klondikesteveblog

I am going to fly to Dawson for business.  Life is interesting how unpredictable it can be!  I am looking forward to seeing my friends in the Yukon.  I am flying to White Horse then driving to Dawson.  I would prefer to drive all of the way, but time constraints make that a problem.  Besides I need to be where I can chase women!  There are very few extra women in the Yukon!

Steve

My girl friend and I have broken up again.  This time for good!  I am going to put my klondikesteve add back on match.com.  I am kind of bummed out right this minute, but life goes on.  I like being a couple but being single has it’s benefits too!

If are a single woman and like the outdoors and travel……hello!

Steve

I am not going north this season.  I am disapointed because I was very much looking forward to seeing my friends in Alaska and the Yukon.  I love the north country in the summer!  Nice warm days that last 20 hours and the feeling of freedom!

Some things have come up that need my attention and, as I cannot be two places at once, I need to put off my trip north until next year.

This will give me a little more time to work on my goldhoggs.com placer gold machines and my mine in southern Oregon.

I am still disappointed though.

Discovery Channel “Gold Rush” TV show filmed Ready Bullion creek at 40 below Zero.

Todd and Jack Hoffman and others have been interested in this property for quite a while.  Because of the uniqueness of this property and now, how easy it is to get to Dawson, I have been asking for some cash up front for a lease, or a cash sale.  Todd persuaded me to go to Ready Bullion in February of 2011.  I didn’t think we could see much, but I agreed to go show them the property.  I have only been to Dawson in the summer and as late as October, I have never seen it so cold before!

The Ready Bullion property is very special property-virtually inaccessible form the early 1900s until the 1960s. The upper Bonanza Dam was built in 1907 downstream a few miles, until it washed out in 1960. The dam had been fairly effective at keeping the property inaccessible and un-mined.  There was only a cat trail that lead over the hills from the other side of the divide.  Dawson it’s self, could only be reached in the summer, by river boat until 1957.

Mining property had little value through the mid 1900s because the United States had held gold at $35 per ounce for many years, even though this property is in Canada, the US freeze on the gold price had its effect on worldwide gold prices.  The confluence of Ready Bullion and Upper Bonanza has been held by private ownership since 1973.  The enterprising gentleman we got the claims from, snow shoed 11 kilometers up Bonanza Creek in March of 1973, to stake these claims!

This property is made up of 24 claims, upstream from where the original 1896 discovery was made. 12 to 14 of the claims have not been mined by heavy machinery as far as I know and probably still need to be mined. We bought it in 1992 from the man that had staked the claims in 1973 and had made his entire living from about 4 claims for all those years.

I mined 1 claim on Ready Bullion Gulch in 1993 and 1994. We took out a good amount of gold and it was profitable. Much of the gold was chunky, angular and with quite a few nuggets.  My father leased out the ground on Ready Bullion, and the waist and shoulder claims on Upper Bonanza (the lower part of our property). We and the lessee did well. Bonanza has been considered a dead stream so miners have been allowed to discharge a bit of mud into the creek.

The Ready bullion property is probably the best place to start mining, but my son and I have more claims closer to Dawson.  We own a total of 47 claims, 3 of which are discovery claims-twice the size of standard claims.  I tell people it is 50 claims to simplify the explanation.

The Pesapie claim is very close to the Dawson City limits. It is on old dredge tailings and probably doesn’t have a lot of gold values. It is possible you could find something with a metal detector. Its main value would be to have a gold panning business, park a motor home or camp there. The backside is next to quiet gravel street. Electricity is connected to the properties on both sides.

The GM claims are on a hill on the south side of the Klondike River overlooking Dawson City and the Yukon River. My father’s partners mined just across the Klondike River from these claims in 1990 with great success. One claim I believe it was GM 37536 was mined in about 1999 successfully. Many of these claims are quite deep, but where we tested it was not frozen. I don’t know if these could be mined economically. There was an underground mine on the opposite side of Bonanza Creek in the 1980s.

This information is done to the best of my recollections and any buyer will need to make his own determination of value. Nothing here should be considered a representation. Subject to change without notice. June 19, 2011

I am heading to the shop to put garding on the test plant today.  It is an early version of a mining plant that I will be offering for sale.  They will be available on the web under goldhoggs.com.  I am trying to finish up a few things and am hopping to head to Alaska and the Yukon on the 15 th of June.  I have really great neighbors watching my place, so I don’t have to worry about a thing!

I will put some pictures here and write a bit as we travel north!

It is a great drive. I recomend it to everyone.  The road is good now, and the weather is better there than here!

We all should live with the idea of keeping this blue marble clean for our children and grand children.  To enjoy our modern way of life we need things like copper and other metals. You would not be able to read this or respond, with out metals, or even turn on a light. Mining is a necessity for our modern lifestyle.  I suggest that everyone encourage responsible mining, here in this country where we have better control and rules.  If mining is impeded by red tape and impossible rules, it will be done somewhere else where there are no rules.

I believe that even if reckless mining is done on the other side of the world, it is still bad for future generations.

There are those people who say there should be no mining anywhere.  Those people are unrealistic at best.  Without mining we would be back to living our lives in the stone age……oh wait, we would have to mine stones for that.  Can you imagine getting enough to eat with only wooden tools or sea shells?

Mining is nessasary for the worlds current population just to survive.  We could not feed our selves with out mechanization.

We need to encourage more small responsible mining ventures.  Small is better because there is someone who is responsible, not shareholders somewhere.

I have watched all of the Gold Rush episodes.  I thought it was all great TV!  The camera team seems to get all of the problems on film.  Mining even with the best of equipment has it’s share of breakdowns and problems.  The editors seem to like the problems more than the mining, but watching an excavator cycle a thousand times is pretty boring.  It is mind numbing to set in the excavator for those thousands of cycles too.  I guess I almost look forward to a breakdown just for a break in the monotony when I am mining.   It made it a little more interesting for me because I knew Jack and Todd from before.

I plan on visiting them this summer, where ever they decide to mine.  If they come to Dawson I will help them with contacts, resources and advise, if they ask.  Perhaps if they decide to buy or lease my son’s and my claims, I may be on the show again.  I like Jack and Todd, they are much smarter than cameras and editing allow.  I was able to spend a bit of time with them in Dawson and I enjoyed them as friends.  I had known them for quite a while, but had not spent much time with them.  If you make a list of people you can spend an hour with….that is a fairly long list.  People you can spend a whole day with is a much shorter list.  A week…?

I had a great time on the trip to Dawson this February.  The Raw TV crew are really great guys too!  They are very dedicated to their craft.  They did not cut any corners or complain about the long hours in the extreme cold.

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A young man named Shaw Ryan has developed a better way of sampling the ground and has located an area that looks to have immense deposits of gold!  It came to the attention of some of the worlds largest mining companies, who purchased his claims.

My friend in Dawson said another company bought 50,000 claim tags which used up all of the governments tags and their suppliers can’t make them fast enough.

Don’t everybody rush to Dawson though!  Like in the gold rush of 1898 most of the claims are held by someone who was there before.

It does show that huge new discoveries are made by ordinary people sometimes.  The whole area had been scoured for over 100 years!

Congratulations Shawn Ryan!!!!

What about my handle?  My sons girlfriend doesn’t like it at all.  Others have expressed their reservations about it too!  It sounds too wild or maybe too tame!  Where did Dakota Fred get his handle?  Are people with nicknames with places in them more devious?

I never had a nickname before.  My friends called me Steve!!!???

All the people who live in Dawson are Klondike Bob or Jim or Sue.

I wonder how they will take someone called klondikesteve???  I had a sour toe cocktail!  Do I have to spend a whole winter there?

I am not a worrier.  I will keep the handle!  I am interested to see what others think.