Finding High Grade Fluorite in Deserted Gold Mine

hey guys it's your favorite Gold Miner prospector and geologist Jeff Williams and today we're not going to do any gold mining I know you're saying Jeff but you're a gold miner I know right now today we're going to go mining for fluide and we're going to be going in that mountain right there so let's get into it looks like I spoke too soon look at this waterfall see all the eons it's carved it out there has to be rocks down in there for the gold to get trapped if not it'll just blow it out like it did this this flow sand oh look at this fault that I have right here see that and you have all this Basalt you see the basalt running in through here so you have a fissure there's the hanging wall there's the foot wall right there do you see it and then you can see the chill margins on the outer edges and then the basalt's in the middle and you can see where the basalt was starting to become changed or altered through hydrothermal fluid intrusions and you can see that heavily right in through here look at that that's why when they got to this point they begin to Stope it out but as you can tell there is no mineralization in it so that's why they didn't continue stooping it but you'll see these dikes of balt running into these fissures and sometimes they can have minerals on the outer chill margins but there's nothing in this one then they continue the cross cut forward trying to get to that dyke up on the hill that has the mineralization in it you can see how the Rock is getting darker now you have a lot of of this Alkali precipitate coming out see that all that nasty Alkali we got some ground fall here and this isn't a Stope this is actually where the ground is soft enough where it's peeling away now look at the structure of the rock here see where this granitic rock has been heavily altered to where it's starting to fall apart so you have two different rock types in contact with each other and then they came into another fault here see that there's your your fault plane right there that's a no-brainer and you can see the contact Zone A lot of times you'll have minerals right along these contact zones you see that right here to here and that is why they did that they chased that thing all the way back along the the hanging wall because most of your minerals are along your hanging wall and you see that there's your hanging wall and I can I can smell sulfur in it yeah and see how soft and brly that is yeah that's why I got so much ground fall here so that's why they started to Stope this hoping to find minerals in the contact zone between this granitic rock and it looks like I've got another basaltic Dyke right here oh you can really smell with sulfur in it that's nothing but but once again they didn't find anything so they got to this point and they said you know what we're going to do a cross cut they continued going this direction but this was a small cross cut looking for more minerals look at this is a tiny cross cut see how tiny that is and then you got another one here they're just looking for more mineral assemblages another little cross cut right here you see that now the neat thing about these cross Cuts is that the miners would use these when they're setting blast down the way they would get in here when the charge or the round goes off pressure wave would rush past them that way it wouldn't blow their eardrums out now in most modern Minds what they'll do is they'll take cigarette butts and stick it in their ears and then open their mouth so it doesn't blow out their eardrums now here you can see where the drift was going this way because you've got your look at this you've got a fault right here you see it this beautiful fissure right there so they started to go forward and Chase it in this direction it kind of pinched and petered out and they said you know what let's go back to this point and we'll change direction and that's what they did so they came here and look what happened they tapped in to this natural fissure here this is what got them excited and fissures are perfect conduits for hydrothermal fluids and it's the hydrothermal fluids that are carrying all the mineral sybles in it and you can see where it's been altering the host Rock which is mostly andesite but of course as I told you earlier this whole plug we're in is what mostly riight but you got basement rock you got granitic rock and you got dkes of B salt cutting through it now look at this it might not look like anything but can you imagine cutting this little tiny Crosscut I mean they must have been hand stealing it to get in there so what we're going to do is we're going to go back in there and see what's in there but I'm not going to do anything till you smash that like button smash it hard all right let's get in there now already I've got evidence look at that evidence of meganes oxide see that it's got a little back on it so you got to be careful look at that ooh that's why you got to be careful in these older smaller mod because a lot of times the cross cuts are tiny because they didn't want to spend the money to open up a fullsize drift now look what I got here see I got a natural fissure running here the fissures here have an East West strike to him see that there's another one there another one there isn't that pretty and so the hydrothermal fluids come rushing up through here and look at that what do you see a lot of calite and then later quartz will replace the calite and then the fluorite will begin to precipitate out of that with manganese oxide and a lot of the gold mines around here this is what you see manganes oxide with fluoride crystals ain't that pretty nice see the fissure and all this is calite and I'm going to show you what that looks like with a black light here in a minute but I wanted you to get a taste of what you're looking at see look at that isn't that pretty see those natural fissures and all the vein structures in this District are fissure filling vein structur and they all have the same composition that's why it's an no-brainer look at that see all the calide in there see all the calide oh ooh look at that look at that nothing but M and these oxide for weeks look at this natural fissure and it goes way up in there this is so cool oh now nice see how kgy it is is it almost looks like box works don't it but it's not I got Dynamite boxes back here too o what else do I got back here oh I got something living back here hi see him right there right there or a packrat he's so cute take a look at him no see the alternate banding here you have color form and crusta form and you can see traces of sulfur in there and magnes oxide but I know it's in in here somewhere it's got to be look at that now if my wife can do this there's no excuse for you guys at home sitting on the couch eating chips getting fat see this big old hanging wall right here look at that Isn't that cool it's called a hanging wall cuz it hangs in towards you and then here's the foot wall because it goes away from you most of your mineral assemblages look you can see here are going to be against your hanging wall but this was one big fissure and you can see how there was an injection in the middle of this ride light and then on the outer edges is where you have the fluids bringing in all that manganese oxide and all the calite and of course all the fluide look at that little teeny stall right there pulling the hanging wall up and you can see where they were working that that RI light up there trying to get out any mineral assmes and you can see some more fissures right back up in there but I'm going to go back up in here because I think I have parallel veins in here which I do see these natural fissures these are parallel veins and you can see tons and tons more of that beautiful green fluoride see that here's another fissure here oh it just gobs and gobs of it right here look at this this is absolutely amazing look at that nothing but fluoride florite and calite that's amazing and here's another one that's why I say always check for parallel veins and here's another one look at this see this this is a raise that goes all the way up to the top of the mountain because they found more up there and you can see it's following the dip of these fissures and somebody wanted to go down there and drink some Bud Light all right so we got ourselves a black light and I'm going to see if I can turn my light off so you can see what this looks like cuz this is pretty cool I got a nice deposit here nice look at that o isn't that pretty all along there huh that is nice like I said fluorite was one of the indicator minerals that the miners would look for when looking for gold out in this particular district and it's not only that but it's pretty to collect them as specimens too cuz some of them are terminated I'm at a junction right now now I'm going to go into detail why this Junction's here so some of you people out there who hit Junctions can understand why I've got a natural fissure running right through here I can see it and you can see the fault plane right there you see it but you can see the fluoride there's a seam of it right in through there you see that miners are smart and they knew that hey we in the past when we were driving this Holly drip we saw other parallel veins I showed you that earlier when they did a small cross cut so what did they do they got to this point and they said hey you know what we got to know if there's a larger vein structure to the South so what we're going to do is we're going to drive a cross cut in this direction while we have the rest of of our team continue to follow this particular vein structure right here now the gold was traveling in this material of course A lot of it brated because of fault movement and the other crew went the other direction this way because they were certain that maybe there were higher gold deposits this way so let's go this way let's see what they found I'm curious so they're driving this drift in this way and we're going through this particular rock that we're in right now is Rite this is all riy right here and we're inside of a riy dome and you also have granite or granitoid rocks in the area and of course the a lot of the basement rock is and the because remember all this stuff didn't happen at once you had multiple Generations or episodes happening over millions of years so they got to this point and they thought well we'll drive start driving the drift this way but obviously there's nothing here this this is Barren rolly there's nothing in it I can tell just by looking at it now I want you to take a look at these bore holes for the dynamite see that look how tiny they are these guys were hand stealing you can always tell if they were hand stealing or if they're using pneumatics based on the size of the holes that they drill for their Dynamite when you're in a mine and you see a fresh hole that's been cut that hasn't been altered by the blast take a good look at it this will tell you in some degree the age of the mine it looks like they had maybe 10 so you've got three on the outer wall you got some lifters or what you call tow holes there must have been a burn of some kind in the middle but this is a small tiny Crosscut well they didn't see anything there so they said hey let's keep advancing to the r light in this direction and they did and they kept pushing and pushing now they kept seeing all these different areas where the fluids which was carrying lots of sulfur with it was starting to seep out of the Rock and now you can see where the rock is changing this is andesite you can tell it's that gray nasty material and it's got Alkali F spars in it and you can see these areas where alteration has occurred and if you get close enough you could smell the sulfur in there it's nasty and of course I got alkalize precipitating out cuz there's groundwater really really close to it we're in andesite right now there's no gold in the andesite here I could tell I don't know why they would be following at this direction but they did then as they're cutting through the an aite looking for more fissures they found one here's another fissure here you notice how far away we are from the original fissures and it's got the classic example here and there's a survey tag there I've got all these natural fissures in there all these huge vugs and all the black manganese oxide that's in there which is very common in this District so they got excited but it didn't have anything in it so they Advanced through this andesite some more so they're coming through the andesite and they're hoping to hit another one you can see in this particular section of the drift where they started to back fill it and whenever you see back fill like this that means that the drift had no value to it it it played out or it didn't find anything and so the miners they didn't want to have to do extra work or extra labor hauling out mck or waste rock so they say Hey where's the nearest place we can dump this in a spot we're not using well we've got drifts that are not productive we'll go dump it in there so they would wheel all their muck and they start from the back and work their way out and they would fill these things up that's why you can't always gauge the size of a Mine by its was waist rock pile because a lot of the waist Rock would still be inside the mine and that's especially true if you're doing block cutting or cutting fills a lot of the waist rock is still inside the mine that's how I know that there's nothing in here cuz it's all filled all right we're going to go back to the other one and we're going to see where that one went cuz I think that one's going to be productive look at these fissures these vugs these huge vugs filled with manganese outside imagine the boiling that was going on during this time look at that all those hydrothermal fluids blind fluids percolating in through here over millions of years look at that so that tells me you can see the vein structure but all of a sudden what happens it looks terrible again what's going on and you can see the ri light which is the host truck and here's one of those little cutouts see what I mean the miners could sit in here now it was very important for the miners back then who weren't using electric blasting caps they used safety fuse back in those days okay it was very very important for them to be as close to the blast as possible without getting hurt because they had to literally listen and count all the shots that were going off on that round because if one of them didn't go off they had to wait an hour to sometimes all day depending on who your powder monkey was because they wanted to make sure they didn't have a bootleg round so they would wait and count 1 2 3 4 if they all went off great let it air out we'll go back and we'll bar down and then we'll we'll check for minerals if they heard one that didn't go off or maybe a few that didn't go off they had to wait and that is the scary part because the powder monkey whose job was to actually load the dynamite and then light it it's his job to go back there and check and find out where that bootleg round is so you can't send your miners back there if there's a bootleg round because they don't know they're just going to go back in there and start digging and if they were to hit that blasting cap that's in one of those sticks of powder it's going to set that Dynamite off and vaporize them especially in your smaller mins usually it's one or two guys so they're just sitting there waiting and Counting that's why you'll see a lot of these in the smaller mines are little dugouts that are on the side people are like is that a cross cut it's not very big no some of these are made just for what I told you air is getting really thick and really stale and I can see where there's been a lot a lot of boiling action look at this oh my gosh this is nothing but calite that's [Music] incredible see the calite that's nothing but calite and these huge open pockets and bugs and manganese oxide for weeks look at this that is amazing somebody actually got up there and was digging that means this is a good area if people are going to do that and look at this moner huge fissure now I know that there's gold in here because they stoped it and I can tell just by looking I've got mineralization there in some of the banding which is typical in hydrothermal vein structure and I can see mineral sybles in there where all that red is that's where I'd be digging in fact that's where I'm going to be digging isn't that beautiful looks like they were going to drop a winds in the floor too I don't think it goes much further but we'll check we'll definitely check where does it go oh notice everything is starting to pinch out starting to pinch look at the vein structure on the back it's pinching look at this and I can tell that it pinched cuz I got a junction see that what you see here is a a typical cross pattern and when you see these this usually means either a they found another Shear Zone that had mineralization in in it or they're getting to the very end of the vein and they're desperately trying to find any more leads to it so you can see they went forward they didn't see anything this is terrible looking Rock and so they came over here and they cross cuted and they're in andesite over here terrible Rock ain't no gold in that and then they came over here and they found this other Shear Zone see this this is the hanging wall of another Shear they said hey maybe just maybe this might go somewhere and do something but look at this we're getting back into that gray andesite nasty andesite they came over here and said hey we found a vein we found a vein and you see that they did and there's a nice big healthy pocket right up in there so then they got excited again and they start drilling blasting but obviously it didn't have enough mineralization in it they even marked it here now I want you to take a look at these patterns that are right here on the face on the working face and you'll see that a lot people don't know what that is they think it's some type of a fossil but it's not what that is is dendritic iron and when iron starts to precipitate out it can grow like in a fern-like design and they call those dendrites or dendritic formations and gold can form out like that too it's really cool and you can see where they actually ran some blasts in here trying to get samples here here here they blasted this section out and they were seeing if there was enough gold in here to keep the mine going but obviously there wasn't now your gold is going to be over here and not in here but you you can also see the banding I was telling you about which is very common in a lot of your hydrothermal vein structures they always have banding cuz you have multiple Generations coming in causing that banding effect you have silicates and you have carbonates in there and like I said you have crusta form and you have color form in there which is an obvious no-brainer that this was hydrothermal in nature but this is fantastic but I'm want to go back and I'm going to see if I can chip out some of that fluoride cuz oh there's some huge terminated crystals in there and I'm going to check that mineralization too because we're stooping and stooping means gold so let's go now look at this I don't know if you can see it I'll try to get the light in there for you see all that fuzzy hair growing in there see all that right up in there now a lot of people think that's as best is it's not those are that's gypson hair that's precipitating out see that that's all gypson it's really pretty but it's really really delicate up in there let's see if I can get a better shot of that there I don't know if you can see that but that's all gyps in here gypson fuzz as I call it see that that's all gypson needles that are precipitating out isn't that pretty so I'm going to climb up in that bug right there oh it's hot it's hot there's no air up here look oh man air is thick thick as thieves look at that see the mineralization in that look at that yeah all right so I'm going to chip out what I can and I'll grind it up in a mortar and pestle or Dolly pot they call it in Australia and then I got a whole bunch of beautiful looking terminated fluoride crystals in here too I'll try to get that out but man the air is it's thick really thick what are you [Music] doing I really got to quit using Walmart bu just come on in belly up to the bar wil oh oh a finger that dollar bills everywhere look at this it's nothing but dollar bills nothing but just solid money it's the money room it must be a million dollars in here and of course they have live music here too look at this the whole room is filled with dollar bills that oh that's cool there it is there's the honeymoon suite just as it was they've seen apparitions in here and I think there's photos of it around here somewhere yeah right there imagine if this was your hotel room looking it out into a downtown Oatman Isn't that cool oh man those are some nasty toes look at them toes Reach for the Stars Pilgrim yeah reach for the star come on boy come get some yeah oh man the sights are off on this thing the sights are off yeah come get some boy come get some yeah woo yeah what is that thing I don't even know what that is what's that up there yeah what's your name and what's this all about Bob meric desert Diggin open Arizona yeah and you got your shop out here right yes sir this is open gold right here open gold off the kichi layer off the top nice you're doing good backpacking that yeah oh that's a nice flake right there nice little ones there and this is from drywashing no uh we back packed it and brought it right here to the shop pan it all out oh high five my brother yeah color in the band nice you got yourself a honey hole now yeah nice little spot right there wow so you're over here on the end of town they can come see you anytime they want huh oh yeah we got gold pan there's blacksmithing ax throwing yeah axe we just open don't get angry couples in that one welcoming center right here next door right came out real good nice yeah trying to build it up oh you got all kinds of stuff in here here and a gold panning tub yep we can do the gold panting there gym panning gold panning yep you can do that and I get my rock saws all set up and everything oh c do lapidary work so I'll be doing all the smart probably put a TV up here with a and all this stuff is yours that's all oh this is cool where'd you get it all actually all this I I built out of all the uh stuff I found out here by the mines and just out in the old t I've used all the wood that I found out here in open wow this is all open wood yeah actually the roof is sign the old Oatman sign oh wow you're right it is the old Oatman sign the big one that was outside of town there nice this is really cool you did a good job then I dug this out hammer and chisel this whole shaft and then that was closed yeah yeah this was all closed and you opened it yeah you did a good job oh it's nice in here wow yeah I remember when this was all full this is that nasty andesite and you cut right through it andite is something I'll tell you what yes it is big old piece of it right there oh yeah that's andesite I know that anywhere yeahhuh wow what was this though this is part of the old hotel right part of like the maid's quarters or wow laundry room something like that yeah before it burned down y there's another one in there pretty cool check out of there nice oh wow this looks like a vault nice so what do they got to do they want to come see you they come on up to open get up here you're up here ask for B everybody knows who I am up here up do some uh prospecting in uh in my shop do you take them out to the gold Fields no I do not we only do panning right here in my shop so we can get you out to some fire aot mines right here if you fire Dawn's quest of fire EXA yes sir that's a lot of fun and so some Goldfish out there there is absolutely Fishbowl shaer you got any shout outs for anybody desert dance jck desert Dance all right hey you know what I'm going to say right so come on let's go let's go don't forget at the end of each month give me that we give away Co Monster 1000 met detector bags of bags of perer from our drift mine and if you're lucky you can come out on one of our tours with these people are going to help you find nuggets the size of your fist now if you want to get involved with that all you got to do is look for the little icon at the end of the video that looks something like that you're going to click on it you're going to make a $10 ledge and you're in like fln and if you want to see more videos on the Oatman area go ahead and watch this video right here so what am I going to say so come on let's go [Music]

Channel: Ask Jeff Williams

Views: 35,940

Keywords: Unearthing High Grade Fluorite in Deserted Gold Mine, ask jeff williams, high grade gold ore, ask jeff williams gold panning, ask jeff williams gold, jeff williams gold, mineral exploration, jeff williams, ask jeff williams metal detector, jeff williams gold panning, high grade gold, quartz vein, Finding High Grade Fluorite in Deserted Gold Mine

Id: aWkY9Wxtv1w

Length: 26min 51sec (1611 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2024