Elagantp
Tenderfoot
Hello. I'm a new prospector here in So Cal. Here is my adventure so far. (help?)
ok so I'm a wedding entertainer. I make great money but I'm bored out of my mind Monday through Thursday. I've been watching the discovery science channel and came across a show about these people in Alaska with huge mining equipment finding gold. Ok I thought, that's cool. Now I get to the introduction part and they show these three huge jars chock full of gold and instantly I'm thinking, "honey pack the bags...oh yeah can I buy a tractor?" I figured if I can find 1% of that stash, I'd be doing pretty good. Welp, I love geology and rocks and such, even got a degree in it from college. I figured hell, I'd like to go prospecting. I tell my younger brother about hunting for some gold and he was all in. We will split everything we find 50/50. (he is the younger one in my avatar picture.) So on with my education! I cruised the interwebs; Read countless sites; watched hours of "Youtube" videos; found a local (right down the street) prospecting store. I went in and and "holy crap Batman! I'm going to need to start buying things!" I walked out of that store spending about $300.00 bucks. I bought a crap ton of books, maps, two 14" pans and a 10"pan. It took me two days to read all the books. Got myself a basic understanding. I explored the maps and found the locations of the small red splotches on them said to be gold bearing spots. Not too bad, and not too far away. The first spot was a place called "Blue Cut" in the Cajon Pass right off hwy 15. No problem. I took my maps, and two pans, called my brother and we were off to drive the 15 minutes to the spot.
We hiked down into the stream a bit and I immediately began top "read" the geology of the area. I used all the new found knowledge I gained with my new books. We found a spot and put on our new Walmart water boots and went into the sand. We panned about 5-10 pans and found nothing. Not even a flake. No black sand. Not even a sparkle. Ok, maybe we're doing it wrong. Back off to the prospecting store we went. This time I walked out with a 1/2 inch classifier, and a 20 mesh classifier and a few big glass vials (because I was going to have all three of them filled with gold the next time I come in.) I overheard a conversation between a customer and the guy working at the prospecting store about Lytle Creek. He said he's found gold there. (I started to listen more intently, while pretending to look through a book.) Said to go up Lytle Creek to Middle Fork Road and follow it till it dead ends into a parking lot.) Well this guy was looking at sluice boxes. I went over to take a look myself. I thought "holy crap" these tiny things made from "Home Depot" parts start at a hundred bucks? This was for some plastic green thing call a LeTrap. well I passed and figured hell, I'm a man, I can build one of these things bigger a better. Off to Home Depot I went. Huh, exactly a hundred bucks later I walked out with a sheet of plywood and some metal parts. I did however go back to the prospecting store and buy another 70 bucks worth of small corrugated vinyl and miners moss. Alright! Off to the man cave I go.
The final product came out pretty well if I do say so myself. It was 2 feet wide and 6 feet long. It weighed a bit more than a "**** ton." Time to call my brother.
We packed the truck this time with everything we "needed" to find gold. Two chairs, a folding table, our boots, a pair of shovels, enough water for 40 people(just in case), all three gold pans, 3 buckets, and our 6 foot Frankenstein monster of a sluice box. Yeah, we were gonna find some gold today! Off we went for the 1/2 hour trek to Lytle Creek. We stopped at the forest station to get that Adventure pass and arrived at our destination in about 40 minutes total. We even passed a fellow prospector. I took the opportunity to pull over, to go talk to him. He told me he was finding about 1/2 a gram of gold a day working the stream. He showed me his sluice box and thought (if this guy is finding 1/2 gram a day with that piece of crap then were gonna find a crap ton more!) He showed me a sluice box made from a rain gutter and some wires in it. He was also using a ribbed commercial carpet.) heheheh, I thought. "I've got miners moss." Now were we were parked there was two trails. One heading up, and one heading down. I decided to explore a little bit and take the trail that went up. After about 1/4 mile up that trail I had enough insight to discover that we were heading away from the water. Bad. So back down we went to the lower trail to the water. It was only about 2 hundred yards away from the truck so out came the gear. It took us about an hour to get all that crap down to the creek and set it up. It was time to put the 6 foot monster into the stream and start collecting the booty. Well, dumb ass me, the frigginn 6 foot monster sluice box with miner moss and all the goodies inside started to float on down the creek. Who would have thought about that? WOOD FLOATS! ok. I'm learning here. We weighed the huge ass box down with some rocks and positioned it nicely. The water was coming in at a nice rate. The angle was sweet and we were ready to start feeding the monster. My brother started to shovel the sand and rocks and stuff right into our bucket with the 1/2 inch classifier on it. I was shaking it and getting all the big stones out. The bucket would fill and we fed the monster. Worked like a charm! the rifles were working right, the miners moss was catching small heavy rocks, we were in the rich! I thought a few hours of this and we'd be coming home with gold. Well, we spent about 4-5 hours shoveling and decided it was time to clean the box. The only thing heavier than our 6 foot monster was our the same thing being made out of soaked plywood, and a **** ton of dirt in it. Proudly hauling that mess up to our table, we were very careful not to lose one pebble out of the sluice. We dumped the contents into our 35 gallon Walmat tub and started to pack up...because hauling a **** ton of pebbles seemed to be a good idea at the time. Several trips to the truck and back, and two tired brother later, we made it back home, unpacked, and started to go through our "mother lode." I classified the dirt down through our 20 mesh screen. We saw tons and ton of small sparkly things. We panned the crap out of all that. It took us hours! We spread out the bigger stuff on my work bench. We went through two 5 gallon buckets by hand. We didn't find a damn thing. No black sand, no nuggets, no flakes, no flour, not even a hint of gold. *sigh* off to the prospecting store I went. This time I walked out with a $150 dollar "Blue Bowl."
Throughout the next week, I rebuilt our monster sluice box. I bought some sheet metal and hardware this time. I'm going to find some "damn" gold. I don't care how much money I spend! The new box it easily a tenth of the weight. Still 4 foot long, but I made it a mere 18" wide this time. I also asked the guy at the prospecting store about a place in Azusa called East Fork along the San Gabriel River. He told me to stay away from there, it's a rough spot. um.... ok, I thought. I did a bit of research on East Fork. So many videos to watch and forums to read about the place. It took me about 4 days to read everything that was said about the place. It was time to pack up and go.
Called my brother, loaded the truck (with only half the crap we took last time.) Off we went for the hour ride to Azusa!
We stopped at the ranger station to buy an Adventure Pass. The old guy behind the counter asked what we might be doing up there. I told him we were going to go prospecting for gold. He chuckled and said, um no you can't it is illegal to prospect for gold up there. With a very polite rebuttal, I simply educated the guy that it was not illegal, I read all about the USFS bullshit, joined the PLP, read their website, and told him that the "withdrawal" he was referring to simply meant that I could not file for a commercial claim and I was able to exercise my RIGHT to access public lands and do whatever I see fit as long as it was in fact within the law. He smiled at me, handed me a plastic trash bag, and told me to have fun. I knew my reading would come in handy!
ok off the the end of East Fork Road. Saturday morning 8am we passed Cattle Canyon, and that little bridge, went a bit further, and found that the entire state of California had the same idea! Crap! There was no where to park! We ended up down the road a bit. I read somewhere on this site to look for an old burnt up tree on the left as I hike down from the parking lot. There was to be a shelf or something there that contained gold. Yep, couldn't find any sign of an old burnt tree, not even a black spot on the ground. Off we went across the road and over the ridge into a place called "Nugget Alley." We carried all our crap down the trails trying hard not to break our asses tripping on a rock or something. We found a nice little spot. This time, we were going to do things a little bit different. We decided that we were going to go in the middle of the river, turn over a crap ton of rocks and shovel all the sweet sweet gold goodness into out 5 gallon buckets and take them home for further processing. DOH! You guys probably already know how heavy dirt is in a 5 gallon bucket, but for some reason, I decided that all the gold we were about to find would be worth the effort. My poor brother and I made several trips back and forth to the truck lugging a **** ton of buckets filled to the top non-the-less, up that climb. Oh Christ I was sore. I thought I defiantly broke myself. We met an old guy that told us he had been out there camping for a solid week, with no shower, and he only got bout 2 grams of gold (from what he said.) I thought after all the damn dirt we just hauled, we got to have a crap ton more than that! Off back home we went. I was to damn tired and sore to work our spoils that day so I waited till the morning. I couldn't sleep at all. It was like a little kid the day before going to Disney Land or the night before Christmas. I couldn't wait to get all that gold out. Needless to say, I classified for hours. I panned for what seemed like forever. I ran my "paydirt" through the blue bowl at a speed that would have shot an astronaut into orbit. After all that, my wife comes out, trespasses in my man cave and asks me if we're rich yet. Welp, no. I didn't find anything. No nuggets, no flakes, no flour, nothing. This time I think I lost a little bit of my dignity as well. All this work, all the money, and all the time I've spent so far and all I've got to show for it is a front yard full of dirt and rocks from various places I've been to.
OK I needed some motivation. I needed to know that I'm not on crack and that 8lb baby Jesus is not laughing his ass off at me. I joined some web site with "Prospector Jess." I started to read more and more. I just know people are out there finding gold. Where the hell is it, I wondered?
Ok, I rebuilt the monster sluice box. I rebuilt it into a "high banker." I popped on a hopper and a stand. I cruised out to Harbor Freight. Spent more money on a 3000 gallon per hour submersible pump and a 200 watt power inverter. Got me a car battery and all the crap to find this illusive friggin gold. It is no longer a hobby. It is no longer an interest. It is no longer something I want to do for fun. I'm now on a mission. I will start sacrificing goats and eating turkey livers. I will go visit a psychic adviser, to find this yellow crap.
Called my brother this last weekend. We took out a minimal supply of crap we didn't need back out to East Fork. This time we were going to beat all the people. We left at 10pm Saturday night. Got there around 11:30 or so. Still a lot of cars in the parking lot, but plenty of room to park. It was really dark. We put on our jackets, took out flashlights and decided to do some reconnaissance of Heaton Flatts. It about 1/2 mile or so above the parking lot. Damn it was dark. We turned a corner and saw lights out in the distance. I thought who in their right mind is going to be out here? Well, we crept up on some of the nicest guys that were looking for gold as well. We talked to them for about an hour or so. We told them we were new at this and still have not found anything. They showed us where they were digging and the huge ass boulders they moved out of the way. They told us that they find about 1/2 gram or so a day. Well allrighty then, we are in good company. After talking to them, they advised us to go back to nugget alley and dig in the old river banks up against the rocks. Well hell, there were a lot of huge holes dug into those areas, and I thought it may be worth the effort. My brother and I took our flashlights, and took all our gear to a sweet looking spot to set up. It was 2am. It was really dark. We set up all the stuff, hooked up our "high banker" to the pump and the pump to the inverter and the inverter to the battery. Yeah we had a light to plug into it as well. The damn battery wasn't charged enough to turn the pump on, so I took a trip back up to the truck, stole the battery out of it (yes I don't care at this point) and set it up again. VIOLA! the pump screams to life and we're in business.
Long story, I didn't find anything again. We got to be doing something wrong. I'll keep looking. I'll keep you all posted on my adventures. Stay tuned!
ok so I'm a wedding entertainer. I make great money but I'm bored out of my mind Monday through Thursday. I've been watching the discovery science channel and came across a show about these people in Alaska with huge mining equipment finding gold. Ok I thought, that's cool. Now I get to the introduction part and they show these three huge jars chock full of gold and instantly I'm thinking, "honey pack the bags...oh yeah can I buy a tractor?" I figured if I can find 1% of that stash, I'd be doing pretty good. Welp, I love geology and rocks and such, even got a degree in it from college. I figured hell, I'd like to go prospecting. I tell my younger brother about hunting for some gold and he was all in. We will split everything we find 50/50. (he is the younger one in my avatar picture.) So on with my education! I cruised the interwebs; Read countless sites; watched hours of "Youtube" videos; found a local (right down the street) prospecting store. I went in and and "holy crap Batman! I'm going to need to start buying things!" I walked out of that store spending about $300.00 bucks. I bought a crap ton of books, maps, two 14" pans and a 10"pan. It took me two days to read all the books. Got myself a basic understanding. I explored the maps and found the locations of the small red splotches on them said to be gold bearing spots. Not too bad, and not too far away. The first spot was a place called "Blue Cut" in the Cajon Pass right off hwy 15. No problem. I took my maps, and two pans, called my brother and we were off to drive the 15 minutes to the spot.
We hiked down into the stream a bit and I immediately began top "read" the geology of the area. I used all the new found knowledge I gained with my new books. We found a spot and put on our new Walmart water boots and went into the sand. We panned about 5-10 pans and found nothing. Not even a flake. No black sand. Not even a sparkle. Ok, maybe we're doing it wrong. Back off to the prospecting store we went. This time I walked out with a 1/2 inch classifier, and a 20 mesh classifier and a few big glass vials (because I was going to have all three of them filled with gold the next time I come in.) I overheard a conversation between a customer and the guy working at the prospecting store about Lytle Creek. He said he's found gold there. (I started to listen more intently, while pretending to look through a book.) Said to go up Lytle Creek to Middle Fork Road and follow it till it dead ends into a parking lot.) Well this guy was looking at sluice boxes. I went over to take a look myself. I thought "holy crap" these tiny things made from "Home Depot" parts start at a hundred bucks? This was for some plastic green thing call a LeTrap. well I passed and figured hell, I'm a man, I can build one of these things bigger a better. Off to Home Depot I went. Huh, exactly a hundred bucks later I walked out with a sheet of plywood and some metal parts. I did however go back to the prospecting store and buy another 70 bucks worth of small corrugated vinyl and miners moss. Alright! Off to the man cave I go.
The final product came out pretty well if I do say so myself. It was 2 feet wide and 6 feet long. It weighed a bit more than a "**** ton." Time to call my brother.
We packed the truck this time with everything we "needed" to find gold. Two chairs, a folding table, our boots, a pair of shovels, enough water for 40 people(just in case), all three gold pans, 3 buckets, and our 6 foot Frankenstein monster of a sluice box. Yeah, we were gonna find some gold today! Off we went for the 1/2 hour trek to Lytle Creek. We stopped at the forest station to get that Adventure pass and arrived at our destination in about 40 minutes total. We even passed a fellow prospector. I took the opportunity to pull over, to go talk to him. He told me he was finding about 1/2 a gram of gold a day working the stream. He showed me his sluice box and thought (if this guy is finding 1/2 gram a day with that piece of crap then were gonna find a crap ton more!) He showed me a sluice box made from a rain gutter and some wires in it. He was also using a ribbed commercial carpet.) heheheh, I thought. "I've got miners moss." Now were we were parked there was two trails. One heading up, and one heading down. I decided to explore a little bit and take the trail that went up. After about 1/4 mile up that trail I had enough insight to discover that we were heading away from the water. Bad. So back down we went to the lower trail to the water. It was only about 2 hundred yards away from the truck so out came the gear. It took us about an hour to get all that crap down to the creek and set it up. It was time to put the 6 foot monster into the stream and start collecting the booty. Well, dumb ass me, the frigginn 6 foot monster sluice box with miner moss and all the goodies inside started to float on down the creek. Who would have thought about that? WOOD FLOATS! ok. I'm learning here. We weighed the huge ass box down with some rocks and positioned it nicely. The water was coming in at a nice rate. The angle was sweet and we were ready to start feeding the monster. My brother started to shovel the sand and rocks and stuff right into our bucket with the 1/2 inch classifier on it. I was shaking it and getting all the big stones out. The bucket would fill and we fed the monster. Worked like a charm! the rifles were working right, the miners moss was catching small heavy rocks, we were in the rich! I thought a few hours of this and we'd be coming home with gold. Well, we spent about 4-5 hours shoveling and decided it was time to clean the box. The only thing heavier than our 6 foot monster was our the same thing being made out of soaked plywood, and a **** ton of dirt in it. Proudly hauling that mess up to our table, we were very careful not to lose one pebble out of the sluice. We dumped the contents into our 35 gallon Walmat tub and started to pack up...because hauling a **** ton of pebbles seemed to be a good idea at the time. Several trips to the truck and back, and two tired brother later, we made it back home, unpacked, and started to go through our "mother lode." I classified the dirt down through our 20 mesh screen. We saw tons and ton of small sparkly things. We panned the crap out of all that. It took us hours! We spread out the bigger stuff on my work bench. We went through two 5 gallon buckets by hand. We didn't find a damn thing. No black sand, no nuggets, no flakes, no flour, not even a hint of gold. *sigh* off to the prospecting store I went. This time I walked out with a $150 dollar "Blue Bowl."
Throughout the next week, I rebuilt our monster sluice box. I bought some sheet metal and hardware this time. I'm going to find some "damn" gold. I don't care how much money I spend! The new box it easily a tenth of the weight. Still 4 foot long, but I made it a mere 18" wide this time. I also asked the guy at the prospecting store about a place in Azusa called East Fork along the San Gabriel River. He told me to stay away from there, it's a rough spot. um.... ok, I thought. I did a bit of research on East Fork. So many videos to watch and forums to read about the place. It took me about 4 days to read everything that was said about the place. It was time to pack up and go.
Called my brother, loaded the truck (with only half the crap we took last time.) Off we went for the hour ride to Azusa!
We stopped at the ranger station to buy an Adventure Pass. The old guy behind the counter asked what we might be doing up there. I told him we were going to go prospecting for gold. He chuckled and said, um no you can't it is illegal to prospect for gold up there. With a very polite rebuttal, I simply educated the guy that it was not illegal, I read all about the USFS bullshit, joined the PLP, read their website, and told him that the "withdrawal" he was referring to simply meant that I could not file for a commercial claim and I was able to exercise my RIGHT to access public lands and do whatever I see fit as long as it was in fact within the law. He smiled at me, handed me a plastic trash bag, and told me to have fun. I knew my reading would come in handy!
ok off the the end of East Fork Road. Saturday morning 8am we passed Cattle Canyon, and that little bridge, went a bit further, and found that the entire state of California had the same idea! Crap! There was no where to park! We ended up down the road a bit. I read somewhere on this site to look for an old burnt up tree on the left as I hike down from the parking lot. There was to be a shelf or something there that contained gold. Yep, couldn't find any sign of an old burnt tree, not even a black spot on the ground. Off we went across the road and over the ridge into a place called "Nugget Alley." We carried all our crap down the trails trying hard not to break our asses tripping on a rock or something. We found a nice little spot. This time, we were going to do things a little bit different. We decided that we were going to go in the middle of the river, turn over a crap ton of rocks and shovel all the sweet sweet gold goodness into out 5 gallon buckets and take them home for further processing. DOH! You guys probably already know how heavy dirt is in a 5 gallon bucket, but for some reason, I decided that all the gold we were about to find would be worth the effort. My poor brother and I made several trips back and forth to the truck lugging a **** ton of buckets filled to the top non-the-less, up that climb. Oh Christ I was sore. I thought I defiantly broke myself. We met an old guy that told us he had been out there camping for a solid week, with no shower, and he only got bout 2 grams of gold (from what he said.) I thought after all the damn dirt we just hauled, we got to have a crap ton more than that! Off back home we went. I was to damn tired and sore to work our spoils that day so I waited till the morning. I couldn't sleep at all. It was like a little kid the day before going to Disney Land or the night before Christmas. I couldn't wait to get all that gold out. Needless to say, I classified for hours. I panned for what seemed like forever. I ran my "paydirt" through the blue bowl at a speed that would have shot an astronaut into orbit. After all that, my wife comes out, trespasses in my man cave and asks me if we're rich yet. Welp, no. I didn't find anything. No nuggets, no flakes, no flour, nothing. This time I think I lost a little bit of my dignity as well. All this work, all the money, and all the time I've spent so far and all I've got to show for it is a front yard full of dirt and rocks from various places I've been to.
OK I needed some motivation. I needed to know that I'm not on crack and that 8lb baby Jesus is not laughing his ass off at me. I joined some web site with "Prospector Jess." I started to read more and more. I just know people are out there finding gold. Where the hell is it, I wondered?
Ok, I rebuilt the monster sluice box. I rebuilt it into a "high banker." I popped on a hopper and a stand. I cruised out to Harbor Freight. Spent more money on a 3000 gallon per hour submersible pump and a 200 watt power inverter. Got me a car battery and all the crap to find this illusive friggin gold. It is no longer a hobby. It is no longer an interest. It is no longer something I want to do for fun. I'm now on a mission. I will start sacrificing goats and eating turkey livers. I will go visit a psychic adviser, to find this yellow crap.
Called my brother this last weekend. We took out a minimal supply of crap we didn't need back out to East Fork. This time we were going to beat all the people. We left at 10pm Saturday night. Got there around 11:30 or so. Still a lot of cars in the parking lot, but plenty of room to park. It was really dark. We put on our jackets, took out flashlights and decided to do some reconnaissance of Heaton Flatts. It about 1/2 mile or so above the parking lot. Damn it was dark. We turned a corner and saw lights out in the distance. I thought who in their right mind is going to be out here? Well, we crept up on some of the nicest guys that were looking for gold as well. We talked to them for about an hour or so. We told them we were new at this and still have not found anything. They showed us where they were digging and the huge ass boulders they moved out of the way. They told us that they find about 1/2 gram or so a day. Well allrighty then, we are in good company. After talking to them, they advised us to go back to nugget alley and dig in the old river banks up against the rocks. Well hell, there were a lot of huge holes dug into those areas, and I thought it may be worth the effort. My brother and I took our flashlights, and took all our gear to a sweet looking spot to set up. It was 2am. It was really dark. We set up all the stuff, hooked up our "high banker" to the pump and the pump to the inverter and the inverter to the battery. Yeah we had a light to plug into it as well. The damn battery wasn't charged enough to turn the pump on, so I took a trip back up to the truck, stole the battery out of it (yes I don't care at this point) and set it up again. VIOLA! the pump screams to life and we're in business.
Long story, I didn't find anything again. We got to be doing something wrong. I'll keep looking. I'll keep you all posted on my adventures. Stay tuned!
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Started up the truck to make the heater blast out hot air and went on a road trip up Shoemaker road. (short trip) My brother found a way to fall asleep, while I was still in a "gold induced" frenzy. I decided to play UNO on my smart phone until the break of dawn. At 5am the starting bell rang! We headed down the trail and cleaned up the mess. I disconnected the hopper and pump to convert this machine back into a sluice box. Into the river we went. Set it up, and had a great time! We dug and dug and dug. We fed the box all day long. We emptied it out at around 3 in the afternoon and packed up for the day. Now remember the part were we cut down on all the unnecessary crap? We still had a **** ton of stuff strapped to a dolly. We logged this menagerie up the ridge and back to the truck. Again, I think I broke my self. My poor brother was in no better shape. On the hour drive home, we both made a vow. We promised each other a very simple thing. If we broke this vow we would both kick one another square in the nuts. "IF IT DON'T FIT IN A BACKPACK, IT AIN'T GOIN!" 
Thank you for the insight.
