Hooked on Gold Gazette 08/29/08

Strange faces can be seen all around the Arkansas River Valley. This old fellow looks to have a tale to tell, don't you think? Notice how the rock is chipped away from the right hand side of the beard. These smooth areas on the rock are not in character with the rest of the rock in the area. Whodunit? Man or Mother Nature?

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $829.90
· Spot price last week: $822.40
________________

Calendar of Events
SEPTEMBER
· 1st - LABOR DAY
· 10th – GPOC General Meeting
· 12th – 14th Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Panning Demo with GPOC
· 30th – Last Day for Motorized Equipment on the Arkansas River in Colorado
_______________________________________
NEWS

Labor Day weekend is upon us and our last big push to find gold. While we will have many weekends that will still be warm enough for gold prospecting, this next week will be our last week out and about without work interfering with our progress. If you have not seen it, scroll on down after you have finished with the newsletter to read about all of the website problems and fixes for today and this past week. Suffice it to say that the e-mail has been down for what looks like the last 12 days or so. I did go in this morning and was able to fix it, so if you were one of the many who did not get your information or an answer to your e-mail, please try us again. I was able to get e-mail messages and form requests sent to myself, so it looks to be fixed.

Has it been as quite around your house as it has been in ours the past two weeks? We find our favorite buttons on the clicker have been the mute and off buttons for the last 6 to 8 weeks. Tired of all the political ads running. We are, too. Nuff said! I HAVE been busy reading some very interesting books on some of our favorite areas while I am waiting for T.V. to return to normal, and by the looks of things I should get several read before the November elections. Should be good fodder for a few more articles to post for you to read.

If anyone (Paul) can think of a subject they would like to see an article on, let me know. I certainly would like to write about something people are interested in. The winters can be long and researching some information can lead to all sorts of ideas, so don’t hesitate to make a suggestion. It’s probably right up my gold pan. (One of the big military ‘copters just flew over my house, a left over from the DNC.) Gunny (He’s in Iraq for those of you who know him), check out www.icmj.com to keep up to date. (If the link does not work, copy and paste it into your browser.) Joel, try the e-mail address again. Sorry if you got the undeliverable message. I really don’t know what happened to it.

A caution about old mines; Three friends were killed this past May in a mine in the Sierras that they had entered. The cause of their deaths was due to carbon monoxide poisoning. They were the first deaths reported in that area since the early 1900’s. Gold is nice, and it can bring you some change, but it isn’t worth your life. Stay out of abandoned mines and stay alive. If the poisonous gas doesn’t get you the water or the deteriorated walls and ceilings may.

For all you out there searching for treasure, gold and silver, beware the Hundredth Monkey theory. (Reply to this post for the answer)

Gold is back up a bit with a weaker dollar, and the stock market still hasn’t made up its’ mind on what to do. Think I’ll wait until it does before I start risking the 401K again. Retirement from this job comes in spring next year, and we don’t need to be without enough to play with.

Oh, and by the way, there will be no newsletter for the next two weeks. First week we will be out of town……second week I’ll be working the Denver Gem Mineral and Fossil Show at the Denver Merchandise Mart. GPOC will have their panning troughs set out, so come on out and for a day of amazing things to see and do.

Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com . If the links do not work, copy and paste them into your browser.
If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now opened TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until October 1st.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
www.hookedongold.com
www.hookedongold2.com Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.

Hooked on Gold e-Mail is Back Up and Running

info@hookedongold.com is now back up an running. Sorry for any inconvenience you may have had in getting your panning instructions or in contacting us for any other gold prospecting information! More on this at the bottom of this blog.

10 inches of snow on Mt. Evans and the smell of fall in the air two weeks ago make me realize that gold prospecting season will be at an end for another year before I know it. This morning was chilly for Denver at the end of August, and my hands were cold for the first time since the first of June. We will be making our last week long trip to camp for this season and the weather looks to be a lot more favorable than it has all summer. We are looking forward to warm days and cool evenings in the mountains as we look for gold and hopefully find enough to make our winter warmer with the thoughts of the summer before.


We have met many wonderful people this year, and many were from website contacts. What fun to be recognized in the field with a floppy hat and dirty clothes on! Yeah, I know. I don’t exactly look the part. But then, that’s part of the fun, too. Not many people would take me for someone who digs dirt for fun and entertainment, or for someone who maintains a website with information about gold prospecting.


Speaking of maintaining a website, if any of you have tried to contact us through the website e-mail address, I found out just yesterday that there was a pathway error. Now, I’ve been e-mailing and on the Internet almost since its’ inception, and I have NEVER had this type of error develop with a VALID e-mail address before. I’ve had quite a few with many different hosts over the years and can’t imagine how this happened. I announced it on the website yesterday, and went in today to cancel the current one, retype it exactly as it was, and reinstate it exactly as it was. All of the pathways are now showing correctly and all of the forms are getting e-mail out again. I cannot think of why the error occurred and am thinking that only the ethernet gods know why. Anyway, it is all working again and if you requested information in August or tried to contact us with the web e-mail, please try again…….and again. I was successful in sending myself e-mail and information requests off of the form. I am SOOOOO sorry if you had a problem with it. I try to troubleshoot these things as soon as they come up, but it is NEVER soon enough for the one who didn’t get through.

ALSO, gold'n'store is semi back up and running. You will find links to the product description pages on the gold'n'store home page with pictures to come as I have time to resize and put them back up. I will add more of the gifts with prospecting themes in October, and DO check out the prospecting auctions for any items you want to add to your prospecting equipment, GOLD, too.

As always,

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau MQS

Hooked on Gold Gazette 08/22/08

Here is an early morning arrival at the Cache Creek parking lot. She had a companion that stepped out of the woods on the left just after we put the camera away. Could have been this year's fawn.

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $822.40
· Spot price last week: $786 and change
________________

Calendar of Events
SEPTEMBER
· 1st - LABOR DAY
· 10th – GPOC General Meeting
· 12th – 14th Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show Panning Demo with GPOC
· 30th – Last Day for Motorized Equipment on the Arkansas River in Colorado
_______________________________________
NEWS

Gold! How the mighty have fallen! In case you missed last week’s close on Friday, it was down in the $786 range. The dollar rallied late last week by nearly 5 cents to send the yellow metal tumbling past its’ price supports. This week it is back up above $800, but still well below the $850 mark. If it does not make its’ move soon, there is little chance it will see $1200 by year’s end. However, as you saw last week, that can change on a dime so don’t count it out quite yet.


Finding gold this year has been really tough. The weather trends have been against us most of the summer, and it seems that just about the time we come home, the sun comes out, the skies clear, and we hit a stretch of hot weather. Such is the way of luck. We had plenty of time out, but spent much of it in or volunteering our time. The 10 inches of snow that fell last weekend portends possibly of an early winter, and what with all of the rain in the high country we went through this year, we certainly are not looking forward to Indian Summer being cut short. We do hope that the cold snap has cleared out all of the mosquitos and biting flies that have plagued us all summer. Still, we did find gold, and will have more opportunities to find more. Wish us luck!

I am having trouble getting my msn browser to open the website. If anyone else is experiencing this, reply to this blog or info@hookedongold.com and let me know. (Blogger has a problem letting these links go live, so you might need to copy and paste them into your browser)

Many new things are going on up at Cache Creek. We had two sessions with the BLM and much was accomplished. The biggest concern was the trees in the area. The BLM had their forrester out to assess the area, and he found that many of the trees are not in very good shape. Many of the Aspens have aspen canker and the lodgepoles and spruces are being hit with pine beetle. They may look for a volunteer group to clear dead trees and leave for firewood to be used in the area, but that has not been decided. The Kiosk was put up and the Arkansas Headwaters Group put up a sign at the parking lot concerning camping and day use, and BLM ranger has been in ticketing anyone camping in the day use parking lots.

The parking lot was expanded to the west across the road. An area was leveled off more to accommodate about 6 vehicles, if they are parked in along the sides and back. It was decided that this solution would be better than expanding the existing parking lot to the east since people have been using the west area anyway.

Another item that all agreed would be a good thing was to have a kind of camp host, like you have in the Forest Service campgrounds, to assist with information and help new people with how and what to do. You will still need to pack your trash out as these people will not be camping onsite, but probably in and out each day. We will be looking for volunteers to help with this program this winter, and we have several who have already expressed interest.

The issue of porta potties is still being considered. Since many groups, such as hikers and hunters, also use the area, the BLM did not think their department alone should foot the bill for these. There seems to be many areas that are as difficult as Cache Creek to get in and out of that have had porta potties put in and maintained.

Wow! That didn’t take long to spit out. Watch the blog for more pictures and descriptions on what we did the first of August. I’ll be getting the Colorado State Gold Panning championships list on the GPOC page this next week as well as some other updates that need posting. Store should get some new items back up, oh, and if you haven’t checked out the auction pages yet, you SHOULD! I took a look at them myself today and found several items I would have liked to bid on. However, I’m not allowed to click through anything on my pages from my computer. BUMMER! I had to pull up e-Bay and go looking for what was already listed on my pages! You will find links to the other auction pages at the top of the GOLD AUCTIONS page. It will take you to four other specialty pages on prospecting equipment, and metal detectors. Can't find what you are looking for? You can type it into the search box at the top of the auction listings and find it. That’s all for this week. Get out there and find some gold before old man winter sets in!

Google has begun running third party ads and is requiring adsense sites to include information about this change on their websites. You can read about this on our Privacy Policy page.

World Open Panning website has this year’s world wide panning competitions listed and they add more all the time. A great site to visit: www.worldopenpanning.homestead.com .

Until next week……
___________________________________
If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now opened TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until October 1st.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley Weilnau
www.hookedongold.com
www.hookedongold2.com Metal Detectors at Auction
info@hookedongold.com contact us
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Ads that you might find on this blog or on a website using ads, may use cookies or other tracking means to track your movements on the web. Please read our Privacy Policy to see how this affects you and what you might want to do to prevent cookies being used to track you.

Mt. Antero Aquamarines

Where to start in catching up? How about with mighty Mt. Antero and our search for Aquamarines with Brian Buschy and company. That's Mt. Antero's peak in the distance, and the slope, as you can see, is near verticle. Colorado gold and aquamarines is our quest, and making that happen is our challenge. Brian has invited us up for a day, but you can book a tour of the mine with Fun Time Jeep Tours at the Prospectors Village, right next to the Rock Doc, in Nathrop, Colorado.

Now, I know that we are all about gold, but I must tell you about one of our trips this last week. Under azure blue skies that faded into brilliant turquoise, we spent a day in the Mt. Antero area searching for aquamarines on a friend’s claim high in the mountains south of Buena Vista. OMG! What a fabulous experience!

That's the mine looking back from about half way down

While this trip was not for the faint of heart, or weak of body, it was exhilarating. (That's the mine where the blue specs are) The mountain views from near the peak of Mt. Antero, one of the fourteeners, was beyond compare, and I am hoping the pictures capture the colors as well as they were seen. Anyone who knows me has seen the gold ring I wear that sports a band cast from Arkansas River gold dust, nuggets from two areas in Colorado, a Kelsey Diamond, (Yes, we have diamonds in Colorado) and, yes, an Aquamarine from the Mt. Antero area. (Mt. Whites, to be exact. It sits just behind Antero). We found all of the components of the ring including the diamond that we found at the jewelry store already cut. HAHA. Everything else we hunted for and found ourselves. A TRUE Colorado gold and gemstone ring. Now don’t go getting your nose out of joint thinking that Larry has been left out…….his Colorado gold, nugget, and diamond ring is much more impressive, but mine holds the aqua. We had them done for our 25th wedding anniversary, which was quite some time ago, now. Since then we have found a lot more gold, and some very special types of gold from Colorado, but that’s another story.

View above the trail, but the trail looked much the same

So, back to Mt. Antero and hunting aquas. We left camp about 7:00 a.m. to drive up to the trailhead for the big mountain, and then creeped our way up the four wheel drive road for an hour over rocks. At just about timberline we met part of the mining company at their camp. Brian was already digging, so Randy escorted us up the mountain. The climb was steep and the air thin, but we made it without incident. They had also taken pity on us and walked us up the easy trail. Mountain goat Larry would not have had to take this route, but he did so for the ladies present.

That's the crew in the pit with Brian looking at the camera in the center

The last leg up the falls and scree tailings of the mine was almost verticle but we finally got sight of the pit. Buckets of material were screened for aquas and then dumped over the side. Rocks, too. A permafrost layer was uncovered that yielded several deep blue aquas as big as your thumb, and a few that were bigger. The color was as blue as the sky above our heads!!!!! After about 6 hours of digging, we decided we had better get ourselves out of there as the weather had turned colder and grey with the threat of rain. Down the mountain we went and then back down the horrible little rocky road for another hour of bouncing around. Glad we went. Glad to find a bed that night, too. Just look at that sky! Good Prospecting to You,

hookedongold.com

High Country Golden Photo Ops...Gold, too!

Finding gold in the high country always gives photo ops like this!!! You can just smell the fresh, rarified air.

I suppose you have been wondering why I haven't given you any blogs lately on gold or our latest trip to find gold. Well, we came back in rain and heavy rain for several days has a way of messing with our phone system and that also means the DSL. Qwest says they will get around to us tomorrow, and we have a small window in the evening to get evertyhing done before it goes down, again. Lucky you, I have everything else caught up. As as soon as I have internet service for more than an hour a day, I'll begin feeding you blogs I have been cacheing for the past week so you'll get all the low down on where we were and what we did. The trip to look for Aquas was amazing! Oh, and, yes, we did find gold!

Have to run, but I'll be back tomorrow to give you some juicy pictures and information of some of the gold areas we visited. Cache Creek has been HOT all summer with activity, but we also had some interesting visitors on the mornings there was no one around. Plans for the area continue with the BLM, too. Watch for improvements and changes to the area by next summer. TTFN (Oh, yeah. We old folks have been texting for decades y'All. Do you know what sbsd is?)

Shirley (MQS)

www.hookedongold.com

Gold Rush Days in B.V.

Gold Rush Days in B.V.

Hey all, here's a picture of the GPOC group in Buena. The Cotin Tail Gem Show had some very nice rocks, which we bought, and some very nice fire agate in town. Tomorrow we will be headed back to the hills to find some gold for ourselves. One more week and we will be back at home for two weeks before we have our last big push for finding gold Labor Day Weekend. Hope you are out there yourselves finding those big nuggets!

'08 Colorado State Gold Panning Champions

Breckenridge, Colorado and the Colorado State Gold Panning Championships

Here is the list of the winners for you. We had a fabulous three days in beautiful Breckenridge, with sunny days and very few showers. Competitors came from around the country, and we saw several new pans in the California style competition. They were good enough to win, too! Thanks to all of the competitors and the volunteers who put in numerous hours on their feet on cement to pull this competition off. And NOW...Here They Are!

Jr's Anna , Julia, and Tess

Jr's + Kate, Joshua, and Jeremy

Oldtimers Larry Weilnau Sue Drewes Linda Jent

Team Isaac Beattie Larry Weilnau Mike Sutton

Linda Cole Glenn Ohrns Linda Jent

Sue Drewes Craig Koretoff Patty Gallaghan

Nationals Barbara Sutton Larry Weilnau Mike Sutton

Ladies Stacey Smith Sue Drewes Patricia Vesterby

Mens Eric Beattie Isaac Beattie Larry Weilnau

State Larry Weilnau Eric Beattie Stacey Smith

World's Dry Eric Beattie Gary Beaderstadt Stacey Smith

I'll get a better list up when I get back home some time next week. Congratulations to this year's winners. Join us next year for some more fun in the high country

Cache Creek updates

Well, we had fun with our grandsons last week, but there has been some new news on the altercation that happened at Cache Creek a couple of weeks ago and brought the BLM down for a check. Apparently, someone took equipment out of a hole someone else had dug, and proceeded to excavate it. The person who had their equipment placed in the hole challenged the newcomers and proceeded to throw them out of the hole. The second person said there was no gun involved, but that he had forcibly made them move. There is a “code” that prospectors usually respect with regard to holes being dug. Generally it is accepted that if you have equipment placed in a hole you have been digging, you have first right to the hole until you have vacated it. While most people have no problem with this show of cooperation, no one can actually claim a right to any hole on public lands. If someone wants to dig your hole, and removes your equipment to do so, they have as much right to the hole as any other person. I’m not saying that is the right thing to do, or that you should do that, just that you don’t have any more right to the hole than anyone else. WHY you would want to make someone mad over a hole they had been digging, I cannot imagine. There are simply too many other places to dig for $20.00 worth of gold a day. Oh, and PLEASE do not pee in someone’s cooler for any reason. If we have the sheriff in there too many times, their office will complain and we will all be blessed with regular visits from the ranger, and you will not like his attitude. He will ticket first, and then someone else can sort it out. Either way, there will be a fine involved.

Colorado State Gold Panning Championships TODAY!

Day light is breaking here in Colorado as I write this morning. We are busy packing up the last few things for this months 18 day get away. We will be in Breckenridge around 8:00 to help set up for the first of three days of competitions in the Colorado State Gold Panning Championships. The event is always a lot of fun for everyone, and this years field of competitors is coming from around the U.S. to vie for the medals and prize money.

A small entry fee is collected for most events with all the money returned to the contestants. Come and watch the fun one day, or all three. Today will open the championships with contests for kids and old timers, which do not include fees, and then a California/National style of panning in the "swamp". Tomorrow will include Teams, Women's and Men's events, with the State title and World's Dry events on the last day. We are predicted to have hot and sunny days in Breckenridge, but don't count out the occasional rainstorm, typical for this time of year.

After that we will be back at camp, so the usual intermittent internet connection will apply, with e-mail answered every three to four days. Gotta find gold. That's what it's all about!