Cave of Crystals

This video from a cavern in Naica, Mexico is of some huge gypsum and selenite crystals. Workers in a silver mine opened up the cavern a few years back, accidentally. This cavern is deep within the earth, so the temperature is over 100 F, and the suits that they wear are full of ice. An interview with the host and some more information about the crystals is on BBC's website here:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8466493.stm

$20 Sluice Modification

I've been good about not blaming my equipment for not getting as much gold as I think I should. I've always allowed the blame to come onto me, like messing up the cleanup or not digging where the gold is in the first place.  But after two years of blindly accepting that my sluice box was working great, I decided to read some reviews of the darn thing. The sluice box is what you put your gold-bearing gravels into, and it separates the gold from the other stuff at a much faster rate than panning.

Turns out, its the cheapest and most negatively reviewed sluice on the market! The reason for that is not that it doesn't work, but it only has a narrow application. It is the E-Z sluice by Tee Dee co., and its principal application is as a backpacking sluice, for low volume and very rich gravels. It's quite finicky, and not too easy to just throw in a river and start shoveling.

Purchased Materials and Sluice to be Modified

So I decided to add some modifications. After looking around online and seeing what other people had done, I decided I would add a "slick plate" to let the material sort itself out and hopefully increase gold recovery. I also planned on adding some expanded metal and rubber matting to help catch gold too. After spending an hour at Home Depot trying to find everything, I got everything I wanted. The rubber matting is 27" wide, and $2.09 a foot, so I only had to buy a foot.  Expanded metal was around $9 for a large sheet, and the sheet metal that I needed (12"w x 18"l) was also $9. I bought a drillbit too to handle the sheet metal, and some screws and wingnuts, all in 1/4" threading.

I spent a few hours banging it together, and came out with a usable product. I had forgotten to buy adhesive and didn't have enough epoxy to glue down the matting, so I just jammed it under the flare and expanded metal and hoped it would stay. It came out looking alright, and so that weekend I went and gave it a go at the creek. It worked alright, the slick plate didn't slow down the material fast enough to see it spread out, and the expanded metal just filled up with black sand and clay, but still held a few flakes. The rubber matting got blown up with water from beneath the flare, and didn't last more than a minute in the water, I would have to glue it down. After a frustrating day trying to figure out how to get it set up for proper recovery, I went home with only a flake for the day.

There was another prospector there that day who had a nicer, more appropriate sluice that was covered in the material that people use to coat their truck beds. It was black, so you could see the gold coming down very apparently, and rough, so it would slow the material down just enough. This guy would just sit there with a suction bottle and watch the gold come down, and grab it right there. It seemed to be just what I needed to make my slick plate work like it should.

So I went back to Home Depot and ended up convincing myself that I needed two bars for stabilization on the side, I wasn't sure last time if the two separate parts of the sluice were collectively flat or not. I didn't think so, because it made a sort of a wave where the water came into the original sluice box part.

I painted the coating on, glued in the matting, bent the expanded metal into angular riffles instead of horizontal bars, and am ready to go get to the river and see how it works! I need to go buy a suction bottle or two so that I can collect all my gold in this way. This weekend a snow storm is moving into the region and it looks like it might rain or snow, so the temptation to go skiing is great, but I really would like to go prospect as well.

****EDIT****

My modifications didn't perform at all like I was thinking. The bends on the sheet metal were not 90 degrees or straight, so the water in the sluice formed blast currents in the front of the box. The seal between the two wasn't very good, so additional water came in at the joint, as well as gold being lost when cleaning up. As I lifted the sluice from the water, I watched gold slip from the top of the sluice into the crack and back to the river. The expanded metal seems to work, and could do better if it had a permanent fixture to keep it in place. The black truck bed coating is by far the best thing about it. I have since painted the flare of my other sluice, and it slows down the gold a lot. If I were to do it again, I would find a better way to bend the sheet metal or have a professional do it. But by that point it is almost easier and of equal cost to buy a prefabbed sluice. Its all circumstantial.

My Electric Organ Donor

I've got a habit. When I have some free time, the mouse on my computer just slips over to that craigslist thumbnail, and right into the "free" section. What brings me to these postings is a simple, pure fact based on perception. People perceive trash differently. Some people consider everything unwanted to be trash, and there are others who consider everything to have its own intrinsic value, and may place extreme value on these same items. Of course, these are two opposite ends of the spectrum.

Things (too materialistic?) I have found in the trash(or just plain unwanted):

   A large, beautiful oil painting, that now hangs above my bed...

   My snowboard, bindings, boots, and snow pants...

   Food (ramen and yams that sustained me for a week)...
   Alcohol (I have no shame in pulling unopened beers from dumpsters, I do have shame in drinking them before I wash it off)...
   A Guitar...
   And so much more.

And now, an electric organ!

Terry, the man that I met off of craigslist about this free organ, gets contracted to clean out rental houses before the next tenant moves in. What a job! He had salvaged this organ from a house (of apparently religious people, due to the bible hymn sheet music) and gave it away for free. It is in excellent condition, and has noting at all wrong with it. I gave him all of the cash in my wallet, which was about $5 (in singles, too), and I call that a GREAT deal for an organ.

UPDATE: I've recently looked around at CL's for other cities, and have noticed that most other cities only have one or two items a day, and usually they are misplaced classified ads. Boulder must have a) a large upper class that can afford to donate or b) like-minded people who want to recycle and avoid the landfills. Maybe its both, but it is definitively different

A little bit of varnish chipping below the keys, but nothing else is wrong with it.


*EDIT*
I sold my organ to my neighbor for $50. It was quite the enjoyable item to have in the house, however.

Field Geology: A cold day for a stromatolite

  In my Field Geology class at the University of Colorado, we are learning to create geologic maps. We have been using our Brunton compasses (not just your everyday compass) to make measurements about the rocks. We look at things like how thick the section of rock is, what kind it is, where it is pointed, and which way it "dips", which is the direction that a rock unit is sloping downward. Making both quantitative and qualitative observations, and gathering LOTS of observations, we should be able to produce a geologic map of the region that describes the history and rock types of that area.

The class listens as our professor, Lon Abbot, describes a brief history of the stramatolite

Today, we were just practicing making these measurements, because the details of these procedures raise lots of questions in their application and accuracy, so that we can be prepared when we head into the field. The weather forecast had given a high of 45 degrees, and it may have reached that in the morning, but by noon when we head into the field it was getting nasty and cold. A storm coming into the region promised 7" of new snow and a high of 11 the next day, so the mother nature was feeling tempermental. 

There was plenty of snow on the ground as we took notes on outcrops of varying rock types and ages. We followed a hiking trail that took us through the depositional history of the front range of Colorado, getting younger and younger from the Pennsylvanian aged Fountain formation (a notable red rock characteristic of places like Red Rocks Ampitheatre and Garden of the Gods) to rocks that had been recently moved within the last few million years.

A pattern characteristic only of
stromatolites.

The particular rock that we are looking at in the picture is a stramatolite. It has close, thin wavy bands on its side, and these differ from ripple patterns in the fact that they are not symmetrical or of a constant amplitude. The rocks at first did not appear overly interesting. We had examined several rocks from this formation when we came upon one which was different. One person within our group correctly identified it as a stramatolite. Our professor Lon was explaining to us that these stramatolites are the oldest organism that we have on fossil record, and they consist of bacterial mats that grow in humps together. This first organism was quickly outdated by other organisms, and later became a food source for some creatures. The theory is that stramatolites are only preserved in fossil record in areas that were of high salinity or otherwise unfavorable for creatures to eat them. They grow only in areas of calm water movement, but could grow in either freshwater or saltwater environments. The other rocks (which did not have stramatolites) we had been looking at surrounding it further indicated that these organisms flourished in one particular spot.

For what at face value had appeared to be a quite dull rock, its history is actually quite remarkable, and it turns out that these characteristics are specific to only stramatolites, and even more can be interpreted about the environment that those rocks were deposited in. In creating our geologic maps, we are being taught to rely on our ability to piece together clues that lead to the complete history of those rocks. Our next project is to begin mapping a decent sized chunk of land, Mt. Sanitas in close proximity to Boulder.

Gold

It may not look too big, but the biggest piece of gold in this pan is the largest I have found to date!

    I headed up to the North Fork of Clear Creek Canyon this last saturday for some snowy prospecting. Missing out on a powder day at the resorts, I hoped that prospecting might have me bringing back some gold. I spent about six hours digging and sluicing only one bucket of bench deposit material. Bench deposits were left on the sides of the river, way back when the river had not eroded down to its current location. These deposits usually weren't worked by the old-timers, and sometimes can have lots of gold left for us! I spent all six hours on this day digging and sluicing one ONE bucket of material! My sluice wasn't set up right, and the riffles would pack full of fine sand and clays. I was watching my gold come in at the top, set up in a riffle, and walk its way right down into the river bed. For some reasoning, I didn't want to run a clean up and re-set up the sluice twice, I already had once because I had felt it wasn't working right, so I kept running material through and watching the gold exit.  My first clean-up held two small flakes, right on the lip of the sluice after I pulled it out. The next one held a slightly bigger flake, and then the biggest flake (almost a nugget?) that I have found to date. Don't get too excited, its still very small. But I am excited, I feel that if I dug the same material with a well-working and bigger sluice, I could probably extract a decent amount of gold.

Radium Hot Springs

 I love hot springs. Hot tubs are modeled after these, so are bath tubs, but neither of these are created naturally in remote places. Radium hot springs sit right on the edge of the Colorado river, a short ways away from Kremmling, CO.  Radium usually stays around 97 - 98 degrees, but I have soaked it both cooler and hotter. Fishing from the hot springs is phenomenal. I've witnessed fish be caught from someone sitting inside the hot springs (that would be Forrest, who can catch a trout out of a sand dune), and kicked myself whenever I forget my pole. Whatever the temperature, it never fails to please.

 

     Hot springs come from fissures (or cracks) in the earths crust which are filled with water. This water once was in close proximity to a hotspot or magma body, and it has boiled up through the fissure to create the hot spring. I'm guessing that because the pressure on the water is so high, when it reaches high temperatures within the crust it can't just become water vapor, and becomes super-heated. Hydrothermal action that makes hot springs also deposits some very interesting minerals, like pyrite and fluorite.

 To get to the spring, a short hike is required after parking at a forest service campground and hiking directly up the hill. My favorite time to go is right at sunset, because in the summer and fall the sun sets directly over the river, creating quite the pretty sight. During rafting season they sometimes bring loads of people by to come sit in the springs, so watch out during the day. The campground and parking for the springs is remote and has ample room, and can make a good takeout camp for Gore Canyon, a class IV+/V- whitewater run.

Directions: From Kremmling, head South and cross the Colorado River. At the top of the hill, take a right (west) turn where a wooden sign says "Radium". It is a decent ways on this road, somewhere around 15-20 miles, but a notable feature that your aren't there yet is a paved pass, that means your close! Take a right (north) turn onto CO Hwy 11, at the bottom of a small but steep gulch, and go straight until you arrive at the campsite. Look for the pictured cliffs, the trail splits up, but head to where there are some trees along the bank of the river.

The Flattops; good backpacking and great fishing

   Objective: Spend four days in the Flattop Wilderness of Colorado, and to pack out every pound of food that we packed in.

The skillet is cast iron and about 12" in diameter.
Cast iron works best for fish because it evenly
 distributes the heat.

   In the second week of August, in the year 2010, we did almost that. From Boulder, my friend Henry and I drove to Steamboat, picked up Aaron, and headed to the east side of the wilderness boundary. Parking just below Stillwater reservoir at just about noon, we hiked to the north side of the reservoir and dipped our lines. After about 5 casts, I had caught a fish, a decent 13" brown trout. Henry soon followed with his fish, as I continued to work my way down the shore. As I reeled in another, and Aaron had yet to catch one, he gave up his pole and went to get the stove and cast iron pan out, and begin to gut the three we had already caught. We were all hungry, and had been imaging eating nothing but trout for the next 3 days, which appeared to be a very real possibility. By the time the first two had cooked, we got another two small ones, bringing our total to five fish for lunch. Only about an hour into the trip, and we all had our bellies full of fresh-caught and fresh-cooked (out of the water and into the pan) trout.

Looking back down on Stillwater Reservoir from the top of the Flattops

                        
                                                             


                                              
                                                                



                                       The three of us bushwhacked right into the thick of it coming across mushrooms (including edible boletus, which we picked), small ponds and cricks and tall grass. We found a small lake to make camp at, and fished with great success for dinner. The forest there, despite it making a comeback from a disease which resulted in a large fire in the 1940's, is very healthy consists mostly of trees of only one age. The dead trees from long ago can make going tough though, as they all blow down in different directions, and were quite large trees. There are no trees above the top, as the basalt that makes up these tops is hard, and the winds must be ferocious at times. We hiked across the flattops to a lake situated on a shelf of basalt, right below the top lip. It was called "Suprise Lake". Right before our descent into the suprise, we saw some sheepherders, whose dogs barked ferociously at us. It made me realize that I had left my ice axe (more for protection and utility than ice) about a mile and a half back. Oops. We continued for camp, and a large white sheephearder's dog kept following us.

Our view from the small lake the night before we hiked to "Suprise Lake". It was about 1800 vertical feet, and steep!

 











                  










                        It was really nice, actually, this dog. It wasn't one of those that had been barking at us, and it just kept wandering around, keeping an eye on us. Once we had a fire, it came by and sat with us and allowed us to pet it. Henry decided to call her "Marisol". She left, though, dinnertime we had supposed. We fished the lake after setting up camp, and of caught dinner within the last hour of sunlight. It turned out the dog slept right by where we were camping, and it was a good thing. That night we all woke up when we heard crashing and the breaking of branches. The smell of our dinner had brought in a bear, just like we had expected. Our bear bag was tied between two spruces, about 25 feet up, but our clothes, which smelled like delicious fish and in our tents, that is what scared us. Right after we made sure we were all awake and had in fact heard a bear, Marisol started barking close by. She barked for about an hour, making sure that bear didn't come back.

   On the second day, it rained. The morning was cloudy and before noon it was pouring. We napped and tried to keep the fire going, but there wasn't much we could do but stay under the tarp and stay warm. The tarp, by the way, was mine and had my sleeping bag and pad in it, but neither Aaron's or Henry's tents were large enough for all three of us, and so my tarp was the place to be. This whole hanging out under my tarp thing was really a drying off from tending to the fire kind of thing, and my bag and gear all got soaked as a result. But it turned out to be o.k., because right as the sun set, the rain stopped and we were rewarded with and awesome sunset, and a few minutes to dry our clothes in sunlight and by the fire. The fish that night and next morning didn't bite, so the last morning we all took turns swimming in the lake. There's not too much nicer than skinny dipping in a cold fresh lake of mountain water, with the sun shining and a warm fire to return to. We didn't quite pack out all of our food like we had hoped, but we were all tired of eating fish, so I deem it a success.

Winter Prospecting

      Even with the cold 13 degree temps, the gold bug bit and I took a sick day from my physics class. My field geology class had already been canceled for inclement weather, so the day was wide open. Leaving around noon, I hurried up Clear Creek Canyon with sluice, buckets, bar and shovels in tow. Arriving at the locality I had been e-prospecting, I found that it was north facing, coated in snow, and had already seen the most sun for that day. Delightful! To add to the elation, the spot was just downwind of a sewage treatment plant. It looked like there had been lots of past digging in this spot, behind boulders mainly, so I found myself an undug boulder at the top of the placer and started chipping away.
     Well, the ground was frozen solid. So I started chipping at the frozen creek, and finally worked up some water. Pouring this on the ground, I hoped, would thaw it enough to be dug, but it just froze within seconds and made a nice little pool of ice.
     Scratching that idea, I started pounding the ground with bar and shovel, and managed to work out about a half bucket of material. The material came off of a clay layer about 4 inches down that was frozen solid. Scraping the clay was just like curling very hard chocolate, but you would see gold flakes as they were pulled out! Curiosity finally got to me, and I took a handful of the material and panned it quickly. This one handful had about 9 or 10 finds, well worth the time.
     The hard work was keeping me warm, but after about two hours with almost a half-bucket of material and no water with which to sluice, I packed up and headed home. At home, I quickly set up my desert fox-a machine like an archimedes spiral that separates gold and attempted to classify the material, which just separates it all by size. The water froze in the classifying screens, and left me soaked in muddy water and with cold hands. The sun had gone down by then, and the water in the wheel also froze on the desert fox, so there wasn't a chance. I packed it up and went inside, cold and disappointed.

Calcite Crystals and Caves

After doing much probing to find information on the Owl Canyon calcite locality, I didn't find much. Well, a few things
    1. A book - The Rockhound's Guide to Colorado by Kappele that listed this as a locality and not much detail about where to find or look for crystals.
    2. A friend, telling me that his dad had once found crystals in this spot.
    3. Best of all, a cave survey detailing a cave in this exact area, describing the walls of a cave that were literally lined with crystals. Now that's promising!

    After some trailfinding and bushwhacking, I made it to the outcrop, where Colorado Lien had previously  dug some pits down to unexposed limestone. From what I understand, this company mines the limestone for a supplement in cattle feed.  The limestone that the crystals occur in is the Fort Hays member of the Niobrara formation. I examined, smashed, and overturned lots of boulders, and searched directly on the outcrop for calcite crystals.

As for the cave, it descends probably 20' to 25' vertically and the horizontal is probably close to the same. I didn't quite reach the end, claustrophobia kicked in when things got tight, and being alone didn't help, though I am sure it just right down around the corner. The description, though, is quite accurate, the walls protrude in triangular calcite crystals, many have been smashed away. The degradation of the cave is evident, and sad. A small piece of plastic was in the main chamber, and I promptly found room in my pocket for it. As to the exact location of this cave, that information is only for those who are trustworthy. Preserving this cave is very important, and the more people that know about it (who will not take care of it) severely decreases the time that we will be able to enjoy it.