A slide show of the Alaska Gold Expedition 2012 at the GPAA Cripple River Mining Camp near Nome, Alaska is now available on the GPAA website. For those who use Facebook, the photo album is also available for viewing and comments at: Facebook Alaska Gold Expedition 2012. More photos and stories will be published in upcoming editions of the Pick & Shovel Gazette and Gold Prospectors magazine as well as on the GPAA website. Also, stay tuned for some online video clips.

POCATELLO, IDAHO (August  14, 2012) -- Recreation advocates yesterday joined with several other organizations in a legal challenge to new forest planning regulations promulgated by the U.S. Forest Service. The BlueRibbon Coalition (BRC) and the California Association of 4Wheel Drive Clubs (Cal 4 Wheel) joined forces with the other forest product and multiple use groups in filing a lawsuit to require the Forest Service to modify its new planning rule to avoid its devastating impacts on the health of National Forests, recreational uses of the forests and communities located nearby.

Here are just a few Facebook images from the Alaska Gold Expedition 2012 at the GPAA Cripple River Camp near Nome, Alaska. Stay tuned for more photos and stories to be published in upcoming editions of the Pick & Shovel Gazette and Gold Prospectors magazine as well as on the official GPAA website. Also, stay tuned for some online video clips.

Greetings again from the Cripple River Gold Camp! The last few days it has really rained some, cleaning the air of imaginary impurities, as the air is pure enough here as it is. Great duck weather, as they have oil on their feathers so the rain just rolls off them like, well, like water off a duck’s back. Prospectors however, not being blessed with feathers, have to wear wet weather gear. Our chow hall, especially at meal time, has looked like a mobile flower garden for the last couple of days as rain gear comes in all colors, blue, yellow, green, tan, gold, orange, dark maroon, and even white to name a few colors. With prospectors coming in all shapes and sizes and you could give each one a flower name, and start a brand new unique flower book. If you did it might sound like this: Look, there’s a blue and black Cute Karla they are up and shining early, and like places warm and food related, while the same colored Dandy Dean variety is out and about all the time, and there’s a purple K.O. also called a ‘wood-chick’, this flower blooms mostly in wooded areas, while the orange to gold Roaming Joe is found everywhere in camp.

Greetings from Cripple River Gold Camp, where we have had days of golden sunshine, and just enough gentle breeze to chase away the tiny flying critters! After working hard on the beach all day it is nice to relax with a nice quiet game of ROWDY BINGO, A Cripple River Original. In this game you can talk, laugh, tease the caller, make paper airplanes out of used bingo cards (Rhoda) and fly them, or steal the pots like the Husman family. Glenn Husman from Berthoud Co., played bingo last night for the first time in over 40 years, accompanied by his sons Jason and Rodney who haven’t played for over 10 years. And NO they didn’t come to our gold camp for the BINGO! Jason, his son from Manhattan Beach Ca., saw information about this camp on T.V. on a show called “The Alaskan”, and called Glenn and Rodney and suggested they all come to Alaska. They each joined the GPAA and here they are!

Greetings from the Cripple River Gold (and everything else) Camp! This has been an interesting year here in camp, and with lots and lots of different activities to choose from; there seems to be too much to do at times. You must pick and chose how to spend your time when at camp for your best benefit! Most people are here to gold prospect or at least learn the basics of prospecting and the ins and outs of individual mining equipment, but not everyone! So there are additional activities and classes for the people who haven’t been bitten by that pesky and highly contagious “Gold Bug”. Or at least haven’t been bitten yet! Be Warned it can bite you anytime!

Greetings again from our Gold Camp 12 miles west of Nome Alaska! The weather this week is what we old timers in the camp are used to — summery sunshine! Hurrah! Now maybe the more exotic wild flowers will venture out, they’ve been mighty shy the past year or two. Of course, we always have a plethora of colorful wild flowers with their rainbow of jewel bright colors to delight the eye, and make the inner person smile, but some of the more delicate ones don’t always grow well without a lot of sun! One of the ones I miss is a plant that blooms a dark blue green and is a member of the Gentian family (Gentian Violet is a relative with a purple blossom that has a medicinal use). This shy flower is only a few inches high, and blooms only in bright sun. If your shadow hits it, or a cloud blocks out the sun, the blossom will close up before you can snap a picture! It is that fast, and so is a challenge to photograph unless you are very careful! Who said flower photography is simple!

Is gold ready to climb to $3,000 per ounce? It may seem unlikely now, but naysayers scoffed at the idea of $1,500-per-ounce gold as recently as 2009. And, at least one gold executive is confident that higher gold prices are likely in the months ahead. Sean Boyd is CEO of Agnico Eagle Mines, a mining company worth nearly $7 billion that has been in business for 40 years. The comments were made in an interview with King World News about the future of the shiny metal in the commodities market in relation to the inflating U.S. dollar and debt crises in America and Europe.

The Environmental Protection Agency has waded into waters way over its head. Recently, officials at the Region 10 office based in Boise, Idaho have claimed that dredging has been illegal for the last 40 years under the Clean Water Act, which was passed in 1972. Really? Hmmmm. Then, why are dredgers in almost every state, except California, still mining for gold? And, why are there six — soon to be seven — cases involving dredging before the California courts? According to Region 10 officials, that’s because the EPA has so generously allowed small-scale miners to continue dredging. This leads me to another question: Who died and left the EPA in charge? It sounds to me like the Environmental “Propaganda” Agency has taken a few lessons right out of the Joseph Goebbels playbook: “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed.”  I have another theory: The truth will prevail.