searun
Well-Known Member
That's a ton of vertical...you must be out ripping the pow almost every week. My new hero. I've only got in 11 days at Sun Peaks and 1 day of heli. Heading back up after New Years to rip it up again and try my best to catch up to you.
sir-vivor
Well-Known Member
Drone Pilot ...everyone thinks we spy on them ,dont worry we cant pick up a human over at an elevation of 40 feet and u can hear us 150 ft away so we're not likely to be spying ..but keep in mind the Govt Satalite that can read a page on a std book and they've been up there for decades lol
Clint r
Well-Known Member
Well you don’t hear that too often! How long have you been doing it? Flint knapping has always interested me. Fossils too for some reason. Got a couple stories about those as well but I’ll save them for another thread. Anyways, I was walking on a beach on an island in a lake one time and glanced down and noticed an odd stone. When I picked it up it turned out to be a small arrowhead half knapped out of a piece of stone. You can see where the grain of the stone took a curve and the arrowhead has a definite twist to it. So I think it was tossed for that reason. I’m not %100 up on my arrowhead types but it’s about 2- 2 1/4” long overall with about 1.5” of the end knapped to a point. Its very fine so I think maybe a bird point? I’ll take pics tomorrow sometime and post them up. I found that more than 20 years ago. About a year after that I met my gf (now wife) and I took her to that same beach. No word of a lie, we had just got out of the boat and I was telling her about the point I found when she bends down and holds up an actual spear head about 5-6” long. I was amazed. Her too haha, it looked big enough to take down a moose. Judging by the wear on the edges, it’s looks quite a bit older than the arrowhead I found. Almost prehistoric but I’m no anthropologist. It had also split in half point to butt(?) the wide way. So was basically half of a spearhead. What’s even more crazy is we were at a friends place a week or so later and she tells the tale of how she found it and my buddy Shaun (RIP) says no way and pulls out his spear head. Found the same weekend on the same beach as my old ladies and believe it or not it was the other half of hers. I swear to god. I’ll post pics of that tomorrow too. Later on in life I met a guy who owned a cabin on the lake where the island where the beach is and he had buckets of arrowheads, hammers drills ect.
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Clint r
Well-Known Member
Heres those pictures. The last two pics are of what someone told me was a drill? I cant be 100 percent sure of that but it’s obviously been worked. Hard to tell from the picture but it’s almost round in profile. 
Hmmm looking at the pictures it’s possible the spear head may be a scraper?
Hmmm looking at the pictures it’s possible the spear head may be a scraper?
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tyeeking
Active Member
I'm retired and can see one ski hill from my house and live within a 50 minute drive of another. When the conditions are right it's not uncommon for me to ski 4-5 days a week. Hope you get lots of powder days Searun! Life is short so play hard.
Chasin' Dreams
Well-Known Member
This is a great idea for a thread topic Storm Trooper. Nice to get to know guys better on the forum.
Bit about myself: I'm semi retired. Owned my own business for 10 years doing importing, warehousing, wholesale and retail gaming products and drove truck before that for 14 years. Fishing both fresh and salt water are for sure my #1 hobby. I enjoy fly fishing a lot too tying my own fly's and fishing for trout, steelhead, salmon and sturgeon mostly in fresh water and in the salt I enjoy going after all the species we have here on our west coast. I do brood stocking for steelhead on some of the valley rivers which I have been doing since the late 90's as well as helping with fishery projects with the BCWF, FWFS, and others any chance I get with free time. I spent a lot of volunteer time building up the Chehalis Summer Steelhead Run by brood stocking from the returning Coquihala fish that we used for the original brood stock for that run. Originally it only had a Winter Run of Steelhead in the Chehalis. I built my own hard ABS brood tubes to use on my pontoon boat that I used to drift the canyon with to catch and build up that Summer Run of Steelhead. I also was the original brood stocker of the Winter Run of Steelhead in the Stave River using returning Vedder River Steelhead to initially build that run up with greater returns for the sports fishermen to catch. Prior to me brooding on that river the hatchery used a mixed bag of excess brood from other rivers in the 90's from the Alouette, Kanaka, Chehalis etc. but it was never direct brood from the Stave water body. It did have it's own good run of wild fish prior to the dam being built however. I also teamed up with a BCIT biologist brainstorming a way to help better imprint the Stave Steelhead smolts by holding them in net pens and feeding them for a month above the dam prior to their release in the river. With the FWFS/BCWF and BC Hydro teaming up we got funding for the joint venture. I fed the smolts twice a day every day with the help of my two very young daughters at the time. They loved going there to feed the smolts, watch them grow big and healthy and they were there for their release as well. I love nature and use any excuse to spend more time in it.
Other than the fishing though for hobby's I've been getting into gold mining over the past few years on a mechanical exploration level which is a lot of fun and keeps me occupied. I get restless pretty quickly lol. I've been doing prospecting on smaller levels since around 2010 and thought it was time to turn that up a notch.
I've also recently started welding/fabricating as a bit of a hobby too. I now own mig, stick, and tig welders. My welding is improving and I enjoy practicing that in my shop a lot. Have built a few things and just bought some metal to build a new pentagon fire pit for the family that I'll be starting this week.
I also really enjoy cooking. I smoke a lot of meats, fish, cheeses and do a fair bit of baking as well now.
Some pictures of some of my metal work lately:
Bit about myself: I'm semi retired. Owned my own business for 10 years doing importing, warehousing, wholesale and retail gaming products and drove truck before that for 14 years. Fishing both fresh and salt water are for sure my #1 hobby. I enjoy fly fishing a lot too tying my own fly's and fishing for trout, steelhead, salmon and sturgeon mostly in fresh water and in the salt I enjoy going after all the species we have here on our west coast. I do brood stocking for steelhead on some of the valley rivers which I have been doing since the late 90's as well as helping with fishery projects with the BCWF, FWFS, and others any chance I get with free time. I spent a lot of volunteer time building up the Chehalis Summer Steelhead Run by brood stocking from the returning Coquihala fish that we used for the original brood stock for that run. Originally it only had a Winter Run of Steelhead in the Chehalis. I built my own hard ABS brood tubes to use on my pontoon boat that I used to drift the canyon with to catch and build up that Summer Run of Steelhead. I also was the original brood stocker of the Winter Run of Steelhead in the Stave River using returning Vedder River Steelhead to initially build that run up with greater returns for the sports fishermen to catch. Prior to me brooding on that river the hatchery used a mixed bag of excess brood from other rivers in the 90's from the Alouette, Kanaka, Chehalis etc. but it was never direct brood from the Stave water body. It did have it's own good run of wild fish prior to the dam being built however. I also teamed up with a BCIT biologist brainstorming a way to help better imprint the Stave Steelhead smolts by holding them in net pens and feeding them for a month above the dam prior to their release in the river. With the FWFS/BCWF and BC Hydro teaming up we got funding for the joint venture. I fed the smolts twice a day every day with the help of my two very young daughters at the time. They loved going there to feed the smolts, watch them grow big and healthy and they were there for their release as well. I love nature and use any excuse to spend more time in it.
Other than the fishing though for hobby's I've been getting into gold mining over the past few years on a mechanical exploration level which is a lot of fun and keeps me occupied. I get restless pretty quickly lol. I've been doing prospecting on smaller levels since around 2010 and thought it was time to turn that up a notch.
I've also recently started welding/fabricating as a bit of a hobby too. I now own mig, stick, and tig welders. My welding is improving and I enjoy practicing that in my shop a lot. Have built a few things and just bought some metal to build a new pentagon fire pit for the family that I'll be starting this week.
I also really enjoy cooking. I smoke a lot of meats, fish, cheeses and do a fair bit of baking as well now.
Some pictures of some of my metal work lately:
Gold Mining Sluice Box
Fraser River Steel Anchor
Fraser River Aluminum Anchor Filled With Lead For Weight
Cradle Net For Sturgeon For My Jet Boat
Some pictures of some of my mining: Cradle Net For Sturgeon For My Jet Boat
Excavator Feeding The Trommel Washplant
Cat Loader Feeding The Trommel Washplant
Trommel Feeding The Sluice Box And The Settling Pond
I love to cook, smoke foods and bake! Cat Loader Feeding The Trommel Washplant
Trommel Feeding The Sluice Box And The Settling Pond
Smoked Red Spring Salmon
Fresh Baked Sour Dough Rye
Dry Rubbed Alder Wood Smoked Baby Back Ribs With Smoked Sweet Corn, Grilled Veggies and Marinated Tomatoes with Bocconcini
Fresh Baked Sour Dough Rye
Dry Rubbed Alder Wood Smoked Baby Back Ribs With Smoked Sweet Corn, Grilled Veggies and Marinated Tomatoes with Bocconcini
fishin solo
Crew Member
Your a busy man!!!! Love the gold mining stuff that’s very cool
walleyes
Crew Member
wishiniwasfishin1
Well-Known Member
CD - has your gold mining paid off in any way? Looks like you got a few bucks invested in all that gear. Must be fun to think you might hit the motherlode any time...
Chasin' Dreams
Well-Known Member
It's a lot of fun and it's very cool washing gravel to recover gold. When I started prospecting I was on the Fraser River mostly, recovering fine gold with hand tools and a high banker. When you get your first gold there's just something about it that is very addicting and it keeps drawing you more and more to the ground to try to find more. On the Fraser it's tough to make a mechanical mining venture out of it but there are a few commercial operations on the Fraser. I know of 5 of them but for the most part the Fraser is mostly hand mining stuff. So after a few years of plugging away on the Fraser River for gold I started looking at claims in different parts of BC where mechanical mining is possible and where there are more concentrated placer gold deposits.
I claimed up a few cells in a known gold producing area and my first year up there I took hand prospecting tools, bought a cheap used travel trailer and went up while there was still snow on the ground. That first season I found some decent gold with the hand tools early on so I bought a decent used excavator from a friend of mine who fixes up used equipment knowing that if I don't do good I can always sell it back to him for the same as I paid for it as long as I didn't wreck it lol. The key with exploration is to buy good used equipment and take care of it cause it always sells pretty easily if things don't work out. I also bought the used testing trommel off of a miner who was retiring so I got a great deal on that and I can sell it when I upgrade for what I paid for it also.
Exploration takes a lot of time, researching the land, talking to old timers experienced in the area and knowing the gov regs to get the proper docs in order to mine by the rules so that things never get shut down. I have a couple mentors who have been helping me out as well whom have been mining in the area since the 80's. So I have just been taking it step by step and progressing as I go. My first season digging with the machines I recovered some decent gold so I got a bit more serious with the exploration. When I found my first little nugget I actually had tears in my eyes lol cause that is serious gold not fine flour gold. Like a kid getting his first bike for Christmas lol. Just so surreal getting gold out of the ground.
It takes a lot of math and testing to figure out if the gold per yard of gravel is worth recovering on a larger production scale and that next step also costs more money in larger equipment, permits and bonding etc so that is the step I am at in my exploration. I am trying to decide if and when I will take it to that next production mining stage. The gold where I am mining has been redistributed several times by glacial movements over history so trying to get a grasp on how it all lays in the land and at what depths and strata layers in the geology is the hardest part of it all. But being careful and testing the land the right way is the main thing. Most guys that go broke doing it just fly at it full speed spending too much money and running too much worthless gravel while trying to get to the more valuable layers. I'm in no rush so I plan on doing things as both an enjoyable hobby and as a potential income earning business. So I am trying to do things without breaking the bank at the same time. It's cheaper than fishing lol!!!
The first nugget I found I kept for a couple years along with the flakes and finer gold that was recovered in that same clean out. All the other gold recovered was sold to help pay for exploration costs. For a Christmas present last year I had that first nugget along with some of the flakes made into a pendant for my wife to show her how much it meant to me to have her support while I spent time doing the mining away from home and our family at times. I also had her birth stone set into the pendant as well. It blew her away cause she thought that I had all of the gold smelted down and sold. She never knew I kept any of it at all. And she has always known how much that first nugget meant to me. She has taken a big interest in the mining now too and I make sure to bring her home cool quartz rocks etc for her garden etc after every trip up to the mine.
Sorry about the long answer but I like to explain things well so you can get a good picture of what I mean.
Here's a picture of my first nugget I recovered while processing the concentrates and a picture of the pendant I had made with it for my wife. Check out (what I think is really cool!) how the nugget looks like a fist with finger pointing down. I interpreted it when I found it like "DIG HERE!!" lol.
wishiniwasfishin1
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the write up CD and way to go it sounds like you are enjoying yourself and going about it in a pretty calculated way. Cheers!
X2,
CD; I do have a "bucket" of dirt and "gold" that needs washing. Don't ask where I got it but the stream bottom was yellow. I thought fake but no its real, tailing gold from way back. As you state I fully understand the feeling that it ignites. What hurts is when I walk amongst the old mines and see the total mess left behind. Abandoned trucks, trailers with 40 washers/dryers and cabins each with a good stove. That place is 600km up a rough trail so the reason it was left. Awesome post and thread.
HM
CD; I do have a "bucket" of dirt and "gold" that needs washing. Don't ask where I got it but the stream bottom was yellow. I thought fake but no its real, tailing gold from way back. As you state I fully understand the feeling that it ignites. What hurts is when I walk amongst the old mines and see the total mess left behind. Abandoned trucks, trailers with 40 washers/dryers and cabins each with a good stove. That place is 600km up a rough trail so the reason it was left. Awesome post and thread.
HM
Chasin' Dreams
Well-Known Member
Thanks HM! Ya there are some bad seeds out there but that's the case in all kinds of outdoors activities. There's always gonna be dip ***** that ruin it for others leaving garbage behind and not doing reclamation properly on the ground they disturb. Reclamation bonds are getting higher and higher now so if guys don't clean up their sites now they lose a good chunk of money so hopefully that helps with making sure guys do what's right with the land they are working. Sad part about the bonds going up is that it also makes it tougher for smaller mom/pop operations to be able to afford to keep mining in some cases. Hard to make everyone happy in these situations but for me I put mother nature before all the other stuff and most of the miners I know are the same way.
Totally agree, reclamation is the reason the road in became a built truck only trail. Good and bad aspects as now nobody is in there without a very long horse ride. I am ala red seal cook so we also share that passion. Mouth watering meal you have there.
HM
Gramps
Active Member
My favourite hobby other then fishing is watching my kid drive race cars. After driving for 18 years I put my son in a car at 4 1/2 years old and after 6 years it has become my second full time job. We have traveled to Vegas a couple times and were the first Canadians to run California Speedweek, 4 races at 5 different tracks in 5 days. 36 races from January to September last years keeps me busy.
Just installed new swivel mounts on the downriggers just need a day to try them out.
Just installed new swivel mounts on the downriggers just need a day to try them out.
casper5280
Crew Member
Next stop the Chili Bowl. Lol
Gramps
Active Member
Not on my wallet, haha. We are trying to do Tulsa shootout next year, biggest race in the nation for mini sprints.
