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▶ CEX Website: cex.io
We’re back at the Golden Griffin Mine, and this time we brought in an excavator to rip open the surface veins and see what the mountain is hiding. Instead of drilling and blasting underground, we’re peeling back the loose rock, exposing quartz, chasing galena, and trying to understand where the high-grade gold is concentrating.
In this episode, Jason is joined by Harry from @mineoperator and Pete from @Standingbearloggingandmore as they work across two surface veins at the Golden Griffin. The snow has melted, the hillside is open, and the goal is simple: expose the vein, sample the mineralized quartz, follow the structure, and see if the gold indicators line up with what we’ve already found underground.
The first mission is just getting the machine into position without getting into trouble on the steep hillside. Once the excavator starts ripping, the crew quickly finds quartz, rusty oxidized vein material, iron sulfides, copper staining, chalcopyrite, and beautiful platy galena. Around this mine, galena has been one of the strongest indicators of gold, so every shiny seam and heavy piece of ore gets a closer look.
As the vein is exposed, things get more interesting. The quartz pinches down in places, widens out in others, and appears to jog across a small fault zone. That fault may be one of the most important clues in the whole video. Underground, the Golden Griffin has already shown high-grade pockets near structural changes, and this surface exposure lines up with the same kind of movement. Where the vein bends, breaks, changes pressure, or opens up, that is exactly where gold-bearing fluids can drop minerals.
The crew samples carefully, bags ore from the exposed vein, checks suspicious rocks with a metal detector, breaks open galena-rich pieces, and follows the red oxidized zones along the footwall. Some pieces are loaded with sulfides. Others show green copper staining. A few make the detector sing. And when the crew starts panning material from the vein, the reaction says it all.
What you’ll see in this video:
– Excavator work on steep surface veins at the Golden Griffin Mine
– Two separate quartz veins exposed on the hillside
– Galena, chalcopyrite, pyrite, copper oxidation, and rusty quartz
– A fault offset that may control high-grade gold pockets
– Metal detecting hot rocks and mineralized vein material
– Ore sampling, bagging, panning, and testing
– A look at how surface vein exploration connects to underground mining
– Smelting/testing results from concentrated material, including a small gold/silver precious metal button shown in the visuals
This is the kind of hard rock exploration we love: real geology, real equipment, real uncertainty, and real payoff. Not every shiny rock is gold, and not every vein is worth mining, but when quartz, galena, sulfides, oxidation, structure, and old high-grade results all line up, it is worth taking the time to investigate.
The Golden Griffin Mine continues to teach us more every time we open up a new section. Sometimes the vein is only a few inches wide. Sometimes it opens into a much stronger zone. Sometimes the most important clue is not the gold itself, but the fault, the galena seam, the oxidized pocket, or the way the vein changes direction.
Drop a comment below: would you keep chasing this surface vein, or would you portal in and follow it underground?
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Music in this Video:
“Roadtrip To Kansas” by Lobo Loco, Free Music Archive, CC BY
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▶ Coinbase Website: Coinbase.com
▶ CEX Website: cex.io
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