Alabama Trip Report

I have not posted any trips this year because my two dredging buddies went to Alaska to make their fortune!!  They are back now so two of us got up a river dredging trip.  I won't say it was a trip from hell, but I could smell the smoke and feel the heat!!  Mike got their a day ahead of me and set up camp.  I am not much for roughing it, but Mike has a air conditioner in his tent!!  I am in.  Arrived early Thursday morning to find his generator was not working and he was sore and grouchy from sleeping in the truck.  Hot humid Alabama nights are not the perfect time for tent camping.  We unloaded and slid our dredges in the river.  We pull our dredges with mud motors.  Everything cranked up and away we went.  We found a ledge runnn ing across the river  which should make a natural riffle.  Anchored on top of the ledge in3 1/2 feet of water.  There was almost no current .  The dam upstream runs at 7 am and it takes 5 hours for the flow to arrive.  We proceded to suit up , put on weights and hop in.  I told him I planned to stay in 3 to 4 feet of water since we did not has a third person to watch for us.  10 minutes later I am laying on the bottom in 13 feet of water sucking up sand and cobbles out of depressions in the rock. Did a clean up after an hour to see how it looked.  Not too good.  Clean up was difficult and slow  in deep water.   Second clean up was just as bad. The wind blew my boat up stream 10 feet and I decided to swim to it to get more gas, with 30 pound of weight on and air harness laying on the dredge!!  Closest I have come to drowning since I was in an indusrtrial accident in 1978.  Managed to grab the anchor rope and haul myself to the boat.  Mike never saw what happened --so much for watching each other!!  He was dredging and I decided to catch my breath a few minutes.  Took off the weights and was standing in the water when the lightning started.  Swam over to him and tugged his air line . Up he came and we both headed for our boats, but, the current just got to us and I had to swim upstream 30 feet.  No weights but very tired.  Second escape!!  The afternoon was spent watching the storm and lightning. Then it came back that night.  Spent a terrible night sleeping in the front seat of my truck.  Next morning my boat had sunk up to the motor!!  Bailed it out , ate some breakfast then sat there a while getting the will to go back dredging.  Things got a bit brighter.  We went further downstrean to an island that we had worked before.  Dredged a new place on the up stream end .   1 1/2 hour run got me 1 gram of gold. WE were both beat so we left took our time dragging everthing up the muddy ramp , and packed up.   Conclusions:  I want no part of deep dredging.   I can get a good showing in less than 5 feet of depth.  

WE left ill as hell and ready to sell everything.  I cleaned up cons yesterday and decided $42 of gold in less than two hours is not so bad.  Mike cleaned up his generator , tightened all connections  and it works now.  So we are planning another trip in a couple of weeks!!   I will post some pics when I get them on the computer.

I don't do heat very well myself~ flooding and rain w/ lots of heat / humidity has stopped me all year. I sold most of my equipment awhile back but got my knee replaced in Jan of this year. Im feeling frisky and Im looking to buy another 4 inch Keene dredge BUT the heat is keeping me from doing the 13 hour drive to get it and the 13 hour drive back home. Shipping is out of the question!!! Good note is that the cool weather is comeing after all! Hope I can beat the snow!!!! Ive done TOOOO MANNYYYYYYY slepping in the front seat! Not anymore!!

Russ:

In about 30 days I will be in Indy and I will try and take a side trip down to Cottonwood Trails to check it out and get some photos. May get some information on camping there while I'm at it. Maybe you ought to make that trip and get the dredge while your toooo hot right now. HA HA

Dickb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o12ORiV_BHU

Dick , We will see !

Kilnmaint,

WOW................that's a story...

Glad you survived it all... Good to see you have decided to keep all your "stuff" and work the shallow water.

Thanks for sharing, posting us all a Trip report. One thing I can say I am VERY happy about here in pot smokin' "High" Kolorado is we don't have many bugs, low, low humidity and nice summer days...

Hope your next dredging outing goes better!

Randy C-17A