Hey GPAA Gold Prospectors...
Well, we FINALLY have had the snow stop falling for a few days now.....and a warming trend, so a new prospecting friend Matt from Leadville, Colorado, and I hit the Arkansas River on the GPAA Arkansas Groups claims block for a little afternoon sluicing fun in the bright High Colorado sun yesterday...
We met about 11AM as the morning was a bit nippy, at 9 degrees F at my house, hoping the sun would warm the ground, make diggin' in the river bed possible.
Walking thru several inches of snow and slush we got to a spot I'd worked last Fall successfully, but unfortunately the area in the bench I wanted to try was frozen solid, under a layer of snow. So, we were relegated to working less good gravels at the edge of the water, being the only unfrozen material available.
I setup up my trusty Le Trap sluice and sample panned a few pans and started working a spot whereby I could pitch & roll bigger rocks and shovel straight into my Le Trap.
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Matt brought his Keene sluice, but decided to walk back to this truck and swap it for his Angus MacKirk sluice, being a drop riffle design much like my Le Trap and it would work better in the slower water flow needed to catch/keep the very fine gold we were after.
Here's Matt's MacKirk in action:
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Matt's dig spot at the water's edge:
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We stopped about 1:15Pm for a quick bite of lunch, admiring the beautiful day as it warmed up. We saw a Clark's Nutcracker, a Townsend's Solitaire and even 2 wild turkeys that swooped in and landed in a big tree above us on the bank.....cool to see so much bird life.
A couple shots of Matt working for his gold:
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I spent way more time just talking and enjoying the company with Matt than aggressively shoveling/washing material for the gold. However, I did clean out a little bit of gravels at the water's edge too:
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By 3PM I was tired, ready to cleanup and head home. So, we both cleaned up, packed out and said our goodbyes....
Ha. Here's my whopping 1.3 grains or .08 grams of fine flood gold. Ha. Well, at least I wasn't skunked!
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The gold was just the icing on the cake for a fun day spent on the river with a new gold prospecting friend. Hope "you all" get out soon, even in winter, and create a "gold adventure" memory for yourself. COME ON SPRING!!!
Randy "C-17A" 
www.goldadventures.biz