The best, most painful prospecting trip yet!
Wrench, meet gears…
I knew things were off to a rocky start when my ride to the
airport, who was supposed to pick me up at 4:45am, showed up almost 20 minutes
late. After checking baggage and finally working through the TSA line I
wondered if they were using some new patdown technique that would soon be
outlawed due to decency laws. Just where the heck were all these people going
so early? After a jog, then run to my gate, I got the bad news that I had
missed my flight. After rebooking I wouldn’t be leaving Dallas till 9am, with a layover in
Albuquerque for one hour, finally to arrive in Phoenix at 3! Crap. I won’t even
talk about our jetway not working once we got to Phoenix, nor them having to
push our plane to a completely different gate to deboard. At least my luggage
was waiting for me in the pickup area! It got there on time…I should have just
climbed in my suitcase I guess.
No country for slow, old men!
Finally arriving in Mayer and accepting the loss of one
entire day of prospecting, I was just trying to relax and allow my blood
pressure to finally settle a bit. That seemed to be the prudent course, but
that gold… I saw the look on Owens face as he walked into Curt’s house to greet
me. Maybe it was the sound of the ATV idling outside as well, but I knew that
look. So I said my hello’s while changing into my prospecting gear! We weren’t
going to let this day be a total waste! My new detector didn’t disappoint and I
managed to find my first ever gold nugget that I detected on my own! Things
were definitely looking up-as long as you pretended the weather forecast wasn’t
worsening. After returning from the claim we loaded the ATV’s and gear for our
Rich Hill adventure the next day.
One thing I love about being in Arizona is, aside from the
incredible beauty, the fact that it’s all new to me and a nice contrast to the
completely boring surroundings back home. As we drove through Prescott the sun
was breaking and revealing a snow-dusted beauty of a city nestled in rolling
hills. We dodged a few deer crossing the road and put the hammer down once the
curves smoothed out! The gold of Rich Hill is known to be large. It has its own
‘Potato patch’, so named because of huge nuggets being found, but the entire
area is incredibly…well, RICH with gold. We knew we’d need patience and bigger
gold pokes for those nuggets that were waiting for us, frost covered and
waiting to be warmed up in our pockets. We didn’t drive two hours to let 25
degrees and frozen mud puddles stop us!
The day warmed up and the layers came off. Luckily the
terrain was just harsh enough to keep a mild sweat going against the chill as
we scoured the hillsides. We all looked forward to our buddy Tim showing up
because he said he was going to bring a bucket of KFC! We laughed. ‘What! KFC when
we’re prospecting?’ Well, we were all happy when he showed up with that AND
chocolate chip cookies! Roughing it can be fun!
As the day progressed, I worked my way to an area I had been
previously shown on the map to be an old nugget patch. After a little random
swinging of the coil I began to notice schist protrusions coming up through the
soil. These protrusions were so faint, the schist so decomposed, that I started
to recognize that the ‘soil’ I had been walking on was largely composed of nothing
but previously decomposed schist. Anyway I decided to try a method I had read
about to follow the schist protrusions and within minutes, MINUTES, I had my
first nugget of the day! Lots of slow walking, avoiding cactus and ocotillo, balancing on
cliff edges, I worked the schist methodically, ending up with 4 small nuggets!
Little did I know at the time, but I had been the most successful of our bunch
of prospectors that day! Our truck ride back was relatively quiet, interrupted
with bursts of conversation after the caffeine kicked in from our leftover,
cold morning coffee. Good, no, GREAT times!
Showers bring flowers, well, mud anyway!
To my surprise, I woke up the next morning still very much
alive! Time to get moving and…yes, that’s rain. Well that’s ok, we’ll just
watch the inauguration (‘Merica!) and wait for it to clear. Yeah, about
that-Accuweather says it’s gonna get worse! We opted for ‘plan B’, which was to
visit Tim’s underground mine that he recently filed on. Adventure without
getting soaked? Let’s do it!
Last day, last ditch effort.
I woke up on the last morning of my adventure, thankful for
everything I had seen and done thus far, appreciative that the pizza and beer
from the night before didn’t keep me awake all night, and hopeful for one more
(painful) trip into the backcountry. But I was also very ready to go home...
Curt had already announced his intention to stay home that morning since he had
a radio swap meet to attend later that day, and the weather still required a
level of crazy that he didn’t aspire to, if prospecting was still part of the
agenda. Ok…more for us! We knew it was going to be a rough day when we pulled
the frozen and ice covered tarps off the ATV’s and prepared ourselves for a 30
minute ride through rain, sleet and snow!
We finally hit the BLM road, good and frozen from our 30mph
plus ride through town and down the backroads. I had a new layering technique that
was working well against the sleet and rain, but I was still cold and ready for
the warmup that pushing an ATV through rough terrain brings. One interesting
note, snow and ice accumulated in your lap will melt quickly when things start
warming up! Plan accordingly. What followed will remain forever etched in my memory. Not because we found huge gold or washed away crossing the flooded creeks, but because the sun started poking out and revealed the surrounding mountains, covered in snow, displaying yet another extremely harsh and intensely beautiful aspect of the high desert. If we weren’t in survival mode I might have thought to take more pictures! My Gopro battery had long since frozen and the camera wouldn’t remain on. My digital camera was so buried in my pack that I couldn’t get to it for the layers of waterproofing I had added for the ride. The pictures and video I did get were with my phone, and once I reviewed them, realized I might earn gold just by entering a few of those pictures in a photo contest!
I managed to squeak out one gold nugget that cold morning.
Almost expecting it to be there, I swung my coil and heard the faint
whisper-had my hunch been correct? The detector seemed to say so! I pried the
small, flat nugget out of the bedrock and took stock of my surroundings. I just
pulled that nugget out of an area that has been beat to DEATH by other
detectors! How was it missed? Or maybe the water flowing through the wash had
brought it there? There was so much water moving things around…and that has not
happened in years there. My mind raced ahead to what new discoveries could be
made once the water did its work of revealing what was once hidden.
The next trip can’t come soon enough…
