Chaz

I think you're right. Todd's role is to wear the clown shoes. Last week, things were looking up. This week it's bust again, after using ridiculous methods to get to a predictably absent pay layer. A first year student at the CO School of Mines could have done better. Of course this is contrasted by Beets and Schnabel who run more sensible operations. Both are doing well on the gold count and are having engaging seasons. Tony's old dredge projects are really cool, and Parker's personal and professional growing pains make for a good story arc.

There's rumors that clown shoes Hoffman may be heading for Colorado next season. http://starcasm.net/archives/359620 Back in September, I was having dinner in Buena Vista, CO. We got to talking with our waitress, who started talking about Jack Hoffman being a regular customer. He had been doing some kind of mining-related work in the area. BV, as we call it, is on the Arkansas River, downstream from the workings around Leadville. Its also about 40 miles from the old goldfields around Fairplay. The placer deposits there were pretty much played out before WW1. They used big bucket line dredges. You can see the tailing piles at Fairplay using Google Earth. If Clown Shoes maintains his ambitions, I don't know where they would go. Any claim worth working using the Hoffmans methods would have been plyed out decades ago.

Like others have pointed out thw Hoffmans seem to not prepare at all. Some guy waves a jar full of nuggests at them, supposedly from the High Bar claim, they head up there and start digging. No exploratory drilling or testing, and of course they come up empty. They switch to the Buckland and the same thing. It's. Gone on like that for years. Waste time and money. In the end the whole damned crew looks like a bunch of idiots.

True, but it does seem that Tony doesn't take the same care as others, that's all.

Has anyone else noticed that the Beets' cleanups always seem to be really dirty?