Why not?
"Momma" won't let you. That's why!
Mother nature is not only unforgiving but also "unwilling" to release her riches in the winter. The desperate, the uninitiated, the unprepared and the uninhibited unfortunately fall victims to a cruel, harsh reality.
I know of many stories where the uninitiated Cheechako has gone out into the wild in the winter with an illusion of collecting GOLD.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cheechako
The reasons for failure are - as the stories are - many. It is when the unexpected cold which should have been expected comes to visit.
We expect it to be cold. Ice cold! We don't expect it to be so cold that ice freezes back faster than you can thaw it! We might think we have experience in the Arctic. That experience was in a "mild" Arctic. An Arctic where temperatures were minus 10 to minus 20 Fahrenheit. This time is different! This winter is minus 20 to minus 40 Fahrenheit. Prospectors and miners during the Klondike days were a tough breed. They suffered the cold. The cold got colder and they began to freeze. First their fingers and feet. Then their hands and arms and legs. When they were found, they were frozen solid. Completely frozen! In the mining community of Long, south of Ruby, prospectors and miners were frequently caught in freezing temperatures. They were found frozen. The ground was frozen. They couldn't be buried. They were stacked and stored in the rafters of buildings until the ground thawed enough in the early spring or summer to dig a hole so they could be properly buried.
The winter of 1971, I lived in North Pole, Alaska. It might as well have been "the" North Pole.
"Record low temperatures were set across Alaska during the historic arctic blast of January 1971. The temperature in Fairbanks did not rise above -22°F for 18 consecutive days that month, a record stretch of such low temperatures. Dietrich Camp dropped to its coldest-ever temperature of -70°F on January 23, 1971."
I met an old ice cold GOLD miner named Robby. Robby was an "Iditarod musher". He had sled dogs and a sled. He pushed the limit. He tried to mine ice cold gold. Ice cold placer GOLD - the "easy" stuff. He shared story after story of his frustration and failures. Failure after failure. Making a fire on the Frozen ground. Melting the ice cold GOLD. Then quickly excavating the ground to get the spoils of GOLD from the ground. The ground was frozen. Immediately frozen!
The early history of GOLD prospecting and mining in and around Fairbanks serve as a testament to the cruel, harsh reality.
Stick around. There's more!
- Geowizard