp rock made contact with my hipbone and brought me wide awake. I didn’t move much, just enough to try to see what time it was by my watch. It was early yet, and unless I wanted to bundle up and build a campfire it was best to stay right where I was.

Once I was warm again, however, I ventured out of the sleeping bag far enough to look out the window of our tent…Yes, he was there again. Each morning, if I awoke early enough, I could watch the great blue heron who inhabited our mining claim. In the early morning hours he stood just a few feet from our tent, surveying his world. He could be seen during the day flying up and down the creek, but this was the only time to see him “up close and personal.” The cold soon drove me back to my covers, and as I lay there I wondered, not for the first time, how I managed to get myself where I was.

It had long been a dream for Bill and our son David to own our own claim. Through diligent research the previous year, they and a friend had managed to locate this one. When they told me about it the first time, I had a sinking feeling that this wasn’t going to be all fun and games. In the first place, it was remote (but they said we could drive all the way in), we would have to tent camp, since we could not drive the camper in, and, although it was only about 35 miles from the campground we were staying in at the time, it took three hours to drive that 35 miles (that was a real bad sign).

I didn’t see the claim at all that first year. It was late by the time we finished all the paperwork on it, and they told me it was no place to get caught in the rains. They did enough testing to know it was worth the price, and we settled for making plans for the next year. Although several friends would be partners, none of them would be able to work it during the first year, so we made plans for just the three of us. We were going to take both our 4-inch and our 5-inch dredge, since we weren’t sure which would work out best.

Spring finally arrived, and, as ready as we could be, we were off. I was beginning to catch the excitement that Bill and David were showing, but I still had a few butterflies concerning the road. I’d thought, after traveling Hwy. 49 through the Mother Lode area for several years, and the back roads, that I was cured of being intimidated by mining area roads. Both of them had been noticeably silent about the road in to the claim, however, which led me to believe it was not going to be something I was going to enjoy. The first hour of our trip in, we wound up, over and around several mountains, on a narrow paved highway. We left that for a dirt road (one lane) and I was given instructions to watch for oncoming vehicles. It was hard to see very far ahead, but I was watching carefully when we rounded a curve and my heart leapt into my throat–we were on top of the world, it seemed! As far as the eye could see in any direction there were forested mountains, all of them below us, except for one taller one right in front of us across what looked like a bottomless chasm.

As Bill slowly rounded the curve, he soothed me by saying that he’d been over it several times, and there was no problem with the road. As I looked across to the opposite mountain I could see a much higher, narrow, steep road hugging the edge of it. I consoled myself by thinking that at least I was not on THAT road. We crept down the side of the mountain, with nothing between us and the edge. Several times it was so narrow that pebbles rolled down, and down, and down….

When we finally reached the bottom it was to find a bridge which we crossed and started up the other side. As I held on to the hand grip and tried to keep my head from hitting the door as we bounced and jumped over the large rocks, ruts and washboard of the narrow road I gritted my teeth–it was now clear that we were on the road I had seen from the other side! (Lucky Me!)

Bill tried to keep up a chatter at first, but gave it up, since keeping the truck on the road with its full load was like handling a bucking bronco, and I did not trust myself to speak. There were still no trees on the edge, and that was on my side of the truck, of course. I wondered at one point if anyone ever did completely bounce right off the road, because we seemed in imminent danger of doing so. I became ill as each curve put us higher and higher above everything.

Finally reaching the top, we pulled off into a meadow to take a break, and I sat on a log waiting for everything to settle back into place inside. The next few miles were breathtaking. Beautiful high meadows full of ferns and many wildflowers, the road banks of deep red earth covered with vines and flowers, and a sky of such a brilliant blue it almost hurt. The air was wonderfully fresh and clean, full of the scent of forest and flowers. Meadows alternated with thick forests of huge pine and cedar laced with little babbling brooks.

We soon turned onto a non-maintained road and pulled over to lock the wheels of both vehicles into four wheel drive. About one fourth of a mile further we turned off again, went over a rise, and then…down. Down a steep hillside through new growth trees so close they continually scraped the truck. We had to scramble to close the windows as they thrust themselves inside. As he tried to straddle a rut that was growing ever wider and was more than 15 inches deep, Bill started to say something…Ooops! The truck fell into the rut avoiding a tree trunk, and we had to work our way back out. Then we had to stop several times to move large boulders that had fallen. Soon we arrived at a sharp switchback, and I had to get out and guide to back them both around.

Until I returned to the truck I didn’t notice the road. As I buckled up we started down and I caught my breath as the truck went over the edge. It was so steep it was like that long first hill you go down on a roller coaster, only this was very narrow and had large fallen logs here and there. We crept down in low four wheel drive, tilting first this way and then that as we drove up on the bank, in and through deep ruts, on or over logs–anything to stay on the narrow road. Then another steep switchback. No where to turn around, so we took it as wide as we could, and just barely made it. Then down another roller coaster ride, and another one.

The trees were so thick I still had no idea how far we had to go, but I was feeling so ill that I knew I couldn’t go much further. I was very relieved when we pulled up and stopped for a break at the bottom of the fourth one. I was looking ahead. I could just catch a glimpse of the creek below through the trees. As I started to get out, however, my foot met nothing but air! I looked down to see the turn in the road badly chewed up with big hunks of shale churned from vehicles trying to claw their way out. It had been torn up so badly that there was at least a 10-foot drop during the turn! Then the road tilted alarmingly where the hillside had slid–tilted so badly that I decided then and there that I was going to walk the rest of the way.

I never did ride up to that point, or beyond there going down. It was a walk of a mile or so from the campsite, but much better than riding. It seemed that last mile was just more than my stomach or nerves could handle.

When I reached the bottom I found a wide, wide wash. Probably 300 feet wide, with groves of trees near the edges, sand and gravel bars, and a crystal clear creek meandering through on the near side. Our campsite was to be just in front of the sheer bedrock face of a mountain that caused the creek to turn west, then south again, where it had worn through the bedrock and made a channel about fifty feet deep in the sheer sides.

Our claim started just above where we were camping, and continued down through the narrow canyon. I did not see the rest of it for a couple of days, as we devoted the first two days to setting up camp. David took the 4-inch dredge down piece by piece in the evenings to where they planned to start dredging.

We were at 4,800 feet elevation, and the nights were cold and wonderful for sleeping, but the days warmed up beautifully. It was the most peaceful, serene place I had ever seen. The area was steeped in mining history, and well documented. I had purchased a book that gave us a lot of information on the area. From that book I knew that our road in to the claim had been built by hand to construct a dam right where we were camped, in order to flume water 11 miles across these rugged mountains to hydraulic another mining area. Just 20 feet downstream from our tent, where the narrow canyon began, the two bottom logs of that dam still remained, the top one just breaking the water.

Our third morning dawned clear and beautiful, and we quickly made preparations to be gone for the day, since Bill and David intended to dredge first at the lower end of the claim. By the time I was ready they had gas cans, pry bars, and all the things they still needed, ready to go. I put the daypack on my back, grabbed the small ice chest with the shoulder strap that carried our lunch, and we started off.

From this point, our only access to the rest of the claim was a trail where the flume had been. There were no “banks” to the creek. We waded across, and started up the bedrock face at the point where the dam had been. There were enough handholds and footholds so that this was not a problem. Up on top there were rotting timbers in a pile, which must have been used for repair on the flume, and the small flat area was littered with square nails. We were about 60 feet above the creek. I could see the trail just to where the mountain jutted out to a point, and then a turn hid it from view. The trail was wide with a flat area on the creek edge, and I was pleasantly surprised. Actually, in all the concerns I had had about coming to this area, this trail had not entered my mind before now, which surprised me, since I have a terrible fear of heights. When we reached the point where the trail turned, I looked back at our camp. I turned back. From this point on the trail was narrower, so I spent all my time looking at my feet. It was also covered with leaves from trees and bushes above, and slick. My feet were still wet from crossing the creek, so I had to step carefully. There was no longer anything between the trail and the edge, and as I followed carefully, I noticed that the creek was getting much further below us. That’s when it occurred to me that the flume would have to stay level, but the natural drop in the creek was a pretty good one, so the further we went along, the further above the creek we would be.

I had dropped a little behind since I was going more slowly, so I paid attention to what I was doing, and tried to catch up. The further I went, the narrower the trail seemed to be. With the loaded daypack on my back, and the hard plastic cooler slung over my shoulder I was off balance a bit, and I soon found myself hugging the mountainside and creeping even more slowly than before.

All of a sudden, I almost ran right into Bill! As I looked up, surprised, he went around me and it was to see David in front of me, across a space where there was no trail at all! A slide had taken the entire trail, but there were places where he had scuffed out just enough space for one foot at a time across what seemed like a vast six-foot space. He was reaching his hand out to me and saying “…Now, Mom, this is going to be easy. Just put your feet right into my footprints. Dad will hold you from that side, and I’ll get you from this side as soon as I can. You’ll be past it in no time.”

Now, this child is talking to a person he knows doesn’t even climb a ladder; who is totally un-athletic, and who is already pretty strung out after the trip in to this claim and the “fun” of setting up camp for two days. I just looked at him, but he remained calm. He continued to talk to me as if I were a child while I stood there with my face pressed to the mountainside, loaded down with gear.

I looked down again at the footprints David had made on the bare mountainside. Since there was nothing else there, and it was straight down to the water (about 100 feet below us at this point), it wasn’t hard to imagine my body splattered, spread-eagled, on the huge boulders at the bottom. I pressed my face back against the mountainside, and told him to give me a minute. Well, I told myself, here you are–you knew something like this was coming–either you put your feet forward, or you turn around and everyone goes home. All the work up to this point has been wasted, and you’ll never ever do this. I knew I was not really ready to go home, so I decided not to think about it–block it out–and I looked at David and said “Don’t think you’re going to get off lightly for this one. Give me your hand again, and you’d better not let me fall!”

I don’t remember anything about crossing that space except that I was lightheaded and dizzy because I had to look down. I did cross it, however, and after that the rest of the trail seemed very good!

Bill and David had to spend the rest of the walk listening to what I thought of them for getting me into such a situation, and what we were going to do to the trail to improve it. They wisely made no comment or objection. By the time we reached the point where we were to go back down the mountainside, I was beginning to feel better.

On a previous trip down, David had taken a rope. Since the mountainside was so steep and we were now about 150 feet above the creek, he had it strung from tree to tree and cut some steps to help us get up and down. The only problem was that he, being 6’2″ tall, and having the legs of a giraffe, had cut steps for a much taller person. I ended up slipping and sliding down much more of the trail than I wanted to.

Numerous times my feet went out from under me trying to negotiate the long steps, and I would bump and slide (usually right into a “stickery” bush) while dangling from the rope by one arm. I had taken a few pry bars in one hand to leave each of them with one arm free. David apologized each time I’d fall, and promised to fix it the next day. By the time I reached the bottom I had big splotches of dirt, scratches, and bruises almost everywhere.

When we emerged from the trees at the creek we crossed again (which gave me an opportunity to wash off most of the dirt) and I noticed that it was much cooler. I looked up to see clouds moving in. We were soon at the dredge, however, and we all worked to get it set up and ready to go.

Once they’d donned their weight belts and fired up the dredge, I decided to take a break. David had been thoughtful enough to bring a folding chair with short legs–they are great for panning, and a real backsaver. I tried to find a sunny spot since it was now decidedly cold, but there didn’t seem to be one. I picked a flat place, pulled a book from my daypack, and sat down to read.

Suddenly, I sneezed six or seven times and my nose started running. Great! Now I was going to come down with a cold. Oh, well….I picked up the book again after digging out the Kleenex, and sat back with a sigh. As I leaned back in the chair, I encountered instant pain on my shoulder blade! It felt as if someone had just stabbed me with a long needle. I jumped up to find I had leaned against a bumblebee! That was it! My nose was running again, my shoulder was throbbing and everything to treat it with was clear back at camp, I was cold, wet, and tired! I stalked off into the trees. Although I’m sure you’d have a good laugh I’m not going to tell you just what I did there. Let’s just say I was riled.

When I came back I felt better except that my shoulder was killing me! I rummaged around in the daypack, looking for something I could use, but the only thing I could find was some aspirin. I debated taking a couple of them, but knew from experience that they didn’t help. My grandmother had always used a baking soda paste on bee stings so I moistened one aspirin, making a paste of it, and rubbed it right on the bee sting. I could hardly believe it, but it took the pain away in a very short time.

Once again I settled back with my book (this time checking the chair for bees), and started reading. Before I finished the first page..Splat! A very large rain drop fell on the page, and I raised my eyes to look at the sky. I had been so involved with my problems I hadn’t noticed that there were huge thunderclouds above us, and all of a sudden they let go with a terrific storm. We were pelted by huge drops, lightning and deafening thunder. We quickly shut down and covered the engine, and hurriedly started back for camp. Arriving thoroughly soaked, I put a big pot of homemade soup on to cook, and then snuggled down at last in my sleeping bag with my book.

It rained all day, and steadily for two more days, which actually worked out quite well. It gave me time to get over my cold, and it gave all of us a chance to rest up from our hustle and bustle. We unpacked the books we’d brought along, and spent most of our time reading while we listened to the rain on the tent, surrounded by the sweet smell of wet pine, fir, and cedar.

By the time it was clear again, we were really ready to get busy! The first order of business was to improve the flume trail, however, and when we left camp that morning we carried a shovel and our small camp broom. On our way down to the dredge I swept a portion of the trail clear of leaves, and left the broom at the other end of them, to sweep a portion that night. While I did that, David went ahead and started working at re-cutting a trail into the side of the mountain where there was none. We left both the shovel and broom on the trail until all areas of it had been improved as much as possible.

The reason for wanting to dredge the lower end of the claim was because it made a bend near the bottom, and widened out into a series of pools interspersed with clumps of large boulders: an ideal place for gold to come to rest after its headlong plunge through the upper canyon which mostly had very shallow bedrock.

We did not have to dredge there very long to find out that many huge boulders had also come to rest in the same pools–they appeared to have been laid in by a master–each of them too large to winch. They were wedged in so tight we couldn’t even dredge between them!

After some discussion (always lively in our family) about where we were going to dredge next, a decision was reached and we dismantled the dredge, packed it up the mountainside, across the trail, and back down at the new site. We could not move more than a few feet without having to do this, due to the many huge boulders that were strewn throughout the canyon.

In addition to moving the dredge and accessories it was necessary to have boulder moving equipment. We’d made a portable mount for our 8000 lb. electric winch so it could be cabled to a piece of bedrock or large boulder, and set it up in succession with a small generator, 12V battery, and battery charger. It was necessary to have the battery charger to charge the battery fast enough to move several boulders at the same time. That meant that each of these items also had to be moved from place to place with the dredge, since there were boulders no matter where we dredged.

Our days soon settled into a routine. While I dressed Bill carried water from the creek. I put some on the stove while I washed up, and the warm water was used to soak lightweight soiled clothing during the day. Once the washing was in to soak I put more water on while I cooked breakfast, and by the time we had eaten, I had more hot water to wash dishes. I packed our lunch while they filled our solar shower bags and put them out on the rocks to soak up sun during the day. We then loaded up our backpacks and were off to the dredge.

At the end of the dredging day we cleaned the sluice, screened the concentrates and carried them back to camp with us, along with gas cans that needed to be filled, etc. After climbing to the trail, and then back down again when we reached camp, I washed the clothing that had been soaking all day, removed the clothing hung the day before from the clothesline, and hung up the new. Then, I showered in our shower room and started dinner.

By this time Bill and David had finished the cleanup of the day’s gold, and while they took showers I weighed it, recorded it, and put it away. After dinner they gathered firewood while I cleaned camp. Then we could relax around the campfire, but we were ready for bed early.

Most of the gold we found was beautiful– chunky, or nugget, gold. Due to the rapid drop in the creek and the force of water through the narrow canyon we found very little fine gold, or gold in the overburden.

Because we left camp unattended all day, we had debated long about where to keep it! Although I was not thrilled with the idea, we finally decided that the only way to keep it really safe was to bury it. There was a large area around camp that was deep, soft white sand. We picked an easily identifiable place between bushes, dug a hole, and buried it. After filling our second jar I went to the spot where we’d buried the gold, dug, and….Nothing!

Bill came over to help and soon David joined in. We couldn’t find it! We knew it had to be there, somewhere, so we fetched the shovel to dig out the entire area between the bushes. After digging a deep pit we finally retrieved it, with relief. We’d probably caused it to sink by digging all around it. I had a hard time letting it go again, but from then on we placed it in a metal tin, which went into a bag, placed directly on bedrock in an area where bedrock was shallower and marked it with some equipment we weren’t using.

We rarely took a full day off since we didn’t know how long we would be able to stay. We systematically worked our way down the creek dredging, and found some rewarding pockets of gold. Two small areas yielded 27 pennyweights apiece.

As we neared one boulder almost the size of a house, it paid better and better. The boulder was not sitting on bedrock but sat right on top of the material. When they began uncovering the material around it, they found two boulders on bedrock which were supporting it. The problem was that one of the boulders underneath was at a very precarious angle, and if the large one above had shifted at all, it would have rolled, smashing Bill, David, and the dredge.

They kept telling me they would quit working there before it became too dangerous, but they found two coins from the 1840s, and then one from the 1830s, then a 6 pennyweight nugget–they kept getting closer and closer…..All this time I tended the dredge and stared at the rock looming above them. If it had shifted I could probably get out of the way, but they would have no chance to. I knew they were getting nervous about it because one of them kept a hand on the boulder at all times, but they couldn’t seem to bring themselves to stop dredging there. I was beginning to feel panic. How was I going to get them to stop?

Finally, I tugged on both airlines and had them shut the engine down. I said “Look, I understand that you’re excited about what you’ve found, and what you could find, but no amount of gold is worth either one of you, let alone both. I can’t tell you what to do. That’s your decision to make, but I can’t stay here to watch you any longer, worrying every moment that that huge monster is going to fall.” I picked up the pack and said “I’m going back to camp and you do whatever you have to do.”

And, that’s just what I did. They showed up about an hour later. They had already moved the dredge over to work down a small set of falls near the boulder. They never did comment on what I had had to say, but they were pretty sober the rest of the day, so they had done some serious thinking about it. I think they were both ready to move, but each hated to be the one to say so.

As we worked down the small set of falls, the gold production fell off some. When they reached the bottom of the falls, however, there was a small pool, and they found some nice crevices carrying gold in the bedrock there.

Once Bill came up to the surface of the water and asked me to put his mask on. He’d uncovered a pocket of gold and wanted me to see it. I put it on, and holding my breath I put my face down in the water. Bedrock was only about five feet deep, and the water was so crystal clear the sun was shining through to the bedrock. There, right in a band of sunlight, was an inverted cone-shaped depression in the smooth bedrock, filled with sparkling, shining gold. It totaled one and one-fourth ounces, the largest pocket we’d found.

We followed the bedrock down another small set of falls into a larger pool where the recovery was also good. This was also one of the few places where fine gold was recovered; a small bank on one side widened the canyon just enough to let some fine gold settle.

Although days off were few, I did take a few mornings to do some baking. All three of us had huge appetites, but we all lost weight (I found the perfect waistline exercise–shoveling dredge tailings!). One morning I stayed in camp to bake a cake. We were working quite some way down the canyon, so David told Bill to stay there with me, he would dredge alone (he wanted cake, too!).

We used an oven that sat on our propane stove which had a thermostat. But since it was outdoors, if a breeze came up the temperature fluctuated quite a bit, and it helped to have someone sit there to let me know when the temperature changed. I mixed up the cake, beating it by hand, and put the first half in the oven. While it baked I started some of the cleanup, and was humming along with the radio as I worked. Never has a cake smelled so good, or the scent filled the air as that one did.. David said later that he could smell it way downstream at the dredge. It was a beautiful day, and I had placed a big bunch of wildflowers gathered from a nearby spring, that morning, on our table. Birds were chirping, our friendly chipmunks were waiting in the bushes for any scraps we might have for them, hummingbirds were fighting over the feeder that hung from the edge of our tarp frame, and all was right with the world. Or, so I thought!

A year later, after hearing about it from someone else first, Bill related that he had just happened to glance up at the trail when all of a sudden a bear shuffled around the point, headed our way. It had evidently smelled the cake, too! He casually got to his feet and went to the tent, and when my back was turned grabbed his gun from the pack and laid it next to him on his chair, out of my sight. I was still humming along with the radio, cleaning up, and when I burst into song the bear must have heard me. Bill told me the bear looked up and saw us, and sniffed the fragrant air. Instead of coming on, however, he sniffed again, then turned around and went the other way.

Knowing that I would leave if I saw a bear, Bill took David aside when he returned to camp for lunch and told him about the bear. David left camp before we did that afternoon, to brush all the tracks from the trail. From then on, he left camp every morning before us and kept the trail swept for me. They enjoyed putting one over on me, and there were no further sightings of any large animals.

I was 48 years old that summer, and I really cherish the experiences we shared. Our lives took another direction not long afterward, and I don’t know that I will ever again be able to do something like that. It was a lot of work, but the rewards were great enough to make it very worthwhile. I am not speaking of the monetary rewards, although they were good; the rewards I am speaking of are less tangible, but greater. We did something that not many ever have the opportunity to do today, and that experience will always be with us.

We went back to the claim the next year. This time three other families (our partners) and another of our sons went also. That year brought its own unique experiences, mostly good ones, but it just wasn’t quite the same as the year that Bill, David, and I had our “Great Adventure” in the wilderness.

And by the way, that pan of gold up there is holding almost all of our “take” for the six weeks we spent there that year; our first pound of gold (1 lb., troy weight) found in a summer!

 

by George McConnell

What can go wrong will!! And does!!

Never has such an adage been more true than with small engines – on a prospecting trip – a BILLION miles from nowhere! The engine sits after your arm breaks from trying to start it, and tempers flare while someone screams “The thing worked last year!”

Here are a few tips:

Repair of anything in the field is much more difficult, not to mention the trips to town for a spark plug wrench, or a clamp, only to find the store just closed! Make up a small kit of tools and parts to keep with the mining equipment.

1. Pliers
2. 4-way screwdriver
3. Inexpensive socket set with spark plug socket that will fit your spark plug!
4. Allen wrenches
5. Extra engine oil
6. Extra pump seal kit and gaskets and clamps
7. Extra spark plug
8. Whatever else you can think of that you’ll need!

Ok-ok, the season is over and I’m dreaming of next year’s expedition. DON’T WAIT. Now is the time to pickle that engine!

How to “Pickle”:

1. Make it a habit to run the engine until it runs out of fuel. This helps stop problems from “modern” gas formulas, forming gum and goo in the carburetor.

2. Check the fuel filter and replace it if you’re not sure.

3. Disconnect the spark plug wire and “ground” it to the engine. Most small engines have a triangular “tab” for slipping the spark plug wire onto it.

4. Change the engine oil (dispose of the old oil properly). If you don’t remember when you changed it last, or just “checked” it, change it NOW.

5. Remove spark plug. If it looks oily, cracked, black, or just plain crummy, REPLACE it. If it’s ok, check the spark plug GAP – .020-.025 is typical. If you’re not sure, get a new plug and make sure it’s the right plug for your engine.

6. “Pickling” rings and valve, and cylinder walls, protection hint: Pour a TEASPOON of “Marvel Mystery” oil (any light oil will do) into the spark plug hole. (Don’t go crazy and overdo it.) Let it sit for a minute, then press your thumb over the spark plug hole (after making sure the spark plug wire is grounded to the frame. Caution: “Instant Shock Therapy” is very possible if it is not.) SLOWLY pull the starter cord, ONE TIME ONLY! You will feel a suction and then a pressure “poof” on your thumb. (If you don’t, it’s time for the repair shop engine doctor!) The oil is now distributed into the cylinder rings and other engine parts to keep them from freezing up and happy while in storage.

7. Make sure weeds and twigs are not hanging in or on the fan.

8. Clean the air cleaner (foam type) and replace if needed.

a) For the foam type, wash in light soapy water, squeeze and let dry. Oil it up, squeeze out the excess oil and re-install.

b) For the paper type, blow carefully on the inside of the filter with an air hose. If it’s too clogged, replace it.

9. Re-install spark plug and wire.

10. Wipe the entire engine down removing dust, dirt and goo. You paid a lot of money for it, take pride in it by keeping it clean.

11. Don’t “adjust” those little screws by the carburetor, unless you’re SURE of what you’re doing. Those “adjustment” screws normally don’t “un-adjust” themselves. Consult the engine manual for adjustments and tweaking for altitude load or for poor fuel, only after everything else checks out, (clean air filter, etc…)

Hint: After dredging, high banking, etc…, I cover the engine, after it cools, with a plastic garbage bag in case it rains! That way, it will start easily the next time.

Now you can get back to dreaming and planning your next expedition with reasonable confidence that y our engine will run when you get there.

See you on the river!

 

By Dave McCracken

You don’t know what frustration is until you have gone back and forth from your dredge to your dredge hole three or four—or eight—times trying to knock out a single plug-up!

Dave Mack

 

plug upOne of the main impediments to production in gold dredging is the occurrence of plug-ups in the power jet and/or suction hose. A plug-up is caused when a single rock, or a combination of rocks, lodge in the suction hose or power jet, which then prevent further material from being sucked up.

Beginners are especially plagued with many, many plug-ups, because they have not yet learned which types of rocks, or which combinations of rocks, to avoid sucking up the nozzle. Everybody that dredges must get through this part of the learning curve.

When possible, an experienced gold dredger will watch to see what kind of rocks caused a plug-up every time he or she will get one. Beginners should do this as well. This way, after a while, you gain an understanding of which type of rocks and combinations to avoid putting through the nozzle.

For the most part, the rocks to avoid sucking up are those that are just large enough to fit in the nozzle that are sharp and angular, or that are shaped in such a way that if turned sideways, they could possibly lodge in the suction hose or jet.

Sucking up a larger round rock, just after a long-thin rock, or just after a medium-sized flat rock, is just asking for a plug-up. The reason for this is because the round rock, having more surface area, will move up the hose faster than the flat rock. So the round rock can catch up and possibly cause the flat rock to turn and lodge. Generally, we avoid sucking up large flat rocks altogether.

Generally, we avoid sucking up large flat rocks altogether. Just like there is a system of knowing how to avoid plug-ups, there is also a system for removing plug-ups quickly.

Many plug-ups occur in the power jet. These are generally caused for two reasons (in addition to sucking up the wrong rocks). The first is because of a design-flaw. Many power jets are smaller in diameter than the inside of the suction hose. Where the larger-sized suction hose meets the smaller-sized jet, there is a restriction which can cause rocks to lodge.

The other reason for plugs in the power jet is further up just beyond the inductor(s). High-pressure water comes from the side into the main jet tube from one or more inductors which can spin a rock just right to make it lodge.

Once you gain some experience in dredging, you can often tell from the feel of the plug-up when you get it whether the plug-up is in the hose or the jet. Jet plug-ups are usually very sudden; you can feel them “slam”, with a sudden complete loss of suction. Hose plug-ups sometimes leave you with some smaller amount of suction at the nozzle.

The first thing to remember with a plug-up is to stop sucking material into the suction nozzle as soon as you realize you have one!

All of us, sooner or later, experience the joy of loading a suction hose full of rocks and gravel. But you haven’t experienced life to the fullest until you have had the opportunity to do this with a 12-inch dredge! A plug-up is much easier to remove if you have not sucked up a bunch of additional rocks and gravel to complicate the problem.

When you get a plug-up in the suction hose, sometimes you can free it up simply by yanking forward on the hose, or by popping your hand over the intake of the suction nozzle. If there is still some suction, sometimes purging air from your regulator into the nozzle will help free the plug-up. When I get a plug-up, I will do this a few times, and then set down the nozzle (where it will not suck up further material) and move rocks out of my way for a little while to see if the plug-up will free itself.

I always like to keep the outside of my suction hose nice and clean. This means using a good wash brush to clean the algae off once every two weeks or so. Or, you can disconnect your suction hose from the dredge and clean it with a pressure washer. The good thing about a clean hose is that you can look into it for plug-ups as you move towards your dredge to knock the plug-up out of the jet. Sometimes, when you think it is a jet plug-up, you discover that the plug-up is in the hose. With a clean, clear hose, it is usually pretty easy to spot the plug-up quickly. This all saves time, energy and frustration.

When leaving your dredge hole to find a plug-up, always leave the suction nozzle positioned so that it will not suck up additional material, or will not get sucked against a larger cobble or boulder as the plug-up is being removed. As the plug-up is being freed, you need water movement through the hose to help carry the rocks which caused the obstruction out of the system. Sometimes, the offensive rocks free-up and then cause another obstruction further up the hose. On tough obstructions, I will generally follow the rocks up the hose until I am certain they are through the system. You can hear the rocks rattle up through your metal power jet if you are listening.

Another reason for leaving your suction nozzle so it will not get blocked by a cobble or boulder, is that when you are probing the power jet for the plug-up from the surface, you are paying attention to how much water is flowing through the sluice box. A plug-up slows the water down. When the obstruction is freed up, more water consequently flows through the box. If you are watching, you will then see the offensive rocks flow into the sluice (where you can take a look at them). This is, unless the suction nozzle gets sucked up against something down in your dredge hole which prevents forceful water movement through the suction hose.

It is really important to get this right. You don’t know what aggravation is until you have gone back and forth from your dredge hole to your dredge three or four—or eight—times trying to knock out a single plug-up!

You need to develop a feel for probing the jet from the surface for plug-ups. This is done with a “jam rod” (Also sometimes referred to as the “plugger pole.”).

What I mean by getting a feel for probing, is that you have to learn to feel around and find where the obstruction is in the jet.

Some beginners start off thinking the key is to simply slam the jam rod down into the jet over and over again—the deeper the better. This does absolutely no good if the plug-up is further up into the jet and the rod is just bypassing it. Sometimes the jam rod goes down into the jet, through the rocks causing the obstruction. The person comes to the surface, slams the jam rod deep into the jet a few times, feels no plug-up, decides the obstruction is in the hose, goes back down and follows the hose back to the dredge hole, follows the hose back up to the dredge, jams the rod deep into the jet, etc., etc., and finally decides there is something wrong with the pump! This is all part of the learning curve, and can be very frustrating.

What I mean by getting a feel for probing, is that you have to learn to feel around and find where the obstruction is in the jet. Some beginners start off thinking the key is to simply slam the jam rod down into the jet over and over again—the deeper the better. This does absolutely no good if the plug-up is further up into the jet. Sometimes the jam rod goes down into the jet, through the rocks causing the obstruction. The person comes to the surface, slams the jam rod deep into the jet a few times, feels no plug-up, decides the obstruction is in the hose, goes back down and follows the hose back to the dredge hole, follows the hose back up to the dredge, jams the rod deep into the jet, etc., etc., and finally decides there is something wrong with the pump!

And, this is why it is important to learn to get a feel for probing. I do this by probing down the jet about a foot at a time, probing at different angles, feeling for the obstruction. The obstruction is that solid-something that the jam rod touches as you are feeling around in the jet. Sometimes, it is barely a nudge as the rod slides past the obstruction. So you really need to pay attention when probing!

Once I feel the obstruction, I direct the jamming action to free it up. If smacking on the obstruction does not free it, try again after turning the engine down to idle.

Some experienced dredgers weld a “T” onto the upper-end of their jam rods. This is for the simple reason of avoiding the additional aggravation of having to remove the suction hose to recover your jam rod if it slips from your hand and slides down the jet and suction hose! If you make the T-handle narrower than the diameter of your power jet, you can turn the jam rod around and use the T-handle to help you find the occasional elusive rocks that lodge in the power jet.

It is also a good idea to have a bolt or some other solid rod material welded onto the probing-end of your jam rod. Otherwise, the pounding action can cause the probing-end to flair out. This causes problems when you jam the rod down through an obstruction, and the flared portion gets stuck when you are trying to pull it back out. The probing-end of your jam rod should be a smooth continuation of the rod itself.

If a plug-up is found in the suction hose, it can usually be freed-up by tapping against it with a smooth cobble from your cobble pile. If you look over the obstruction, you can usually see the best angles to tap against the obstruction. If one angle does not work, perhaps another angle will free it up. If the obstruction does not free up easily, the answer is not to beat your suction hose full of holes! The next step is to turn your dredge engine down all the way to an idle. This releases the heavy suction pressure holding the plug-up in place. Once the engine is idled down, you can usually tap the obstruction free with little difficulty. Then, by turning up the engine, often the rocks which caused the obstruction will get sucked through the system. Sometimes, they will also plug-up the hose or jet again—in which case, you go through the process all over again. This same procedure is used also in jet plug-ups.

If this procedure does not work on a hose plug-up, the next step is to remove the water from the hose. This can be done by lifting the suction nozzle out of the water while the engine is running at idle, or at just enough throttle to pump the water out of the suction hose. With no water in the hose, an obstruction is usually very easy to free up. In this case, however, it is wise to shake the rocks completely down the hose and out of the nozzle—to be sure you are finished with them. Here is a helpful hint: Remember to then toss the offensive rocks out of your hole, so you do not suck them right back up again when the dredge’s throttle is turned back up!

When a really difficult plug-up is in the suction hose near the jet, sometimes it is necessary to disconnect the suction hose and pull it up onto the bank to remove the obstruction. This is only on very difficult obstructions. If you are paying attention to what you are sucking through the nozzle, you should not be burdened with this chore very often!

All of this unnecessary additional work will prompt you to pay more attention to what you are feeding into the nozzle! I have spent plenty of time watching beginners invest more than 50% of their day just on freeing plug-ups!

Several years ago, in an effort to enhance production, we developed oversize power-jets and exterior suction hose clamps. In this way, the suction hose fits into a jet tube which is slightly larger in size than the hose. This can eliminate 95 percent or more of the plug-ups which a dredger will get on a normal day. Some of the dredge manufacturers are now creating dredges with oversized jet tubes and exterior suction hose clamps—which is one of the best things that has happened for suction dredges in quite some time.

Caution: just because a dredge has an exterior suction hose clamp does not mean that the jet is larger than the hose. You have to look closely and measure to be certain. If the mechanism has any part of the jet smaller in diameter than the inside of the suction hose, you are going to get plug-ups there no matter how careful you are at the nozzle. What I am saying is that an oversized jet tube for a 5-inch dredge should have an inside diameter greater than 5-inches.

Team work on removing plug-ups can be very efficient when two or more dredgers are working together. When I am nozzling and get a plug-up, I usually hand the nozzle to one of my rock men, or send the rock man up to find the plug-up. Once the plug-up is removed, material is immediately sucked into the nozzle. This creates a signal to the person trying to locate the obstruction that it has been cleared. If no material is moving through the hose and sluice box, it is a definite signal that the obstruction still exists somewhere in the system—or that the partner has fallen asleep and lost track of what is going on (It is a good thing that you cannot hear miners when they get frustrated at each other while underwater).

While sampling, or during production dredging, the end result is directly proportional to how much material you are able to feed into the suction nozzle. Plug-ups play a big part in this; because while you are spending time freeing up obstructions, you are not sucking up pay-dirt!

If you are having problems with plug-ups, sometimes you can improve production by just slowing down a little.

The real key is in oversized jets. The amount of work to build and install one on your dredge is small compared to the amount of energy and time you will spend knocking plug-ups out of your jet during the course of a mining season!

Everyone gets some plug-ups. The thing to do is improve your control of the nozzle to the point where you only get a few (or none) each day.

 

 

By Dave McCracken General Manager

Dave Mack

 

   

Quite often in gold mining, your best-laid plans fall completely apart as soon as you get started. This happens to me on a regular basis. In late August, we had a firm plan to do a week-long dredging project on our Lower Seiad Claim (K-14). I know of a place there that should deliver up a substantial high-grade gold deposit. But the day before we were to start, a large truck drove off the highway and spilled some kind of oil into the Klamath River. Not wanting to take any chances of exposing our team to the possibility of hazardous material, we decided at the last minute that we needed to do our dredging project upstream from the oil spill. So we went up to UK-3. Through just several hours of sampling, we got right into a rich pay-streak up there. Everything turned out alright in the end. I suppose the lesson in this is that in prospecting, you just have to adjust yourself to setbacks when they happen and keep on moving forward.

Then, since we had not finished up the rich deposit that we found on UK-3 in August, we were planning to go back in there on our September group dredging project and pick up right where we left off. It is a lot of stress off my shoulders to begin a dredging project in an already-established pay-streak. This allows me to put more of my personal focus on working with the project participants. Out of the 15 people associated with the September project, 9 of them had never even breathed off a hookah-air system before. Wow; that is a lot of beginners to get grooved into an underwater program all at once! So already having an established high-grade gold deposit in place meant that we would not have to sample. This was good!

As these group projects only last a week, and the first and last days are mostly devoted to orientation, moving gear on and off the river and final gold clean-up, there really are only 5 production days to make the gold add up. Making the gold add up is important to the last day when it is time to split it off amongst all the participants. I know this better than anyone, because I am the one that weighs and splits each share. The bigger the share, the better it feels when you get it! So every day matters to the final outcome!

It is also true that a beginner who is worried about drowning in the river does not care very much at that moment about how much gold is being recovered. That person just wants to stay alive!

I devote a lot of the season helping beginners through the early stages of underwater mining. So I have an intimate understanding of the different feelings and motivations.

First of all, I just want to say that everyone has a primal fear of drowning. It’s really a matter of how energized that fear is at the moment. I’m a strong swimmer and spend a lot of my time around the water. So I am reasonably comfortable under normal (for me) circumstances. But when I tried surfing several years ago in Maui, and found myself tumbling head-over-heals along the underside of a big wave, I immediately tuned into a panicked madman fighting for my own life. It didn’t feel like I was going to live through it! After that, I was afraid every time I tried to catch a wave. Numerous times when I really had the opportunity to catch a great wave, I chickened-out and decided not to go for it. I never did learn to surf very well. I’m afraid! So it is easy for me to identify with the fear that others experience around the water. That fear is very serious stuff!

Many beginning participants on these group dredging projects arrive with a healthy fear of the water. Some have had earlier traumatic experiences. Some were born with fear of the water. Some just have a healthy respect. With 9 beginners in this project, I knew that a lot of my personal focus would need to be devoted to helping them get through the beginning steps of dredging.

Just for the record, these group mining projects are not a school or a class. They are joint mining ventures where all participants work together as a team to locate high-grade gold deposits and recover as much gold as we can out of them by the end of the week. Those that are not able to contribute to the underwater work are utilized in other activities on the surface to help with forward momentum. Those that do not know how to do the underwater activity, but who wish to contribute there, are helped through the beginning stages so they can become more productive to the group venture. Everyone (including me) learns something on every mining project. I’m sure that is true of any type of activity where a person is personally challenged. As the project manager, without compromising safety, my personal job is to get as much productive activity as I possibly can out of each member of the team. More productive activity channeled in the right direction will produce more gold by the end of the week. This makes everyone happy with the final result.

Showing someone how to get comfortably underwater during the first few days of a dredging project means that we will have yet another person helping us to recover high-grade gold later in the week. Therefore, my plan on this project was to direct our 5 more-experienced participants to get started in the established pay-streak right away, while I invested my time working with the beginners. This way, we would be accumulating gold from the very beginning. That is always a great way to start!

And here is just one more example (of many) of how a great mining plan fell apart even before we got started: We arrived on UK-3 on Saturday afternoon, only to discover that the Iron Gate Dam had increased its water release that very same morning, causing the river to rise about 18 inches in the section of river where we had intended to dredge. This made the water flow there too fast for us to dredge! So much for that plan!

One thing I have learned is that dwelling on problems or failures does nothing to increase the size of gold shares at the end of a project. So after allowing myself just a brief moment of personal disappointment in the realization that we would need to find another high-grade gold deposit with just 5 people, our newly-formed team did a complete survey of the UK claims in search of a new place to begin a sampling program.

The river was running higher and faster. So our options were actually reduced to just several locations. Each of these looked pretty good. As a group, we always allow some time to discuss each option. There is often some debate on these matters, but I must ultimately make the final decision. This time, we decided to go down to the upper part of UK-2. Mainly, this was because we had left some high-grade gold behind there during an earlier dredging project (last season). In addition, longtime supportive member, Lee Kracher, happened by at just the right moment and told us that his son had been pulling a lot of gold out of the river not far downstream from where we had already mined some high-grade along the upper portion of UK-2. I assumed this was probably an extension of the very same deposit we had been mining the year before. As Lee said his son was pulling out gold through the last day of his vacation, this area seemed pretty-much like a sure thing for our project.

I always go for the most sure thing I can find when results really matter! Our new plan required us to work until dark on the first day to get all of our dredging gear moved to our new project site.

Luckily, Craig Colt and Jason Inks were along to give us a hand on this project. Both have extensive experience in serious dredging and team management. We split up our experienced participants into two teams on the morning of the second day; with Craig’s team operating the 8-inch dredge, and Jason’s team operating the 6-inch dredge.

   

Because every day counts, we set realistic targets every morning. These are the things that we must accomplish to ultimately achieve our objective (plenty of gold) by the end of the week. Craig’s and Jason’s targets on Sunday were to both get their teams established in the pay-streak before the end of the day. We positioned their dredges downstream of where we had been dredging high-grade last season and they didn’t waste any time getting started.

Then we set up a 5-inch dredge just off a shallow sand beach where I could work with the beginners. I always begin with those who seem like they will get through the initial steps quickly. Those persons are then directed to operate the 5-inch dredge as part of the ongoing sampling program, while I work with the participants who will require more time along the edge of the river. As soon as they demonstrate that they are up to it, some beginners graduate off to help on one of the other dredges where they can be more productive. By more productive, I mean that a good sampling program requires that we do sample holes out into the deeper, more challenging parts of the river. Sometimes, this is where the richest gold deposits are found. Sampling for high-grade is a lot like playing hide-and-seek. You have to be prepared to go anywhere the deposits might be located.

Starting into the third day, both of our serious dredges were pushing out further towards the middle of the river. While they were finding some gold and small nuggets in closer to the bank, we believed the gold was going to get better as we moved further out. It did, but it still was not as good as we wanted. So we decided to move the 6-inch dredge further upstream, closer to the area where we were mining rich gold the season before. By trial and error, we just kept up the process of doing small dredge samples here and there and checking the results to trace the gold into the richer portion of the pay-streak. The following video was captured just as Jason’s team was starting to uncover what we were looking for:

Shortly thereafter, Jason’s team started expressing the excitement of seeing gold while uncovering bedrock on the river-bottom. In other words, they were hooping and hollering it up pretty good. This is always a good sign to me that things are moving in the right direction.

“The first nuggets started coming up after we moved the 6-inch dredge further upriver”

By the end of the third day, all of our beginners (except for one person who insisted from the beginning that he was not going underwater) were through the initial learning curve and being productive underwater. So we moved the 5-inch dredge just upstream of Jason’s team, and they immediately also started uncovering high-grade gold along the bedrock. Everybody started getting pretty excited!

There is nothing quite like seeing gold nuggets on the bottom of the river to help a person get over their initial fear of the river! I’m serious! It is always good to try and get a beginner extroverted. A good way to do that is to get the person helping to uncover high-grade gold from the bottom of the river!

Some participants arrive on these projects with deep-seated fears or phobias of the water. Some participate with the hope of overcoming these fears. Others arrive with no intention of going underwater; they just want to help on the surface. This is alright with me. We talk this all over as a group on the first day, and always then move forward with an understanding that everyone will just participate the best that they can to help get the job done. It is important to get the right kind of team chemistry in place on the first day. Working together with a good team, so far, we have always managed to locate high-grade gold.

Interestingly, everyone I have worked with that has started out with a serious fear of the water goes through very similar stages as the fear is overcome. I always just start the person out doing something that he or she is comfortable with – like just sitting or standing alongside the river without a face mask, getting used to breathing through a hookah regulator. Sometimes this first step is the most difficult in the whole chain of progressive steps! It is not unusual for someone’s body initially to reject having a regulator in his or her mouth (creates an impulse to gag it out). Still, a person standing up on the bank has little to fear from putting the regulator back and trying to breathe from it some more. Amazingly, the body always makes its own adjustment about this rather quickly all on its own. It is not a mind process. Thinking or talking about it does not seem to help very much with the process. The answer is to just keep the regulator in the person’s mouth until it is no big deal anymore. This usually happens pretty fast if the person just does it.

The next step is to have a person just get comfortable wearing a face mask. Sometimes we start out with this step before the regulator. It doesn’t really matter. But, if we are trying to overcome a healthy fear, we always do these two steps by themselves, before we ask the person to wear the face mask and breathe through the regulator both at the same time. It is just a simple matter of taking things one step at a time. No big deal. This all plays out alongside the edge of the river, while the bigger sampling program out in the river is being moved forward by the more experienced participants

Everyone has a threshold where traumatic fear overcomes everything else. This is commonly referred to as “panic.” That’s the place where you lose personal control and totally freak out! Water can bring that threshold very close to the surface with some beginning dredgers. I have worked with so many people on this over the years that I have developed an intimate sensitivity to what people are going through. The important key is to avoid pushing someone beyond his or her personal threshold of fear.

The step-by-step routine works every time. Most of the process is just to get the person’s body accustomed to being in a different environment. That’s all.

Once the person can breathe comfortably through the hookah regulator while looking through the face mask (even while standing or sitting alongside the river), the person has already made it well beyond the half-way point in getting comfortable underwater.

This all gently progresses to having the person float around in shallow water along the edge of the river while looking underwater through the mask and breathing through the regulator. Here is another milestone in the program, because the body initially doesn’t believe that it can breathe with your face in the water. Again, the key is just to do it!

The internal fear almost always presents itself in discussions, like “I have never been a mouth-breather.” I have found that discussions usually do not help very much with the progress. So I just coax the person to just keep putting his or her head in the water as much as he or she can tolerate until the body makes an internal adjustment. Initially, the person never believes that the body will adjust. That is just part of the internal fear being expressed. The body always adjusts just by doing it. It usually happens very fast. Because personal embarrassment also comes out with the fear, I usually back off a bit and just allow the person to work through this on his or her own. I usually only step in when I see the person is not continuing to put his or her face in the water. That’s the key. In 25 years of helping beginners, I have never seen a time when the person did not get through this step very quickly, as long as the person just stuck with it.

Usually, within just a short time, the person is swimming around comfortably while looking around at the fish, or watching the dredging program if it is close enough to be seen. That’s when I go over and gently press the person underwater. This step is always done in shallow-enough water that the person can push his or her head above the water’s surface if he or she feels the need to do so. They almost never do, though. By now, the person is already through most of the fear. This is relatively an easy step in the progress.

Then I straddle a set of weights across the person’s back to let him or her sink to the bottom in shallow water. This is also an easy step, because the person always finds that he or she has more personal control with the weight, than when I am holding him or her down. Soon thereafter, I buckle the weights onto the person to keep them from slipping off. The person has now comfortably made it to the bottom of the river. It’s not so difficult as long as we don’t try to move things along too fast and overstep beyond the person’s fear threshold.

In dredging, it is important to be weighted heavily to the bottom of the waterway. But the heavy weights usually make a person a bit top-heavy. Because of this, you cannot swim or walk around very effectively. The right way is to crab around on the bottom using your hands and legs. Balance is everything.

The final step in the process of helping a beginner is always to have the person go underwater and roll over onto his or her back, and then roll back over again. We do this several times. About the worst thing that can happen is that you lose your balance and roll onto your back like a turtle. So, in shallow water, we just get the person to do this right away and get it over with! I am always standing right there with the person’s hookah line in hand – more for moral support than anything else. Once a person has rolled around on the bottom of the river a few times, the body will automatically learn how to maintain its own balance. From there, the rest is pretty easy.

Until the person as demonstrated an acceptable level of personal confidence, we usually have someone keep a firm grip on his or her hookah airline just for safety. Although, to date, I have never actually had to drag anyone in by their airline.

Really, it is amazing how fast people adjust to the underwater environment! Most people have more courage than they allow themselves credit for. The following video sequence was captured while several of our beginners were working through the process:

Out of our 9 beginners on this project, the 4 woman got through the initial learning curve surprisingly fast. This was probably because they were giving each other a lot of assistance and moral support. By mid-week, we had woman dredgers helping with an important portion of the underwater work on both the 5 and 6-inch dredges. The following video was captured just as the two dredges were beginning to recover high-grade gold:

Everyone was so excited about it, on the 5th day; even the guy who insisted that he would never go underwater decided he wanted to give it a try. As he had spent so much time watching the others learn how to do it, it only took him about an hour to get underwater. Now 100% of our dredging team was working in the water.

While we had both the 5 and 6-inch dredges into high-grade on the third day, we could not set up the 8-inch dredge there because of the way the river was flowing in that particular location. There simply wasn’t enough room. That was too bad, because the 8-inch dredge will process more stream-bottom than the 5 and 6-inch dredges combined. This is especially true when Craig Colt is operating the suction nozzle!

Craig’s team pushed their downstream sampling program further out beyond the middle of the river in search of high-grade. But they still had not struck the pay-dirt that we were looking for. In a sampling program, if what you are doing is not producing adequate results, you try something else. And you just keep trying different things until you find something good. The problem here was that we only had several days to make it all happen. We were running out of days!

So once all of our beginners were safely established underwater, I personally took on the mission of locating the dredge excavation which Lee Kracher’s son had made earlier in the season. Nobody was quite sure where that was. We could not see where it was from the surface of the river. Lee had pointed downstream and across the river. That’s all we knew. Since they had recovered high-grade from that location, our plan was to move the 8-inch dredge over there for our next sample. We were feeling a strong need to do something effective, and soon!

I take the opportunity to do a lot of underwater prospecting during these projects. By this, I mean swimming around underwater to have a look at what is on the bottom. It’s the only way I know of to see what is down there! By doing a survey of the bottom, I can see where the bedrock is visible and what it looks like. Seeing exposed bedrock will allow our team to dredge samples nearby without having to go through deep streambed material (which takes more time and effort).

Surveying the river-bottom also allows us to discover where the hard-packed natural streambed is and where the boulders are. It also allows us to see where others have dredged before. I almost always swim around and survey the bottom of the river before deciding where we will dredge sample holes.

There are two ways I know of to survey the bottom of the river. One is to put a long extension of air line on your dredge’s hookah air system; like about 200 feet. Then, with your weights on, you can survey a big area around where your dredge is floating.

The other way is to float with the flow of the river, diving down on single breaths of air, to get a look at the bottom. Doing this without a wet-suit makes it easier to get down to the bottom and stay there longer. While you cannot stay down very long on a single breath of air, not being connected to anything allows you the freedom to survey long stretches of river.

Depending upon the circumstances, sometimes we float long stretches of river holding onto the bowline of my boat, just drifting along with the flow. It’s amazing how much you can discover about a stretch of river just by swimming it a few times! The following video sequence was captured while I scanned the river-bottom of UK-2 looking for that pre-existing dredge hole that Lee told us about:

It just took a little while for me to find the excavation which Lee’s son had left behind. While swimming along, I just kept looking for a dredge hole, a cobble pile or the tailings. I spotted the cobbles first. This turned out to be big hole; Lee’s son had done a lot of work! Fortunately, the excavation was just as he left it. He had been dredging in about 5 feet of original hard-packed, gray-colored Klamath river-bottom material. There were some large boulders visible. It would have taken us the better part of a full day or longer just to open up a good sample in this same location using the 8-inch dredge. Luck was on our side that someone else had already accomplished all that work for us and made the gold discovery there. It was going to be easy for us to go right into production in this hole!

This is one of the great things about being a member of The New 49’ers; it seems like someone is always coming along and letting you in on some already existing, exciting opportunity!

To save time, we just put the 8-inch dredge nozzle in the front of the boat, and I reverse-motored the whole platform across the river. This is a common way for us to move a dredge around when sampling in slower-moving water. Once to the other side of the river, all we had to do is tie the dredge off and go to work. The following video segment shows how we transferred the whole 8-inch dredge program from one side of the river to the other:

Two hours later, we had our first high-grade clean-up on the 8-inch dredge. The following 2 video segments were able to capture some of the excitement (and relief) we all felt when we finally got the 8-inch dredge into high-grade gold:

By Wednesday afternoon, all three dredges were in high-grade gold and all of our beginners were helping push underwater production forward. That sure was a long way from where we began at the beginning of the week!

As is normal, there was not much for me to do on Thursday. Our whole group had already pulled together as a polished team. Everyone already knew everything that needed to be done. Those that were so frightened of the river early in the week had long-since evolved into experienced gold dredgers who were working together with the team to recover as much gold as we could in the time remaining to us. I could have taken the day off and probably nobody would have even noticed! I always find myself feeling a bit helpless towards the end of these projects when everyone else is doing all the work and there is little for me to do.

   

Because so much time is required to do the whole process, we always accumulate our concentrates in a bucket throughout the week and do the full gold clean-up on the final day. We also needed to pull all of our dredging gear off the river this time, because it was the end of our dredging season along the upper Klamath River. We all worked together on this. Fortunately, there are several river access points down towards the lower-end of UK-2. We used the boat to tow all 3 dredges down there. Then we used the electric winch mounted in the back of my truck to load the dredges on trailers, tie them down and hoist them up to the road. Even the 8-inch dredge came up the hill without a single hitch! The following video sequence captured how smoothly the whole process went:

“Dave Beatson from New Zealand”

We often have visitors in Happy Camp from other countries. This time, we were honored with the presence of David Beatson, who is a very enthusiastic gold prospector from New Zealand. David is one of those rare individuals that always adds more life and fun to the party. He also carries a big part of the work load! It was interesting to listen to David talk about his gold mining adventures in New Zealand. There is a common bond created amongst gold miners that cannot be duplicated in most other types of endeavors. Here follows some of what David had to say:

This season, we were also rewarded with the presence of Otto Gather on all of the group projects. We call Otto “Mister Mom,” because everyone looks to him to provide all of the important basic necessities, whether it is a cup of coffee in the morning, fuel to keep the dredges operating, a spare part, a Band-Aid, or even a spanking if you deserve one. I’m not talking about anything kinky here. Otto has a kind way of telling a person to quit being a sissy just at the time you need to hear it! He adds much-needed life and substance to these projects that make them better for everyone.

Final clean-up was finished in camp on late Friday afternoon. All participants are always encouraged to participate in the final clean-up. Because we accumulate so much gold, there is actually quite a lot of work involved! The following video sequence captured the highlights of the full process which we normally follow:

“Otto Gather provided a lot of help on this year’s group mining projects!”

Altogether for the week, we recovered 118.4 pennyweights (5.92 ounces) of beautiful gold. That included 27 pennyweights of very nice nuggets to go around. Everyone was pleased with the result, and we all said our goodbyes before going our separate ways. This was the end of another very special chapter in each of our lives.

 

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