In our trip to Nome last week my buddy Dave and I were able to find some very very fine beach gold. Everyone was digging in about the same location on their GPAA 25 foot beach claims. Dave and I decided to break the mold and try a little exploring on our own. After about 6 hours of exploring the tundra walking the river and then walking the beach we found a place that had about 4 or so inches of the red sand we were looking for just lying on the surface. Easy pickings. Right now at the Nome GPAA Cripple River camp the red sand is the payout layer we were told. And it seemed to test out way better than what we were pulling in our assigned claim. So I started filling 5 gallon buckets and using the ATV to take 3 buckets at a time across the river to our beach box where Dave was running the materials thought our Keene beach box. On the first day we ran about 22 full 5 gallon buckets. We used a small garden hand spade to put the concentrates into the slick plate of the beach box. A lot of the people were either dumping 5 gallon buckets directly in or #2 shovel fulls directly fed into the slick plate. We had watched several of the others working their claims and it seemed like they were really overloading their beach box. This was evident by seeing what is called the Water Snake. It is curved areas where the heavy metals pile up on the matting and looked like a snake under the water. Meaning you were feeding your box was to fast and loading it up. We took the slow and gentle route. At the end of the first 15 buckets we decided we needed to check our progress and do a cleanout. We had a couple of the Cripple River staffers wanting to see the matting when we turned the water off. Much to everyone’s surprise we had a considerable amount of gold on the matting. But then came the heart break. We also had very fine gold in the end of the matting which told us that running 15 5gallon buckets of this heavy concentrate was overloading the matting. So on our second cleanout of the day we only ran 7 buckets which proved very good. From that time on we agreed to run a max of 10 buckets to a clean out. Over the 2 days we were able to run a total of 79 very full and heavy 5gallon buckets. Cripple river GPAA had a 4 tray Gold Cube on hand so away we went to run our concentrates through the Cube. We only had about 3 gallons of concentrates and it took no time to run them through. I was shocked to find that the Gold Cube actually stopped some of the super fine gold in the first/top tray. I wish I had my camera to show everyone. But there were maybe 40 or so super small flakes sitting in the center of the top tray. Then when we broke the gold cube down there was a lot of gold sitting on the leading edge of the 2nd tray. It wasn’t until I sprayed the matting on tray 2 with some water that we seen the fruits of our labor. People that were watching me use the gold cube (lots of folks interested in buying one but never had seen it work first hand, hopefully I did you proud Mike) were amazed of the gold washing out of the matting. 5 or 6 of the people actually knelt down to inspect it closer and couldn’t believe their eyes as to how much the matting had stopped. All the gold was covered by beach sand and ruby dust so you could not see the gold. Once I was convinced tray 2 was clean I hit tray 3. We all inspected tray 3 prior to me putting it in the tub to clean it up. Only a few flakes were visible on the matting and nothing on the leading edge. But when I hit the tray with the water the gold ran like water. It was really cool to see. Then came tray 4 and of course it had some gold also, but I expected this because of how fine this beach gold is. Knowing that we were dealing with super fine gold we panned some of the gold cube waste. YUUUP still had gold in the runoff. I was going to run everything a second time but a impatient miner came in and wanted to run his concentrates and started removing my gold cube runoff without asking me and it really upset me to say the least as he knew it was mine and that we were still using the machine. I decided it was not worth a hassle so I just cleaned everything up and moved on. Hopefully in the next few days when I recover a little more from the traveling and being back at work I will run everything through my Gold Cube again at home. I really believe the gold cube recovered more of this super fine beach gold then most any other machine out there. Cripple River has 3 Keene Super Concentrator gold recovery systems which I sat and watched a few miners run by spoon feeding it. I was told by a few of them that they lost a lot of gold out the end when they used them. I am not sure if they were set up correctly or not so I could not judge for myself. But each of the guys that told me they lost gold were not familiar with the gold cube so they didn’t feel comfortable using it. Everyone was impressed with how easy the Gold Cube was to set up and run, then throw the results in on top of the ease of use made it a win-win situation.
Like I said before, I will try to run the concentrates again in the near future and this time get some pictures or video and I will update this thread.
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thank you for sharing about cripple river makes me want to get up there and try my luck too! maybe next year
Sounds like you had fun and did pretty well. One thing to always remember, when you are setting up any device or even using a pan, always add a safety device till your certain you are catching everything, and stop before you think any gold has accumulated to check. Your better off to take home twice the cons and get everything than half and lose half. You probably would have been better off to stop the beach box every 5 buckets. If its a pan, safety pan. If its a sluice use that giant 16" pan at the end with a rock to hold it down. If its a power machine add a sluice to the outflow. Then stop early before you even think you should and check. I get a lot of easy gold down on the public just shoveling high bank tailings into a bucket because 9 times out of 10, the folks doing it are weekenders and they never bother to check their flow rate vs angle each and every time they set up. Most of them work too much material and boil their box just like you saw with the sand snakes. Sometimes they blow half or more right on out. The bonus is its already classified so you just shovel it up. last run I knew the TRII was catching everything with that pan at the end. I just didnt know I was on barren ground, because I was all excited like a little kid to get to a spot I usually couldnt. Common sense was right out the window and the gravel was flying. Sorry you lost some on a blow out. Its a hard lesson to learn but now you know, just dont forget.
The important part is.....You Got Gold!!!
Thanks FlourMIke, I am not to sad we may have lost some. It was a trip for learning. And it is all a part of learning. We did run 7 buckets the end of the first day and everything was confined to the first mat. So we were pretty confident that after the blowout we were getting a majority of it. Or atleast the stuff large enough to pick up with the old eyeballs. We thought about putting a catch bucket at the end of the box but decided that after 5 or so buckets we would have it filled. We watched a couple of the other crews doing that and it was amazing how fast it filled up. But you are most correct when you say it is already classified. When it hit the bottom of the box it was all very fine material. We took a kitchen strainer to the stuff we ran throught the Gold Cube and got maybe a 1/2 cup of material out of the 3 gallons. I wish I had taken my 50+ classifiers along as I think if you went that far you may have been able to save a little gold being blown out by the bigger material, maybe. Anyho Thanks! and YES WE GOT GOLD!