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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[SushiDog]

Seems like you will be working this spot for years to come Lanny....SushiDog

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Look at that bedrock to the left. Below the cobbles to the right (and buried under them in this picture) is another shelf of bedrock (completely different color) that met the bedrock on the left. It formed a contact zone and caught the nuggets between them. See if you can spot the gold.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi--I sure hope to. A buddy of mine got a nice ounce and a quarter nugget just upstream from where I worked. I figure there must be at lease one more left. I used my underwater detector on the bedrock after I cleaned it and found a little stinker that didn't want to show his face any other way.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[nuggy]

I' sure Sushi dog meant "always seem to amaze us!"
Some more details about that creek; It was the scene of a major gold rush in the 1880s. I've seen a couple of old photo's of the area looking like a scene from Dante's Inferno. Huge holes everywhere, people carrying things, horses loaded with stores and old shanty bars and shops, with sashed and booted diggers standing around, smoking pipes while leaning on shovels. The forest hacked down to a hill top in the distance, leaving a moonscape of mud and rocks with water flowing in down rickety flumes. Almost impossible to believe it was the same quiet forested place that I found myself in so many years later.
I believe the old timers worked the creek down to a false bottom, then in the rush to work the fabulously rich ground on the terraces they filled the creek with tailings, making it uneconomic for anyone to dig that deep, and they would have had to cope with everyones tailings still coming down at them too.
It was a great place to explore while waiting for that damned motor to cool down, moss covered relics every where, a small mountain of bottles behind what was the old bar and the old blacksmiths yard full of worn down ironware.
I don't mind that someone else did well from the creek, it was a guy I now know and he well deserved it. Nuggy

 

[SushiDog]

Nuggy...thanks for the correction! That is exactly what I meant to say, albeit, sometimes I am at a loss for words with the stuff Lanny is posting...I saw two pieces of gold in that pic you posted...really very pretty blue rock...I am sure I missed some other pieces...SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks for the clarification Nuggy, and nicely spotted Sushi--one at the top of the big cream colored boulder in the loose stuff, and one at about a 45 degree angle from it on the other side of that darker, eggplant sized rock.

Here's a different shot with a chunk of gold--check out the round flat rock with the blue rock on it, then look what's sitting right tight against the bedrock wall. By the way, the locals are always cruising by checking out every move and looking for free-swimming snacks.

 

[SushiDog]

Lanny....that LQQKs like wire gold! SushiDog

 

[nuggy]

Great photos Lanny, I see what looks like the edge of a flat, sassy nugget beside that round flat rock. Pity you can't train those fishes to do a little scouting, I always thought they would probably see some good rich spots. Nuggy.

 

[nuggy]

Hi Lanny, you might like to take a look at the thread I started in the sluicing section "Mosswisher". Let me know what you think if it holds any interest. Nuggy

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi--I wish that was wire gold--you're looking a bit too high and to the right. I have found some nice wire gold in this spot, but only in very small pieces. On a different note, nice spot Nuggy, and on a related note about the trout, I found out years ago that the gold and the fish like to hang out in the same spots--the fish may not bring the gold to you, but they love the spots where the river will drop the gold, and in an indirect manner will lead you to likely gold locations.

I've observed countless trout from under the water and watched the places they frequent--any place the current slackens (behind a boulder, rock shelf, big log, sharp bend, etc. that's where you'll find the trout hanging out waiting to ambush a bit of living or dead food that goes ripping by in the current). When they hit it, they immediately return to the sheltered spot to prepare another ambush. I actually like to take my fishing rod and head upstream to do some fishing from time to time and so take the opportunity to relax and clear my mind as I scout out new possible areas for gold (locating suction eddies, drop-offs, hidden shelves, etc.).

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Lanny....I have never seen blue rocks like that in the river....do you know what they are? (and don't tell me "blue rocks"! ha,ha,ha,ha!)....SushiDog

 

[Astrobouncer]

Sushi, I think those rocks are of the chlorite group. I find many that look like that around Vein Mtn, NC. When I take them out of the water and dry them out they become less blue and more greenish. I could be wrong though, since its hard to tell from a picture.

See the bluish green in this picture, which is of a chlorite schist:

I know this picture is of a schist, but a traverse across an area of metamorphosed fine-grained sedimentary rocks could show schists grading into phyllites, and then into slates. I think a Phyllite containing chlorite is good possibility for those rocks.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I'd only be guessing as to what the blue rocks are--Astrobouncer sounds much more knowledgeable and learned. I know that some of the blue rocks we have contain nickel, but I'd only be guessing on the rest of them.

Here's a shot of some caprock/conglomerate that overrides some coarse gold. In fact, sometimes this barrier layer contains nuggets that can be found with a good PI machine. Often there's an annoying group of hotrocks that sound encouraging--only to let you down after you've chiseled them out--or broken the matrix around them. Just as current river-run contains gold/doesn't contain gold, and old stream channel contains gold/doesn't contain gold, so caprock/conglomerate may or may not contain gold. That's why it always pays to crush and test with a pan as well as electronically check it out with the detector.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Thanks guys on the rock geology....may I ask a question? Often times I see people refer to a metal detector as a "PI machine"....what does "PI" mean?.....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

No problem--PI=Pulse Induction. Most detectors are VLF--more problems with hotrocks and extreme ground than PI's. PI's ignore many more ground mineralization problems and hotrocks than VLF's do. They both have their strengths and weaknesses.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Thanks Lanny.....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

The real deal before panning it down--super concentrates.

 

[SushiDog]

Lanny....you have hit the mother load....are you getting all of this gold by dredging?....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Here’s a little gold tale about some gold I found this summer when the river was running very high. Moreover, as I’ve spent a bunch of time in the area, I’m now becoming quite familiar with what I’ll call gold indicators: easily identifiable heavy rocks, stain on rocks or discoloration, and coloration of the water from heavy materials released into the water.

There was a certain section of the stream where a past flood had stacked debris on a bar, close along the shore, right tight on the bedrock. It was an area I had passed many times in the past, and it wasn’t the easiest to get to. It was a spot I had never investigated, but always noticed, for it had all of the classic signs of a great area to investigate: large boulders topped by watermelon-sized rocks, topped further by decent sized logs and drift debris. As a matter of fact, if the gold was going to be present, you couldn’t really ask for a more likely place, as the water was carrying a lot of energy for heavy movement potential as exhibited by the materials it had left during its flood stage.

Why had I never tested it before? Rather ashamedly, I’ll admit that I’d always had other places to test that I thought were easier places to test! To run a test in this area would require a lot of pick, shovel, and Armstrong power—it was a genuine mess. Plus, I’d have to get dirty, and I don’t know about you, but getting all dusty and sweaty in the hot summer sun is not my favorite thing to do.

However, I finally decided that because the river was running abnormally high, and was running an energetic stringer adjacent to the deposit, I’d have the opportunity to run a test right at the site—I wouldn’t have to transport any materials to the stream for testing. Mother Nature had shifted the stream flow and moved the liquid required for testing right to the spot. Well, I started my test by moving those logs and flood debris, and my first reward was an arm crawling with black wood-boring ants! Those devils were so much fun (way over the legal-limit for fun in fact!!) that I almost cancelled my gold prospecting adventure.

But, after I’d removed the voracious defenders from my skin (it’s amazing how quickly you can shed your clothes when the painful extremes of life demand your undivided, urgent attention!), I put my shirt back on, and using the shovel to prod and probe, I removed enough of the flood detritus while relocating the ants, to get to the river-run beneath it all.

The first thing I noticed was that there were some pieces of rusted iron (wire, nails, bigger spikes, strip iron) mixed in with the cobbles—the cobbles had bits of bundles of concreted iron-stained orange material adhering to them (another good sign). These are great signs where I work, as the gold run is usually very close to this line of heavies and concretions (right or left of it usually) [the concretions are usually pieces of iron that are so badly rusted that all that’s left is a residue that cements bits of rock and pebbles together]. I kept digging and got enough material to test some in the pan. I had a few nice-sized pieces of ironstone in the pan and quite a few chunks of oxidized pyrite.
This is another good sign in the area I work. It lets you know that you’re on the trail of the super-heavies. When you start to get into the ironstone family (hematite or magnetite) the gold is usually quite close. (If I find large chunks of Galena—I really get excited!) I dug deeper and got into the boulders. Prying them apart, I placed some of the dirt trapped between them into a pan.

The water went a very red color. I know that this signifies an extreme amount of oxidized pyrite in the dirt, but not necessarily any gold. However, there were a few smaller flakes of gold, but nothing to get very excited about. I dug down and got close to the bedrock, the water running along the stringer was now swirling into the boulders tight on the bedrock and the water was being stained a deep purple color! This only happens when there is an exceptional concentration of ironstone. (I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever found a heavy concentration of stream-run dirt filled with ironstone without gold? I don’t think I can recall any except for a couple of times where I’ve stumbled onto someone’s tailings behind a boulder or in an eddy, but the accompanying dirt doesn’t discolor the water that tell-tale purple color in that case.)

I got a nice sample in the pan, and you’ve already guessed it—there was some nice flake gold, with finer dust in the pan. After several more pans it was very obvious that this place tested-out well. To make a long story short, I got a very nice concentration of good-sized flakes, some respectable nuggets, and a whack of fine gold to boot. The purpose of this story is to remind me to check out likely looking spots, regardless of the toughness of the work required to test them!! The other purpose of this gold tale is to inform you of the markers nature places with the gold—either the specific gravity markers or the color markers—for they can all lead to the gold.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi--not the mother-lode, some weak cousins. I love to metal detect for gold, and nugget-shoot every season. I genuinely enjoy dredging, but only have a very short season in which to do so. I tolerate sluicing, but have accumulated some nice gold that way--it's just not one of my favorites. The previous shots are of dredge gold; however, you need to remember that I combine dredging and metal detecting--I have an underwater detector that conveniently sniffs out the sassy nuggets that are trying to hide. Its only drawback is that it won't find anything under a gram.

All the best,

Lanny