Bedrock and Gold: The mysteries . . .

[Lanny in AB]

Do you love to chase the gold? Please join me--lots of gold hunting tips, stories of finds (successful and not), and prospecting poetry.

Nugget in the bedrock tip:

I had a visit with a mining buddy this past weekend, and he told me of an epic battle to get a nugget out of the bedrock, and of what he learned from the experience. I thought some of you might like to learn from his mistake.

While out detecting one day, he came across a large sheet of bare bedrock. The bedrock was exposed because the area had been blasted off with a water cannon (a monitor), by the old-timers! It was not fractured bedrock, in fact it was totally smooth.

He was not optimistic at all of the prospects of a nugget. But, for some reason (we've all been there) he decided to swing his detector over that bedrock. After a long time, just as he was about to give up on his crazy hunch, he got a signal, right out of that smooth bedrock.

There was no crevice, no sign of a crevice, nada! So, he had to go all the way back to camp to get a small sledge and a chisel. The signal in the rock intrigued him, but he still wasn't overly optimistic. For those of you that have chased signals in a similar situation, sometimes there's a patch of hot mineralization in the bedrock that sounds off, but this spot, according to him, was sharp and clear right in the middle of the signal, not just a general increase of the threshold like you get when you pass over a hot spot in the bedrock.

Anyway, he made it back to the spot and started to chisel his way into the bedrock. If any of you have tried this, it's an awful job, and you usually wind up with cut knuckles--at the least! Regardless, he kept fighting his way down, busting out chunks of bedrock. He kept checking the hole, and the signal remained very strong.

This only puzzled him all the more as he could clearly see that it was solid bedrock with no sign of any crevice. He finally quit at the end of the day, at a depth of about a foot, but still, nothing in the hole.

An experienced nugget shooting friend dropped by the next morning to see him, and asked him how the hunt was going. My buddy related his tale of the mysterious hole in the bedrock, and told the friend to go over and check it out, and see if he could solve the riddle.

Later in the day, the other nugget hunter returned. In his hand was a fine, fat, sassy nugget. It weighed in at about an ounce and a quarter! After my friend returned his eyeballs to their sockets and zapped his heart to start it again, he asked where the nugget had come from.

Imagine his surprise when he heard it came from the mystery hole!! He asked how deep the other guy had gone into the bedrock to get it. "Well, no deeper" was his reply.

So, here's the rest of the story as to what happened. When the successful nugget hunter got to the bedrock, he scanned the surface got the same strong signal as my buddy. He widened out the hole and scanned again. Still a solid tone. He widened the hole some more so he could get his coil in, and here's the key and the lesson in this story, he got a strong signal off the side of the hole, about six inches down, but set back another inch into the side of the bedrock!!

My unlucky friend, the true discoverer of the gorgeous nugget's resting place had gone deep past the signal while digging his hole!!

Now, of course, a good pinpointer would easily solve this problem. The problem was, my buddy didn't have one, so why would he widen the hole, right? Well, the other guy was the one with more experience, and that's why he did. It was a lot more work, but what a payoff!

So, my buddy's butt is still black and blue from where he kicked himself for the next week or so for having lost such an incredible prize.

Some nugget hunting lessons are harder than others to learn. . . .

All the best,

Lanny


P.S. When in gold country--check the bedrock, regardless of whether it looks likely or not! Mother Nature likes to play games sometimes.

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Question to all:

I know what slate bedrock looks like, as I've seen countless miles of it, and because it fractures so easily, it catches the gold well. But I've seen other types of bedrock in the same areas I hunt, and I don't have a clue what type it is.

I'm not sure what the bedrock was that this nugget was found in, unless it's Gneiss? Does anyone have a link, with good pictures, that can help me learn to identify different types of bedrock so I can tell people what kind of bedrock this nugget was taken in?

Thanks in advance, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hidden Nuggets

Here's a little tale of some nuggets I found in a hydraulic pit.

I was detecting in a hydraulic pit one day. I was using a Minelab 2100. Moreover, for those of you that have never detected a hydraulic pit, there's a genuine trove of junk that's always left behind.

I was finding little brass boot nails, copper wire, blasting caps, old square nails (of all sizes), drift mine rail spikes, dozer-blade shavings, cigarette package foil, bits of old tin can (AKA, canslaw). . . I think you get the idea--I was hitting everything but gold!

I wandered over to a rise on the side of the pit where there were some quaking aspens. It was a hot day with a cobalt sky, and the shade looked inviting. The unforgettable smell of the pines higher up drifted through the pit on its random journeys.

I sat down and pondered what I'd been up to. The pit was huge, and I'd been hammering the exposed bedrock, and any places where there was a clay deposit tight on the bedrock. I guess it was good that I'd been finding the junk, as it proved the area wasn't totally hunted out, but I wanted some gold. I was tired of my world-class assortment of junk.

As I sat in the shade, I noticed lots of river rock around the base of the trees. I looked at the rise and saw there were lots of river rocks tumbled from it as well. I took my shovel and peeled off the surface plants, and underneath, you guessed it, lots more river rock.

I fired up the detector and passed it over the rocks and worked my way along the edge of the rise. To my amazement, I got a signal! Of course, I automatically assumed it was another nail, as there was a veritable nail-mine in that hydraulic pit.

But, for those of you that have used the SD's, the tone was low on the ends and high in the middle, a good sign, generally not a sign of iron, although I've been fooled by the small tips of square nails before, for they really sound like a nugget. I have no clue why, but they will drive you crazy.

Anyway, I dug down and cleared away some of that river rock. I noticed right away that the dirt didn't look like it had been disturbed. It looked like virgin ground, and as I looked at the rise, it made sense. This was obviously a small hump they had left when they were hydraulicing. Why? Who knows for sure, but around the side of that hump there were a million nails, so maybe there was some sort of building there when they were working that stopped them from blasting that place with the water cannons.

At any rate, I kept digging, and the signal got stronger. Pretty soon, about eight inches down, I saw bedrock. I passed the coil over the spot and the sound was nice and sweet.

This was shale bedrock, with lots of fractures packed with clay, and lots of small river stones jammed on and in it. I pinpointed the signal and carefully scraped down through the clay and small stones. There on the bedrock was a nugget. It was very flat, but it looked remarkably like the sole of a shoe, the bottom of a golden Barbie boot perhaps, only thicker, and somewhat larger.

Naturally, I decided to detect the area more, but I got no more signals.

Next came the thing that can stop a nugget hunter cold, the battle over whether to strip more overburden to expose the bedrock. Was this a rogue, loner nugget, or was this a patch that would warrant the extra work to clear the area?

If you're like me, I've faced this decision many times, and many times I've thrown off hundreds of pounds of annoying rock, only to find nothing. But, the place had a feel to it, and the rest of the pit was baking in the blazing sun; therefore, I was working in the comfortable shade, so I decided to tear into it.

As a side note, my buddy invented a slick rock fork that I had with me that day. He took a manure-fork and heated the tines and bent them about halfway down their length at a right angle. Then he cut the sharp tips off, leaving safe, blunt ends. This is a dream tool for raking off river rock from bedrock as it has a long handle, and you can really move the rock in a hurry. Plus, any heavies like gold fall through the tines and stay put, but the rocks get cleared off.

The overburden varied from about six inches to a foot, and the rocks varied from cobbles to watermelon-sized boulders.

At last I'd cleared an area about the size of two half-ton truck beds. It took a lot of work, but there was a nice patch of exposed bedrock. This was once again covered with the clay and the small river stones.

I ran the coil over the area and got no signal at all! I slowed down and ran it perpendicular to the way I'd detected it the first time. This time I got a whisper. I got out a scraping tool and took off the clay and stones and the signal was slightly louder, but still very faint.

I used a stiff-bristled brush and scrubbed the bedrock. I detected the spot again, and the signal was still there yet hard to hear. I got out a bent screwdriver (one with the end bent at a ninety-degree angle), and I worked that bedrock hard. It started to break off in flakes, and my efforts exposed a crevice! I dug down deeper and the crevice got a bit wider, and little stones packed in wet sandy clay started popping out. I got a bit more interested as this can be a very good sign. Nevertheless, the crevice was very narrow.

I ran the edge of the coil along the crevice and the sound was definitely crisper. I took out a small sledge from my pack and a flat rock chisel. I cut down on either side of the signal in the crevice in that solid bedrock, then I slanted back toward the crevice itself, breaking out the rock and exposing the contents of the crevice. I scraped all the material out of the crevice and put it in a plastic scoop. I ran it under the coil and was rewarded with a nice sharp sound.

I sorted the material under the coil, and there at last was a very flat nugget, its body still wedged in between two pieces of bedrock. I then saw the difficult nature of the signal and why it had remained so quiet for so long. That little rascal had been standing on its edge in the crevice!

I cleaned along the rest of the crevice and found two more nuggets, smaller than the first and second nuggets, but nice to have nonetheless.

I went back to the same spot a couple of weeks later and really cleared off a large section of that hump. You'd have been proud to see the rocks fly that day; nonetheless, I found no more gold. Isn't that the way it goes?

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

What to look for: How to get at it.

Now, for a few things I've learned about working bedrock.

When checking bedrock, always look very closely at the surface. This means that you have to clear ALL of the material off of it first. Moreover, any clay, and associated material, that is sticking close to the bedrock, carefully save it, so you can pan it out. This means that you'll need some sniping instruments to clean out all the VISIBLE cracks and crevices as well.

Go to a wholesale supply store, a place that sells lots of various hardware/automotive items, to get some things. Several screwdrivers of various sizes is a place to start. Take a slot screwdriver and put it in a vice and bend a couple of inches of the end into an "L". This will make the screwdriver into a little digging/scraping tool: very handy for cleaning out crevices. You might buy an awl as well. Also, if you're in the right type of store, you can buy dental instruments--they come in all kinds of hook and scraping conformations--excellent for getting into very narrow crevices, and they're made of stainless steel so they won't rust, and they're quite tough too.

Buy several sizes of wire brushes, from the small, almost tooth brush sized ones to the larger ones that you'd scrape a wall down to get it ready to paint. You'll need a variety of chisel sizes as well to break open crevices--the good gold goes down deep, and even if the crevice is narrow, it wasn't always that way. I've taken nice nuggets out of crevices that, in their current configuration, were far too narrow at the top to let in the nuggets they held.

This opens up all kinds of theories as to how the nuggets got there, but the key point here to remember is that they ARE there, and who cares how or why they got there. Bust open those crevices until you're sure you're at the bottom, and then really rip up the bottom until you're in solid bedrock--a note on this later.

You can buy tiny little chisels at hobby/automotive stores. You'll need a variety of sizes. You might want to have a few larger chisels as well, and you can buy ones that have a protective shield on them so you don't smash you hands and fingers. So, you'll also need a small sledge--buy a fiberglass handled one--they're much tougher than the wooden handled ones, and the water doesn't affect them. As well, paint all of your sniping tools fluorsecent orange--trust me, you'll leave things lying around, especially when you find some good gold, and it's much easier to spot them later.

You'll need a variety of brushes, from stiff bristles to softer ones as well. Also, you'll need something to sweep your sniping concentrates into. Those little plastic shovels that kids take to the beach work well for tight places, and plastic dust pans work great in larger spaces. A plastic gardening/planting scoop works wonders too. It's also a good idea to have to have a steel one as well--a lot tougher for digging.

Stainless steel spoons of various sizes are handy for digging and for collecting, and sometimes a tough, small plastic spoon can get you into an otherwise inaccessible spot.

An important point, one I alluded to earlier, and this has to do with the bedrock itself, is that after you've cleared all the visible cracks and crevices, and cleared/washed the bedrock, take a very close look at the bedrock to see if you can notice any subtle differences. Also, watch out for a purple stain with any adhereing clay--for whatever the reason, this purple color sometimes indicates hidden crevices and gold.

Moreover, watching for subtle differences is critical. The reason for this is that sometimes, eons ago, the stream was running little bits of material the exact same color as the bedrock. This material, in combination with binding minerals, formed a matrix that cemented in cracks and crevices, and often, gold was already trapped in the crevices. Why bother? The cemented material makes the crevices virtually invisible, but if you look very closely, and if you chip away at any suspicious looking spots, you may discover a hidden crevice. Furthermore, any cemented material should be carefully crushed and panned. I've found a lot of nice gold this way.

Now, the best way to find these obscure crevices is with a detector; if the nuggets are big enough. I've found many a sassy nugget completely hidden in a totally invisible crevice--one cemented so tightly, and invisibly, that I could not tell with my eye that it was there.

In other words, mother nature did a perfect job of hiding that ancient crevice. Not only that, but the matrix is as strong as the host bedrock, and the bedrock will break off with the matrix as you chisel the nuggets out. Always work well to the sides, above or below, the target signal, so you don't damage the nugget as you chisel it out.

This is where it's critical that you have the right detector for the temperature of the bedrock--by temperature I mean that a cool temperature would be a low mineralized bedrock that a VLF would run smoothly on; and by hot I mean bedrock that only a premium Pulse machine will operate on. If your detector just screams and gives up, go borrow or buy one that will run on that bad bedrock as there just may be some pretty little nuggets trapped in invisible crevices.

So, if any of you can offer advice on bedrocking while dredging, or things to watch for on the bedrock while dredging--signs to be alert for that may indicate hidden gold, or likely areas to rip up or investigate, I'd love to hear your input. Also, if any of you have further tips on sniping, I'd love to hear them as well. I know there's more I need to learn.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

Snooping Around Rock Piles and Old Diggin's

I ran into a guy from the Yukon two years ago that was running a big placer operation up there. He told me that they always pushed off the piles of hand stacked rocks and checked out the bedrock underneath. Not only were there nuggets the oldtimers had missed, there were sometimes virgin strips of ground that he said were incredibly rich, as in the rush to mine the bedrock, the oldtimers had stacked their rocks on pieces of ground and then got too busy, or who knows why, and never got back to the virgin dirt they'd buried in the first place.

I know of a nugget shooter that found an incredibly rich patch under such a pile of rocks. He took out hundreds of small nuggets, and some nice fat ones too, and the strip was only about three feet at its widest point!

This makes me think of tales Oldtimers up north told me about how mining companies were in a hurry to get to the bedrock, and to quickly get the gold--kind of like skimming thick cream off of milk, and that some of those companies were very sloppy in their recovery. As well, there were always other rushes going on that lured them away to "better" diggin's.

There are countless piles of hand-stacked rocks where I'm working, and I'm going to closely investigate some of them for sure this summer. In fact, for years nugget shooter have been winching the boulders off the bedrock, and they've recovered a lot of nice nuggets. We have a cat too, so maybe it would be worth it to haul it to the mine site if we find some good bedrock.


To all: By the way, I'm after tips for working bedrock, whether dredging or nugget hunting.


There's one thing I'd like to highlight here: the oldtimers DEFINITELY did not get all the gold. I've seen too many rookie prospectors give up in proven gold country when they see all the stacks of rocks, and all the old workings because they figure the oldtimers were perfect in their recovery techniques--they weren't! Plus, some of them were lazy, some were disillusioned, some were just sloppy, some were homesick, some were physically sick, some were starving, some were panicked by possible attacks, none of them had the technology we have today (my initial post in this thread bears out how nuggets they could not possibly find can be recovered today)--I think that paints a bit of the picture as to why they absolutely did not get it all.

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

Nuggets Stuck To Sticky Bedrock.

How many of you have ever worked with a sticky, black bedrock? I ran into this situation one summer, where the bedrock had lots of graphite in it, lots of pyrite, and lots of quartz stringers, but it was sticky, like gooey cheese. Man, did it hold the nuggets!

They were stuck to it like flies to fly paper. The stuff was terrible to pan, and the graphite was murder--my hands were black for days, and the green pans looked like you'd used them to change oil.

But, the gold was sure trapped, in fact, as the water dropped in the river, I found a nugget just by looking at the bedrock, as the nugget was stuck fast to the surface, just winking in the sun, so to speak.

Anyway, there's more to this story, but I'm interested in input from others, if you've ever run into this stuff before, or anything like it.

Thanks,

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

Upright Sheets of Bedrock Hold Nuggets!

Say, anyone ever seen this?

Last summer I saw a guy, down in a hydraulic pit, metal detecting for nuggets. Thing was, he was detecting vertical sheets of slate! He'd run his detector down the sheets of slate, and then across the sheets, and that kind of detecting is mighty hard on the arm, if you're using a full-sized detector, but, for those of you that have never seen sheets of slate like I'm so poorly trying to describe, imagine sheets of thin plywood standing vertical, the tops at rather jumbled angles to each other, and that's kind of what this feature looks like--also imagine bits of dirt and small river run in between those sheets. Obviously the rock was thrust up at a 90 degree angle to the way it was put down by mother nature, but in its upthrust state, it worked like an excellent sluice box, what with all the jagged ends, and the spaces between the sheets. Whew!! Quite the explanation--my apologies!

Anyway, he was working his way along these sheets, and I thought he was a little out of it, sort of like "What a waste of time buddy!", as there was exposed bedrock all over the place in the pit that was lying flat on the ground!

So, I was relentlessly hammering that ground-hugging bedrock with the SD. Imagine my surprise when he started to peel off one of those big sheets with a long bar, and then started to carefully scan the small amount of material that fell out. Well, to make a long story short, my next significant event was to suffer that great big grin on his face as he held up a nice, very flat, two gram nugget!!

All the best,

Lanny in AB

P.S. I'm always learning, and plan on hitting those sheets of bedrock with the SD this season, but with the 5x10 elliptical--so I'll still have an arm left for dredging season!!

 

[blazen70]

That's some great information Lanny :!: So, i hope you don't mind me learning something from your posts. 8) Sorry, i don't have any useful information to pass on as of yet, maybe in a few years. I do have one question though. Have you ever heard of gold being found in sandstone? The reason i ask is a couple of years ago i bought a bunch of old prospecting, lost treasure, etc..., magazines from an old timer who was retiring from this hobby. He told me of a lost mine story near where i live, where a rich gold deposit was found in sandstone! As far as i know gold hasn't been found in sandstone but silver has. Just wondering if you or anyone else has heard anything about this? - Robert -

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi there,

Yes, I have heard of gold being found in sandstone, and in limestone--not very common compared to other rock, but sandstone is a sedimentary rock. Now gold placers are found in sediments--sorted sediments of various sizes, so I guess it's possible that long, long ago the gold was lain down in a sediment and that sediment today is fossilized as sandstone.

Best answer I can give you. I've seen iron in sandstone, and dinosaur teeth, and bones, and fish, and fossilized plants--all because they fell in a river at some time, or got washed out into a shallow sea as sediments.

So, not very common I don't believe, but possible, and from what I recall, it's happened before.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Lasivian]

Well, gold being washed downriver, then ending up in the sandstone when it hardens to rock is extremely plausible.

From a geologic point of view.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Here's a URL for a very interesting article on sandstone deposits:
http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/geol212/sandst&cong.htm

If I find any more, I'll post them also.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Beav]

Lanny, I have worked a small (<4ft wide) stream here in NS that has that
exact same type black, oily, goo bedrock - that has gold in it. Spotty and I
have not found the source of the Au yet either. Makes everything black as
coal including tools,etc. TONS of quartz stringers cut across the brook that are only 1/4" to 2" wide. No Au seen in any of em yet.
Biggest piece of Au found was 3mm piece that was chunky.
Not a rich mans diggins, but good enough for a poor-boy claim I guess.

Chris in NS

p.s. Enjoy all the stuff you post. I have a tight lip most times, but i occasionally "spill gut" and make up for lost time.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hey Beav,

Good to hear from you. Thanks for your input, and I hope you have a good season this time out.

Can't dredge here for about another month and a half, so I'm off to swing the SD for the weekend.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Beav]

Hey Beav,

Can't dredge here for about another month and a half, so I'm off to swing the SD for the weekend

Lanny,

Can't dredge here for about the same time because of the BUG thickness! Its true! Blackflies and mosquitoes are KING here right now. They rule the roost.
After that, LOOK OUT! I'll be vacuming river gravel and making pets out of the trout. Maybe even get some underwater pics of bedrock & gold. :lol:

Chris in NS

 

[Lanny in AB]

Say Chris,

Maybe you can just run the bugs straight through your dredge!! That way, you'll be doing everyone a favor.

I'm with you--can't wait to get out there and dredge.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

Another nugget tip . . .

Another tip: High up bedrock.

This happened last weekend. I was out nugget hunting with the SD2100. It was the first time I'd ever run it with the 5X10 Joey mono coil, and so, I was a little tentative and unsure about how it would hunt.

The first thing I noticed was how light it was!! For those of you that have used the SD's they are a major league detector, and when you use the bigger coils it's a major league workout. However, the little joey is nice and light and it gets good coverage. It is a dream to pinpoint with as well--I found this out digging a whole bunch of old boot tacks from long since disintegrated miner's boots!! The little nails were all over the place, and the joey was picking them up easily--and they were down in crevices--well rusted. It was also finding the little points off of old square nails--and this in a well hunted area, so encouraging progress.

I found a few pieces of lead, from spent bullets, a steel button from an 1800's miner's shirt, a couple of pieces of wire, and lots of old square nails, as well as a few round headed nails.

So, I knew the coil was pretty hot, and as I said, light. Therefore, I went down to a spot on the river that has always intrigued me, but one I've been handcuffed from detecting. The oldtimers washed lots of gravel over this spot: it's an area of high slate cliffs, where the slate has been sluffing off for a long time. I've always looked up at those cliffs and thought, that with all the jagged edges protruding, some gold must have been trapped--especially with all the sluicing that was sent over the edge, as well as the virgin material that had sat on the cliff for eons before the miners started mining the area.

Anyay, I've never been able to find anything but small flakes trapped there, and these discoveries made by panning. However, I decided to walk along the base of the cliff to detect.

Well, it's a veritable square nail mine--all kinds of them, and spent bullets (I found a nice 44 caliber slug too.) and bits of copper and brass wire etc. So, I decided to cut some footholds up the sluff at the base of the cliff, enabling me to reach up the cliff with my detector.

Because the joey is so light--this was easy to do--to suspend the end of the coil high in the air above me as I swept it back and forth across the bedrock. Almost instantly I got a signal. I pinpointed it easily, cut some more steps with my pick, and trapped it in the scoop. It was a very rusted end of a square nail.

I rested the coil as I stepped back down and the coil swept down through a new spot and gave a crisp signal. I stayed put and scanned the spot again. Of course, my brain is telling me it's another square nail, or a bit of lead.



I reached up gingerly with the supermagnet to see if a nail would jump out--none did. I say I reached gingerly because If I would have poked the pickhead and magnet into the dirt, of which there was only a small amount tenaciously clinging to a little space in the face of a jagged spot on the bedrock, the whole kit and caboodle would have gone scurrying down the cliff, and you know what a nightmare it is to try to find a target after that happens.

No metal jumped to the super magnet. Gee, now the brain is eliminating ferrous materials, but still holds to the impression that it could easily be copper, or a sliver of lead, or another boot tack!

I took the tip of the scoop and carefully removed the dirt where the joey had pinpointed the signal. I saw a flash as the dirt poured into the scoop! Now, the rapidly calculating prospecting brain was telling me it was undoubtedly a piece of untarnished pyrite--of which there's certainly enough.

I worked my way back down the sluff to a level spot and started to scan the scoop. There was a nice crisp, mellow growl. I sifted the material out to the top of the coil and heard a whap, and a scream as the coil overloaded due to a continuous metallic contact. I gently moved the particles around until the movement of one little group made the signal jump. I blew away the material, and there grinning up at me was a sassy little half-gram nugget.

No major league nugget mind you, but a great find, as now I have lots of new area to search, and a coil that makes it easy, due to how light it is and thanks to it's sparkling ability to pinpoint.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

More Tips on Getting Nuggets out of the Bedrock.

Up front, I know this story is rather involved, and lengthy, but it's a story I'm willing to tell, as it involves the results of quite a bit of detective work, and the results of a lot of previously fruitless detector work!

On Saturday, June 14th, I got ready to head to the hills to try to find some gold. I'd been out the previous day with a group of High School students, an annual trip we've been making for the last five years, and they found some flakes, the weather was gorgeous, and they had a great time playing in the water, and rootin' around lookin' for gold, in the mountains.

So, early the next morning, I grabbed my 2100, and the little Joey mono coil, and I picked up my partner, and we drove the four hours to get to the gold fields. The day was incredibly beautiful. We cached our equipment in the outfitters tent, and went out with the detectors to find some gold. The week before, I'd finally found a nugget on the slate cliffs, and that was encouraging, as I'd never found one on this particular side of the river before. Isn't that funny--I could find them on the other side of the river, but not the opposite bank--go figure?

Anyway, my buddy had his SD with the Coiltek 14" mono, and I had the Joey wired up to mine. He headed off to stomp some ground he'd been saving, and I went to a gully that had always intrigued me, but one that had consistently skunked me.

The oldtimers have done a massive amount of hand mining in this area--stacks of rocks are piled all over, and it's shallow to bedrock in quite a few places. There's massive old pines, and lots of guts--shallow little washes--and boulders everywhere.

Well, what I'd noticed before, on previous trips, was that someone had moved a lot of rocks off of places that were shallow to bedrock, and they'd really had to work to move those rocks, let me tell you. So, they must have moved them for a reason . . .

So, for a long time, almost two seasons actually, I'd tried detecting those places with a pulse machine, and with the SD, and I'd never found anything but little steel and brass boot tacks, and square nails--you get the picture.

But, this time around I had the Joey, and it had already found a sassy little nugget on the side of the river I wanted to hunt, so it was broke in; it was golden so to speak.

I started detecting along the exposed bedrock, the rock that had been uncovered by some industrious gold seekers. I'd always seen evidence of their work, but never understood what, or how they were finding anything with this technique, as we'd cleaned the bedrock and panned it in those exposed places, and never got anything but little fines--and scarce bits they were too!

However, I still detected along the bedrock with that little Joey, and all at once I got a little whisper. Now, I use a great little signal enhancer, and Gray Ghost headphones as well, and with the SD, and that little Joey, I can really hear faint signals.

I've turned off the enhancer a bunch of times to see what the SD sees without it, and there's NO comparison--that enhancer really jumps those faint signals up into the realm of reality.

Anyhow, I kept scrubbing that coil over that faint signal--more like a bump in the threshold than anything else, but definite--not ground noise--and the coil was right over bedrock, almost no dirt at all.

By way of explanation, the Slate bedrock, or shale, depending on which fault I'm working, is in sheets, or fractured finger-like projections. This bedrock was Shale I believe, and it was like leaves of rock sticking up. (I've since learned it's called friable rock.)

I scraped what little overburden there was off with my pick and scanned again. There was the sweetest, mellowest little signal you can imagine! But, there was no dirt on the bedrock. So I started to pry out pieces of the bedrock, and kept scanning after I removed each piece. And here's something important--I love the little Joey for its manueverability--it gets down into really tight spots.

So, there was a small space in the bedrock I'd exposed, and the tip of the Joey fit it nicely--the sound was coming right through the rock, and the rock was perpendicular! The SD was seeing the gold right through the sheet of rock.

I kept carefully breaking up the rock and scanning, and I noticed that the signal was moving--not getting any louder, but moving deeper. It still had that soft, sweet tone on the SD--not harsh like the growl of a square nail when you get close to it.

But, I took out another piece of bedrock and the signal was still in the same place. I looked where the rock had been and I saw a golden sparkle. I couldn't imagine it really was gold at last, but it was--a nice, yet very flat, nugget.

I gave a wolf howl and my buddy came over to see what I had (not much of a stealth hunting technique I realize, but effective at getting my buddy out of the timber and over to see the finds). He really liked that little thumper.

I was ready to move on down the bedrock a ways, and he suggested that I scan the hole again--Duh! Sometimes I forget the basics, so I did scan it again, and I got another signal!!

I rooted around, using the same technique I've described, and pulled out another flat nugget, that was lodged tightly between another two sheets of bedrock, about an inch from where the other one was.

I diligently scanned that little area--about two foot square--and no more signals. But, the bedrock was sloping off downhill, and there were about two inches of small, gravelly overburden and clay covering it. I scanned it--no signal.

But, and this is important, I took my pick and cleaned off all the dirt--every bit, and scanned it again, and you've guessed it--another sweet whisper.

I had to break the sheets of bedrock again, and those nuggets really drop fast and easily every time you move that bedrock--it's a fact. But, I got two more nice flat nuggets that way, and one of them was bent on the end, where it was lodged in a perpendicular crack in one of the sheets of rock.

So, I took out four nice little nuggets--all under a gram, about a quarter of an inch long, from a section of bedrock about ten feet long. Say, I guess that makes it a patch, doesn't it--well, a patch of sorts--nothing like the Aussies find though.

I scraped around in the bedrock farther down the wash, but got skunked (that's a reality any serious nugget shooter should get used to).

I went back to the Outfitters tent to get some grub, and then I geared up again and went to another spot that's always looked good, a place where someone has moved all kinds of rock off the bedrock, but one that's always managed to shut me out as well. I used the same slow, scrubbing technique, but got blanked.

It was getting dark, and I went up over a big sheet of bedrock that had a lot of sluff on it. It's a genuine, bonafide square nail mine that spot is, but I decided to scan some more of it. I got a sharp signal, moved the sluff, and a nice square nail jumped to the supermagnet!

Not much of a surprise, considering the location, but remembering my buddies counsel, and the little ribbing I'd taken from him earlier in the day for violating one of the sacred laws of nugget-shooting, I scanned the spot again. And, you probably won't believe this, but there's not a word of a lie in it, there was that same, soft, sweet tone again!

Only this time, the bedrock was a different type--solid--no leaves or sheets of bedrock--really hard solid stuff. I worried some of it with my pick--went down a couple of inches, and out popped a nice, very flat, nugget. By this time, I was beginning to think that maybe this was my day, and I'd better scan the spot again--maybe there was something lucky in that technique. I did, and there was another signal, but I could not break the rock anymore with my pick.

So, I headed back to the tent for a masonary chisel and my small sledge, and a flashlight--because it was dark! My buddy came back with me, and let me tell you--he's a real sledge and chisel man--he made the chips fly I should say! Every time he chipped a chunk out, I'd scan with the Joey, and the signal got louder.

Down four inches, the signal moved--we'd been working carefully as it had gotten continuously louder, the deeper we'd gone. Up on the side of the hole, in some bits and chunks of rock, the signal rang sharp and clear. Nested in it was a little beauty with a little pot belly, and a very flat end.

I rattled the gold around in my little plastic jar--six sassy nuggets in one day!! It seems when the gold finally comes, it makes a heck of a statement.

Now the combined weight was only around three grams--not a huge mass; but man, the lessons I learned! And the places I'll go back to . . . And I've still got that big sheet of bedrock to work, because those last two nuggets were in an old cemented crevice, and it keeps going too!!

Now I know what the others were after--lots of flat nuggets that were down several feet originally in the bedrock--the oldtimers had broken the bedrock up a couple of feet, and taken all the cream, but they didn't have the technology to see what that little Joey could see, so there's still a little cream frozen in those old cracks.

Update: I went back this past summer (2012) with the Falcon MD 20 and got a couple more grams of gold from those cracks!

Happy hunting, and all the best, as always,
Lanny in AB

 

[blazen70]

Show us some pics!!! -Robert-

 

[Fred]

Well done Lanny,and you didn't have to go all the way to the Peace. I expect my new GMT to do as wel,if only I could find the time to get out. Fred

 

[Hardpan]

nuggets

Nice finds Lanny. If you get some pics, please show us. By the way, what type of signal enhancer are you using? Best Regards, Hardpan