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]

P.S. We always bought "Bazooka Joe" bubble gum....man! That stuff gets sticky! That's my recommendation....SushiDog

 

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[Lanny in AB]

P.S. We always bought "Bazooka Joe" bubble gum....man! That stuff gets sticky! That's my recommendation....SushiDog

Sushi--we were on a dive trip in the Caribbean, and between dives, we were playing some cards on our veranda that fronted the beach by the ocean. One of the cards fell from the table and dropped between the planking. There was no way to get it, but we needed it to continue the game. So, I took a drinking straw, put some gum on the end, and it was just the right thickness and length for the perfect retrieval. So, going chimp really does work!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

All of you guys are "treasure's" and "gold mines" to me! Lanny....when you wrote that post, it was for me....I know one thing....when I do find my very first gold nugget.....that "find" will only be possible because of all of you guys here....Lanny....two things for you.....first, I will be going out to the "You Bet" area this coming Sunday.....there is a hydraulic area with tailings, and across the dirt road, there is a river.....don't know the name of the river, and have only heard the water from where I was at the last time I went there.....I shall take some pics of my adventure with Kimiko's digital camera, and make a report.....and second, turn your plumbing problem into your insurance company.....SushiDog

Sushi--if you're pounding an area like that, and you're hitting lots of trash--that could be a good sign, because at least you'll know it hasn't all been cleaned. The frustrating part will be that you'll dig a lot of junk, but there's always cool stuff at sites like that. I've found bullets (whole and spent rounds), square nails, various gauges of copper wire, drift-mine spikes, mine rails, money, blasting caps, various steel and brass buttons, etc. You'll get lots of practice time ID'ing and digging targets, and you've got the chance of finding some gold too as hydraulic operations were notoriously inefficient. I've got enough hydraulic pit nuggets to vouch for that, and I know several dredgers that did exceptionally well working just downstream of hydraulic operations.

Have fun, and all the best--I only wish I was going too!

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Hi Lanny....and all the other guys here....I laughed so hard when you told me your story of "chimping" for a playing card! I hope you won the game (smile)....Thanks for the 411 and all of the goodies that I might find at a hydraulic pit....sounds good....If you guys want a thrill tonight go to this link - http://whiteselectronics.com/videos/gmt-instruction.html - and click on Part #1 on the right of the screen, and go to the 7:00 minute mark.....I have this GoldMaster machine by White's, and our good friend Jimmy Sierra made this training and instructional video for the gold master....****Do you know what you will find there? Treasure from a tailings area.....Jimmy found a boulder that weighed 22 pounds about 2 1/2 to 3 feet deep, and the boulder contained 24 ounces of gold....and like they say...."seeing is believing"....and you can see it there if anyone is interested and wants a real treat....I was going back through the video to bone up on my machine since I will be going out with it this Sunday....I will take a lot of pics of wherever I end up, and share them with you guys here....well, Lanny.....the way I see it....if I can just get out in God's country, and breath some cool crisp air, swing my MD for awhile, and marvel at the landscape and enjoy all of the critters out there, then I have a winning day, and have hit the jackpot (smile)....and if I am lucky enough to find some artifacts....wow!....it will even be a better day!....and if I can find any form of gold.....then....well....I would have died and gone to heaven! Ha! ha! ha!....Also, in closing this post.....everyone here knows about Jimmy, and he is a seasoned, tough, smart guy....but you know what? Jimmy never shared the "low and slow" scraping the coil on the ground method that you guys turned me onto....perhaps Jimmy may know, but he is not sharing, and that's his privilege to keep it private IF that is what's going on....the video is well made....I will give them that much....SushiDog

 

[SushiDog]

P.S.-----Lanny.....thanks for posting the pic of vertical rock! Gosh! That sure does LQQK sweet, and it really brings home what you are talking about here.....and forgive me for being so rude....of course you're invited to come along on Sunday! (big smile) SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

P.S.-----Lanny.....thanks for posting the pic of vertical rock! Gosh! That sure does LQQK sweet, and it really brings home what you are talking about here.....and forgive me for being so rude....of course you're invited to come along on Sunday! (big smile) SushiDog

You have no idea how badly I'd like to break out of this ice prison and head out with you!!

All the best, and the longer you keep swinging that detector, the closer you'll get to a nugget,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Thanks Lanny.....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Iron Spike Mine: A true bedrock tale of two Rookies.

In July one summer, my brother-in-law from the USA, finally came to visit me in the gold fields of British Columbia, Canada. I've been inviting him for years and years, and he finally made it! Moreover, he brought his brother from Washington State with him. (As a matter of fact, my brother-in-law is the one that got me interested in prospecting over thirty-five years ago, and that all happened in Montana at a famous historic site, Virginia City, the jewel of Alder Gulch. I believe I've posted a poem about that on this site.)

The two rookies had quite an ordeal getting to the mine, as they got lost on one of the many maze-like, chuck-hole-filled logging roads, and then they innocently tried to turn around in the middle of the road, hoping to retrace their path and reconnect with the right road.

Well, you’ve guessed it, while still negotiating their turn, a massive, dusty, diesel-belching logging truck came blasting and barreling down the road straight for them. They had only one option, quickly hammer down on the accelerator of their brown and yellow camper van. allowing them to hit the opposite ditch as quickly as possible. They made it, and the logging truck went smoking and roaring straight on through, his freight-horns blaring loud curses. The poor brothers both had a severe case of the “near death experience” shakes for the next half hour. (Trust me, if you’ve never had a near-miss on one of those narrow logging roads going head to head with a fully loaded logging truck, you don’t know what excitement is all about—nope, not by a long shot!)

But I’m digressing again in my meandering tale, so I’ll head back to the aforementioned prospecting story. I took my guests to a little honey-hole I’d found the previous summer. And, without a word of a lie, I found the nugget-bearing ground right behind the outhouse!

There was a very interesting looking formation on the side of the hill behind the outhouse (no bathroom humor please), and one of the miners was kind enough to open the spot up a bit with a Bobcat (a skid-steer loader). Well, you should have seen the nice pickers and big flake gold that came out of that formation—it was beautiful, heavy stuff. Nonetheless, it was one weird formation.

In an attempt to describe it, I can only say that it was like nature threw an angry fit and just flipped everything on that hillside upside down. I mean there was clean beach sand in a huge layer (that in itself is bizarre), and then there was slate on top of that, and then there was broken slate on top of the solid bedrock, and then there was dark ruby sand in a big band on top of that next layer, and then there was more broken slate, and then there were lenses of more of that dark ruby sand, topped by more solid layers of slate. (I've never seen anything remotely like it since).

Well, the gold was on the TOP of the dark ruby sand, not on the slate underneath where it should have been, so that’s why I figure the whole thing got flipped or folded over somehow, during a massive, landscape altering cataclysm.

But, I said I had a story to tell about my prospecting guests, so, I’ll soldier on. (You’ll just have to forgive my wanderings and sidebars from time to time please.)

Anyway, I took the eager rookies to the honey hole, and they were a little jittery about working so close to that small and fragrant house of ill refuse. For you see, there was a fine ripening odor issuing from the highly essential structure, so we spent several hours panning pay-dirt adjacent to a brush-filled, breezy little creek, fronting a mining pit just downstream, but well upwind from that honey hole! Amazingly enough, we were getting pickers (up to half a gram each) but no nuggets, but three to four nice pickers to the pan kept turning up. Now, that’s fun panning dirt indeed--no chance for catch-and-release when things are going that well.

However, my guests, named Butch and Ford, wanted to find some nuggets very badly—something about having traveled over a thousand miles, and surviving a near-death-experience just to get to the gold camp—that kind of logical nonsense. I guess they didn’t realize that the panning they were doing was power-packed panning indeed. Nonetheless, the budding Cheechakos were getting a fine and festering case of gold fever, and we all know how quickly that glorious disease spreads to every cell of the system.

So, my guests (still resisting my urgings to pan behind the redolent outhouse), seemed pleased when I suggested a trip to a large, airy river the next day, so that we could check out the stream-bank accumulations of some suction eddies I’d spotted while scouting along a Spruce-lined section of the stream. I'd stumbled on it while out looking for a good fishing hole. On my trek, I’d noticed the high-water results of those eddies, noting where they’d left stacks of river rocks high and dry on the exposed bedrock.

The ice-filled spring runoff was higher than normal that season, and when a mega-melt happens, fresh coarse gold is always rooted up and popped free, washed down the sides of the valleys, and spun madly along the feeder streams, and then into the voluminous, raging rivers.

After a pleasant quad ride through tall pines and stout balsams, frequently passing brightly colored wildflowers alive with kaleidoscopic hummingbirds, we got to the peaceful river. However, at the crossing, our passage was blocked by a huge Spruce that had lodged in the middle of the stream. So, we got a chainsaw and sectioned the tree into more manageable chunks. (However, being the graceful, synchronized water creature that I am, while wrestling the logs, I unceremoniously fell into the river several times—taking most of that glacial melt-stream in with great, ragged gulps I did. I went without the need for any drinking water the rest of that amazingly hot day. Upon reflection, what a blessing having a near-drowning experience turned out to be.) Nonetheless, moving along with my prospecting story, we then towed the largest section of the trunk out of the way with the quad, so that we could cross to prospect the other side.

After crossing the river with Butch and Ford, we scouted for the areas of exposed bedrock that had slowed the river enough to create the aforementioned suction eddies. We found one just a short ways upstream from where we’d lumber-jacked the Spruce. The river had deposited large boulders on a bedrock shelf on the right-hand bank, facing downstream of the crystalline river. However, in the stream proper, the bedrock, which was a stern black slate, protruded close to a foot above the surface of that inviting water. Upon closer examination of the large rocks and cobbles stacked against the stream bank, I noticed a large iron spike, about a foot long, lodged firmly among the hefty, pumpkin-sized boulders.

My fevered prospector brain was trying to signal something to me, something I’d learned the previous summer—some dim reflection of how any suction eddy that loses enough energy to drop out boulders and large pieces of metal must certainly abandon any gold that it is carrying as well.

So, I told Ford and Butch to get in there and commence to digging. Well, the rocks really flew then. As they neared bedrock, they scooped up pans of the good-looking, reddish-orange dirt, and true enough, after panning, each and every pan had some gold, each pan's gold successively larger, but flakes only. Nevertheless, the gold was getting coarser the closer to the bedrock they dug, and four more large iron spikes, packed tight against the bedrock, came out of the bottom of that hole. The growth of the size of the gold inspired and fired them onward, for they kept digging into and cleaning the mother rock. No family of industrious northern beavers were ever more engaged in an enterprise than they were.

Eventually, seeing a crack in the bedrock and using a large pry bar for levering off a sizable section of the host rock, I carefully cleaned all the rocks and clay out of that deep crevice. Not long after handing it over to the two brothers for panning, my brother-in-law's brother, having concentrated it down queried, "Hey, look at this. Isn't this gold?" Well, as dumb luck would have it, it most certainly was! There smiling most sassily at those Cheechakos was a nice little nugget, about twice as thick as a matchstick, and a little more than a quarter of an inch long.

Well--Look Out! They both jumped into that hole and every one of those remaining rocks grew wings—no Red Bull necessary to launch those! Why, that there bedrock got mighty naked in one big hurry. Moreover, while the brothers labored, I kept cleaning out that interesting crevice, teasing out yet another pan-full of the good stuff.

Seeing that it looked promising, I passed it to Ford who smartly panned it out, and then he gave what I can only describe as an electrified shout, or maybe it was more like a startled, stuttering scream. Regardless, I’m sure he’s neither made that explosive sound before, nor since.When I looked in that green pan, I knew what had shorted his system out. There basking in the deep-green bottom of that gold pan were four chunky nuggets!!

That’s right . . . nuggets. (What’s up with that anyway? Like, how do rookies have so stinking much luck?!?) There, sun-bathing in the pan, were two rounded, beefy ones, grinning away at their new-found world, and two nice, substantial thumpers--both staring smugly up at me. That's one of the nicest river pans of dirt I've ever seen. (I’ve seen better stuff in old channels, ones hidden for countless millenia, and ones newly opened and exposed by recent mining, but this stuff was from a well-worked placer stream--that's what made it remarkable.) Nonetheless, my apologies in advance, as I had no scale along with us on that trip—I left it at home. Moreover, the brothers took the gold to the States with them, but those nuggets were fat and sassy—that’s for sure.)

So now, Butch and Ford, well, they think finding gold is quite easy, and how in the world am I ever going to convince them otherwise?

As a final note, lots of people in the area scoff at the idea of even panning in the river, because it's been worked for well over a hundred and forty years, but the generous spring floods keep bringing freshly freed gold to replenish some of what was taken.

Therefore, because there's no gold left in that resplendent river, we ignorant tourist-types certainly don't mind being the dopes that pan those nuggets out of there at all!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Great story Lanny! I was painting a picture in my head as you were describing this little saga.....and yeah....if you have ever watched Ice Road Truckers, I got the visual of that NDE you guys had too!.....this is a great lesson to learn, as I learn lessons here from you and the other guys....(by-the-way....where's EagleDown?).....are the mining laws in Canada as strict as they are here Lanny?....on several of my "drive-throughs" in the Mother Lode country, I have had my fill of too many signs being posted that says...."keep out"....."no trespassing"...."private road"...."private land"....and a few signs with plenty of expletives indicating "do not enter".....or you are on government land that prohibits any type of mining, or even MD's.....that's why I ask....and believe me Lanny, those signs are the "rule" here, rather than the "exception".....Gee!....SushiDog

 

[EagleDown]

I'm right here SushiDog. I'm the proverbial "Bad Penny" that always comes back!! (Pay no attention to what that man behind the curtain calls me!!!)

Actually, I've discovered that 5am is NOT a good time for me to be writing a simi-technical set of instructions. I'm more use to meditating about now. So, I'll be back in an hour or so.

Eagle

 

[Hefty1]

Mornin all
Hey Sushi
Got your pm.......and as much as i would lov to ride along this sunday as i have never been in that area. Looks great. And the road closures i sent you are not in that area. I have other plans for sunday.
Going with the wife to see THE JUDDS final tour at arco, already got tickets. And I dont think the wife would be to happy if I was sleeping through the concert. LOL
We will get together as soon as I get my gold bug. I will pm you with a phone number.
Let us know how you do at YOU BET.
Hefty

 

[Hefty1]

Sushi I pm you with my # and my cords.
Lookin at the time of some of your posts.......dont you sleep

Hefty

 

[EagleDown]

Sushi I pm you with my # and my cords.
Lookin at the time of some of your posts.......dont you sleep

Hefty

I was wondering the same thing about 5:am this morning.

 

[Hefty1]

Lanny I have to lol about your story of the 2 guys digging in that hole.
You should have seen me dig to china in about an hour after finding this about a foot down.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Wow!! That is a genuine beauty--that's a keeper for sure. With a great picture like that, have you got a story about it you'd like to share? I'd love to hear it as I'm sure the rest of the crew would too.

And, by the way, if I was diggin' for something like that, I think I'd have kept right on diggin' once I got to China to see if there weren't a few nuggets hiding out down there as well.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Hefty1]

Lanny
Yes theres a story.....but I will have to get to it later. Kinda slow at typing,
Thanks

Hefty

 

[SushiDog]

Hey Guys!....good to see you back EagleDown, and yes, Hefty.....I do sleep whenever I get the chance to do so (smile) That sure is a great treasure you posted Hefty, and it is soooooooooooooo sweet to see! and Lanny is correct....we would love to hear the story behind that find....Hefty....I got your PM, and I will call you early this evening....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great story Lanny! I was painting a picture in my head as you were describing this little saga.....and yeah....if you have ever watched Ice Road Truckers, I got the visual of that NDE you guys had too!.....this is a great lesson to learn, as I learn lessons here from you and the other guys....(by-the-way....where's EagleDown?).....are the mining laws in Canada as strict as they are here Lanny?....on several of my "drive-throughs" in the Mother Lode country, I have had my fill of too many signs being posted that says...."keep out"....."no trespassing"...."private road"...."private land"....and a few signs with plenty of expletives indicating "do not enter".....or you are on government land that prohibits any type of mining, or even MD's.....that's why I ask....and believe me Lanny, those signs are the "rule" here, rather than the "exception".....Gee!....SushiDog

Sushi--the Eagle, as you've discovered, is still around. I believe he's one busy hombre--always helping someone or doing something or other. The mining laws vary from province to province, or from territory to territory--rather how they vary in your different states. The whole mining industry is very much regulated. But, because we only have about the entire population of California populating the world's second largest country, there's way more room up here. Yes, there are places where they don't want anyone poking around, and that's mostly from the ill and deliberate effects and attentions of vandals and thieves. Some places where you freely go to and prospect five years ago, have now had access shut off by claim owners, all because of the actions of thoughtless individuals. So, I don't think it's as bad as it is where you live, but you've got a whole lot more people squished into a lot smaller territory.

Good luck this weekend, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Hefty1]

Lanny you are right....thats why I like going to my claim....its along hike in but its quiet.
Heck the forest service and fish & game dont like that hike, have not seen them in there for years.

Hefty

 

[SushiDog]

Thanks for the 411 on Canadian Mining Laws Lanny.....just want to let you know that Hefty and I hooked up on the telephone earlier today, (our conversation's and PM's are private, as they are with you too Lanny), and I have decided to scrub my "recon" mission this coming Sunday for something better (smile)....I will just leave it at that (bigger smile)....SushiDog