Unlikely new favorite spot!

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Okay so two weeks ago I was doing some prospecting not far from the Gold Bar area in Washington state. I had been searching for a good area to check out for awhile and had little success finding a spot. Seemed like the best looking areas were blocked off. private, etc. Anyway after searching for longer than I had anticipated I settled on a location that was easy to access but looked like it would contain little gold. I break out my pan and test one small shovelful of material classified down to 1/8. I started panning it down expecting to find nothing... but to my surprise there's about a dozen small colors in the bottom of my pan! I figured it must be a fluke or I'm seeing things. So I move a few feet upstream and try another sample with the same results. Now I'm getting excited. I start taking more samples, moving up about 5 feet each time, and every pan had at least 6-12 colors in it. I want to locate the richest spot so I continue my test pans, but they all come up just about the same. So I move up about 20 yards to a location that looks even more promising... and turn up nothing, not even a speck! I try another spot a little ways down from my first pan, nothing again! I step back and look at the area that's containing gold trying to figure out why that particular location is so rich, and can't understand it. It's on the bank of a decent size river, the flow is not particularly fast or slow, it's not just before or after a bend, in fact it's right in the middle of a rather long straight portion that goes on for at least 100 yards in both directions. The area is covered in medium sized smooth stones with a lot of smaller gravel sized rocks mixed in with dirt. There are no obstructions or changes in current or anything notably different I can see. And all the material I test panned was scooped from the first couple inches of the gravel. I tried digging deeper and kept getting the same size gravel and stones with about the same amount of gold. I wasn't able to get down to anything solid, just gravel as far as I could dig. The gold seemed to be evenly distributed between the first inch all the way down at least a foot or more along about 100 feet of river bank. I talked to some old timers I know in the area and they started cracking jokes when I told them I was finding color in that area, they tried to be nice but I'm convinced they were laughing at me when my back was turned. They must have thought I didn't know what gold looked like, but that's fine with me, I'll keep this little place to myself! My first trip I only brought home a tiny bit of material since it took me so long to find the spot, but I went back this past weekend and filled one five gallon bucket about halfway and another about 3/4 of the way and brought them home. I just finished concentrating and panning down about half the first bucket and this is what I got so far.




It's pretty small stuff but I'm happy with it so far. Still scratching my head about how all the gold ended up in that one spot and no where else though. I'm not complaining however, the area is easy to get to, the gold is right on top, and very little black sand to pan out! I did notice that a lot of the larger stones had quartz marbling and I pulled a few chunks of what I call eroded quartz out of my classifier. Just small chunks of white rock with lots of pits and chunks like it's falling apart but still solid. I checked up stream and inspected the boulders there and noticed a lot of them looked to be rusty and some had very large smooth white quartz like veins on the surface that looked really interesting. I'll have to take pictures of it next time I go back. I was getting rained on just about the entire time so my camera wasn't out much. Anyway, just to make sure I panned a lot around these boulders and the surrounding area but found zero colors. In the end I gave up looking for the source of the gold and was content to fill my buckets as fast as I could. But I'd still like to know where it all came from!

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Congratulations on catching some!

All the best,

Lanny
http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries.html

 

[NuggetN8]

Usually smaller stuff is distributed pretty evenly throughout overburden from what I've seen in the places I go. (probably depends on the area though) I bet there's some bigger stuff on the bedrock if you could get down to it. xD Is it in an area where you could sluice?

 

[bigjoek]

Looks the skykomish gold. Nice dark yellow. Congrats man. Thats awesome. Of tour ever looking for a dig partner let me know

 

[wa-au-nut]

That area has had 3 100 yr. flood events since 75. That river was flat out a torent. Moved a lot of Huge Rocks. The amount of water moving through there was unreal. Saw that with my own eye's. Most place in that valley you would drown by water back filling your hole before you reach bedrock. Know there's more spots like that in that valley. Lot of flood gold moved those years, Just need to think about how the water was moving at 50' higher than it is now. Yup it was that high! John

 

[AlwaysBusyJ]

Wow, didn't know about the floods, only lived in the area about four years now. Thanks for the info! I will definitely be keeping that in mind the next time I'm in that area. Opens up a lot of new places to check out. 50' sure is a lot of water, never would have thought it got that high. I'll have to do some research on the history of the area. I think now I'm going to start checking higher up the bank rather than further down the river.

 

[calisdad]

Great sampling technique Always. Take what the river has to offer. I'd go back and harvest what you can and perhaps more puzzle pieces will fall in place.

If there's enough flow use something like a bazooka gold trap or other fluid bed device. Looks to be a perfect spot for a gold cube (kinda pricey if you don't use it) or this interesting device: How It Works - Gold Rush Nugget Bucket
(I have no business dealings with any of the above I just think a fluid bed device would be best for the fine gold you're finding)

Let us know how it turns out. HH

 

[spillercanyon]

Could be the areas that look more promising, have been worked recently. I have found a number of areas where the 'easy' gold has been taken and yet find gold where it is not so obvious. I see massive cracks and boulders and yet find little but find an area close by, often on a straight away, where for one reason or another there is a slow spot on the creek and do well. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, take some equipment in there for moving material and have at it.

 

[wa-au-nut]

When we get a early heavy snow fall for awhile and have a good snow pack up high then get a Pineapple Express hit for a week or more with heavy rains and snow level shoots to 6-7 thousand feet the water levels in the Puget Sound rivers can be unreal. Dec. 75 was 1, again in 86, then in 91, and 95or6. The S river go RAGING. How many times have those rivers changed course over the years? Look at the gravel pit behind Zeke's, all river rock well away from the river. Glacial? Maybe! But I'm thinking from Index wall to Index Mt. is a choke Pt. that everthing in the Sky Valley faned out from. The N.Fork runs fron a different valley above the wall.