gold claim
Does anyone do any gold mining as a workamping. Phil
Forum Discussion
If you are talking about real gold mining, that is a job, not a part-time workamping gig. Miners work long, hard hours in very harsh conditions. Not a job for the faint of heart. You need either a skill (heavy equipment operator) or the ability to do a whole bunch of grunt work (heavy, dirty lifting and many hours on the business end of a shovel comes to mind).
As for staking a claim and working your own mother lode, just ask yourself what do you know or what can you do that 10,000 people before you hadn't tried? Most successful mining operations just plain overwhelm the obstacles to get gold. They move thousands of tons of dirt to get ounces of gold. They use dangerous chemicals to leach the gold out of hard rock. The blast away entire sides of mountains. The successful companies employ armies of geologists and use high tech equipment costing millions of dollars to just narrow down where to dig. You don't just walk up to any anonymous mountain stream and pan out a few pounds of nuggets. Any stream that had that kind of treasure was found and worked over a hundred years ago.
Not saying it wouldn't be an interesting career choice, but unless you have 30 years of heavy equipment experience and want to take on one more challenge, don't see gold mining as something you do on a whim.
As for staking a claim and working your own mother lode, just ask yourself what do you know or what can you do that 10,000 people before you hadn't tried? Most successful mining operations just plain overwhelm the obstacles to get gold. They move thousands of tons of dirt to get ounces of gold. They use dangerous chemicals to leach the gold out of hard rock. The blast away entire sides of mountains. The successful companies employ armies of geologists and use high tech equipment costing millions of dollars to just narrow down where to dig. You don't just walk up to any anonymous mountain stream and pan out a few pounds of nuggets. Any stream that had that kind of treasure was found and worked over a hundred years ago.
Not saying it wouldn't be an interesting career choice, but unless you have 30 years of heavy equipment experience and want to take on one more challenge, don't see gold mining as something you do on a whim.
