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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[FiresEye]

Well California is really leading the nation on True Laws... No dredging and Medical Marijuana....
They MUST be on to something., I don' tthink they allow same sects marriage either.
Either way, I mean, Theres a reason they made those laws, so just, get out of a state you don't believe in, or convince congress to make it nation wide.
Good luck.

 

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[SushiDog]

Hi FiresEye.....California is a toilet bowl and cesspool....I was originally born in Los Angeles in February 1951, and I have seen a lot....with respect to the capricious and arbitrary mining law on dredging (SB670).....it was exactly that....I can go on and on with political diatribe here, but that is not appropriate here....I am retired, and my wife works for the State Treasurer's Office here in Sacramento with 15 years service so far, and so that is my anchor for not being able to leave this Godforsaken State....and about 9 months ago.....my little doggie became quite ill, and for the last two months, she needs 24/7 care.....so my life is pretty much on hold right now, but I am not complaining....I am turning all the negatives into positives, and this T-Net is a big part of my life now....so....FiresEye.....that's where I am right now.....I can break loose from time to time for a day trip for a little respite, albeit, those days are few and far between.....so if I do set out for a day trip, I really have to make it count for something....I am glad you responded with your post, and I thank you very much....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Nuggy--I haven't forgotten your question--I've PM'd you a response.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi--I see from Eagle's thread, and with his help, that you've figured out that you're smack dab in the middle of some great gold ground! Hope it makes it easier on you to get out there and get some.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Hi Lanny! Always good to hear from the "master"! Yeah....I knew I was in some prime Mother Lode country, and the link EagleDown gave me was to my friends Mining shop in Auburn.....last night I was doing research, and found four abandoned mines nearby that have tailing's to go through....I need to punch in the coordinates on GoogleEarth to get their precise location....I will eventually get down in the Mariposa area some time, but will do so when we have more daylight and the rattlers are not so hungry........more importantly......what has Lanny been doing over the winter months? Research? Cleaning up gear? Anyway, with all the rain out here lately, digging in the soil is gonna be really good since it will be soft and maleable.....and I should get a little extra depth on my detector with the wet ground.....so tonight I will get coordinates for those four possible tailing's sites and go from there......when I do go out, I will have my wife's digital camera that can take about 150 pics, so I will take plenty of pics, especially take pics of things I may need some help deciphering.....I will post my research results, and then will post again when I will choose a day to go out swinging......and.....as always....I appreciate your "online" friendship, and treasure it very much!!! ....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi--I've sent you a PM.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Lanny....got it! Thanks!....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

To continue my previous gold tale of nugget shooting up north . . .

About a week later, we went back to the claim where we’d been invited to wait out the rainstorm in his cobbled together trailer. As a matter of fact, all over that claim, the friendly placer miner had been digging narrow excavations (no more than two to three meters wide) and working the dirt from the grassroots to the bedrock. There was only about a meter to a meter and a half of paydirt, and the bedrock was soft and flaky. It was very different from the bedrock on the corner of the claim.

If you’ll remember, the bedrock on the corner of the claim had a bunch of bedrock with conglomerate filling the crevices (Conglomerate can be fascinating stuff. Sometimes it holds gold—sometimes it’s barren, just like river-run. If you don’t know what conglomerate is, it’s river-run that’s been stuck together by Mother Nature’s brand of cement. And, it’s good stuff too—very sturdy.) That bedrock was iron tough, and red hot. I had to run the detector (the 2100 technology was brand-new to me back then) on one side only—too hot for both sides, and far too noisy. And, if you chipped any of that bedrock, it would draw weakly to the super-magnet on the end of my pick. That mother rock was laced with iron—not solid metal mind you, but enough iron to mess up the signals and just enough to be attracted to the magnet.

Anyway, that piece of bedrock was right on the edge of a drop-off. The bank ripped steeply down to a little creek choked with short brush, about forty feet below. I kicked a loose rock over the edge into the water, and something went tearing off through the bush—most likely a deer, as anything more aggressive would have been long gone, what with all of the noise we were making. Glancing down the bank more attentively, I noticed that scrub pines, fir, and alders clung to every little ledge on the way down, but the rest was jagged, broken slate. Not a nice place for a misstep, that’s for sure, and not any kind of place to be detected. So, I went back to detecting the hump.

It had rained off and on for a few days, but the sun was peeking out now, and with it came the northern hordes—the ubiquitous black flies, mosquitoes, and horse flies. So, with practiced quickness, we drew out our bug dope and liberally doused all exposed skin, and ensured there was a liberal coating down in our ears as well. Nothing itches quite like a black fly bite down in the ear canal where you can’t get to it!

Regardless, we doped up and continued detecting until we ran out of signals (you’ll remember that we chiseled out some nice, sassy nuggets from ancient, cemented crevices in that spot). Well, now we had to look for new ground, and I’d recalled those trenches right on bedrock. I got the claim-holder’s permission (He always told us we could detect his claims—but I always double-checked. As well, he never wanted any of the gold we found—he told us to keep it all because we were working so hard to get it. All he wanted to know was where we found any nuggets.)

Well, I postulated that the best chance for gold would be on that bedrock, right? So, we hammered every inch of bedrock in that maze of trenches all day long, and guess what? Not a sniff—not a whimper—no zip, zip—no low-high Minelab “ew-woo-ew” either. Nothing. Well, I was stumped. He’d been getting nice nuggets from this ground—we’d seen them. I then took into consideration that the bedrock was soft, and that he’d taken a bunch of it up with each scoop, and run it through his wash-plant. (That wash-plant was quite a creation. He’d made his own spring-loaded screens at the end of his shaker trough so that the stones would consistently bounce right off and not clog his screens. Furthermore, he was energy conscious. Gasoline was very pricey that far north, diesel less so and more economical, and so he’d modified an old Wisconsin hay baler engine to run on diesel! Saw it with my own eyes—a gasoline engine running on diesel--cleverest thing imaginable.)

Anyway, as he’d taken up a good portion of that bedrock, and it wasn’t the kind of bedrock to hide crevices, I got out of the trenches and got up onto the flats where he was working. Guess what I saw? Two large boulders that he’d pulled out of the trenches and rolled off to the side. My mini-brain had an illumination. Why not detect any dirt that had fallen from those boulders. Well, there wasn’t a lot of dirt to detect, but the nuggets were sure in it! Three nice, fat, northern beauties went into the bottle before the sun set that night.

Now, seriously, you’d think we’d have rushed back to that other claim where he’d pushed and pulled all of those boulders in that swampy bowl, right? Not!! Thinking back on it now, I don’t know what the heck we were thinking, but I’ve got another story for another day about the gold we tried to give to the claim holder—that’s quite a story of missed opportunity too.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[strickman]

now that's some good looking nuggets ! perfect for jewelry . nice character ,nice color .

 

[EagleDown]

Wow! Beautiful area, and I love the picture(s). I'd love to have a couple of those blue rocks too.

Just wondering, if they were cut for jewelry, does the blue extend all the way through them? I know that most that I've found over the years that are blue or green, are not that way through-out. The color is just a patina.

Anyway, still just marking time 'til I get my vehicle back.

Eagle

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Strickman--it's absolutely gorgeous gold--very much jewelery grade. I think you can see why I'm kicking myself so hard that I didn't buy a jar of gold from that kindly prospector--what a treasure that would be at today's prices!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Eagle--that's a good question as to whether the color goes all the way through or not--I don't know--I didn't bust any up. I know I brought back some rocks that had nickel in them, but they're not solid blue all the way through--so about those, I know that much. Other blue rocks from other places I've broken I don't imagine are any good for polishing--not that solid blue of turquoise and other such rocks. Besides--I'm no rock polisher--way out of my league.

All the best and take the time to think about sending a few of your stories off to be published,

Lanny

 

[nuggy]

Hi Lanny, thanks for the rest of that story, very well written as usual. Really awesome nugget pictures too.
Thanks also for your compliment on Eagles thread, the same comment I made about his writing applies as equally to yours.
About the blue or other stones - my humble advise is dredgers should take great notice and many samples of rocks that are not the common run of the mill types.
For those who don't already have one, get a rock identifying book and carry out simple scratch tests to identify each one. Looking out for any gem stones that may be present in your area, and being familiar with their natural appearance would also be a good idea.
While dredging in a remote gorge, I regularly walked past what I had thought of as a mineralized clay vein that intruded through igneous rock and quartz. It turned out to be a type of telluride, about 50% micro gold! Ten or so years later someone more knowledgeable got quite a few pounds of gold from a few weeks work carting and processing the deposit. Platinum group minerals are sometimes associated with alluvial gold. Dredgers in Australia used to find sapphires and emeralds as well as the occasional diamond.
Metamorphic rock areas or rivers that have run through such can contain jade which may look like any common rock on the outside. Canada, New Zealand, Australia as well as California are just some of the places where this occurs in gold areas.
If it wasn't grown on a farm someone probably mined it!
It gives a whole new dimension to any prospecting trip and interesting research for winter perusal.
Later Nuggy

 

[EagleDown]

Good advice Nuggy!!

Allso keep in mind; those same glaciers that moved the gold also brought diamonds, all the way down into California.

Unfortunately, I've only been fortunate enough to find one.........so far.

 

[SushiDog]

Hey Nuggy....are you a geologist? Man....you sure do know your rock and terrain, and it's really impressive....and I always learn so much from your wisdom and knowledge!!! and I thank you for that, as I do all of the other guys here who teach me through their posts every day....I am a very fortunate man indeed because of all of you!.....SushiDog

 

[nuggy]

Thanks Sushi Dog, no I'm not a geologist unfortunately, just been scrounging through rocks for a while, looking for the good stuff. Getting interested in lapidary work helped a lot. I just hope one of my little hints will be of use to help someone else. Like you I am learning plenty on here, and being entertained as well.
Thanks Eagle, yes those glaciers pushed the rocks around a fair bit, sometimes predictably - sometimes not. Two glaciation periods here, with glaciers having crossed each others paths can make things complicated in some spots.
I sense there could be a story in how you found that diamond, Eagle. I sure would like to hear how you spotted it, what sort of country it was in and what you were doing at the time. Nuggy

 

[Lanny in AB]

Just a few quick thoughts before I shut 'er down for the night. One of the hard lessons I learned about detecting (as you can tell from my stories there were way more lessons I didn't learn than I did!!) was not to go too fast when in heavily mineralized soil, and in all reality, not too fast whenever you're chasing nuggets in good gold ground.

The reason for this is that due to the severity of the ground conditions, every subtle change in the threshold can make a big difference as to whether or not you miss a target or whether you find a target.

I know this is quite a bit for a beginning nugget shooter to get their head around (you pros already know this stuff), but I've found nuggets in insane ground conditions, and the only way it happened was because I paid attention to the pros of the day that counseled me to go slow--they spelled it s-l-o-w on their posts so that slow learners like myself would hopefully catch on.

By the way, another valuable tip that went hand in hand with the go slow advice was to scrub the ground with the coil. Well, when you do that, it often bumps along the ground and you get false signals from the movement of the coil wire, loose components within the coil (if there's any), slack in the shaft transmitted up to the control box, the battery wire swinging around, etc. You get the picture.

However, by scrubbing the ground slowly, and by listening very carefully to very subtle changes in the threshold, that is often the only clue you'll ever get to a nugget cached in severe ground. (It truly does seem opposite to what seems natural. After all--get out there and cover as much ground as possible, right?) But, by going slowly you'll discover that it's rarer to get a loud, distinct signal (most often those are nails and other trash). More often in hammered ground, you'll get a "bump" in the threshold, a barely detectable change. Now, and this is where it gets important, you'll often get all kinds of false signals, but a bump or a definite break in the threshold will be there as you very, very slowly go back over the same spot again. In contrast, false signals, unlike bumps, wander all over the place.

Well, what do you do after you get a bump? Remove some of the soil over the target area, and if it's a good signal, the bump should strengthen into a whisper. This is a very faint signal that will be there as you pinpoint the signal source with coil movement. Next, you need to scrape away more soil. If the signal now gets you a tone, you're well on the way to finding out what's down there. (With the GPX 5000 now, and the variety of coils, programs, and the pinpoint feature, there's lots of ways to tweak this process now.) Yes, sometimes a clever hot rock will fool you, but you'll often get to know the difference in the sound of a hot-rock, or the way its tone behaves differently from a highly conductive tone (like gold, copper, or bullet-lead for example). However, I must admit there are a few hot-rocks that are full of iron mineral, or lead mineral that will drive you crazy, but I need to get back to what's important about those bumps and whispers.

It's been my experience, that often, the easy "come over here and dig me" nuggets have already been found. You know, the ones that blow your headphones off (Usually these only hang out in virgin areas, or in crazy access areas where you risk life and limb by hanging over a precipice or by clawing your way up a cliff! Been there, done that, don't want to repeat it. Yes, the gold was beautiful, but it really isn't worth it. You'll find more gold and have many more prospecting adventures by staying alive. Fun fact, dead detectorists don't get any gold.). Most of the nugget finds will result from those bumps and whispers, especially in areas that have been hunted over and over.

I once found six nuggets in an area of exposed bedrock that had been hammered to death. How did it happen? Just as I described. I spent time carefully examining the bedrock. It was blessed with tons of natural-trap appeal, and I decided to put to the test the things the pros had been telling me. I went so slow I questioned what the heck I was doing. It just seemed way too slow to accomplish anything. But I stuck to it, and I finally noticed a bump in the threshold that I never would have heard moving at a regular or a normal, slower speed. I backtracked and the bump was still in the same spot.

I moved some soil, detected again, and it was now a whisper. I hit solid bedrock with the next couple of scrapes and the disturbance was now a tone, very faint, but that distinct low--high--low. The nugget was in between sheets of perpendicular rock (as many of the nuggets in the area I now hunt are) and it kept moving, but that's not the purpose of this post (how to outsmart those challenges). The purpose of this post is what I did five more times after I'd recovered that first nugget from that great looking bedrock right on the lip of a drop.

(It was the perfect trap for nuggets.)

Well, I was fired up after the first catch of the day, and I painstakingly worked about five feet of that bedrock, scrubbing the coil across that uneven bedrock, fighting off false signals, etc. The detector ignored the most common hot-rock signals (yes, even premier PI machine still detect hot-rocks, but not nearly as many as VLF's), and every time I got a bump, whisper, or break in the threshold, I vectored in on it.

Now, perhaps this is the most important part of the post, every signal was only a disruption in the threshold, a tiny disturbance from the normal, steady tone. It's critical to remember this as this is why I believe why most people with detectors walk right over nuggets.

Remember, if it's a bump--it will stay there. You just have to be moving slowly enough to hear it in the first place. Granted, this takes a lot of listening time to even know what a bump is, but this understanding will get you far more nuggets.

Now, back to my story. I stuck with it and wound up with five more nuggets in the poke making six sassy beauties that I never would have had. (If you're curious as to which coil I had on, it was a small sniping coil, the Joey.)

I've used the "bump" technique many times since, and this technique is solid gold. (As mentioned earlier, far too many rookie nugget shooters think they need a solid signal or they won't investigate it. However, this only leaves many nuggets in the ground. That's why rookies will recover bullet casings, spent rounds, and all different sizes of lead shot because those targets return nice signals. This effort isn't a total waste as gathering all that conductive metal does teach pinpointing skills. However, it often trains the nugget shooter to listen for clear signals at the expense of the really important ones.)

So, go and find some nuggets!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Wow Lanny! I have never heard what you have shared with us before! I am guilty as charged by reading your post because I am the guy who never scraped the ground with my coil....all the more to make sure you have a coil cover on....whom ever doesn't heed this advice doesn't deserve a nugget! (smile).....thanks for a great piece of advice!.....SushiDog

 

[strickman]

great advice Lanny . good story.

 

[nuggy]

Great advice for todays conditions Lanny. We are all going to do a lot better if we use that method. Nuggy