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Our original plans were to head out to Prescott during the Christmas/New years holiday, but delays happened and we finally made the trip during the last 10 days of march while the kids were on spring break.
After arriving late saturday evening, we decided to give our aching backsides a rest and took Sunday off to recover from all the driving. It's 2300 miles one-way from here, but we got to see some great places along the way and of course we were busy the whole time just thinking about what we might find while prospecting out there.
Early monday morning we drove down to Stanton and then found our way back to some gpaa claims a few more miles down the dirt road from the ldma camp. In case you've never been there, the dirt road that goes from Congress to the Stanton camp is very slow traveling. It's all flat, but the washboards are TERRIBLE the entire length. Anything over 10 mph will bounce you right off the road and into the cactus brush. A true kidney crusher in every sense. Just plan on allowing yourself an hour to get from the blacktop and down to the gpaa claims listed in the mining guide.
Once there, we scouted some of the main wash with the White's GMT...it has a great feature to follow the intensity of the black sand, and we found a probable area to set up the mini recirculating sluice and got started. At about 8 inches down, we started running into consistent colors...nothing big, but an ample abundance of fines with a few flakes. My wife and I ran the mini sluice for the afternoon while our son used the metal detector. He didn't have any luck finding gold, but dug up a few bullets and several peices of trash items. By the end of the afternoon, we had recovered just a little over a gram of fine with the mini sluice. If a person had time to really sample and work the wash, they could probably do well in recovering a goodly amount of fine gold......considering ours was just a hit-and-run day trip, I didn't think it was too bad. {just be very cautious of springtime...the rattlesnakes are coming out in full force and we did see 3 of them while we were there}
Tuesday....we went from Prescott over to some claims near Mayer. It was a long, rough 4wd trail back to the claims, and it really looked like a good spot at first....running water in the creek, exposed bedrock, lots of crevices and boulders, quartz veins on the surface and all the right looking ingredients......worked all day and found nothing...not even a speck.
Wednesday we decided to stick close to Prescott and ended up going over to the Lynx creek area for the afternoon. This is a national forest area and no motorized equipment is allowed...just pan and shovel. If a person likes to go at it with just the basics, this is the place for you. It didn't seem to matter where we shoveled a pan of dirt from....each pan had at least 20 small colors in it. I'm convinced that 2 people working casually with 14 inch pans could pay for the weeks vacation while they're there... {just judging from the abundance of fine gold we were finding in the creek.} We met an an 82 year old prospector there that day that was wintering from Colorado....he told us about an area a couple miles further upstream that had more flake gold than where we were at. Thursday we spent the day at the place he told us about, and he was right. All told....we came out of there with a little over 11 grams for about 9 hours panning between 3 people. We weren't working hard...just steady, and still taking the time to enjoy the scenery.
Friday we did the family thing with dinner and relaxing as it was time to re-pack and start the long drive back east.
It was fun to visit and see new things, but I personally prefer the green trees, grass, hills and flowing creeks here at home. The next time we make the trip out west, I think we'll keep going untill we hit upper Ca. I'll let you know how that one pans out.
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