near the drop a quarttz vein crosses beneith the falls to the upstream edge of this bank. the fine gold is deposited everywhere in the top 6-8" the right half of the river is shallower and as the river drops will become more accessable. the left half is very deep 12 - 15' cant do anything about that. zoom in and look around
Read more…
Thanks for the advise, but there is not a chance in hell that i would go in that water its a minimum 8' deep and cold cold cold. It could be deeper than that. Either way im not going in that water. However i do want to build a gravity dredge with a long pole on the front to see what might be hiding in there. I really do appriciate the heads up though. I think the only way i would actually go in there is with an aqua lung. Lol and a bunch of folks standing by to pull me out.
Scott, I'd be very careful about trying to dive in that plunge pool. If the water flow was very slow and you could walk across the top of the falls without being swept off your feet. Then the eddies and undertowsin that pool may be low enough to be able to dive in without being held down by the current. Many folks have drowned in that type of situation. Even wearing a wetsuit or life jacket may not give you enough flotation to get out of the current.
No gold is worth losing your life for. JMHO Please be careful.
Howard, i really dont have any field knowledge on those tromp pumps hell i never even heard the term before. A lot of the thing or ideas i have and play around with is just pure imagination! I think about it and visualize it i can literally see it working in my minds eye. Weather or not it can actually work in the real world i wont know until i attempt it. I have a very difficult time with translating it from my brain in to words that explain it properly. What if you took a bucket cut the bottom off, take some sheet aluminum and attached it to the bottom of the bucket and shap the metal like a funnel tapered to the size hose you would use. That way you would have a large container that would allow a large enough volume to enter and the sheet metal funnel would be smooth reducing turbulence. im gonna do some research on these tromp pumps, i didnt know there was a name for it. Its got my wheels turning i can visualize alot of applications if it can be done efficently.
Im so glad i got u guys to run ideas by. Thanks as far as the pool behind the falls, i was thinking that the gold would fall out before the wall. Man if i had some scuba gear that would be an intriguing place to play. That water is so cold i wouldnt go waist deep without a thick wetsuit. I went just above my knees last time out and when i climbed on the bank my legs were so numb i could barely stand for 15min.
Thats a giant riffle lol. Oh hell i forget the calculation for the water flow but it likely looses the pressure to push gold and small boulders 10-15 feet behind that as the water has to slow and go higher to get through. If it was me and i will only shovel in water up to my ribs, I would start about there and follow it either up or down as it got stronger. I dug a similar one on the south fork. Gold was probably a couple feet deeper than I dug but got 3 nice flakes and some fine.
I tried that on my one attempt Scott but i think one of the battles I didn't bother fighting that day was purging all of the air out of the hose first and Dennis's thought that the PVC adaptors might be creating a turbulent stop gate sounds plausable too. every thing I have read about Tromp pumps point back to the more head you have the better they operate.
I got another quick question a little off topic. If you look in the background the pic at the falls, what is behind the falls is set up like a canal fall, there is a strip of rock that crosses the river like a wall and a deep pool directly behind, my question is this, would gold set up in that pool directly behind the rock wall or natural spillway? In this pic its atleast 10' deep now the water has dropped 3' . If its likely gold will be there i want to gravity dredge it with a long pvc pipe and hose maybe some aluminum from a pool supply store.
Who is spur??? Just kidding! If i ever did patent something like this i would have 3 business partners we could call it the bigg howie flour spur funnel. Lol the name is bigger than the funnel. I think this just might work its gonna take some time to get everything just right. Winter is coming so ill have some time to play with the details but i think this is totally doable.
Howard, if you build a small rock dam or find a spot that has enough water force to build pressure behind the funnel you might not need an elevation drop. If you imagine a water tower how the force of gravity pulls the water to a central point creating the pressure, and forcing down, wouldnt the speed and mass of the flow behind the funnel do the same? Maybe not as efficiently but atleast enough to allow the pressure to go to your box on a level plane or maybe even up hill abit. I think its atleast worth a try. If that makes any sense. My physics education is very limited but my imagination isnt.
Comments
Scott, I'd be very careful about trying to dive in that plunge pool. If the water flow was very slow and you could walk across the top of the falls without being swept off your feet. Then the eddies and undertowsin that pool may be low enough to be able to dive in without being held down by the current. Many folks have drowned in that type of situation. Even wearing a wetsuit or life jacket may not give you enough flotation to get out of the current.
No gold is worth losing your life for. JMHO Please be careful.
Thats a giant riffle lol. Oh hell i forget the calculation for the water flow but it likely looses the pressure to push gold and small boulders 10-15 feet behind that as the water has to slow and go higher to get through. If it was me and i will only shovel in water up to my ribs, I would start about there and follow it either up or down as it got stronger. I dug a similar one on the south fork. Gold was probably a couple feet deeper than I dug but got 3 nice flakes and some fine.
And yes Scott I have always found color in pools like that one as long as no one else got there first
I tried that on my one attempt Scott but i think one of the battles I didn't bother fighting that day was purging all of the air out of the hose first and Dennis's thought that the PVC adaptors might be creating a turbulent stop gate sounds plausable too. every thing I have read about Tromp pumps point back to the more head you have the better they operate.
Howard, if you build a small rock dam or find a spot that has enough water force to build pressure behind the funnel you might not need an elevation drop. If you imagine a water tower how the force of gravity pulls the water to a central point creating the pressure, and forcing down, wouldnt the speed and mass of the flow behind the funnel do the same? Maybe not as efficiently but atleast enough to allow the pressure to go to your box on a level plane or maybe even up hill abit. I think its atleast worth a try. If that makes any sense. My physics education is very limited but my imagination isnt.
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next