Placer gold part two

For those that missed it, part one is here, talking about the dredge method of extracting gold. Part two is what's happening today, just down the road from the dredge. I have to say that it's much less photogenic than the dredge. If you watch the show 'Gold Rush', this isn't far from Tony Beets operation. I haven't seen the show and might have to try it out. I just looked, Good Lord there's 13 seasons of it!

It turns out that gold mining is an iterative process. Where Gold Bottom Mine is working is not pristine territory. It's just that processes are more efficient now, or operators can get into areas that couldn't be effectively worked before. You could be forgiven for driving past and thinking the local roads department was extracting various grades of gravel for road work.

In other news, I'm down to one more day of photos to edit, plus the aurora. Right now 600 photos or so are on the edit list. Stay tuned.

1. We start with another Yukon landscape, from near the top of Solomon Dome, which is the origin of many creeks that contain gold flakes. Some believe the great mother lode is under there, undiscovered. Let's just say there's lots of places to dig, and it's a long way down. While previous eras cut down trees and ravaged the landscape indiscriminately, leaving huge piles of gravel tailings snaking back and forth, there are environmental legislations in place now.

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6. No, there's no gold in that rock. Crushing the rock and sifting the remains wouldn't get you anything. 

7. The top of a hill is a great place for a tower.

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9. One of the historic road houses at Gold Bottom Mine. This used to be a big town.

10. In addition to gold, they find ivory and mammoth bones.

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12. The actual mine in operation. The front end loader slowly dumps in the pay gravel excavated from about 40 feet under the nearby creek down to the bedrock. It goes through the rotating drum to separate out the bigger chunks, and they get ejected off to the left. Yes, it's possible that a gold nugget would be ejected, but the odds are trivial. Really trivial. Previous mining efforts would have discovered such a nugget. What goes through the rotating sieve goes through another wash process that lets the gold and heavier particles settle out, and the lighter ones are washed out off to the right. The slurry goes downstream a bit, through a series of settling ponds before rejoining the river. There's nothing toxic in it, just the dirt and sand that used to be under the river. Some previous mining efforts used mercury to capture the gold, but they don't do that any more.

13. David Millar is the operator of the Gold Bottom Mine. In some ways this is like farming on the prairies. The small mom and pop operations have gone high tech and industrial scale. It's that or get bought out or go under. 

14. Part of the high tech equipment used to trap gold flakes. 

15. You start with excavators and front end loaders. You end up with a spoon. Every innovation dreamt of by mankind has been applied to extracting gold from the surrounding material. I am 100% confident that if someone were to come up with a new idea or process tomorrow, by no later than the day after, someone would be trying a pilot project to test it in the real world.

16. The high tech version of a gold pan. The blue pan is mounted at an angle (the exact angle is a trade secret) and water is dribbled over it as it rotates. (The exact amount of water and speed of rotation is a trade secret.) The water washes away the lighter sand, and the gold flakes are gradually transported through the center hole into a cup. No, I didn't see any armed guards nearby. Then again, there's only one road out, radios exist, and he's a local with lots of friends who are probably very willing to help deal with a gold thief.

17. You end up with this. I'm not sure if this is one day's production, or what. While touring the operation, I was reminded of the old joke. How do you end up with a small fortune in xxxx industry? Start with a large fortune.

18. The largest nugget ever found at Gold Bottom Mine.

In reading about the gold rush, it seems that everyone else got rich except for a small minority of actual miners. The working conditions were brutal, and lots of people died along the way. The lust for gold and the (extremely trivial in actual fact) chance of striking it rich drove many people to take risks that would be considered insane now.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape

Hailstone Butte. You can't tell, but it was so windy we had to think about our balance and be careful moving.