Living in the South West has it's advantages if you like to Prospect for precious metals as well as treasure hunt. Here where we live we are basically centralized for both. Lots of history and treasure hunting leads that we would have to make it a full time job to track them all down.
Being a pilot and Aerial Photographer has had it's benefits as to my prospecting and treasure hunting. It allows me to cover a lot of ground, photograph it and study the terrain and landmarks at my leisure. Having a complete photo lab and total control of the processes and sizes I can print a proof sheet to examine area's and then print color or High Resolution Aerial film up to 24 X 36 inch prints. If you examine the above photo you can detect several trails as well as the roads in the area. If blown up to a larger size and cropped to show only the area's of interest you can determine intrusions and other geological formations of interest.
When used for treasure hunting you can follow old, almost invisible, trails that are barely discernable from the ground as well as locate landmarks and depressions or other anomalies that are of interest in the search.
Contrary to what the Geologist will tell you, there are many geological formations in the Guadeloupe Mountains and surrounding area's that have very good "Color". The above photo is of an old mine, long forgotten and never talked about, that has a substantial amount of silver in the formation. It is located in the Heart of the Guadeloupe Mountains and the "Geologist" will tell you that it is a "Reef" and there are no precious metals located anywhere in the range. Obviously "they don't know as much as they think they know".
Spanish markers abound throughout the area and lead to various openings, old foundations and mines as well. At this point in time my friend Paul and I have mapped well over 500 markers and hundreds of trails that the general population doesn't even know exist. We hope, over time, to put all the pieces together and possibly solve the equation to the source. Below are only a couple of the many markers that have been leading us through the mountains to exceptional finds.
Prospecting here in the South West dose require some good conditioning. Most anything you will want to explore will require a nice long hike in most cases. It is a common joke around here that when someone says "it's not that far" you can expect at least a 3 mile walk, normally up hill. Below is a photo of me exploring the west side of the Guadeloupe mountains. All up hill, ( About 5000 feet from the floor where I started). Water, Shelter and food are have to halves, not nice to have around here.
I will put more up soon, this is only a teaser, I intend to add pages on the Prospecting equipment we build, highbankers, sluices, rocker box's and drywashers as well as our Assaying services and metal detector repair services. come back often and see what changes or is added.
Just to show what persistence can provide, below you will see a photo of a 8lb. 9oz specimen of "Calaverite". This came from an expedition to Colorado several years ago. Calaverite runs better than 65% Gold so you can do the math. I have been considering selling it, but have not had any "Serious" offers "yet"
Keep coming back for more stuff to be added soon.
Jimi
And here it is with a direct difused light, the true presence is shown only on film. There are no tricks involved, no special filters or touching up. This is exactly how the picture came out when developed.
My Well of Gold
When I started on our property it was a clearing and building project that required a lot of time and effort. It was originally a homestead back around 1906 and last inhabited in the late 20's. After "Witching" the location for the well I started drilling it myself. Mainly a 8" pilot hole to be finished professionally when the water was verified. Being well trained in well drilling as well as mining I took samples every 10 feet to keep track of the strata and formations. I figured that the easy way to do this would be to put my sluice box in line with the discharge from the well drilling rig and take samples from it. The most amazing thing occurred in the 8' to 12' drilling. I had come into a ancient gravel bar that runs under my property. after shutting down the rig to make a connection at the 12' level I removed the sluice so as to clean it up and take samples for the log. While the rig was drilling the next join I pulled a full cleanup on the sluice. I panned out the material so as to have a good clean sample of the chips. To my amazement and partially from habit I washed the fine chips into a safety pan and did a "Swirl", like I said, from habit. There in the bottom of the pan was a generous appointment of black sand, fine gold dust and 7 pickers. the largest about an 1/8th inch across and flat. You can see them below.
I have also found gravel bars at 45' to 54' and 68' to 84'. Each showed an abundance of fine gold and black sand but I believe the depth was to great for any sizable pieces to be brought to the surface without special drilling mud's. I have located, by doing fly overs and photographing the area, an old gravel pit a few miles away which I plan on taking a closer look at as soon as it warms up a bit. It may be noted that I use the same drilling rig for sampling prospects. I use a 6" and 8" augers as well as the 3" hard rock bit and I have a 1" and 2" core drills for coring and sampling prospects.
Prospecting Equipment;
I also build some pieces of prospecting Equipment. All of my equipment is built out of Aircraft Quality aluminum and solid riveted together. I use "Pop" rivets only in non structural parts. The current items I make are combination Highbanker/ Dredge/ Sluice that can be built almost any size from 10" wide to 6' long. More commonly I do a 10" by 36" model that can be backpacked into places with not much trouble and process the dirt almost as fast as you can shovel it. I also build custom Rocker Boxes, Dry Washers and clean up equipment. I can build almost anything a prospector could want to their specifications and dimensions. Contact me if you have equipment you would like built.
