New owners


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I thought I heard right about it being sold. I hope they put there signs in the right places because Sierra Pacific owns the western quarter of the pit. I'll have to go to the county and check the records. Oh well I hunted it a lot ten years ago with a whites and it was getting pretty hard to find much. A lot of fine gold and shot gun bb's. I've noticed with the price of gold being what it is there are a lot of claims being filed on places that I have never seen claimed in the 12 years I've been detecting. I think that might be the case here, someone thinking their going to get rich. We'll see, I wish them luck.

Hawk

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I was watching Dirty Jobs on Discovery one night, and the start went out with a bunch from the California Abandoned Mine organization. They found a nice looking coyote hole that had several drifts through a bunch of cobbles. While I don't usually promote going into any old mines, these cobble drifts are not subject to the same degradation that hard rock mines and ores undergo when air gets into the rock.

For all of the propaganda that the drift placer mine was unsafe, the guys sure spent a lot of time going down and into one drift after another, one even remarking about the drafty air flowing through from some other opening. I have been into a few of these myself, and passages can be narrow, but overall, never noticed dropouts, sloughs, and caves that happen in hard rock mines in the deserts of the West.

I think probably the most negative things here would be dropping into one and not being able to climb out, getting lost, or going into a drift that had negligible ventilation. The first two necessitate a buddy system and a mapping/marking sequence, while the last part is the most deadly in that bad air is heavier than breathing air, which displaces the oxygen. Without a complex gaseous discriminating/testing device, perhaps it would best be said that if you encounter a working/workings without a draft, it would be best to stay out in order to stay alive. Next, never go exploring alone. and use some sort of drift mapping sequence, or twine in order to retrace your route.

What they did in the show was to get a large piece of visqueen, and mix up a urethane gel, dump it onto the plastic. Once hardened, the guys cut a rough plug that fit into the vertical entry shaft. with odd pieces broken into wedge forms, and other debris, they chinked the edges of the plug. then mixing several more bags in succession, filled in the hole, rendering the original plug strong enough to support anybody walking or jumping on it, after that, covering the whole remnant depression with dirt, and making the whole site disappear into the woods.

While looking at the cobbles, one of the drifts went into a strata that had a lot of bluish, and blue-gray conglomerate, a lot of it looking like quartz. Boy howdy! sigh....

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wes

The bill Obama just signed had a generous amount attached for

federal land law enforcement. :angry2:

Also most of the forestry guys will be switched to patrol duty,or

fire crews ,because they are not going to be selling hardly any timber. :o

Our local Ranger station has transferred or reassigned almost all of the

timber staff,to recreation or other duties.

The BLM has big funds for law enforcement too. Both agencies have been

training a large number of cops,for the last few years.

Any Forest Service employee with a GS rating can make an arrest,or

write a ticket on Forest land. Also any employee acting under the District

Rangers orders has the same power whether they are GS rated or not.

If they don't want to do it their selves,they have the authority to detain

you until Law Enforcement shows up.

Never underestimate the law enforcement efforts that the BLM and Forest

is capable of. I have personally seen the BLM have enough helicopters ,officers,

and firepower in place in just hours to fight a small war. They wasn't even

friendly either. :lol:

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Wes:

I got a chance to meet the new owners at the San Bernardino GPAA show in January. I also got contact info here somewhere, and they invited me to me up to the property sometime this sumer (exact date to be determined). Perhaps you can join me. Send me a PM for more details.

One of these days we are going to get together for some prospecting!

Chris

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I know of one big gold quartzer that came out of there early last year but haven't heard of anything else. I kind of wonder if thats really where this guy found it. Diamond Creek is actually a little east of Omega pit and has a pit of the same same name on the ridge about the creek. Now its private also and has had a gate on it for as long as I can remember. The owners of a few years back went in and bulldozed the pit and did some detecting and did very well from I heard. You probably won't be getting back in there until spring time now with all the snow. Unless you have a snowcat or snowmobile.

Hawk

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