Colorado -- Sluicing the Ark with Ron & Matt -- 16 Mar 2017

Hey Gold Adventurers...

With the weather so nice lately, my prospecting buddies Ron and Matt and I decided to hit the river yesterday, see if we could pan and sluice up a little fine flood gold and a lot of fun.

We met at 10AM and parked and walked up and down the bank, looking for a spot that possibly 3 guys could setup sluices and work reasonably close together.  Well, the Ark is flowing high, fast and cold for March, with all the lower level snowmelt going on.  Probably a good 600CFS locally now, when it would be about 200 CFS normally.  

We finally decided on a spot where we could get 2 sluices running and I’d just switch off helping Ron and Matt adjust, run their sluices and help them both pitch rocks, dig and wash “dirt” for them.  This was the first time each for the year.  I’d been out several times by myself already.

The day was about as perfect as we could ask for.  Started off for a low of 26F, but by 10 AM it was up to about 37F and with the sun out and no wind, warmed to probably high 50s by 2:30 PM, when we called it a day and celebrated with an ice cold beer.

Here’s Ron digging behind a big boulder:



Here’s Matt setup and running just upriver.  He was digging behind and around a big boulder too:



A view of Matt’s Le Trap sluice all leashed up and held down with rocks:



A view of Ron’s Le Trap sluice.  The water flow kept coming up slowly all day, so we had to make numerous adjustments to allow the bigger rocks to wash out but still leave the drop riffles about ½ full of black sand:


I worked back and forth, between both operations, helping as I could.

Here is Ron’s dig spot, just about the end of our day, getting the last little bit of good black sand material to sluice:



We started about 10:30AM sluicing, stopped about 2:30PM.  Had a nice lunch in the shade about noon.

I made one video early in the day:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcb01CwJV-4

After we cleaned up and packed back to the parking area, we sat around and enjoyed an ice cold beer, recounted the day.....which was perfect.

O.K.  Ron got his cons cleaned up...  Ended up with .24 grams of nice fine flood gold and 1 nice little Arkansas River picker!




Matt get his cons cleaned up and got a little less...  He says his weighed in at .20 grams. Nice...  So, we all were a success in our High Kolorado “hard fun” adventure.  Matt's gold here:



Hope you get out soon on a “gold adventure” of your own soon!

Randy  C-17A    

Sir:

Thanks for the invite, you were a most gracious host as always, from setting the sluice to even diggin/throwing material into the box. We couldn't of asked for a more perfect day, it's been a long winter and was nice to get out and spend the day with you and Matt. Thanks to our buddy Mr OK for sharing some of his bounty......

I did get my cons worked and will send you a picture when I get them downloaded and you can go ahead and post it. My grand total was .23 grams with a nice little Arkansas River Picker.

Come on Apr looking forward to a little more Hard Fun on the Arkansas River and maybe an Arkansas River Nugget....HA!

Ron

NIce looking gold there!! I wish I could be out on the river, too, but not for now. Too many other things pushing for time. So, thanks very much for sharing.

Dave

Looking good!