Fees Increase for the Fairplay Beach Gold Panning Area

In case you have not heard, we had epic flooding and high water in Colorado this Spring. The water is down enough, now, to have people back around the rivers and creeks, although they are still very high for this time of year.

Highway 285 was closed for over a week as CDot watched a 100 year old bridge, fearing it might fail with all the traffic going over it. The South Fork of the Platte River flowed far out of its banks, around the supports, and just under the pavement.

With things settling down, we ran into Fairplay to pick up this year's panning permit for the Fairplay Beach, only to find the fees have changed, again.  Not sure you can read the print in the picture, but they are now charging $5.00 for a week of prospecting and you must designate which week you will be using the area.  The charge for April til October is $35.00.  I would assume there is no panning/sluicing allowed from October til April, as there is no charge during that time frame.

Have a happy 4th of July, and as always,

Good Prospecting to you,
Hooked On Gold

No water in the diversion ditch at Cache Creek June 26th, 2015

                                                         Cache Creek 6-26-2015

It has been a long dry spell for me and the blog. Too much to explain, so I will simply pick up today with information we saw yesterday.

We are afield for the summer and thought we would try our luck with the fishing poles at Four Bay near Twin Lakes, and then hop into Cache Creek to see what was going on there.  Not many people in the parking lot and no camp host. We had a family ask if we knew the area and where to do some panning. Of, course, we told them there should be plenty of water in the diversion creek just beyond the parking lot, and sent them off with instructions that the creek came back around below the catch pond.

We had come in to explore a bit and were shocked to find the diversion creek completely dry as you can see in the photo above.  With all the water flowing in streams, rivers and creeks in Colorado this year, there should have been an over abundance of water, here. You could see where it had been running way our of its' banks earlier. Still muddy, too, so it wasn't that long ago.

We suspect the people above had just come in and had completely dammed up the overflow from the diversion, so no water. Kinda ruins one of the best spots to dig a little, find a little and commune with nature. We did find a tiny amount of gold, but it was a mile walk. Lots of cars down at the cemetery....

No matter what we do, no matter how things are arranged, it seems we lose more of our public places to prospect for gold. Cache is our latest victim.

Good Prospecting to you,
Shirley
www.hookedongold.com