Hooked on Gold Gazette, Nov. 30th

Yes, Mt. Elbert is once again covered with snow.


The HookedonGold Gazette icons have disappeared from computers for some reason, and so, until I can figure out what happened, the Gazette will appear here for all to read, and those of you who have never subscribed will get a look at what we talk about in it. We always start with the spot gold closing on Friday.

Gold Spot Closing Price for Friday Nov. 30th: $783.10

Spot price Nov. 17: $785.40

Looks flat to me even though there have been ups and downs in the last two weeks.

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Calendar of Events

December

12th GPOC Christmas Party 7:00 p.m. Bring unwrapped gifts for children for the Marines toy drive
19th GPR Members Christmas Party
24th CHRISTMAS EVE
25th CHRISTMAS DAY
31st New Year's Eve
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NEWS

We had a few great days up at Cache Creek earlier in the month, before this cold snap rolled in. BRRRR! It has been chilly this week here. There continues to be work done up at Cache Creek, and most of it is orderly without many problems. The undercutting of trees continues to be a concern. Too many trees have withered and died this season in the pursuit of gold.

How is your Christmas shopping going? Wish I could help, but getting my store back up continues to plague me. I have tried, yet, another builder only to find that it will not show pictures even on the pages I build. There must be some silly thing I am not doing correctly to cause all of these programs to react in a similar way. Oh, well. THE NEW Prospectors Calendars, Mousepad and Gold Panner Ornament are all up on Cafe Press. Yeah, that's why I'm late getting this out. I finally got all the right pictures in the right sizes, and got the items put together this morning and afternoon, so you have some gifts for prospectors for this Christmas season. Check them out at my new store at cafe press. You can find a couple of links on the website as well.

Off to do some Christmas Shopping. I still have several geode and fluorite pendants, as well as prospector figures and Orocal jewelry left. If you are interested, email me at info@hookedongold.com and I can send them to you and bill you by PayPal e-mail billing. I've done it a couple of times now, and it sure works slick! If only I could get the durn store to work, we'd all be happy. LOL! Merry Christmas!

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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.

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Until Next week.

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

Have a Golden Christmas Holiday Season

Gold in White Quartz, Black Quartz, or Nuggets in 14K Gold or Sterling Silver


Oh My Goodness! I had NO idea it had been so long since I had posted a Blog! November has flown by, and we have done many things since I past talked with you. Of course I helped at the Gem Show earlier this month in Denver, but we have also gone looking for gold at Cache Creek just before it snowed last week. We found a nice bit of gold up there and went home happy to have had a few days in November to find gold.

In case you've had your head in the clouds all month, you should have seen the spot gold price go from around $750 to $842 to $782 back to $823 and down to $809 right now. The dollar continues to slide and gold goes up.

Hope all of you had a GREAT Thanksgiving holiday, and also, a good start to the Christmas shopping season. I continue to have problems getting pictures to show in my new catalog, which is discouraging, but I will continue to find the answers to this problem. I have even had an expert look at it, and he didn't understand it either. I have two more to consult with, as well as try to find the answer myself. It has taken up ALL of my time trying to find a path to get everything to upload correctly. I have some terrific items to show, but can't seem to get everything going in the same direction. When I come up against these obstacles, I always figure there is some good reason why I cannot get it together right now. The answer to that question raises its' head at some time in the future, and I am usually glad I did not find the answer when I was looking so hard for it. Have a GOLDEN Christmas Holiday Season, and Merry Christmas to everyone. Buy gold for Christmas; coins, raw, jewelry, whatever. It is only going up in value and it WON'T be cheaper any time soon.

GoldnStore and Gold Jewelry

Orocal Jewelry available through Hooked on Gold. 14K gold or Sterling Silver. Gold in White or Black Quartz and Nuggets.


Whoa! It's been a long dry spell getting bogs out! Many things are going on right now with trying to get a store back up on the site. I cannot get pictures to show no matter what I do, even with physically adding the paths by hand into the server. Don't know what to think, but it has been an enormously frustrating month trying to find answers to all the problems with the store. I will be attempting another avenue this next week before I throw up my hands and give up! Can't do that of course, but I do feel like it. I have way too much to offer you right now in jewelry, equipment and gold to give up, so be patient. I WILL find a way. I am also working on a prospecting calendar and t-shirts.

GOLD! Now THERE'S a subject that excites the imagination of all of us! It is down from its' high this morning of around $837 to be $830 right now. Quite a ride since the middle of September when it was still hoovering around $650. Everyone who wants to sell gold has done so, and so the price is finally moving in an upward direction.

Meanwhile, Cache Creek is still open for a few more weeks, and the weather reports indicate that they have little snow on the ground, although Independence Pass is now closed due to snow. The pass is about 10 miles west of the Twin Lakes area and much higher, so the snow would tend to stick there more. We here in Denver are enjoying another 3 days of temperatures in the 70's, with a small front coming in on Sunday that MIGHT give us some precip. A far cry from last year when we had already had 3 large snow storms, and daytime temps were in the 30's and 40's. Both caused, I am sure, by global warming due to man. Indonesia's' volcano continues to erupt spewing more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each week than man produces in a whole year all combined. Kind of like the sediments mother nature throws into the river after a rain compared to dredging with a 4-inch or smaller.

On a sadder note, I regret to report that a long time GPOC member, board member, gem and mineral collector and all around good guy, Lou Severini, died the day before Halloween in a one car accident south of Raton, New Mexico. Funeral service will be held in Woodland Park this Saturday, November 10. For more information visit the GPOC Tem. Page.

Get out there and FIND SOME GOLD. It's worth over $800 an ounce and going up.

Gold and Mercury

WOW! Gold is up to $788.40 this morning and has been advancing since the spot market opened yesterday afternoon! Has anyone been finding gold recently? We have seen some nice gold still coming out of the Cache Creek area and the Leadville area. Speaking of Cache Creek, there has been mercury found in a couple of areas there, so be aware that it is there. Mercury is known to exist in the area naturally, as it was used heavily in the past. You will find it in abundance at the end of the old sluices, so if you get into some lose sand that shouldn't be where it is, you may find mercury in your cons. Gather it all together and put into it's own bottle. Keep water on it, too, as it gasses off at a low temperature. If you put into your bottle with clean gold it will foul the clean gold when it comes into contact with the mercury. We keep ours separate until we have enough to take to someone who knows how to properly handle mercury to have the gold recovered. If you are thinking of processing it yourself, be advised that one WHIFF of nitric acid will make you deathly ill for 2 weeks, OR WORSE, from nitric acid poisoning! You CAN DIE from inhaling the stuff, so be very careful!!!!!! We prefer to take our small amount to a professional. It simply is not worth your life or health. Could we do it ourselves? Sure, but why risk it. It might be more interesting to just keep it in a bottle to talk about. We have had ours for about 5 years, now, and add to it most years. When will we take it to process it? Oh, maybe when we fill the bottle. It is about half full now, so maybe in another 5 years. Maybe not. If mercury covered a BIG nugget, we would probably consider it then. The other thing is that once gold has had mercury on it, it never seems to come back to it's original color after it is processed. The silver gets extracted along with the mercury and leaves it a duller color, if there is copper in with it. Copper is the most frequently found metal combined with gold, so it is highly possible your gold will have the brownish color of a gold-copper combination after it has gone through the mercury cleaning process.

Rockies got swept last night. Bummer, but they DID come a long way to even BE in the World Series. The 8 days off didn't help, either. However, we won't make excuses. The Sox pitchers and hitters were spot on all four games, and ours were not. Hitters seemed to finally get back in the groove by the end, but the pitching was less than stellar. Watch out NEXT year!!!

Gold Tops and Plunges

Dreaming of Summer Prospecting



HMMMMM. PDF files are tough to load on a website. No matter. The first page of the new catalog, along with the new page template, should go up in a couple of days. Pay with PayPal.

Not much going on with gold right now. The usual selling and buying of mining companies continues to go on while the gold mining industry consolidates its energies. Are you watching gold? Kitco has the taskbar download on their page, so get one for minute by minute updates of the prices of gold, silver, and platinum at kitco.com. If you don't preview this site at least once a month, you are really missing out on a lot of information. Gold touched just above $772.00 before plunging below $748, yesterday, before settling back around $752. Today, buyers are pushing the price back above $757. It's likely a good bet that some bank dumped a bunch of the metal after it hit $772 to cause the sudden drop.

Had to turn the furnace on this morning for a shot of heat. Even though it will be in the 70's later today, it was a bit chilly at 62 degrees. A power plant outage and 6 - 9's has us without much time to hunt for gold in October. BUMMER! BUT, we are talking with friends and making plans for the gold areas we will look at next summer.

GO ROCKIES!!!!!

Hooked on Gold Website changes

2 Days Work at Cache Creek this summer


Did the wind blow at your house today? It sure is here! Gold is slipping up past $766 after sliding back around $755 yesterday. Wasn't it just last month it was around $650? An accidental break through on my webbuilder yesterday has me wizzing through pages and building the new template a lot faster than I was. Boy, am I glad that headache is over. I found the path purely by accident, and am amazed that the instructions did not include this tid bit of information. Anyway, I should be able to build about 3 pages a day until I get to the forms and picture albums.

GO ROCKIES!!!

The store part is started and I need to add the pay pal buttons. You should get to see the new template on that page next week with a few catalog items on it. It will appear as a subdomain of hookedongold, so don't be confused when the look of the page changes. You can e-mail me and let me know what you think of it when it goes live. The new template should also solve the problem of the page being too wide. I have no control over that with the present template, and is one of the main reasons I am changing it again for a new look.

GO ROCKIES!!!!

EVERYONE is wanting to get back up to the mountains and get some more gold before it gets too nasty. We have had snow in the high mountains this past week for a total of around 20 inches already. The ski resorts are jumping up and down, and they all had ONE RUN open with man made snow on it last weekend. Only a few are open for skiing, however. Oh, did I mention.....

GO ROCKIES!!!!
(For those of you who live in a cave, our own Rockies baseball team will be playing in the WORLD SERIES next week)
GO ROCKIES!!!!

We are making prospecting plans with friends for Thanksgiving week. Even if it snows, we can go prospect the casinos in Blackhawk. I never did like shopping with the crowds the day after Thanksgiving and have most of my shopping done by then. Well, time to go build another page or two. Get those cons cleaned up. I want to know how much gold you found this summer.

A Golden Rocktober

Snow in Gold Country


Did you see gold's spot price this morning? It has been fluctuating between $757 and $760!

We had a conversation with the BLM head this morning about Cache Creek. FYI! There MAY be another spot opening up for prospectors in the near future. Can't say anything right now, but we have prospected this area, and there is some very good gold to be found here, too! While we were prospecting Cache Creek we did find several interesting areas that the BLM will consider opening in the future. For now, enlarging the parking lot, keeping the road repaired and toilet facilities are on the top of their list.

Our golden Rocktober is shaping up nicely for the Denver Rockies, who won last night's third game by a score of 4 to 1 against the Diamondbacks! Me thinks their "snakepit" has a mongoose lose in it. LOL! We had rain and drizzle in the city most of the day, and the game was played in drizzle to moderate rainfall. On a side note, those of you who ventured up to Cache Creek may have had a surprise of snow, as the storm came in about half a day earlier than expected. Some of the northern mountains got as much as a foot of the white stuff. Today's possible "sweep" game is a late one, and we probably will not be able to stay up for the last pitch to see who wins. I almost missed Torealba's homer to bring 3 runs in last night, dozing off!

Got any prospecting or metal detecting stories? Blog back at me. Others would like to know what you do, too.

Gold and GPOC's new board and club dues increase

RAINBOWS We all know that the rainbow ends in Colorado, but did you know that they both do?

So are you watching gold blow through $750 today? I've been doing computer cleanup for hours, now, and have been watching it steadily climb from $740 yesterday.

Gold Prospector's of Colorado October meeting is for the election of officers and they have retained, basically, the same board they had last year. "New" officers will take over January 1st. The club is still looking for a treasurer, so any of you GPOC members out there that have accounting skills can still step up and do your duty.

The attending members were asked to vote on a proposal by the board to increase dues by $5.00 a year beginning in January 2008. It was passed by unanimous vote. This is the first increas in dues in about 15 years, and still puts the dues well below even "social" prospecting clubs. With the increase fuel, materials, reclamation, store items, postage, paper, printing, etc, the increase still is not keeping up with our added expenses. Those who attend the meetings and volunteer at the demos are helping to cover those costs more than members who are outside the Colorado area. There was a proposal to increase dues substantially to those who live out of state. That propasal will be discussed by the board and may come up for voting early next year. Input to these ideas are welcome and can be sent to info@hookedongold.com to be forwarded to the GPOC board for consideration.

There is still much talk about Cache Creek, and with the mild weather many are taking day outings up there for some fall fun finding gold. The Twin Lakes area is wonderful to visit any time of year you can get up there. The BLM will be touring the Point Bar and Prospector #3 areas on the Arkansas, and will be trying to run past Cache Creek for a look see. Hooked on Gold will be sending our recommendations to the BLM Canyon City office head, Dan Grenard, for possible impovements on the area. Time to get those metal detectors out and swing over some parks that have been used all summer by others while you were in the mountains.

Gold in Sylvanite and Telluride hunting

Snow in the High Country


Well, the weekend is over and we had a ball picking up old ore pieces from Cripple Creek! The sylvanite and telluride deposits there are VERY interesting. Seems that the largest visible gold deposits are in a quartz layer, but the sylvanite appears to run in a rhyolite type of rock that is super hard. We'll have to research more about the types of rock these deposits were in. Never thought to do that before. HMMMM. The more we know the more we know we don't know.

After that we spent a pleasant hour for lunch at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Colorado Springs, and then off to metal detect a soccer field. THAT was interesting in the 50+ mile an hour wind that kicked up in the afternoon. Larry picked up $.22 while I resized pictures on the computer. The amount of sand that blew in the face was too much to deal with. However, the wind did blow the low out of here sooner than expected and we missed most of the rain and snow predicted. The high country got a few inches to a foot, and we got a light shower Sunday afternoon. Freezing temps were reported around the state this morning as the cloud cover went away and all of our heat vented into space. This next week is supposed to be glorious, so anyone looking to take a trip to Cache should have decent weather in the low to mid 50's to work in. The gold coming out of there has been consistent all summer in the best layers. How are you doing cleaning up those concentrates?

Gold 'n' Fall

Fall colors on the power line road at Cache Creek, Colorado


Rockies Win and advance to the playoffs with a 13 inning win against the Padres Monday night! Exciting for Coloradoans! They have been stalked this morning from the air in Philadelphia taking their bus from the airport to their hotel.

Snow today is flying at Georgetown, with wet and slushy roads in the northern mountains. Fall is in full swing, and it is getting hard to find golden aspens as they drop their leaves and colder temps move south. The Arkansas River is now closed to motorized equipment until April 1st, but still open to dry washing, panning, and sluicing.

Did I mention the azure blue skies we are enjoying now that the air has dried out? Our last few days in the mountains late in September was magnificent with color. The pictures that were taken do not do it justice, as the camera adjusts too much for the brightness of the light coming from a sun lower in the sky, but still shows skies bluer than blue. The gold taken out of Cache Creek this year was substantial, and everyone had a terrific time finding it. We heard of only one problem all year, and that involved lack of water. Other than that, everyone got along pretty well, and everyone found gold, even witha pan. I, myself, took out several grams just using a pan while testing various layers and levels. The gold is nice and chunky with depth. Larger flakes were found and some round nuggets as well. Nothing really big, but larger than is found on the Arkansas. Two rock sources were identified, too. One is coming out of a black hematite type rock and the other quartz. We have several small pieces that are wrapped around quartz, and several wrapped around a black rock that is non magnetic. Metal detectorists have taken a few pieces out in either black rock or iron stained bull quartz as well.

Have you been watching gold this week? It is down to $732.20 right now after topping above $745.00 yesterday. Gold producers are now saying that if gold does not break out soon, they will be having a harder time producing it as their expenses rise faster than the price of gold. The dollar is up this morning causing the fall in the price of gold today.

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 cont.

Caught walking through camp!


WOW! Tomorrow for the report on our metal detecting trip ended up being over a week! Needless to say, things got a bit hairy just before the Denver Gem and Mineral Show last Thursday.

We spent two days metal detecting in a new area and found a piece each day in the same area. The pyrite here is just beautiful, as it is colored with copper from the area. Larry came across a chunk of azurite that popped out of a hole. It is about 2 1/2 inches by 1 1/2. Deep blue with some greenish turquoise and chrysicolla in it. Both days were warm with a crisp breeze that told us fall was just around the corner. Leaves were turning quickly as well.

GPOC had their panning troughs up at the Denver Gem and Mineral show in their usual place, the north east corner of the Merchandise Mart exhibit hall. Larry was busy in the troughs for the three days, and I was kept busy in the T.L.E. International booth showing some of the most fantastic Colombian emeralds you ever saw. We also had a house full of guests staying to do the show from GPOC, and we all enjoyed the weekend with friends, except Eric who had to drive back to Pueblo and ride back up with Woody so that someone was available to get the truck back to Colorado Springs. Seriously, GPOC, was there no one who would inconvenience themselves less than this to get the truck back? SOMEONE who lives in the Springs should have had this duty!

This week has been "crash" week. The rest has been good so that we can hit the hills again this weekend. We had a group going to Cache Creek on Saturday when we attended the GPR meeting Wednesday and found out the Hawleys were also headed up there. Several others from that group decided to join everyone, so it looks like the creek will be very busy this weekend. We will be running the metal detector over the rocks already thrown out to see if we can run across any gold still in the rock. The next week we will be highbanking some of the area as well as metal detecting. Looks like a good weather week, too, to end our mountain prospecting days for another year. October will give me time to work on pages and get a new template started. Get out and see the fall colors...they are promising to be fantastic. But, don't wait. The gold color won't last long.

Gold Prospecting Labor Day Week with Hooked on Gold

Twin Lakes, Colorado




Wow! What a golden week! We have been back about a day and a half, and you can imagine all that needs to be done with the Denver Gem and Mineral Show starting tomorrow. Where to begin! What to tell you! Since it has been almost two weeks since my last blog, I will need to put on my thinking cap to remember everything you will want to know.

Our first weekend was a BLAST with a total of 10 participants gathering to do some panning and sluicing on the Arkansas to teach the newest member of the group the basics. Everyone found gold who looked for it, and those who came from lower altitudes got a day to acclimated to the altitude. Our "Chuck Wagon Cook", Elkhorn Jack, put on a feed for us that night of a wonderful chili, cowboy bread, and peach cobbler. You can watch for him next year on Cable T.V. putting on his Chuck Wagon cooking show. YEEEEHAAA!

Sunday found us up Flume Creek, west of Cache Creek and south of Twin Lakes, checking out a possible placer claim. Fabulous views were in store for the group, along with a placer mining site worked as late as the depression. The area is overgrown with willows and dificult to navigate, so we will pass on the claim. Access is by foot trail up about 500 feet above the parking area at about 11,000 feet. The old cabin is caved in, but has a marker nearby with an explaination of its' use and last rebuild. After the hike a look about, we headed back down to the BLM Cache Creek open area for an afternoon of finding gold, talking with those mining there, and deciding where to dig. We set up sluices and panned the pleasant afternoon away and decided where to set up the highbanking equipment when we got back. We all pulled out some nice course gold from the area, along with somne nice flakes. All for now. I'll tell you about the metal detecting we did the next day, tomorrow. Good prospecting? You bet cha! Pictures coming, too.

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.

Prospecting Labor Day Weekend

Prospecting the Arkansas River with friends


This past week went by triple fast! I was able to make connections with a wholesaler we saw in Tuscon that has a line of super gold nugget and gold in quartz jewelry. www.orocal.com (They are wholesalers only, but you can look at the catalog and e-mail me so I can gt a price for you) They also carry those figures and diaramas of miners and goldpanners. I picked up a VERY nice sampling of what they offer and we will be including it in the new catalog that we are working on now. Gold nuggets will also be offered as well as the corrugated mini sluice for black sand separation and Madam Queen Shirley's Magic Black Sand panning concentrates.

Labor Day weekend is upon us, and the summer has flown by at super sonic speed! We cannot believe our last week at camp will be here in 4 days and we have several prospecting buddies who we will be running around with picking up gold here, there, everywhere! NEW NEWS! Leadville has just recently put city wide WiFi in, so we have a second option for blogging and answering e-mail. Hopefully all of you are enjoying the DIY and panning tips form. We have a lot of scammers who are using it to find out if the e-mail address is valid and then sending us a TON of spam e-mail. HATE it. Really wish these people would get a real life. I hope I will not need to put the blocking html codes in, but it may come to that. WAY too many undeliverable requests are coming in.

The weather is shaping up nicely for this weekend, and hopefully all of next week as well. We will be looking at an old claim site as well as revisiting Cache Creek, Prospector #3, and some of our old haunts. Then will come the sad job of closing up camp for the winter and leaving the Arkansas valley soon until the next season begins again. We will have a few more days there at the end of September, but camp will not have running water available, and the sunroom will probably be packed away. But for now, the sun is warm and the gold awaits our finding it and taking it home with us. To golden adventures: CHEERS!

New Update on Point Bar Recreational and Gold Prospecting Area

GOOD NEWS! The BLM has successfully had the road to Point Bar repaired and have reopened it to traffic. They were able to get one of their best contractors up to the area Saturday, and the area reopened very quickly. Reports from the work area indicated that some of the holes left from last Thursday nights downpour were 20 feet deep. That's a lot of mud to wash into the Arkansas. You don't suppose that just downstream from that you might find a nice little pocket of GOLD, now, would you? Somebody ought to go and find out! 20 feet of classified material? I don't think we could move that much in a day with a dredge. Maybe a week, but not a day. That gold had to get classified somewhere downstream. The question is where. Don't think there is anything in that dirt? Well, then, you have never prospected at Point Bar. The upper benches can have larger and more gold than the river. What are you waiting for?! I just told you where to find gold in colorado.

HookedonGold additions

It is amazing how much you can get done in three days! The first attempt to rework the home page resulted in a home page that had to be deleted.....again! you will find HOME2 is the home page, now, and if I can figure out how to rename it without redoing it again, I will change it back. Three new pages have been added today that I have been working on the last couple of days, so you should have some new copy to read. At least one of the pages is a copy and paste from the old site. (Yes, I saved it all before I could no longer get in to change anything). Starting the catalog again is now at the top of the list, so stay tuned for that new page as well. PayPal will be my method of payment this time, and you should, hopefully,find the new catalog pages easier to navigate. The old one gave me no options for making it easier to use, and I am sure there were more problems with it than were reported. Hopefully, not 10 times as many. This is a long process, but we are here to stay, so time is on our side!

Still hearing of good gold coming out of Cache Creek, even though there is no water to work it with. Seems many are taking as many buckets as they can out of there and down to where there is public water to use.

How is blogger working for you as the blog page. I am finding it easy to use and don't seem to forget to log in and blog every few days. It has a nicer format, I think, than just blogging on a template page. Later this fall I will try to change website templates as the one I am using does not allow for many of the things I use to help with the expenses of the website. I love its' format, though, and it will be hard to be able to make it better, but there just is too much information that Adsense provides you to let that go.

The gold spot price right now is $656.50. Not bad for how low it went late last week.

Hooked on Gold's home page

Hey! Have you been wondering what happened to the HOME page here at Hooked on Gold? Well, I finally have time to devote some quality time to reworking the home page, and it has morfed into something really awful! To boot, the edit page is gorfed somehow and I can't get anything new to save. SO, in the mean time, you get to muddle through a mess while I try and figure out what went wrong. Gold has closed Friday up a bit at $656.30. This week should be interesting what with the Fed getting involved with the subprime stuff. Anywho, Watch this week while I try and fix the mess or find a template that works better. It I can do the latter, we will be looking at a format that will allow innerlinking better befroe we leave for Labor Day week and the closing of camp. Boy, did the summer go FAST!!!!! We had time to highbank, dredge, metal detect, and pan. We think we used almost every piece of mining and prospecting equipment we own.

New information of filing claims will show up this week on the website and some information on the blog as well. I have two weeks to get some serious work done. I amy even get the store back up.....if there is time! LOL! Good Prospecting to You.

Point Bar temporary closure

POINT BAR RECREATIONAL AND GOLD PROSPECTING AREA


ANNOUNCEMENT

Popular recreational and gold prospecting area near Salida, Colorado, Point Bar was temporarily closed today by the BLM due to heavy rains in the area that have washed out the road near the railroad tunnel. Several R.V.'s are trapped there, and the BLM has sent in emergency crews and equipment to fix the road long enough to get those folks out. More permanent repairs will be made at a later date.

Woody's claim, to the north of the bridge, will be used as a place for the stranded RV's to stay. Woody has generously allowed them to camp there as well as pan, sluice, fish and enjoy any of the other outdoor activities allowed in the area.

Also, the road at Badger Creek is under water at the sand bar, so passage in and out of the south end is also closed at the moment. Stay tuned and we will bring you the latest on the closure as information is available.

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.

Gold Panning Championships

Colorado State Gold Panning Champions: Center 1st place - Sue Drewes, Right 2nd place - Isaac Beaty, Left 3rd place - Patricia Vesterby.



Ah, home and rest! What a week. The Colorado State Gold Panning Championships went very well, with many new contestants, and many new winners. We had people from all over the U.S., and a great time was had by all. Many thanks to Breckenridge for being so generous in their efforts to make the championships happen each year the first weekend in August.

After the championships were over, we headed for camp and four days of semi rest and prospecting. We met up with friends from Oklahoma and spent several days dredging and prospecting. A very nice restful and enjoyable week. We did not have our grandsons this week, as we usually do, as the oldest one starts high school and had to be back home to register the 9th. We sure did miss them!!!!! The baby is now 5 months old, and after two days of wearing a GPOC tie, he actually tried to put it on over his head when we gave it to him. Adorable! Except for the projectile vomiting he produced the last morning we were in Breckenridge, he took to the outdoors and all the people like a duck to water.

Buena Vista's Gold Rush Days were very nice, with the GPOC troughs filled both days until the wind came up of Sunday afternoon so hard we were chasing t-shirts, and fliers, and magazines. Needless to say, we shut down about an hour early when it didn't stop. We were on the edge of a pretty big thundercloud to the south of us, that produced all the wind. The Cotin Tail gem and mineral show at the fairgrounds was well attended, but many complained that there was too much jewelry, petrified wood, rough for cutting, and not enough specimen material. We bought aquamarine, petrified dinosaur bone, and pieces that are formed when lightening hits sand. There is some very exciting news about one of the big claim owners on Mt. Antero who is looking to open an area of his claim for public searching. Hooked on Gold will be involved with this in a minor capacity and we will let you know about what is happening this next year. That should wrap up the report on this past week. Catch yo in the funny papers later.

P.S. There is scuttle in the markets that the selling of gold by some countries to deflate the price of gold is about to end. Watch for gold to spike when that happens.

End of the 2007 Colorado State Gold Panning Championships

August 6, 2007.

2007 Colorado State Gold Panning Championships are in the record books and posted on the GPOC Temp Pages, so go and have a look at this year’s winners. Pictures will be up as soon as we can get them transferred to the laptop. If we can do it with the equipment we have with us this week, it won’t be too long. If not, it will be next week. We are out in the wilds again this week looking for gold between the Championships and Gold Rush Days in Buena Vista. Man, holding the championships at 9,500 feet elevation takes its toll on everyone who works the championships and the troughs. We are lucky as we take the next week off and sleep all morning on Monday. Most of the group will to go to work on Monday after the long weekend. Kudos to all the volunteers who showed up, competed, and work the one to three days they were there. Thanks to the city of Breckenridge for helping us bring the championships to everyone each year. Without their generous donations of condos and gold for the public troughs it would be a lot more difficult to put on. We are gearing up to go out and challenge the gold gods to give up some more of their yellow treasure this week. With a day’s semi-rest, we should be up to hiking around for the search. We will keep you posted as to chat we find. Oh, in case I did not tell you the weight of the Cache Creek gold, it was 2.06 Grams out of the top carpet. We have not processed the bottom carpet yet; have to be home to do that, and we haven’t spent too much time there lately. Breckenridge has a lot of “open space” on the upper Swan and upper French Creek that we would like to find out if it is open to prospecting with small hand equipment. We haven’t found the right person to ask, yet, but we will continue to try to find out.

Gold Panning Championships and other musings

National/World Style Panning Competition 2006, Breckenridge, Colorado-Colorado State Gold Panning Championships


Gold is back at around $665 today. Minneapolis is in a tizzy today what with the collapse of a major bridge! WOW! Can you imagine riding that down to the river? Our condolences to all who were involved and their families. Fortunately, the number of people lost to this tragedy is not large, and could certainly have been a lot worse. What a mess.

Since the State Championships are this weekend and Gold Rush Days next weekend, we will be in B.V. for the week in between. Newsletter recipients can expect a newsletter next Friday, unless things get crazy. If so, I will que up a short version. Good luck to all who participate in the Gold Panning Championships this weekend! We are also looking forward to meeting folks at the troughs and teaching them the ins and outs of speed paning. Larry will have his highbanker combo cleaning up sand for the competitions.

Cache Creek, Panning Championships, and Gold Rush Days

Pack burro statue in Breckenridge, Co. by Robin Laws titled "Friends"


Wow! The Colorado Gold Panning championships in Breckenridge are coming up FAST! I am drying the Cache Creek gold so I can weigh it and tell you how much we found, along with a picture. Are you finding gold this summer? We have been finding gold with every piece of equipment we have used, and taught a thing or two as well. Next week will be another week in B.V. with new friends and old ones, too. We'll finally get to do some gem hunting in between the gold hunting. After the championships we will be with GPOC in Buena Vista for Gold Rush Days burro races and the Cotin Tail Gem show at the Fairgrounds. Summer is going by faster than usual, but the water levels are a little less. However, with all the rain we have had this year, they are still higher than normal. 4 days between weeks in the mountains has us hopping to get everything done and ready for the next week off. See you in Beckenridge this weekend!

Cache Creek regulations

July 24, 2007.

We visited the Cache Creek area yesterday and found a lot of confusion about the requirements and regulations for the area. First, you need an additional bond from the BLM to work a highbanker in this area. DREDGING IS NOT ALLOWED! Panning, sluicing, and metal detecting can be done anywhere on the BLM portion of Cache Creek. Watch for private property and the working claims in the area. We also found that the BLM requirements did not allow prospectors to reuse limited water sources with their requirement that highbanking be 20 feet off a water source. We assume they are talking about the actual digging. There was a report that a dredge was in Cache Creek well out of the boundaries and downstream a bit. Those of you who choose to disobey the BLM regulations and requirements jeopardize the continued use of this area. The BLM can, and will, close this area to everyone if violations continue to happen. Since GPOC has been working with the BLM to open this area to the public, I have had the information on it on the GPOC Temp page at hookedongold.com. You can find the new info that was posted today at the bottom of that page for now.

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.

Gold Trip to B.V.

June 29, 2007.

Well, I have downloaded two more specialty page scripts for the website, but have run out of time to work on them this week. One is a blog and the other the new shopping cart. The gold we found last weekend weighed in at around 4.5 grains of very chunky gold. Not too bad for goldpans. Spot closed today for the weekend at $647.50. Better go out and buy some before it heads back up! We are off to camp for the July Fourth week and will be busy with many activities. B.V. has a wonderful fireworks display each fourth, and we enjoy it most years. We will be checking e-mail and reporting here every day or two, so keep those cards and letters coming. Have a terrific Fourth of July Celebration wherever you are.

Breckenridge gold

June 26, 2007.

We spent a very warm day yesterday with friends in the Breckenridge area and came home with some VERY nice gold nuggets. Everyone there was successful in picking up the "pickers", with the largest one being around a quarter of an inch long, thick and chunky. Not bad for using the bucket classifier and pans. Friday evening will find us on our way to B.V. and a week off. The demo on the weekend was enjoyable and we all found a few treasures at the show to bring home with us. Have you been watching gold drop like a stone this morning? Right now it is sitting at around $640.00.

Hooked on Gold has moved

OMG!!! What a morning! I have changed servers,and everything went so fast that I didn't get my new home page up on the new server before everything went dark! If you were on the site about 11:00 this morning, it got yanked out from under you. Also, the old site is not redirected yet, and you get a blank page for that as well. What a mess. SOOOO sorry, but the pages will be much better in a month or so. Are you watching gold drop like a stone to around $645? I hear that Spain is dumping gold like mad. They have also started a lawsuit to get part of the new treasure found off the coast of England. The last time they did that, they WON! I hear they are desperate for money and part of the gold and silver haul from the wreck would really help. path to the old site will be www.hookedongold.clicksitebuilder.com We will be helping in the panning booth with GPR this weekend at the Arvada Gold Strike Festival in ole towne Arvada. Along with the fair will be the buffalo soldiers, mountain men, and President Teddy Roosevelt. Have a GREAT weekend.

Gold in Ghana

Thanks to T.L.E. International for allowing us to photograph their extensive cases of gold jewelry and exceptional emeralds.

Ghana, in medieval times, was known as "The City of Gold". Even today 2/3 of the population own gold and buy 18 - 21K gold at least once a year.

14K gold that is common in the U.S., is not even considered acceptable for jewelry in most of the rest of the world. Try to sell your 14K gold jewelry anywhere but here and you will be offered a small fraction of what you think it is worth. While I am in jewelry booths selling jewelry at fairs and gemshows, those who buy and collect gold seriously always ask the karat of the gold in the jewelry, and will hesitate to buy a piece that is even 18K. Design and quality of stones is not as important to them as the quality of the gold. In the Souk gold marketplace you can find tons of gold jewelry for sale on any given day with very little offered below 18K, and some of that can be bought below spot. Haggling is expected, and you may come away with a very good deal from someone who mines, refines, and fashions the gold themselves. A ticker on the price of gold runs continuously at the entrance to the multi leveled marketplace so that patrons are aware of today's price of gold. I don't know about you, but I'm sure I would be on overload at the mere sight of so much gold jewelry. Can you imagine a market half a mile square filled with gold jewelry? Would the sun be brighter in that place or the glow of gold? What a sight it must be! Find your own gold by visiting us to learn how, where, and what to use.

Gold Question of the week, May 16, Summer Edition

Get your panning cons for some panning fun! Find them on the site HERE

GOLD QUESTION OF THE WEEK SUMMER EDITION

I picked up an interesting tid bit this past week concerning small miners and how much mercury they take out of the streams and rivers. In Washington, there has been an ongoing struggle with the state and prospectors over how much damage they do or do not do to the environment. Well, the small miners in Washington have been saving all of the mercury they have been collecting and in late February the Washington Dept. of Ecology was invited to attend the Washington Gold, Gem, and Mineral Show. The collected mercury was turned over to their representative at the show and the total amount presented to the Ecology Department was 73 lbs. The Ecology Dept. was said to be "impressed that small-scale miners were actively removing mercury from state rivers and streams." To date, small miners have presented the department with over 150 lbs. of mercury. What they don't understand is how much we all enjoy taking heavy metals out of the waterways. When YOU find mercury in the rivers and streams, no matter where you are, please put into a vial or jar filled with water, cap it, and save it until you find someone who can take care of it. DO NOT put it back into the water. Ask any prospector on the river you come in contact with what to do with it when you encounter them. Some of us identify areas that contain mercury and collect it at the end of a season, as it will foul carpets when you get into a bunch of it. The first silver bead of mercury I ever saw was outside of Silverton, Co. on Cement Creek. Like gold, the first time you see it, you WILL know what it is. It will look similar to a shiny, liquid, silver sinker. If it is chunky looking, it has gold in it.

Gold in Pre-Columbian South America

To your left is a modern day example of the excellent work still coming out of Colombia in gold and emeralds brought to you by T.L.E. International.

South American, pre-Columbian gold placers made it possible to produce incredibly intricate gold objects created and formed by many cultures in the region. Placer mining was done by ground sluicing, and diverting streams using stone riffles that could be built during dry seasons. Material was dug from dry riverbeds, stockpiled and "washed" through the stone riffles during the flooding season trapping the concentrates in the stone riffles. The gold was then separated from the concentrates by hand using a large cone shaped wooden pan called a "batea" by the Spaniards who found the natives using them much later.

The Waywakans of the south central Andes Mountains are accredited with being first to mine and work gold, with gold artifacts found and dated at around 1500 B.C. Annealing was devised to hammer the metal into thin sheets to use for breastplates, masks, and many other types of large objects. Considering they used stone tools to work the gold, the ability they had to make intricate adornments is, at the least, amazing.

Etching, casting, and embossing were developed by Peruvians around 200 B.C., as well as alloying and the use of mercury in gilding. Colombians perfected working with gold, refining, alloying, casting, gilding, and all other aspects of gold work. Tumbaga was their special alloy of copper and gold. It was strong, easily worked, had a low melting point, and casted very well. Its reddish color was pleasing and the surface was easily washed with acid to reveal a beautiful yellow color. As gold was not a status of wealth, but religion, some villages sacrificed gold to their deities by throwing it into nearby deep lakes.

By the time Christopher Columbus reached the New World, gold had been worked in South America for some 3,000 years. The natives of San Salvador were wearing simple crude gold ornaments made of gold from Hispaniola when he arrived there. When he reached Central America, he named the area "Costa Rica", or Rich Coast, due to the finely crafted gold the natives wore. As all know, the Spanish went on to steal all the gold they could find from the natives in South America, looting even graves in their thirst for the yellow metal.

Today, South American governments do all they can to preserve the pieces that remain. More of the intricate gold is found every year in lost and forgotten burial sites and other hiding places. Several museums in South America hold thousands of these pieces as a testament to the skills of these artisans of long ago.

For more information on gold and prospecting spend a few minutes with Hooked on Gold

Hooked on Gold was lost in space

If you missed hooked on gold yesterday, the server was once again down. Didn't find out in time to post much yesterday, but we will be switching servers this week with at least a home page to direct and redirect you until we can get the whole gold site back up and running. Gold is headed higher this morning above $670. Did all of you have a golden Mother's Day? We are ready to go to Salida this weekend for Let's Go Gold Panning Day's. Camping, prospecting, and jawing with like minded folks for a whole weekend. A FANTASTIC way to start the summer season! For more information on Let's Go Gold panning Days visit the GPOC Temp. Page See you there.

Gold Question fo the Week for May 2, 2007.

The Gold question for May 2, 2007 is:

In what century was large scale gold mining begun in India and where?

ANSWER: According to minelinks.com, "Large scale mining in India began with the Mauryan colonization of the Deccan about the end of the fourth century B.C." "Large scale" mining does not necessaruliy mean large gold mining equipment, but can include the scope of the area mined and the number of people who did the mining as well as consider the undertaking of mining for gold with primitive tools. "Large scale" does not necessarily mean the number of cubic yards moved either. India was a known source of large amounts of gold even at the beginning of the Christian era. While modern machinery and industry can produce larger amounts of gold now than in ancient times, the amounts of gold recovered during those times should certainly be equated with "large scale" mining, as the technology produced as much gold as was possible with what was known at the time.

The pendant in the picture above is a lovely piece of California Crystal gold for sale in our catalog at hookondongold.com.

Gold Question of the Week for April 25, 2007.

Gold has taken a mighty dive! It has been flirting with $672 again, but it doesn't look like it's a serious "thang".

This week's gold question takes us to the Orient and along the trade routes to the middle east. Gold was long known for being abundant in the eastern countries, and our question is about North Korea. Spend a little time looking up this answer and reading the accounts of where gold was found in this country. For the next question visit hookedongold.com. You'll find some interesting information on gold and prospecting there, too. Copy and paste it into your browser if it isn't live for you, or click on the link in the links box.

WOOHOO! Take a look at these beauties! We have many very nice pieces of gold for sale in our catalog, as well as panning sand, corrugated mini sluice, and the ocassional piece of jewelry. http://hookedongold.com/catalog244888.html will give you an eye full of really nice gold.


CONGRATULATIONS TO: JOHN for being the first, qualified, correct answer to the gold question for the week of April 25.

Hooked On Gold's QUESTION OF THE WEEK: April 25, 2007.

In what century was gold first mentioned (or approximate date) as being abundant in North Korea, who wrote about it and what part of the world was he from?

ANSWER: Abundant gold in North Korea was first mentioned in the 9th century by Ibn Khordadzbeth. He was from the middle east.

Gold Question for April 18, 2007.

WOW! Gold has been jumping around this past week going up over $692 and then falling back to around $682. Right now, gold is back on the uptick, so watch for it to go to $700(?) soon.
The gold question for this week was not a question, but a link to some interesting information that is effecting prospecting and small mining now. We first found our about this issue last year when a friend who owns a claim found he had to comply with water quality issues when discharging dredge water into the river. http://hookedongold.com/catalog244888.html will take you to the gold and panning sand page where you will find this lovely pendant and it's description.

Hooked On Gold's QUESTION OF THE WEEK: April 18, 2007.

Something different this week. Follow this link for some information on what is going on with water quality issues and small mining. We are dealing with this in Colorado as well, so be prepared for your local water boards to get involved with small mining.

www.waterboards.ca.gov/cwa401/docs/wrapp/publicnotice040907.pdf



ANSWER: No answer this week, just information you should see

If this link is not live, copy and paste it into your browser to view.

Gold Question of the Week for April 11, 2007.

Hooked on Gold's Gold Question of the Week for April 11, 2007.

During the California gold rush, what method of mining was the largest source of gold before 1884?

ANSWER: Hydraulicking was the mining method that was the largest source of gold before 1884.

The picture is from the Tuscon Show. A FABULOUS example of leaf and crystal gold on its' background rock from Nevada. This show always has some of the best specimen pieces for show and sale we see all year. A great day for gold fans.

Gold is down again

Gold is down a bit again this evening after going over $684 on Friday. OOPPPS! Now it's back up over $685. Speaking of gold being down, if you've been online today looking for hookedongold.com you won't find it. Yup, that's right. The server is down again. That means that we will be switching to a new searver sooner than we thought we would. It also means we will be rebuilding the site, so you will be seeing a shortened version of hooked on gold while we rebuild. Hopefully we will be able to find a template we can modify to redo all of the pages at once on our home computer and upload all at once as well. Anything will be better than this mess.

That also means the question of the week is not for certain this week either. Watch this blog and the site to see if we are back in business or not. Those of you who get the newsletter read about the many colors of gold and how different metals mixed with it naturally or metallurgically make the color different, but does not always mean a lower percentage of gold content.

Gold Question of the Week for April 4, 2007.

Hooked on Gold's gold question for the week of April 4th takes you to the tropics and an unusual place to have found gold. And, not only gold, but a rare type of gold deposit. Unfortunately I don't have a picture example of what this rare type of gold looks like, so you will have to be content with just plain gold from one of the cases of Collectors Edge at the Tucson show.

Hooked on Gold's Question of the week for April 4th:

When was placer gold discovered in the Tavua area, and who is accredited with finding it? Also, tell me where Tavua is located, the type(s) of gold found, and when serious prospecting was begun.

ANSWER: Tavua is located in the Fiji Islands and its modern gold was discovered by Baron A.B. de Este in 1872. Placer deposits contained visble gold, but the lodes were in tellurides. Serious prospecting was not begun until 1932. One point that I should mention is that the gold on the island had been first discovered by the natives. More infomation on this can be found on the minelinks site under alluvial gold.

New Gold Blog Look

Blogger has added some realy neat stuff like news feeds and video streams at the left hand side of the page. Check them out! I have gold panning, metal detecting,and gold prospecting videos steaming on the side for you to click on and watch. Also, newsfeeds about mining in general. You can click on the titles to change the newsfeeds to what you would like to read. Stories about mining, mining stocks, silver mines, gold mines, and more! Have some fun with this one!!

Gold question of the week for March 28, 2007.

Gold is back up above $670 this morning and it looks like it might keep rising. Or not. The picture on the left is of gold taken fron Gains Creek, Alaska, and was sitting in the cases of the Colorado Nugget at the Tucson Show in Feb, 2007.

This week's gold question takes a bit from ancient history and ties it back to today. Much of what the Egyptians knew is still used today, and many of their ingenious ways to extract gold from rock and placer areas are the same today as they were back then. We just use more modern materials. A search on the net for gold in ancient Egypt will give you a wealth of information about ancient techniques that will look and sound very familiar to the prospector. Take a trip down the Nile River in Ancient Egypt for some very interesting information on gold and how to get it.

Hooked On Gold's QUESTION OF THE WEEK: March 28, 2007.

According to the Code of Menes, what was the value of gold to silver. Compare to today.

ANSWER: According to the Code of Menes in ancient Egypt, the value of gold was 2 1/2 times the value of silver. Today it is about 50 to one.

Gold and the new age of "Green" energy

Gold is back up this morning to over $666.00. I will have a link in the Hooked on Gold newsletter this week sent to me by a reader to a video with a diferent viewpoint on global warming. I will link it here as well when I get it. The youtube version's sound is more in sink than the videogoogle. Very interesting point of view put out by the BBC, and an hour and 13 minutes long. What these scientists have to say is enlightening and profound in the end. Yesterday, here in Colorado, our Democratic controled legislature passed a bill requiring untilities to increase their "green" production to 20%. I don't know about you, but I'm really sick of utility bills going up and the power companies getting the blame. Green power isn't cheap! It is expensive to build and is unreliable as an energy source, however, those of Al Gore's ilk have decided for us that we WILL pay higher utility bills while they do whatever they can to gt their hands on more of your money to do it. Now, you ask me what this has to do with gold. Mines use electricity to operate, and this legislature has effectively made it harder for any mining (this means oil, too) to be profitable. There are now, also, too many people who used to be with Green Peace that no longer agree with their "vision". What would this world be like without mans use of fossil fuels and metals? Where would the computer age be without gold?

Beetle Kill in Gold Country

What is beetle kill in gold country? Any of you who travel to Colorado have noticed the pine trees turning reddish and then brown and then grey. Most of you are probably aware that it is caused by pine beetle that burrow under the bark of the trees and kill them by "ringing" them, thus cutting off the tree's system it uses to get water and nutrients to all of its' parts. Thus, beetle kill in gold country. There is an article in today's paper that says up to 90% of the trees in Summit and Grand counties are infected and will die, and that the infestation encompasses at least 1,000 square MILES of forest. This tragedy is due to overzealous environmentalism, which hinders and prohibits the husbandry management of forests. Environmentalists do not seem to be interested in preserving what we have, but allowing mother nature to "take her course". Well, believe me, mother nature could give a RIP about what species lives or dies. Only man cares. Only man can protect what is here, and only through careful MANAGEMENT can that happen. Mother Nature has destroyed these forests which will take decades to replace. Careful logging and management of the forests would have preserved them. Instead of using wisely what we have, environmentalists have WASTED entire forests to neglect and non management, but then I suppose fire IS better. The Haman fire we had a few years ago attests to that. I am sure no one was bothered by the smoke, and the animals that died in it were better off. Yes, it was started by man, but the conditions that existed were also created by man. What does this have to do with gold prospecting? We work in the natural environment, educate the public to responsibility, and teach how to properly engage in activities that might be seen as destructive, to be done in positive ways. Fish love us! We provide new, freshly turned spawning beds when we dredge responsibly in rivers. Gold panning, sluicing, dry washing, and metal detecting get us out in nature where we can experience and connect with it. To watch the destruction of the forests in my state is heartbreaking and irresponsible of our government. All the prospectors,large and small, put together have not damaged the number of acres that this trend in environmentalism has. 1,000 acres in two counties. This number does not encompass the entire state, which has also seen the devastation of the forests. Drive up Clear Creek from Denver and see what I mean. All those trees that are dying have already infected 5 or 6 more, and this June, those trees will infect 5 or 6 more. One thing that is certain. The beetles will eventually stop spreading. They do tend to literally eat themselves out of house and home without management, and even the U.S. Forest Service agrees that it is too late to stop the complete destruction of the forest in some areas. So what is going on now to clear the dead trees? Clear cut logging.

Gold is back down

Gold is back down this morning to around $655. Hooked on Gold still cannot make changes to the website as the server is still "upgrading". Three days is a long time to not be able to make changes or blog. Sure, we have weeks that are busy and there isn't much to say, but not this time of year. The gold Question of the week didn't go off because there was no way to post it. I try several times a day and get the same "page cannot be found" messages, and so far I haven't gotten an answer to my queries about when I can get back into the sitebuilder. For now, you have static pages to view. We will be off to the mining museum at the School of Mines tomorrow, and looking forward to seeing their excellent selection of mining "stuff". They have an excellent library. Newsletter recipients got a short discussion of global warming and some of the possible effects on mining. I read an interesting analogy on the rising seas theory. Everyone learned in school how water expands when it freezes. If global warming causes the ice to melt, wouldn't the seas fall as the water compresses back to it's liquid state? I am not sure this is the correct way to interpret this, but it is an interesting suggestion to think about. Not exactly anything to do with gold, but an interesting thought, none the less.

So, is anyone out with a metal detector or a gold pan yet and finding anything interesting? We are itching to get out, but have decided that we MUST do something about the build up in the house before this season gets started in earnest. One truck load of "good stuff" has gone to the ARC store already, and I am sure another will find it's way there soon. Motorized equipment season is about here on the Arkansas River. It wiil start April 1st, and with the nice weather we have been having, and the river still not in run off stage, it may be a really good time to hit the sand bars while they are exposed. Water quality is becoming an issue with the State, and it seems that claim owners will have another State government agency to deal with. Some claim owners are being required to pump DREDGE water to the bank for settling before returning it to the river. That's right. You read me correctly. DREDGE water. Water quality agencies are getting there fingers in. Another agency wants to get their fingers in on the permitting side too. Information on these two new agencies is being received now and more information will be coming out on these issues as time goes on, so stay tuned for more of what they will be requiring.

Gold Question of the week Where is it?

Howdy all. As you have noticed this week's Question on gold is not on the Hooked on Gold site. The reason is that my server, clickincome.com/clicksitebuilder is down and has been since yesterday morning! No way of telling when we will be back online, so be patient until they get it fixed. This is just the latest in a number of frustrations with this company, and we will be looking at taking the major site to another server. Can't call. No one answers the phone and online or email tech support, usually right there, must be inundated with mail as there was no response from them either. So, you will need to wait for your chance at winning the gold for now. Also, the blog! Good thing for Blogspot or I would have no way to communicate with you. Unfortunately, their builder is very easy to use and I will hate to leave it. Who knows. Maybe the "fixes" will make it worthwhile to stay with them. Don't know. I need more pages and the upgrade just costs too much. The mentoring program was good, but not long enough and I can find lots of the same information on the web for a fraction of the cost. Unfortunately, when I began as a complete novice,I didn't know any better. I will be putting together a program that a newbie can use at their own pace instead of a 12 week slam telephone course and then access to a mentor by e-mail for a year. There were a thousand questions that have come up since my year is up that I can't get an answer to. Yes, I am ranting, and fuming, and down right mad! If there was any way to ask for refund from these people I would. However, they are very careful to not guarantee ANYTHING and, believe me, the cost is way too much for what you get. Also, don't fall for the "You gotta have a merchant account to take credit cards with". Believe me, PayPal works fine until you get to the point where you are BIG, and then you will have a $5,000.00 month limit. In the meantime, it will cost you about $50.00 a month PLUS the 3% on the credit card amounts. Their affliate programs are coming off my site and offering my "Free gifts" with them are ending, too. Enough on that for now.

Gold is up again at $663.30 as I write. We will be headed this weekend for a tour of the gold, gemstone, mining museum at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Looking forward to another tour, as it has been a few years since we were last there. We will be meeting with some of the members of the Denver GPR club at 9:30 a.m. in the north parking lot. Everyone is showing us their metal detecting finds for the past month, and we have been having grandchildren and throwing out household stuff and trying to get things back under control before the season starts....again! Looking over my gold nugget inventory, some of my prices are looking cheap agin, so you might want to grab some of it before I am forced to raise them due to the continued rise in the replacement price of gold.

Gold Question of the Week for March 7-14, 2007.

Gold is beginning to make a recovery these past few weeks with highs around $670.00.

CONGRATULATIONS TO: RANDY for being the first, correct, qualified answer to the Question for the week of March 7 - 14th!

Hooked On Gold's QUESTION OF THE WEEK: March 7, & 14, 2007.

What is the term "mineral light", and to whom is it attributed?


ANSWER: GOLD was referred to as the "mineral light", and is attributed to Hindu Philosophers. The ancient Hindu's also considered gold to be sacred and a symbol of wealth, prosperity, love, generosity, power, and illumination. Thus the illumination of gold was the "light".

Gold Question of the Week for Feb. 28th

Hooked on Gold's Question of the Week for Feb. 28th, 2007.

In what state was the first buckline dredge, that was successful in the U.S., located, where was it located and when. By 1910 approximately how many buckeline dredges were operating in California.

ANSWER: The first successful bucketline dredge in the U.S. was operated on Grasshopper Creek in Montana near Bannock in 1895. In 1910 there were 63 dredges still operating in California.

CONGRATULATIONS TO JAN for being the first, qualified, correct answer to this week's question.