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]

Lanny,
What a fine share!

I noticed that your new pan has a scrape or two, a dig here and there, a notch, a gouge, several fibers of plastic turned up nearly everywhere, a few different colours to it and in general it must have been new several years ago. Must have seen you through many an adventure! Thank you for the pictures as well as the words as well as the reminder of the prospectors repast that is always so appreciated............63bkpkr

Hello Herb, and thanks for dropping in to leave a note.

On any given prospecting outing, I'm constantly sampling as I go along. I learned a hard lesson years ago (a golden lesson of lost, coarse gold that still haunts my dreams) that when I'm out nugget shooting and all of a sudden I start to hit the nuggets that are riding in the bedrock, I'd better check out any accompanying material that's cached in the crevices. Far too many times, there's generous amounts of accompanying gold running in those crevices (The following are some pictures of secondary gold that accompanied the nuggets I recovered from bedrock cracks.).











So, I never go out where I'm going to be near any kind of water without taking a pan. In fact, I pack at least one pan along regardless as it's a time saver to have a pan as it allows me to speed detect by throwing any signal and it's surrounding dirt in the pan (I can also detect over a plastic pan [unlike a steel pan] to see if there's actually a signal in the pan!) so I don't have to stop to hand-sort every target. That way, even if I'm not right close to water, I can quad over to some water to pan everything out quickly to see what I've gathered after a nugget shooting session. Moreover, on other outings that are what I call dry outings, those far from any water, if I'm working old bedrock and hit a good run of trapped nuggets, I'll dump the surrounding material in one of the five-gallon buckets I always have in the front prospecting rack of my ATV, then I'll drive it to water to have a look see.



And, yes, my collection of pans have been up the trail and over the mountain many, many times. In fact, I really don't like breaking in new pans as that shiny surface they come from the factory with is too slick, and I like the texture of a seasoned pan much better. However, when I do have to break in a new plastic pan, I'll use some detergent that helps a bit to start the process of seasoning, then I'll head to a spot by a creek or some standing water where I have access to some nice sandy grit so I can rough up the surface a bit, and of course as I'm always panning, the process soon produces a plastic panning surface without the new pan shine, a surface with a little "holding" ability for sure.



So, as you've noticed, that particular pan is a true friend that's been used to speed pan numerous times, or to sample many times, and I'll generally only insert new pans into my rotation when I've worn the riffles down so much that they've lost enough of their retaining edge that I'm concerned they're not doing a good enough job of stopping and holding anymore. (As well, a few have gone rocketing down streams the odd time or two after I've either been a bit careless where I sat them, or embarrassingly, I've stepped wrong into the ripping current of a mountain stream and my pan and material have shot out of my hands to then go rocketing down the stream, never to be seen again!) And of course there's been the odd time when I've been dumb enough to set a heavy pan of material down too quickly on a sharp rock, or when I've been pulling material from a side-wall and a dislodged rock from higher up has come pounding down to punch an unwanted hole in my panning bottom!



Thanks for letting me know you're enjoying the stories, and all the best,



Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

To my friend Hoser John,

Some pictures to help you get your mo-jo back!



I always wanted to dredge the spot in the picture below, not too far to bedrock, but never got the chance.



My original mining mentor, but he spends most of his time in the rocking-chair these days as age has a way of doing that to people that worked hard their entire life . . .



It's a long ways down, but I made it, and found some nice gold panning, enough that I'd have loved to have dredged this section as well, but getting permits is like finding hen's teeth!



Just can't beat the wonderful beauty nature crafts so easily.





See you on the trail one day John.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jeff95531]

Wow Lanny. Two banner days in two days. I won't bother to click on the tab but we all know you did it... once again.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Wow Lanny. Two banner days in two days. I won't bother to click on the tab but we all know you did it... once again.

Thanks Jeff, and thanks for letting me know how much you enjoyed it!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[4x4x4]

Couldn't stop laughing !
Still reading this fine thread from the beginning !
I'd hate to skip even one page ahead......I am hoping all the Characters are still kicking seven years later !
Thank you , Lanny and All !

 

[IMPDLN]

Hey Lanny, just stopped in for the latest installments. Superb stories as usual. Dennis

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hey Lanny, just stopped in for the latest installments. Superb stories as usual. Dennis

Hi Dennis,

I'm sure you're in the thick of nugget shooting right now, so thanks for dropping in to say hello, and thanks for taking a moment to leave a kind word about the stories.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Morning Lanny,
The gold pan comments were interesting/useful guidance! Ah the water pictures, they make my heart bounce right up to see such country and water at the same time they take me back to places that are very similar to your pictures. Memory pictures!

And of course that is some steep country you are 'playing' in(previous group of pictures). Some breath taking country! As always thank you for sharing words as well as pictures.........63bkpkr

 

[bcfromfl]

Thank you thank you, Lanny, for taking the time to share all your wonderful adventures and photos! I wish I could have all your posts and pics in this thread in a book I could keep on my shelf! You truly have found a gold-seeker's paradise!!

-Bruce

 

[Lanny in AB]

Couldn't stop laughing !
Still reading this fine thread from the beginning !
I'd hate to skip even one page ahead......I am hoping all the Characters are still kicking seven years later !
Thank you , Lanny and All !

Hi there, and thanks for dropping in to leave a kind word as I truly appreciate it.

This thread has been a memorable record of mining successes and failures, with some fun along the way for sure. I'm glad you're enjoying the read.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Morning Lanny,
The gold pan comments were interesting/useful guidance! Ah the water pictures, they make my heart bounce right up to see such country and water at the same time they take me back to places that are very similar to your pictures. Memory pictures!

And of course that is some steep country you are 'playing' in(previous group of pictures). Some breath taking country! As always thank you for sharing words as well as pictures.........63bkpkr

Herb, I'm always glad to have you drop in to say hello, and thanks for your enduring kindness over the years.

I can tell we both love the mountains for similar reasons, and when it comes to the treasures of the high mountains, the gold can often take a distant second in the rankings. As for the pure waters, there's a refreshing beauty I never tire of, no matter the size of the stream.

All the best, and keep us up to date on your adventures when you hit the high slopes again,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thank you thank you, Lanny, for taking the time to share all your wonderful adventures and photos! I wish I could have all your posts and pics in this thread in a book I could keep on my shelf! You truly have found a gold-seeker's paradise!!

-Bruce

Bruce, how nice to hear from you again! Thanks for such kind words of appreciation, and I really am happy you're enjoying the stories and the pictures. Thanks for taking the time to drop a note.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[4x4x4]

I would like to see "Heavy Metal" removal !
...Mark...

 

[Lanny in AB]

I would like to see "Heavy Metal" removal !
...Mark...

"Heavy Metal Removal" is what it's all about. In fact, gold was the original "heavy metal" long before any rock bands came along.

Thanks for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[4x4x4]

Well, Lanny......I've just caught up from your thread starting FIFTEEN YEARS AGO !
You, your pinning of Family, Friends and Sassy gold rewarded every last of your vicarious followers and dreamers alike.
I personally want to thank you for the first person accounts , photos and humorous stories you have so generously shared .
I wish you MANY more years of success in Family, Friends, (that book?) and that growling, Sassy gold !
In closing, my favorite last line from a favorite Fireside Chat storyteller from your neck of the woods......
"MY GAWD....THATS MOOSE TURD PIE !!!................................it's GOOD though !"
Mark.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Well, Lanny......I've just caught up from your thread starting FIFTEEN YEARS AGO !
You, your pinning of Family, Friends and Sassy gold rewarded every last of your vicarious followers and dreamers alike.
I personally want to thank you for the first person accounts , photos and humorous stories you have so generously shared .
I wish you MANY more years of success in Family, Friends, (that book?) and that growling, Sassy gold !
In closing, my favorite last line from a favorite Fireside Chat storyteller from your neck of the woods......
"MY GAWD....THATS MOOSE TURD PIE !!!................................it's GOOD though !"
Mark.

Mark,

I'm sure glad that you've enjoyed the odyssey. I admire your tenacity in making it through the thread; that's a long haul and requires some serious commitment.

Thanks for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Well, Lanny......I've just caught up from your thread starting FIFTEEN YEARS AGO !
You, your pinning of Family, Friends and Sassy gold rewarded every last of your vicarious followers and dreamers alike.
I personally want to thank you for the first person accounts , photos and humorous stories you have so generously shared .
I wish you MANY more years of success in Family, Friends, (that book?) and that growling, Sassy gold !
In closing, my favorite last line from a favorite Fireside Chat storyteller from your neck of the woods......
"MY GAWD....THATS MOOSE TURD PIE !!!................................it's GOOD though !"
Mark.

Here, Here!! Couldn't say it better 4x4x4, and certainly can't imagine this forum without Lanny's wonderfully descriptive stories and freely sharing his gold prospecting savvy as per this excellent thread.

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Here, Here!! Couldn't say it better 4x4x4, and certainly can't imagine this forum without Lanny's wonderfully descriptive stories and freely sharing his gold prospecting savvy as per this excellent thread.

Jim.

Jim, what kind and thoughtful things you always have to say! Thanks so much.

I hope you're out pounding the ground looking for a bit of silver. It's been raining a bit too much here for me to get out and chase the gold, but that's the way Mother Nature seems tease me: it finally stops snowing; the snow melts at elevation in the mountains so I can get in on the trails, then it rains so much everything is a sticky, muddy mess just waiting for some sunshine to dry!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Little Bedrock Pockets . . .

This story involves some exposed bedrock that had been worked in the past; however the interesting part about this area was first and foremost, it was difficult to get to because of permission access, and secondly it was flat out unfriendly terrain that made the descent to the exposed bedrock a dicey affair. The ground was still staked, but after a rather circuitous route, and after lots of talking, I was granted permission, only to find that I had to find a way down into those old diggings! I tell you what; it was steep! And, the footing was terrible, but as I've done many times in the past, I figure if I can find a way down, I should be able to find a way back up and out, and I did, eventually, but I'd better get to the gold tale.

The location was pretty enough, pines, firs and larch populated the slopes above the excavation, and a blanket of aspens covered the bench below the excavation, their leaves whispering silent messages as they twisted and turned from the slightest imagination of any movement of air. It's amazing how an aspen leaf is brought to life by the tiniest breath of pristine mountain air. It truly is a beautiful sight, one I often pause to enjoy. Moreover, the northern sun was high overhead, sending its warm golden rays to heat the still cool alpine atmosphere. Furthermore, little mountain wrens filled the air with beautiful age-old masterpieces, ones never to be written or entered into a musical score, but wonderful melodies, brief marvels of Nature's genius nonetheless. Not to be left out, the flowers performed as mountain daisies undulated in white waves down the descending slopes.

The spot I'd chosen to detect was one the miners of the past had excavated, one that cut through a large section of clay overburden as the chased an ancient channel, a river the dinosaurs apparently used to tiptoe across in the dim days of long ago.

Well, that's what the geologist I consulted with told me, and he also informed me that if I was lucky enough to find any gold, it would be gold that was deposited many tens of millions of years ago (but hey, what's 100-200 million years to a geologist?). He pointed out a few things to me as well about the heavy glaciation of the area and how to tell the difference between glacially tumbled rocks and actual stream-worn rocks, which was interesting, as was the second part of his instruction to me that day when he told me how to look at the surrounding mountain peaks to learn to identify which ones the glaciers had plowed over in their rush to cover North America in ice (that's right, apparently there's a way to look at mountain peaks to see which ones got glaciated [they have shoulders on either side of the pointed peaks?] and which ones kept the uppermost part of their peaks free from the ravages of the ice sheets).

The whole ancient-geological-events thing boggles my mind (I mean, hundreds of millions of years/billions of years, how am I supposed to get my head around that?), if I'm honest, because I just can't imagine sheets of ice, miles thick (deep) filling valleys and covering mountains. However, this glaciers vs. valleys vs. mountains thing does remind me of when I was in the much more northern gold fields chasing the gold, and the Oldtimers way back when in that area used to look for what they called bedrock rims, ones narrowly separated on each side of old stream-beds that would stop the glaciers from gouging down into the steep bottoms to strip them of their gold. Moreover, I've seen some of the gold (and found some of the sassy nuggets with my metal detector as well) that came from those protected valleys, and it truly was and is beautiful gold.

Furthermore, I've seen the areas that weren't protected by those bedrock rims, and I've seen the deep striations (giant scratches left by the glacier's claws, so to speak) in the bedrock where the gold hungry robber-glaciers scoured the very bottom of wider valleys, stealing the gold, then transporting it off to who-knows-where!

But, I digress in my story telling, which seems to happen more and more often to me these days. Perhaps because I've chased the gold in so many different places, and have chased it for long enough now that while travelling down the road of one memory in my cluttered mind, it triggers adjacent or related memories that propel me down other trails of memory . . .

So, I apologize, and I'll head back to the pockets story.

After finally getting my gear down into the bottom of that old excavation, I was faced with a couple of challenges. I don't know if the average nugget shooter knows about what I call creeping clay. It's clay that gets washed down into old excavations from the surrounding overburden, clay that moves like a slowly flowing invasive force, one that eventually covers almost all of the formerly exposed bedrock much as a lava flow does, except that the clay isn't lava or rock of course, but when it dries from its former plastic, sticky, gooey form, it's no fun having to use a pick to try to get it out of the way. Furthermore, oftentimes I wonder what's under three or four feet of that stubborn stuff that's ten to twenty feet wide. For instance, what good bedrock crevices and cracks has it buried that the Oldtimers had no way of electronically checking? To confess, that much clay cover is just too intimidating for me to dig, so I focus on areas with only a thin layer of overriding clay, or in best case scenarios, I dedicate my entire efforts to huntung sections that have not felt the heavy hand of the clay invader.

As luck would have it, I stumbled across what I can only describe as some downward rolling troughs, ones trending downslope, an area the former miners had scraped with machinery, but due to the composition of the bedrock had left multiple pockets that nature had scooped (pounded or hammered) into that terribly hard bedrock before the ancient channels dried then solidified, but they were small pockets carrying ancient stream materials, ones the former miners must have considered not worth the effort, and commercially speaking in fact, they would not have been viable for a big operation to chase, but those little pockets were tailor-made for a nugget shooter like me. (I only realized the pockets were there after scanning the bedrock and getting a signal. In scraping the bedrock while chasing the signal, my pick scraped into some softer material, but material that was nevertheless tightly packed and hard; however, by following the margins of the softer material with the blade of the pick, I soon realized what I'd discovered. Moreover, the stony material running with the clay in the pocket had a lot of orange and red stain, and even purple stain deeper down, which in my chosen area means ancient, undisturbed stream-run.)

So, I started the process of slowing down to hunt for other pockets.

After getting another signal (the first one was a bit of rusted steel caught on the lip of the bedrock where it contacted the pocket material), I scraped with the pick until I could clearly see the outline of the pocket. Then I used the tip of the pick to soften up the old material until I could scrape off a layer with the blade. I scanned again, and the signal was louder, but still a nice soft sound. (The previously mentioned steel target had been quite rackety as I got closer to it.) Encouraged, I worked off another layer, then scanned again. The signal was crisper now, but still sweet. After removing more material, the Bug Pro pinned in the golden range. The recovered target was a fat and sassy two-gram nugget that growled nicely as I spun it in my nugget bottle close by my ear. There were some sub-gram pieces in the bottom of the pocket tightly jammed into a little crevice holding purple-coloured material, but no more nuggets.

I spent the rest of that sun-filled afternoon finding and checking pockets, and several of them were good to me. So, I left with a nice collection of nuggets in my gold bottle, nuggets that Mother Nature had banked ages ago in those long forgotten dinosaur days, nuggets deposited safely in those little bedrock pockets.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[meMiner]

Excellent story Lanny. Thanks for taking me along. I have also been into some steep places (Cariboo BC comes to mind) that were easier to walk up then descend down the mountain due to limitations of the human body. Funny how you found a spot that they were able to get machines into. I guess it proves, where there is a will (and good gold), there is always a way...