My son has been in Dawson City, way up North in Canada's Yukon Territory recently and sent these pics of alluvial finds in mine museums he visited there:
Klondike placer (alluvial) mining
- Thread starter grubstake
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Very cool looking. I know fossils can go for some big money over there. But yeah, nah bugger that, to damn cold.
user 14190
Too old to care anyway.
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So it looks like the Mammoths and Mastodons were collectors of small gold nuggets also, pity we do not have more of them that collected here and I could find their hoard.
And by total coincidence, in news just out today:
Gold miner finds 'most incredible', 35,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth in North America:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06...eserved-woolly-mammoth-yukon-canada/101187708
Gold miner finds 'most incredible', 35,000-year-old baby woolly mammoth in North America:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06...eserved-woolly-mammoth-yukon-canada/101187708
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Would you like fries with that?
Teemore
One foot out the door
Your son's lucky, it's a great place we loved it there and even managed some Yukon gold (panned from the river).
Hope he has a "Sour Toe Cocktail", a Yukon tradition. We were lucky enough to run into Tony & Minnie Beets and spent a good half hour talking prospecting differences between Oz and the Yukon, great couple.
If you get the chance, GO. Oh, my wife was a bit pi55ed when I told her we weren't going to Bannf/Lake Louise etc. but she really loved every minute of Canada/Alaska.
Oops, that last pic is actually in Whitehorse, not Dawson City.
Hope he has a "Sour Toe Cocktail", a Yukon tradition. We were lucky enough to run into Tony & Minnie Beets and spent a good half hour talking prospecting differences between Oz and the Yukon, great couple.
If you get the chance, GO. Oh, my wife was a bit pi55ed when I told her we weren't going to Bannf/Lake Louise etc. but she really loved every minute of Canada/Alaska.
Oops, that last pic is actually in Whitehorse, not Dawson City.
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We spent a few days at Dawson City in the Klondike. Free panning is permitted on a special area where gold was first discovered up there.
That area, of course, has been flogged, first by the Stampeders who braved the Chilcoot trail and later by bucket dredges that gouge their way deep into the permafrost and leave very little gold behind them.
Remarkably we found traces in that original location.It was very fine float gold, so fine that it floated on top of the surface tension of the water and was very difficult to harvest. What we did get was like pulverised pepper, mighty fine.
There was someone working further upstream on a commercial basis and it is possible that he was stirring up the fine gold and setting it drifting down to where we were working. We didn't go upstream to check him out. One does not venture uninvited on to any one's lease in the Klondike.
Stampeders climbing the Chilcoot Pass - 65 died in just one avalanche, many died of typhoid and those who fell crossing rivers often drowned under the weight of their packs.. They were required to carry enough supplies to last them a year (presumably there would have been ample fresh meat once there) - they used Tinglit packers as the load was one tonne. On one day 7000 home-made boats set off across Lake Lindeman as the ice thawed. 3200 horses died on the alternative White Pass trail. It was this stark wilderness that 100,000 prospectors tried to cross on foot, and in homemade boats, during the Klondike gold rush of the 1890s. The “stampeders,” as they were known, were desperate to reach the gold fields around Dawson City, but the journey took more than two months, and was so punishing and dangerous that only 30,000 made it through.
That is amazing, we read about the gold rush in the 1800s and 1900s but it's been happening for much longer than that. Just crazy to think how many people have died chasing that dream.
goldierocks, where are those photos from? I would love to see more.
Sorry not sure where I got them - originally stored them just for my interest (I used to work up that way).
Some of our goldfields were rather benign by comparison - I would definitely prefer working by the Turon River or Bendigo Creek. Places like White Range, Arltunga and parts of North Queensland were a bit more punishing, but the Yukon goldfield was hard yakah.
Some of our goldfields were rather benign by comparison - I would definitely prefer working by the Turon River or Bendigo Creek. Places like White Range, Arltunga and parts of North Queensland were a bit more punishing, but the Yukon goldfield was hard yakah.
Why was it such hard yakah compared to the other places you mentioned? I could imagine the climate would play a significant challenge, especially winter... Apparently Yukon can see temperatues as low as 40 degree celcius and is one of the coldest parts of Canada.
I have now stumbled across a TV series based out of this region, 5 seasons so far. I might give it a watch.
Even Dawson City can hit minus 40 - coming over the pass with the added windchill factor you would survive perhaps 5 minutes unless extremely well dressed. Water is frozen (throw it in the air and it smashes on the ground as solid ice) - so you must heat it to drink. Take care when having a piss. You cannot touch anything metal or you stick to the metal (I made the mistake of metal glasses frames). Try and separate and your skin peels - you really need to warm water to separate, tricky if you are stuck to your sled - I remember a dog in Siberia that tore its tongue out after trying to lick a pipe - could not separate. . Visibility drops to zero in snow storms and can last for days. No bridges and falling into streams can be fatal. - you may get out but once wet wind chill will get you before you get a fire going - with what? And influenza and other diseases easily kill because your body is struggling to keep warm. To work gold-bearing gravels you sometimes have to run hot water pipes through the gravel to thaw it. Blizzards can last for 4 days with no visibility, high winds and metres of snow.
Give me the outback here any day. Here we bulldoze roads and drive them - in much of Canada and west the ground is swampy and you must lay plastic sheeting then put gravel on top.
Even perspiring can be fatal -it can form a frozen layer next to your skin. I dress properly and have no trouble working at minus 25 degrees, but minus 40 is something else (and wind chill factor makes it effectively much colder - the wind takes away your body heat.
Here's some nice big chunks from Yukon placer (alluvial) mining in 2020:
