HookedonGold Gazette 3/27/09

That's Colorado Winter Gold! 15 inches of it, too

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $923.10
· Spot price last Gazette: $952.60
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Calendar of Events

MARCH
8th Daylight Savings Time begins in Colorado, Spring Forward!
11th GPOC Regular Meeting 7:00p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th Spring Equinox

APRIL
· 1st April Fools Day, Motorized Equipment Opening Day on Arkansas River
· 10th Good Friday
· 12th Easter
MAY
· 5th Cinco de Mayo
· 8, 9, & 10th Let’s Go Gold Panning Days at Point Bar Recreational Area
· 23rd -25th Memorial Day Weekend Observed
· 30th Memorial Day
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NEWS

NEW! Prospecting Community Network! Check it out.

Snow yesterday and today has kept me busy with the snow shovel and taking pictures. ;-) We did get out and do some metal detecting last Sunday and came home with about $2.00 worth of coins that I posted and blogged about on the new community site while I was on there doing administrative updates. You can visit to see what we were up to and to see the picture. I do hope you are following me on twitter. My screen name is Goldpanner2.

APRIL 1st! Yes, it’s April Fools day, but it is also the opening day for this seasons' motorized prospecting equipment use on the Arkansas River. That means on Wednesday you can take you highbanker or dredge out and play in the water. You WILL have to have your 2 year permit in place for that, and you can find the forms on the http://www.blm.gov/ site on their page about the Arkansas River bond, and scroll down past the picture of Woody to where you find the sentence in green about the form. Click on that and you will open a PDF file that you can save or print off to fill in and send off.

I have decided to take the panning tips form down and replace it with 5 pages including the 4 panning tips. Since the bucket classifier is something that needs some knowledge of what you are doing, I have put an e-mail link into the DIY Bucket Classifier to request the information, but it may pop under the page and you will need to drop the page down to fill it out and send it. Subject line is already filled in and all I need is a first name and the message will send me your e-mail address to send the info to. It has stopped the spammers dead in their tracks since I took it down yesterday. LOL!

So much gets reported on twitter, I’m not sure where I am this week. Alaska’s Mt. Redoubt has been erupting since Sunday, and yesterday sent ash 12 miles into the atmosphere. I’d like to see how that stacks up against the power plants that are supposed to be causing the “climate change” in the arctic. Oh, wait! I DO! Over one years’ of man’s pollutants cannot compare with one volcanic eruption of pollutants thrown into the UPPER atmosphere. I also saw a reminder about the volcano in South America that blew its’ top in the late 80’s. I remember how shortly after that one, scientists were worried about the ozone hole that then magically closed up in, what, ’92? But, man was supposedly be to blame for that one too.

We deal with wilderness, protected status, and roadless issues, but did you hear about the energy company that put up wind turbines to make power with, only to find out they could not cross an area of land in protected status to deliver the power to the grid? True story. DID see this one coming, though. Wind turbines and solar power panels have to be out in the middle of nowhere, but getting the power to the grid is a huge problem with rights of way over land.

OOPPS! Am I “off topic”? I warned you about winter and having to deal with not being out prospecting for gold. LOL! Eric, I AM jealous of your gold prospecting trek to Utah this last week during Spring Break. Hope you post pictures for all of us on the ning community site this next week. I did not have time to check my alerts for news with past week as the new ning site has had me pretty busy with set up. I’ll give you a blog or two this next week with what I find. In the mean time…..

Panning Kits Here
Monthly Prospecting Equipment Specials HERE
Basic Prospecting Equipment

Until next week…….

Good Prospecting to You,
Shirley (MQS)
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: http://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 closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT until April 1st. That’s this Wed, folks
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Gold and Winter Solstice

Gold's down this afternoon below $839.

Winter solstice has come and gone, and that means our days are getting longer. What does that have to do with finding gold? Well, that means summer is closer and we can get back to the mountains and get wet and dirty, and do some gold panning, highbanking,dredging and metal detecting in our favorite gold bearing areas.

It also means Christmas is close at hand and we at hookedongold are looking forward to having some much needed time with friends and family this weekend. We hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season and wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year! We will be hearing from our youngest son tomorrow who is in the Philippines, and my Mother is visiting for the Holidays. Chrtismas Day will find us spending time with relatives we have not seen in a while, and visiting with friends. Our Holidays are as busy as our prospecting season! Hopefully your is, too.

You can follow me this next year on facebook and twitter, and I'll get some links up for those so you can find me easier after the holidays are over. I have several new gadgets I will be trying out onsite early next year, so watch for some gadgets you can use to give us some feedback. If they work, we should be able to have some fun with them.

Good Prospecting to You,

Shirley Weilnau

After Gold in the Colorado Mountains

Tossing Rocks for an Hour or so at Cache Creek so we had enough dirt to move. (That's Larry and Sam) Everyone keeps throwing rocks out onto unrun dirt. The walls can be steep with a ton of rock above your head. We saw holes dug in farther than a shovel is long and about as round as a small man can hunch over to scrap the back. PEOPLE THIS IS DANGEROUS. YOU ARE RISKING HAVING THESE ROCKS FALL IN ON YOU AND KILLING OR MAIMING YOU FOR A FEW GRAMS OF GOLD! Gold price is around $24.00 a gram right now and not worth a trip to the hospital.



Our final week in the field is over, and we are headed home. By the time I post this, we will be unloaded and resting before gong to bed in our king size bed in Arvada.


Our last day at Cache Creek was warm, dry and beautiful with aspens looking a little crisp, hinting at the gold color to come and more of those azure blue nearly cloudless skies. The colder weather stayed far to the east along the Front Range, and gave is some wonderful days in the September sunshine. What a week. We found about 3.5 grams of Cache Creek gold in our firsts with a little left in the cons after five days of highbanking. The metal detectors brought us a few more pieces of specimen grade gold, although the pieces were smaller than previously found. Still, worth the days of walking and digging.

We are tired, but still not looking forward to going back to the daily grind. April seems a long way off, and yet it is a mere 7 months away. The Denver Gem, Mineral, and Fossil Show starts tomorrow and the Arkansas River will close to motorized equipment at the end of September, only about 3 weeks from today. The holes at Cache Creek have advanced at an amazing rate, and anyone who was not there this year would be shocked at the amount of material moved this season. The BLM is planning on removing some of the trees on Sept. 25th, hopefully with help from GPOC. Thursday may be a difficult day for working stiffs to take a day off to move 50 or more trees, but they will try to have people there to help. We are out of days to take off, and so will not be joining in the work.

Thursday through Sunday will be work days for me at the Gem Show, and so this week’s newsletter will not be published. However, I will fill you in as I have time with blog postings and some pictures of Cache Creek and some of the holes dug there.

Gold spot price is DOWN today with the stronger dollar and lower price of oil. Its’ lowest point was at $748.70 and is now hovering around $750. Does this mean that gold prices will stay down or go lower? Well, in the short term they may fall some more, but in the long term, the dollar does not look like it will stay up, which will send gold prices back up. When? Who knows for sure. I DO know that bailing out Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae is a mistake that is going to cost you and me really BIG money, and that could help to make the dollar fall again. What do you suppose might happen if both of these giants go bankrupt even with the government bailout? Yeah, I know. Blame George Bush who has control of the Congress and the Federal Reserve. NOT!

Have a GREAT weekend. I’ll talk at you some more in a day or so….maybe four.

Good Prospecting to You,
MQS Shirley
http://www.hookedongold.com/
info@hookedongold.com

Hooked on Gold Gazette 3/14

Prospecting Fever

· Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday: $1002.50
· Spot price last week: $972.40
That’s right folks. We have a weekend close above $1,000



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Calendar of Events

MARCH

9th Daylight Savings Time Begins in Colorado, Spring forward!
12th GPOC General Meeting 7:00 p.m.
17th St. Patrick’s Day
20th First Day of Spring
21st Good Friday
23rd Easter

APRIL
1st APRIL FOOLS DAY – Arkansas River is open for Motorized Equipment
9th GPOC General Meeting
25th – 27th SPRING Gem, Fossil and Mineral Show – Denver, Co.
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NEWS

Do you have cabin fever in a big way? Are you waiting for that first opportunity to go prospecting and find some gold? Boy, WE sure do!!!! Looks like the trip to Arizona will be sometime the first part of April. In the mean time, there are birthdays, Easter, Spring vacation, when we get to visit with the two older grandsons, and snow. Temperatures are moderating into the 50’s, so we will get to go and play on Clear Creek in the next few weekends just to get our prospecting fix. In Arizona, we will be in the Prescott area where my brother lives. Always a fun time for us, early in the season. We are trying to make connections with my brother’s friend near Stanton to see if we can find some of his gold for him with the metal detectors.

I saw a very interesting report on the newswires about mining in India this week. Their cabinet voted to ease their mining policy to shorten the time it takes to get new mining leases granted. It is expected to take 6 to 12 months with the new system. Now, you might wonder why this is so important. Well, it seems only 10% of India’s minerals have been explored for, and as we all know, India needs more and more minerals for their booming economy. If they can get those in country, everyone wins. There will be less pressure worldwide in the competition for these minerals. However, don’t expect it to be over night. It does take years to develop these things.

So, is everyone tired of the promised changes in the site as I am? Man o man, there seems to be one thing after another that gets in the way of my moving forward. Take heart. There should be things going up this next week. Hopefully, by Saturday night the changes my tech needs to make to the pages will be complete and I can start duplicating the template to get additional pages up. If not, I’ll do it anyway and we will have to deal with the additional pages when the time comes. Time is a wastin’ and summer prospecting will be here before we know it.

I have a couple of new link partners, so check them out. Also, here is a link to prospecting books that I don’t find too many other places. http://www.research-unlimited.com/index.html

More researching information will be out this weekend. While I know most of you only want someone to point you to a spot to dig gold, at these prices, there aren’t many who will give you that information willingly, and there aren’t many sites out there that will even tell you where the open spots are. We are trying to give you that information for some of Colorado. If you have information that the public can use for other states, we can start pages for each of those areas.
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……
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If you find a broken link, please let us know
THE ARKANSAS RIVER is now closed TO MOTORIZED EQUIPMENT FOR THE WINTER UNTIL APRIL 1, 2008.
_______________________________________
Good Prospecting to You,
Larry and Shirley Weilnau
www.hookedongold.com
http://www.thevideosense.com/user/MQS/ Prospecting Videos
www.hookedongold2.com Looking for metal detectors on e-Bay? Click here
info@hookedongold.com contact us
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Gold Season in the High Country Winds Down

ASPENS at TWIN LAKES just north of Cache Creek



Oh my gosh! Where do I begin? Our last five days in high country gold placers has been GREAT! The Aspens cooperated by turning that lovely buttery color that gold is, and matched the yellow stripes down the middle of the highways. Most of the color above 10,000 feet is gone. Frost was abundant at the 9,000 foot level, and those camping this past weekend at Cache Creek broke ice from their equipment before they could begin highbanking.

Groups from GPOC and GPR joined others out for a great weekend, with several people coming in for just a Saturday or Sunday's fun in the creek. The weather was cool, cloudy, and spit drizzle both days, but all in all it was a great weekend with friends, and making new friends. Gold was found by all, and some more than others. The "glory hole" is not showing any color like it was a couple of weeks ago, but still much small gold is coming out of all of the holes. Oh, one word about Cache Creek....when you get to the white/greyish sand, don't go on. Several have dug 3 feet of it and still not run out of it.

This next week I should have time to add to calendars. We have taken a ton of prospecting pictures that I will have up on the site later this week. Also, many very nice fall pictures will get added. During this summer season we have come across several nice prospecting ideas for Christmas, and Cafe Press will give us an opportunity to get t-shirts, calendars, mousepads, and what not to you for the holidays. I have been thinking about the calendar for some time now, and hopefully have enough pictures to fill one for you. I could go on, but let's save it for another day.

Gold Prospecting Labor Day Week

Well, it is almost time to go and spend some very quality time with friends for a fun filled week of prospecting before we close up camp until next May. We keep adding people to our group, and it looks to be a VERY enjoyable Labor Day weekend and week. Breakfast will be served to participants Saturday moring at camp and then all will depart on their particular prospecting adventures while the rest wait for those still coming in. We have FANTASTIC weather predicted until next Thursday, when we are supposed to get some rain, which should clear up in time for the next weekend. Will we ALL find gold. If everyone is searching for it we certainly will. We have a new person joining us this year from Oklahoma, and we have learning activities lined up for him that should give him plenty of stories to take. (Bryan and Brenda and the Boys are jealous) Several GPOC friends will be up to do some shoveling, highbanking, panning and eating. Several metal detectorists will be covering ground looking for nuggets and we may even get the dredge in the water. The NEWSLETTER will not be delivered the next two weeks due to time constraints for vacation and our VERY short week before the Denver Gem and Mineral Show. (We have two days before we must be at the show and work. Then there is the GPOC meeting in Colorado Springs to attend.) Hopefully all of you are going to be out finding gold this weekend, as well as bidding a fond farewell to summer until next year. That also ,eans new pictures will be on the website after the 15th, so watch for some great times recorded on film. For those of you who are wondering, gold closed today at $673.20 Good Prospecting to You.

Gold is Down

ARASTRA near Alma, Colorado




Gold is taking a nose dive this morning along with the stock market. I haven't watched silver for a while, but I see it is also down at around $11.27, while gold is bouncing around $645. Everyone is saying the "Fed" should have given interest rates a nudge downward on the last meeting, and that stocks are reacting to the "misstep". I am sure gold prospecting, dredging, panning, and highbanking are going on somewhere while I am at home doing laundry and cleaning house. Believe me, I would rather have a #2 shovel in my hand than a vacuum cleaner! Climbing mountains looking for gold and gemstones is much more interesting that climbing stairs and putting away clothes and sheets. Painting is up there with mountain climbing, but only when I can't get away. We are looking forward to Labor Day week when we have our last big week of prospecting for this year, and must, once again, be content with weekend excursions to nearby places. GPOC has an outing planned for the weekend of Aug. 25th at Prospector #3. Don't know if we will make that as our last week will begin the next weekend and diesel and gas probably should be saved for that. You never know, though. We might decide at the last minute to skeedaddle. GPR has a demo this weekend at the Golden History Museum during the Arts Festival. Lots still going on, but I need a nap! LOL! Have fun out there finding gold.

Finding Mountain Gold

Speed Panning-loading the pan prior to a competitors run


July 17, 2007.
July is going by in a blur! We are getting ready for guests and getting away for another week of fun in the mountains finding gold. The July 27th newsletter will not go out due to time and internet connections. E-mail will be answered every couple of days as we find time to go to town and download it. Are you finding gold? We will be highbanking and metal detecting this trip along with meeting with friends and other prospectors. The Colorado State Gold Panning Championships are coming up quick! They will be held the first weekend in August in Breckenridge, Colorado. Come out and see some of the fastest panning in the state, or the country, for that matter. The Team competition is a blast with each person drawing for their place on each three man team. Three days of fun! Gold is holding this week in the $665 range. Watch the rivers in Colorado. They are still running pretty high.