United Prospectors Inc.,

I spent several hours moving half buckets of material out of the culvert pipe. only got back in about 6 ft. the first 3 ft were a mass of roots and gravel.
I dumped everything in a plastic tarp in the back of the truck. There was a steady flow of water, but not enough to run a sluice box. ran the material up at pine mountain lake camp ground. got a little fine gold out of the 7 buckets. The sluice slipped once and I lost some of the material and probably some of the gold as the water is quite swift up there. Went back by today with a flash light to check the bottom of the culvert everything is well rusted there. Next trip back I will set up a pump at the end and pump water back up to a sluice box.

Today I headed back to the billy goat and collected a 5 gallon bucket full of the green infused quartz and gave a couple of big chunks to the lady and her husband who runs rock bottom finds in coulterville. She is doing an order to get some more mining supplies as she only has one sluice box and a few pans. Showed her the new blue keene pan with large and small riffles she wants to add them to her stock.

It is cold at the billy goat due to the fog layer that is coming up from the valley. Migel was there probably metal detecting, did not go down to that part of the claim. I did get a couple of pickers and some fines on the upper end of the billy goat.

The day I put the signs up I hiked upstream and found the old mining operation. all the equipment is gone but the massive rock walls and brick work were still intact. It was just upstream and up hill from this location that I found the quartz field. Across the river is another one but there is too much water flowing to safely cross.

I really needed a few more days, wanted to set up the power sluice and work a few of the gravel bars I found on the hill side.

Back to the culvert pipe, after I checked the pipe with the flash light I took a walk upstream and found that the water flow was coming from an old mine shaft about 25 ft from the road. it was covered in old vines. I walked towards the opening and was walking on a floating sponge of vegetation. The upper 3 ft was out of the water but I could see that there was at least 4 ft of water covering the bottom of the shaft. The creek flowed to one side of the shaft and it was dry. Will be back there again and work that area after the rains stop. Last time I was at the culvert there was no water flow. So the culvert pipe was put in many years after the mining operation stopped so that section of the creek was filled in for the road. Now I know why there was not a any pickers in the culvert. When the creek flows it is probably not moving that much material the majority of the water is coming gently out of the mine shaft. The gravel build up is elevated probably 4 ft above the shaft. Looks like a good spot for a common operation one day.
The 4th photo is the rock wall it must have taken some time to build it selecting and placing the boulders, the face of all the walls are very flat. fifth photo is a where they build an area with red brick not sure what that section was for. The last photo is blacks creek near the mine. I talked to a telephone lineman yesterday and he said that maxwell creek and blacks creek sounded like a frieght train rushing by just 5 days ago. You can see where the billy goat was at least 5 or 6 ft higher than the level it was today.
I got some good color today only had an hour to dig before it got dark. Will be back there early sat to finish. I was working red gravel on the hill side only dug about 7 gallons of material. Just started getting down to the larger cemented gravel and bigger rocks. Bedrock is only 2 ft down at this location.

Jim