Mining, PrueHeart the Wanderer's Mining Diary, Idaho

Excerpts from PrueHeart the Wanderer's Mining Diary: October 14-15, 2006

Pick and shovel, fill the wheelbarrow—a lot of overburden and a little treasure.

Here's a quote from Irish poet, Eavan Boland: "I always think of myself as working at a rock face. Ninety days out of ninety-five, it's just a rock face. The other five days, there's a bit of silver, a bit of base metal...Unless you have a failure rate that vastly exceeds your success rate, you're not really in touch with what you're doing as a poet."

Being both a poet and a miner, I think Ms. Boland has described perfectly the kind of hard work required. The PrueHeart trench is not as deep as the Prudent Man trench because we haven't worked on it as much, but even so, the photo on the left (taken by Dick Morris) is deceptive. My brother Steve is standing over the deepest part of the trench, but he is on top of a mucking board several feet high. He is removing overburden from the foot wall to give himself more room to work in the trench. My brother Leland is kneeling to remove clay from around the end of the exposed vein where it comes almost to the surface. I am working with the pick to widen and deepen a wheelbarrow lane we want to make so that we can wheel debris out of the trench. So, yes, I do work at the mines, but I'm no where near as good at it as my brothers. Picking and shoveling takes a lot of upper body strength.

Aspen grove below the PrueHeart agate ledge, photo taken October 15th. A spring feeds the grove water, and we frequently hear birds disputing over nesting sites in the oasis. There's no running water there, just the underground seeps.

We worked hard all day Saturday, and were ready to relax in the evening. Near sunset, if we looked at a dark background such as a hillside already in shadow, we could see spiders migrating. The dipping sun picked out their webs as down-canyon winds took them on their way. There were hundreds of spiders, and some of the webs had a radius of twenty feet or more. Where were they going? Wherever the wind took them.

Twilight was short-lived and we could feel the temperature dropping by the minute. Steve donned his insulated overalls and read antique mining books by lantern light after supper. He read out loud a section where the author said, "there is rest inherent in the work"—meaning that one could pick down if one got tired of wielding the pick upwards; or that one could muck with the shovel if one got tired of picking. (Anytime I want to take a break, Steve now tells me that there's rest inherent in the work.)

On Sunday morning we basked in a spectacular sunrise. The sky held just enough clouds to reflect light onto the frosted landscape. Before the sun broke the horizon, we were bathed in uniform Tuscan amber light. The color was particularly beautiful on the autumn leaves of the cottonwood grove in which we had set up our tents (that's the grove below Steve's Prudent Man mine, about half a mile from my discovery, the PrueHeart vein of agate). The highest peaks around us already had a dusting of snow. By comparison, plain day was a slow onslaught of boredom as the morning worn on—if you're judging by theatrical lighting effects.

Steve's Prudent Man trench (technically called an "open cut" that follows the "strike zone") is now 17 feet deep at it's deepest point. Steve cut a wheelbarrow runway that is above the working platform, but still easily accessible for shoveling (mucking) debris. I wheeled many a load of debris out. I also picked and shoveled in the exit lane to make it wider.

The Prudent Man vein is lens shaped, a huge convex lens that is vertical in the ground. Steve appears to have started working at the top of it. The "lens" hasn't started to get thinner yet, so he's not even halfway to the bottom of the vein. If he exposes both ends of the lens then he can estimate the size of it. Steve's theory is that the lens of agate is a hydrothermal deposit that was forced into a fracture from a magma chamber below the area. The assumption is that there is a pluton of granite that did not make it to the surface, but the bubble of heated rock did send mineral-rich, super-heated, fluid into fractures. It's also possible that the minerals were deposited by fluid seeping into shrinkage fractures from the surrounding rock. That last is the most common occurrence, but neither one of us thinks the Prudent Man deposit looks like seepage from the surrounding rock. After we excavate more and look at other veins we've opened, as well as the geology of the surroundings, we should eventually be able to say how the agate deposit was formed.

See PrueHeart the Wanderer's website page <Geology and Stratigraphy> for more information. A polymetallic vein in andesite is most likely what we have at the PrueHeart mining claim.

I cleaned up all the loose rock at the top of the hanging wall so that none of it would fall down. Steve wears the right color of hard hat. White is Head Honcho color. I have a hard hat too, but pink might not even be in the hard-hat hierarchy.

We went back to the mine to work Friday through Sunday. This time, our water froze, but we had a jug in the cab of the truck that remained ice-free. Steve's stayed up there digging away for one more day (until the ground froze too), but Leland and I returned on Sunday.

The photo on the left shows the edges of some slabs from the PrueHeart lode, approximately to scale.

Steve was very impressed with the rock we got out of the PrueHeart vein this time, agate that came from below the frost line. The pieces we kept look remarkable and some are quite solid, thankfully crack-free. And there's lots more where that came from, but we got to a point where we have to do at least two days of overburden removal before we can get at the rest of the vein. Part of the vein we could see when we quit was at least a foot wide, showing large plumes, and flaming colors. We also dug out more pieces of gray/white/black that Leland calls "moonlight agate." The monochrome agate is very appealing in an understated, minimalist way. Once the rock is slabbed and graded, we will probably have about fifty percent waste (that's what Steve gets out of the Prudent Man), but we did excavate some gem-quality, and many almost-gem-quality pieces. After seeing that other rock hounds who purchased PrueHeart rock were able to sell small slabs for twenty dollars (even after noting in the descriptions that cracks were filled and stabilized), Steve has decided to do the same himself. He'll get the right kind of epoxy and polishing gizmos and go to work. Steve has buyers waiting for more PrueHeart rock—and he has more buyers than he can satisfy for Prudent Man agate. We're in business, but we're richer in experience than we are in money.

The photo on the left shows three slabs of rock from the PrueHeart vein (not to scale, each slab is about 9 inches wide). Agate slabs for sale at http://www.agateslabs.com, the website of Steve Howard (my brother). Or call Steve at 208.520.2449

Leland is still wracking his brain for a better way to loosen the hard white clay around the vein in the PrueHeart mine. That clay takes dozens of pick strikes without giving an inch. We also have the problem of insufficient testing for gold and silver in the surrounding "halo" of rock. We don't know what we have, but it's likely that there is colloidal gold in the halo around the agate vein. We have probably been throwing gold onto our piles of waste rock.

I did some "double jacking at the breast" in the PrueHeart mine. Single jacking is when the miner holds a chisel in one hand and hits it with a sledge hammer wielded with the other hand. Double jacking is when someone else holds the chisel so that the wielder of the sledge hammer can use both hands. I held a long chisel about three feet long while Steve slammed away with the sledge. It's hard to hold the chisel perfectly steady if the crack in the rock is not yet big enough for the chisel to bite. I told Steve I would keep the chisel from jumping as much as I could. He said not to worry, that so far he could tell the difference between my head and the chisel head. Very reassuring. The "breast" or "face" is the part of the cut one is working to get agate out of the vein. "Double jacking at the breast" sounds like my daughter's nursing technique as a baby.

Chisels sing as they bites into rock. If the note the chisel sings doesn't change after several blows, then it's no longer going anywhere, at which point we stop and let chisel and rock "rest." The rock is being pressured by the chisel even when we're not working it, so sometimes the rock lets go after "resting." Steve says the rock may not be ready to let go, but "it's plenty scared" and will loosen its grip eventually. When agate rests directly against a wall of clay we can sometimes "peel" the agate off the wall with a chisel or various pry bars. Steve makes some of his own pry bars and/or shapes the ends of commercially-available pry bars to suit our mining needs.

Other mining camp oddities: Steve, being the kind of man he is, brings his laptop computer and various other electronic equipment to the campsite. To charge all this stuff, he built a charging device. It's a marine deep-cell battery housed in an old army ammo box, with two power jacks on the outside. The power outlets are the same as you see in the dashboards of vehicles. In a pinch, the power source can also be used to jump a truck or 4-wheeler if a battery dies.

Dick and Judy Morris camped with us for one day, and one night. Dick is the prospector who wears his long white hair in two braids. Judy is Dick's wife, and is mainly known for bringing so much food that it's dangerous. Steve's always hurting himself by trying to eat enough to please her. You would think that Judy was a Jewish mother, but her ancestors are Mormon through and through.

Dick brought samples of PrueHeart agate he had cut, polished and set into jewelry. He displays the pieces at rock shows and is helping to spread the word about Prudent Man and PrueHeart rock among the aficionados who attend rock and jewelry shows.

The photo on the right is a bracelet made by Dick Morris of DM Silvery in Buhl, Idaho. 208.543.8869 telephone.

Dick and Judy don't do anything in the dark, so we waited until sunrise for breakfast. That was hard on Leland and I because we're not used to waiting for the morning recharge of food. We usually wear our headlamps to cook in the dark. Autumn days are too short to wait for sunrise to begin work, and we're also used to getting started early so that Leland can set up for morning photos.

If I remember correctly, Dick said that he is 65 years old, and his wife is close to the same age. He and Judy just roll out their sleeping bags in the bed of their pickup truck. They're tough. They remind me of pioneers of the late 1800s. Steve loaned them a big army poncho to ward of the frost.

Dick and Judy don't usually work in the mines. Their biggest contribution is to meander over the hillsides looking for "float" from the various veins and finding other outcrops for us to dig. Apparently, we need to dig all the hillsides for miles around. Then, of course, there's the food—they're very good at that. And Dick is the one that put Steve in touch with an old Mormon guy in Bountiful, Utah that makes mining tools by hand. One can never have too many tools, and tools for hard rock mining by hand are difficult to find. Steve may have to go to a third-world country where people still mine by hand.

There are several positive aspects to mining by hand, not the least of which is that environmental impact is kept to a minimum. There are fewer restrictions, rules, and regulations with which to comply—and less money to invest when you get started. We had to pay fees to file the claims, and there are laws dating back to 1872 with which we have to comply, but for the most part we are free to dig as long as we don't use any mechanical devices, and no dynamite of course. We're not using or changing any water courses, so most other visitors to White Knob Mountains don't see our "mines" unless they walk right up to them.

Leland Howard working with a pry bar in the PrueHeart mine. The milk crates contain chunks of agate that are worth taking back to Steve's place for cutting into slabs.

General how-did-we-find-it info: The Challis Volcanics meet dolomitic limestone in the area where our mining claims are staked. Where there are contact zones between different rock types, there are apt to be fractures, fissures, etc. where minerals can collect. The rhyolitic volcanic activity promises hydrothermal action that will deposit minerals. The agate veins we're working are hydrothermal. Jets of hot water, under pressure, pushed minerals into weak spots and fractures (probably - this is our interpretation of the geology). Many thousand years later, the minerals harden.

We walk the trail-less hills where the geology looks promising, looking for "float" which is a piece of agate that erosion or other earth movement has floated out of the vein and onto the surface. Most float is garbage agate, but if you find good float that is plume agate, then you look for where it might have originated. I found one piece of dramatic float (about fist-size) a few feet below the PrueHeart ledge. A ledge of barely exposed agate, with bands of horizontal color crossed the hill. I looked at the dirt around it and noticed a very slight depression, and a slight change in the character of the dirt along a north-south line about twelve feet long. I thought it was worth digging and just sat on it, watching a pair of nesting hawks in the aspen grove below until Steve came over to confirm what I had found.

The exposed portion of the vein contained a lot of white, fractured, snowy junk agate, but all the other signs were good. For one thing, it was obviously hydrothermal and not exothermal. Hydrothermal agate veins have characteristic "coxcomb" formations along the edges. You can see these reddish coxcombs on the pictures, and we could see a bit of an edge like that on the surface.

The PrueHeart Mine is almost exactly 100 miles from Idaho Falls, Idaho. We drive west across the desert, round the southern foot of the Lost River Range, and then drive north along the Big Lost River Valley to a spot where we can turn west again to enter the White Knob Mountains along a dirt road.

Steve has been studying the area for a couple of decades, and I have occasionally followed along after him, accidentally absorbing bits of geological information. Once we find a likely area to stake a claim, we put up a claim post, use a GPS to set up four corner posts, and fill out the necessary papers.

For the most part, we walk many miles of hills covered with grass and low shrubs. There are trees only along water courses, or in ravines, until one reaches the conifer treeline at higher elevations. Sheep Mountain above Steve's mine is over 10,000 feet high, and one can climb to conifers there.

Steve, Leland, and I went to Challis and got our mining claim papers notarized on Friday, May 12th. We got an impromptu tour of the 1880s safe that they built the new building around. The safe was apparently too big to move. It had double doors, and both sets of doors were painted with elaborate landscapes. The offices were furnished with a combination of antiques and modern furniture. Steve pretty much instructed the ladies who were notarizing and filing the papers. They must not handle casual miner claims very often. We have to pay about $190 for this filing and copies. After the initial filing, we have to work the mine and pay $5 per year to keep the claim active. There are a lot of other rules to follow, and one must keep up with those by contacting whatever public land administrator is responsible for the mining district in which the claim lies.

Here's an excerpt from the applicable congressional law, written in 1872:
TITLE 30--MINERAL LANDS AND MINING
CHAPTER 2--MINERAL LANDS AND REGULATIONS IN GENERAL
Sec. 26. Locators' rights of possession and enjoyment

The locators of all mining locations made on any mineral vein, lode, or ledge, situated on the public domain, their heirs and assigns, where no adverse claim existed on the 10th day of May 1872 so long as they comply with the laws of the United States, and with State, territorial, and local regulations not in conflict with the laws of the United States governing their possessory title, shall have the exclusive right of possession and enjoyment of all the surface included within the lines of their locations, and of all veins, lodes, and ledges throughout their entire depth... (R.S. Sec. 2322.)

Agate slabs for sale at http://www.agateslabs.com, the website of Steve Howard (my brother). Or call Steve at 208.520.2449