Gold Rush Alaska

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ramcharger

ramcharger

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Anyone watching this on the Discovery Channel? It's about a bunch of guys, mostly unemployed, who pooled the last of their money together to buy an Alaskan gold claim and are trying to make it work and turn a profit.

Cool idea and I hope they make it but it doesn't look good..... They've mined just a few flakes of gold but not nearly enough to cover thier expenses. One guy's a real whiner and needs to go home.
 
That sounds like a ton of work.
A few of my Buddies and I gold pan out here in the Gold Country.
Usually get about 5 or 6 bucks worth on a good day lol !
 
Cute part about the whiner Joe, I got a father in law that mines the Bonanza creek in Dawson, Yukon (where it all started) every summer and yup the golds turned him and his 2 sons into FULL FLEDGED F@@KING FREAKS.:bootysha:
 
demon seed said:
Cute part about the whiner Joe, I got a father in law that mines the Bonanza creek in Dawson, Yukon (where it all started) every summer and yup the golds turned him and his 2 sons into FULL FLEDGED F@@KING FREAKS.:bootysha:
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LOL! The people that own the claim next to them felt bad for them and sent their 15 year old over to show them how to set their machinery. :-D Once they opened one pipe the one guy said "It's clogged with gold! Look at all this gold!" The kid saw a couple microscopic flakes and walked away shaking his head.

I imagine gold fever will really flip some people out. :read2:
 
Yes used to get a little more but no more dredging in California.
I think there trying to save some frog or something
 
rapidtransit340 said:
Yes used to get a little more but no more dredging in California.
I think there trying to save some frog or something
Click to expand...

State Game Warden almost shut these guys down for running a trench off the creek to their rig. They had to block it off and use a pump with a screen to get water into the retention pond. Warden was worried about the salmon fishery and young fish getting into the dug channel. Valid complaint I suppose. I would have thought that these guys would 've checked into that along with any water rights issues before firing up the backhoe.
 
Probably the same here. Salmon numbers have declined pretty bad.
However all the rivers are damed for the Lakes. All the gold is up river.
I am quite sure the Dam's are hurting the Salmon population more than the few dredgers?
 
rapidtransit340 said:
Probably the same here. Salmon numbers have declined pretty bad.
However all the rivers are damed for the Lakes. All the gold is up river.
I am quite sure the Dam's are hurting the Salmon population more than the few dredgers?
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Good question! Maybe someone here will chime in with an answer?

I played around a little bit in the rivers here in Colorado and didn't even find a flake. :-D
 
Funny the biggest thing I found was a picker nugget (real small nugget)
on my property. I live in a area that was heavily mined during the mid 1800'

Placerville aka (Hangtown or Old Dry Diggins)
 
I've seen a few episodes, the one guy Jeff?? the one with the goatee needs his teeth kicked in and some manners taught to him the hard way.
 
I watched it once for around ten minutes and to me it was theatrical. I can understand the Yukon gold rush where it all started in Alaska but it also started in Eureka California and surrounding areas such as French Gulch. It also started in Gold Hill Oregon, the Rogue River and its surrounding areas and I'm sure there's plenty other towns where an abundance of gold have been found in the USA and Canada and is still found today. My take is that all these reality shows suck as I'd rather be entertained by naked women :)
 
I think its a good show. I also think it's suppose to replace the show Treasure Quest from last year and maybe even The Deadliest Catch.
 
Pretty good Show! Gotta love the DVR. If you start watching 20 mins into the show you can finish the show about when it ends live and no commercials!
 
Yea I've been watching it too. I don't think they really know what they are doing or did enough research before they got there.It would have really paid them to get with an experienced geologist that would have been able to pinpoint the possibilities of ancient stream beds that had been covered up by years of time. I began to think that when the old man started digging random holes around the site saying that "man we got to hit the mother lode". I laughed my *** off. They will probably make out anyway with what the Broadcast company is paying them. I have been keeping up with Gold and it's prices and a buddy of mine who has been doing well with the stock market for decades says that now is the time to sell off your gold that the bubble on it will burst soon.
 
ramcharger said:
Good question! Maybe someone here will chime in with an answer?

I played around a little bit in the rivers here in Colorado and didn't even find a flake. :-D
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I spent 3 years in college writing papers and doing studies regarding the salmon population and the effects of the dams along the Columbia and Snake River, this is where my knowledge comes from. While it may not be exactly the same for other areas, the general principles still apply.

The biggest thing that hurts the salmon in terms of the dams is the water getting cloudy and slow. Biologically, when the salmon are still young, they instinctively know to swim with the current and to reach the ocean. When they are older, and starting to migrate back to their spawning grounds, they instinctively know to swim against the current. What happens when the rivers are dammed up, is the current almost becomes non-existent ( think in terms of what the current would have been 500 years ago ) confusing the salmon.

Salmon also need clean, clear cold water to thrive in. Water that is dammed up and slowed down also warms up making it not very suitable for the salmon. The food niches that the salmon would ususally feed on ( in fast flowing water ) are not there in the slow lethargic water due to dams, decreasing drastically what they can eat.

But, before you get all gun ho about tearing down the dams, you need to realize that doing so will KILL more salmon that leaving them in place. You have 50+ years of silt built up behind these damns along the Columbia. When you tear down the dams, the silt will flow down the river choaking out all of the organisms living in the river. The most logical time to tear down the dams would be during late summer/early fall while the water flow is the lowest. This time also corresponds to some of the more endangered salmon runs ( at least for the Columbia Basin Drainage ). So, by tearing down the dams to save the salmon, you will actually be killing them and driving them ever closer to extinction.

RTom
 
Sorry, I ment to tie in the part about dredging. The dredges will turn up all kinds of silt and heavy metals that will get into the water and affect not only how well the fish can breathe, but also affect the biologically.

There is an old ghost town in Idaho called Silver City. It used to be a huge mining town. Some of the mines up there ended up leaking toxic heavy metals into the watershed. If you catch some of the trout from the streams up there ( which you are warned not to eat due to the toxicity ) you can find traces of the heavy metals in them and see how it affected them ( stunted growth, immature reproductive organs etc. ) when you compare them to the same species of trout but from an unaffected water shed.
 
RTOM is pretty bang-on, Im going thru for Environmental right now and Salmon and Trout are extremely susceptible to temperature change. Also when there are dams, the water levels increase and decrease, so at the banks, they are sometimes submerged and other times not. This messes up the aquatic plant populations. Ok cant think of anything else, 3 weeks holidays and my brain is mush!!
 
RTom said:
Sorry, I ment to tie in the part about dredging. The dredges will turn up all kinds of silt and heavy metals that will get into the water and affect not only how well the fish can breathe, but also affect the biologically.

There is an old ghost town in Idaho called Silver City. It used to be a huge mining town. Some of the mines up there ended up leaking toxic heavy metals into the watershed. If you catch some of the trout from the streams up there ( which you are warned not to eat due to the toxicity ) you can find traces of the heavy metals in them and see how it affected them ( stunted growth, immature reproductive organs etc. ) when you compare them to the same species of trout but from an unaffected water shed.
Click to expand...


It doesnt take much in toxic metals in parts per million to make fish inedible. Even fancy albacore tuna which apparently absorbs mercury more readily than regular tuna is not supposed to be consumed at all by pregnant women and sparingly by others.
 
dustoff440 said:
It doesnt take much in toxic metals in parts per million to make fish inedible. Even fancy albacore tuna which apparently absorbs mercury more readily than regular tuna is not supposed to be consumed at all by pregnant women and sparingly by others.
Click to expand...

Yep, always make sure, for those of you who do a lot of fishing, to know where the fish you are catching ( and eating ) are coming from. The fish are surrounded by the toxins their whole life so it becomes encorporated in them through out their whole body. Those toxins are then transferred to you when you eat them. Your local F&G should have lists and/or maps of where it is safe to eat the fish you catch and where it isn't safe.
 
In Northern California most of the rain and snow come from mid November to April.
Above say 4000 feet it is usually snow. Up at the summits of the Sierra they can get more than 30 feet of snow in a winter.
That is all usually melting in June. You get alot of run of from about April thru June here.
I guess they feel without dams the valley would be a big swamp around then every year.
 
Dams aren't all evil. They provide flood control, a source of power ( some ), irrigation for millions of acres of otherwise unfarmable lands, transportation and recreation.

Without the dams, most people in the northwest would be paying 10 times as much for there electricity. Rolling black out would be a regular occurance.

If the farmers in the midwest/west were not able to get irrigation water from the dammed up rivers, the majority of them would fail. Food shortage would hit the country and food prices would go through the roof.

Lewiston, Idaho would die. Lewiston is one of the furthest in land 'sea ports' all made possible by the transportation along the Columbia.
 
RTom said:
I spent 3 years in college writing papers and doing studies regarding the salmon population and the effects of the dams along the Columbia and Snake River, this is where my knowledge comes from. While it may not be exactly the same for other areas, the general principles still apply.

The biggest thing that hurts the salmon in terms of the dams is the water getting cloudy and slow. Biologically, when the salmon are still young, they instinctively know to swim with the current and to reach the ocean. When they are older, and starting to migrate back to their spawning grounds, they instinctively know to swim against the current. What happens when the rivers are dammed up, is the current almost becomes non-existent ( think in terms of what the current would have been 500 years ago ) confusing the salmon.

Salmon also need clean, clear cold water to thrive in. Water that is dammed up and slowed down also warms up making it not very suitable for the salmon. The food niches that the salmon would ususally feed on ( in fast flowing water ) are not there in the slow lethargic water due to dams, decreasing drastically what they can eat.

But, before you get all gun ho about tearing down the dams, you need to realize that doing so will KILL more salmon that leaving them in place. You have 50+ years of silt built up behind these damns along the Columbia. When you tear down the dams, the silt will flow down the river choaking out all of the organisms living in the river. The most logical time to tear down the dams would be during late summer/early fall while the water flow is the lowest. This time also corresponds to some of the more endangered salmon runs ( at least for the Columbia Basin Drainage ). So, by tearing down the dams to save the salmon, you will actually be killing them and driving them ever closer to extinction.

RTom
Click to expand...

RTom said:
Sorry, I ment to tie in the part about dredging. The dredges will turn up all kinds of silt and heavy metals that will get into the water and affect not only how well the fish can breathe, but also affect the biologically.

There is an old ghost town in Idaho called Silver City. It used to be a huge mining town. Some of the mines up there ended up leaking toxic heavy metals into the watershed. If you catch some of the trout from the streams up there ( which you are warned not to eat due to the toxicity ) you can find traces of the heavy metals in them and see how it affected them ( stunted growth, immature reproductive organs etc. ) when you compare them to the same species of trout but from an unaffected water shed.
Click to expand...

4spdragtop said:
RTOM is pretty bang-on, Im going thru for Environmental right now and Salmon and Trout are extremely susceptible to temperature change. Also when there are dams, the water levels increase and decrease, so at the banks, they are sometimes submerged and other times not. This messes up the aquatic plant populations. Ok cant think of anything else, 3 weeks holidays and my brain is mush!!
Click to expand...

dustoff440 said:
It doesnt take much in toxic metals in parts per million to make fish inedible. Even fancy albacore tuna which apparently absorbs mercury more readily than regular tuna is not supposed to be consumed at all by pregnant women and sparingly by others.
Click to expand...

Thanks guys for a well written intelligent response. I know when I was living in Chicago, the fish from Lake Michigan was not to be eaten by pregnant women. Mercury and PCBs were a huge problem. I don't know if it's gotten cleaned up somewhat. The bigger and older the fish, the more dangerous it was to eat. I used to go smelt fishing in the fall (just a big party on the piers, really) as those were relativley safe to eat. The next day we'd have a big smelt fish fry with a keg. Gotta love Chicago. Oops, off on a tangent, lol.

Great information and thanks for enlightening me.
 
RTom said:
Dams aren't all evil. They provide flood control, a source of power ( some ), irrigation for millions of acres of otherwise unfarmable lands, transportation and recreation.

Without the dams, most people in the northwest would be paying 10 times as much for there electricity. Rolling black out would be a regular occurance.

If the farmers in the midwest/west were not able to get irrigation water from the dammed up rivers, the majority of them would fail. Food shortage would hit the country and food prices would go through the roof.

Lewiston, Idaho would die. Lewiston is one of the furthest in land 'sea ports' all made possible by the transportation along the Columbia.
Click to expand...

You really hit the nail on the head. I'm all for preserving our fisheries and other species...but...environmentalists forget how important irrigation is to farmers and world trade. If I'm not mistaken the "bread basket" in the midwest not only provides all of our grain needs but billions in grain is exported every year.
 
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