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 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

I love those quiet hikes to the claims--nothing more peaceful than one of those walks while on the trail to the gold! The fish & game officers probably have no reason to hassle you--you're most-likely no trouble maker.

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[SushiDog]

Lanny.....going back to your pic of "vertical sheets of bedrock" that you posted earlier in this thread.....the yellow color lines LQQK awesome.....is this gold?.....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi--I wish it was gold, but it's oxidized super-heavies (pyrites and ironstone mostly--with some naturally occurring iron pyrite inclusions in the bedrock itself. The oxidized materials prospecting formula will often lead you to the gold: bedrock+concentrations of super-heavies=much better chance of finding gold. I don't know that I've ever been skunked by bedrock like this--always flake and flour gold, sometimes pickers, and every once in a while, I'll either spy a nugget trapped between the sheets, or I'll sniff one out with the detector.

This is especially effective when the river channel shifts (sometimes this can make a meter's difference [the water will drop a meter on one side as the stream shifts left or right in its channel/bed], and when the water drops a meter on one side as it creates a new channel on the other side, if there's bedrock that close to the surface, you've now got a most excellent place to detect. This of course is because that bedrock may have been submerged for fifty years or more--it's had an fantastic amount of time to trap and hold gold.

Man, I've had so much fun panning and sniping on stretches like the ones I've just described--these are great places to scout for in the Spring right after the water level drops from its peak runoff levels--get there before someone beats you to it. (Streams are constantly shifting and changing the boundaries of their channels.)

All the best,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

Okay...got it.....yeah! the way the bedrock formation is constructed is like riffles on a sluice box....sure is really pretty, and the area LQQKs really great too.....thanks for the explanation Lanny.....you are the "MASTER" of bedrock!!!!!.....SushiDog

 

[Hefty1]

Well guys....
I will try to get the story of that nugget in. On my claim i have a huge gravel bar on the inside of a 90 degree bend. I set up camp on the north end of this gravel bar between 4 trees, perfect for ropes and tarps. About 10 yrds up from camp is a strange L shape wall of un-natural pile of boulders coming off the wall of bedrock, and headed downstream. As if someone was trying to protect something from the high waters of spring. I come down the trail and walk through the L to get to camp everytime. Been wanting to work this area for yrs but didnt want to mess up the trail to or the camp area. Any how one day i had my high banker at camp for miner adjustments and it was HOTTER than hell that week, but cool in the morning. And i wasnt in the mood to move it to far, so guess what? Yup set that mother up at the tip of the L pile. Moved a couple of boulders out of the way. With a come along and snatch block. This took the longest. Started the high banker and started shoveling into my buckets with screens to bring the size down. All the time i am digging watching the gravel fall back into my hole. As this gravel is falling back in, also these dam yellow leaves are sliding in. They will drive you crazy. Anyhow i get down to some other BIG rocks so you have to dig around them to get them unburied so i can pull them out. As i was digging around these rocks watching these dam yellow leaves slide in, i caught out of the corner of my eye something yellow slide in, but it was much faster. Potty break, be right back.LOL
Ok where was i........oh yea. This yellow thing slid in fast and got covered up by gravel. At first i thought just another leaf, but dam it moved fast. So i went for it with my shovel and scooped up a little bit and poured it into a pan i had near by and dam you could hear it hit the pan. Moved a little bit around the pan and there it was.
Like Lanny had said in one of his storys THE ROCKS GOT WINGS.
The high banker was flowing......
But guess what? Not much after that ?
Ya know...I was walking over that Teddy for yrs.
And now hangs around my neck.
Thats the story!!!
Hefty

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hefty--thanks so much for your story. Wow--what an experience. And, you were lucky enough to get a nice pendant nugget out of the whole experience as well.

It really is amazing how fast gold drops, how fast it slides, and how fast it runs downhill when there's a little water involved. That must have been so cool when you heard that sassy, chunky nugget hit the pan! As well, you had your lucky horseshoe in your pocket that day or you'd have never seen that yellow flash amongst all of those yellow leaves. Come to think of it, without your eye tracking those annoying yellow leaves--you'd have probably missed the nugget's flash too. Seems like it was meant to be.

Great find--all the best, and thanks again for sharing,

Lanny

P.S. Was there anything in the dirt you ran through your highbanker that day?

 

[EagleDown]

Good morning Hefty!

From your description of the "L shape wall of un-natural pile of boulders", when the "Old Timers" found a good pay streak, they would quite often build a "Wing Dam" that would divert the stream/river around that area, so that they could work the bed-rock.

I doubt that it kept all of the water out, but it probably made it a lot easier. Remember, in the 1800's, they didn't have under-water breathing devices. As for me, if I had one on my claim, I'd dredge from the wall to the bank, watching carefully for gold. True "Pay-Streaks change very little in the course of 100+ years.

Eagle

 

[Hefty1]

Thanks Lanny
As for what was in the high banker, the small amount of flakes and powder was good but I wanted more of those Teddys.....lol
Hefty

 

[Hefty1]

Morning Eagledown
Thanks for the info. Thats what i always thought. I did dig a few times on the inside of the L and kept hitting buried trash piles. F....ing frustrating. The only problem with dredging that area is that the water only gets that high sometimes in late winter early spring......flash flood. And now with this no dredging law in affect. High banking is all i can do.

Hefty

 

[Hefty1]

Good morning all
Not much going on this morning
Ok i will let you guys know that Sushidog and I have hooked up on the phone last couple of days.
Sushi scrubbed his sunday plans and decided to pick me up monday morning to head up to my claim and check it out. Should be a good day, sunny about 67.

Hefty

 

[EagleDown]

Lanny, you asked about maintainence of my suit-warmer, and this morning, while sitting here thinking about an "up-grade" to increase efficiency, I realised I left a piece of information out of my reply.

Once it was mounted and operating to my satisfaction, I never took it back off. I left it on during the summer when it wasn't needed, and used it the following winter when the water got cold. When I wasn't going to use it, I would remove the hoses and the "T"valve, then put a screw-in plug in the water-pump aux. discharge.

About 3 years later, when I sold the dredge, I could see no discernable damage to the rods or the canister. (I did replace the wet-suit line when I found I needed a few more feet to go beyond the suction nozzle to move a couple of pesky boulders out of the way.)

Eagle

 

[Lanny in AB]

Knock it out of the park you two! Go for that golden home run if you can, and have a ton of golden fun no matter what.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Hefty1]

Thanks Lanny
Im sure we will enjoy the trip, I know i will. Hopefully a little more golden than just the sunshine.
You know what i mean....some baby Teddys
Hefty

 

[Lanny in AB]

Sushi and Hefty--all the best, and I hope you find a family of Teddys.

Lanny

 

[Hefty1]

Yea Lanny I would really hate to break up the family by just taking the mom and dad and leaving the kids behind
Hefty

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hefty--So, it's like a reunite the family project--cool!!

All the best with your worthy cause,

Lanny

 

[SushiDog]

You guys LQQKing for a free weekly Precious Metals Review Report? It's excellent, free, and it's what I use....the email report will be delivered to you every Friday.....go to: http://www.monex.com/monex/controller?pageid=prices and then go to the "Inside Info" tab, click on it, and then select "free subscription weekly"....just wanted to help with a great resource.....SushiDog

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Sushi!

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Bugs, Blood and Gold: Tales from the North.

(However—this story is undisguised prospecting humor--don't take it too seriously.)

A perplexing, maddening phenomenon occurs ever year in the summertime—hundreds of prospectors line up to donate blood. On the surface, this appears to be rather noble. Well, this is not a standard lineup to give blood, but one that occurs deep in Northern Boreal Forests—far from the prying eyes of the soft, cultured masses of pampered urban dwellers.

This annual event seems to be a catharsis, a deeply needed cleansing, one rooted in superstition and myth—the uninitiated call it stupidity.

However, if you’ve never been deep in the northern forests, I pity your inadequacy to empathize with the True Northern Prospector, hereafter referred to as the “TNP”. Now, try to imagine a region of consummate beauty—one espousing all the elements of peace, tranquility, and Elysian possibility—a location accented by massive pine, cedar, tamarack, fir, and balsam forests, further enhanced by a beautified forest floor of lush undergrowth. Moreover, a site where crystal streams run free and unhindered, where lakes teem with trout, grayling, and arctic char. Gazing into the distance, visualize the boundless rolling carpet of green that extends in perpetuity to the majestic, cloudless, cobalt blue horizon.

But wait, what’s that darkening, dizzy cloud that forms the minute you step from your battered 4x4? What pernicious evil is marring this idyllic vision? Why, it’s the bugs! The great, northern horde. (Gengis Kahn? A mere helpless pup by comparison.)

Ha, bugs you say—any prospector worth his salt has faced down the north's flying vampire, more commonly known as the mosquito (Twilight, take a back seat!). And what seeker of gold has never had an encounter with a galloping horse fly, or a prancing deer fly? Bugs indeed! Yes, bugs indeed . . .

As your vista becomes increasingly clouded, your dim brain frantically alerts the defenses—the body’s arms begin a furious windmilling action, and the once valuable detector is launched carelessly through the air, as if the astronomical price paid was an insignificant, annoying trifle. As you turn to open your vehicle's door to escape, you realize that your partner has locked the truck, and you recall he's thoughtlessly wandered off down some dim forest trail on his own expedition of discovery. (Moreover, he's packing an indispensible canister of bug spray in his front coat pocket, yet he's gone out of his way to loudly annouce that he will never use the stuff—something about a real man never fearing such small, diminutive creatures (and such rot), his speech delivered just within hearing range of the TNP, before disappearing from sight.)

Knowing your partner is now long gone, and somewhat bug-eyed (no pun intended) at your impending dillemma, you now press your sweaty face against the window glass and take a panicked look at what you foolishly left on the seat—your first line of defense, your own ultimate weapon—the potent and essential DEET--AKA, Bug Dope (can't blame this one on your partner).

Relentlessly, panic's worried fingers claw at every cell of your organism; moreover, the sheer volume of panic generated is now widening into a chasm of unspeakable terror. Sensing an impending demise, and while icy claws of doom scrape up the back of your neck, you nevertheless turn to face your agonizing fate—the aforementioned, every thickening horde of famished bugs.

Almost instantaneously, you are engulfed by a buzzing, hissing mass of wings and perfectly adapted teeth—by comparison, silly human vampires are thousands of years behind on the evolutionary scale. You valiantly conquer some of your tormentors by cleverly breathing in an entire squadron—or was that simply brought on by a reflexive gasp of stricken terror?

No matter, in the name of valor and survival, you’ve dealt the beggars a blow. (You wish!) The crazed cretins begin a covert ascent up your pant legs—on the inside where their true malice remains hidden. This, however, is clearly unapparent, as the assault is led by the black demons of the northern other-world—their true being revealed as nothing less than the dreaded blackfly—casually referred to in Webster’s dictionary as “any of various small dark-colored insects; esp: any of a family of bloodsucking dipteran flies”. Dipteran?! What a gentle misnomer for this scheming, incarnate-hell on the wing!

(Besides, I’ll have you know, some of those blackflies even practice camouflage now, and they’re dressing in orange, yellow and red—and they’re getting bigger. I saw a cloud the other day packing intravenous poles for blood collection to the site of some poor wretch that was bathing in the river!! Hyperbole? Extreme exaggeration you say? You’re right, of course--I think he’d only gone down to the river to get a drink, and when he saw the horde advancing, he probably dove head first into the river—the bathing metaphor was an unfortunate mistake on my part.)

Now, I’d hate to leave you wondering about the demise of the bug-eyed TNP caught without his Bug Dope. (Which reminds me—I’ve often pondered on that annoying name given to that powerful spray, but one day it came to me, the name refers to the idiot that leaves his locked in the truck--not the spray itself! [Any resemblance to the protagonist in this tale, or to myself, is purely coincidental. All rights to self abuse are exclusively reserved.™]

Anyway, the blackflies’ aforementioned ascent up the pant-legs will not be discovered at all, for the obstinate devils carry anesthetic in their toothy kit of devilry. The bites will not be discovered until the coming night, while trying to sleep. But, sleep will never come, as the bites itch longer than it took the dinosaurs to reign and then go extinct—and, scratching the blackfly bites is much like taking a sharp knife to your throat, because when you scratch them, you will wish you had a sharp knife to take to your throat for being such a jack-wagon for scratching them in the first place!

Of a sudden, your ear begins to itch, but not on the outside, no—deep down in the canal and on the eardrum. The little beggars do not follow the rules of war (Marquess of Queensberry rules you say? Why, they only revere him as a possible blood donor!). For you see, the incorrigible sadists have the power to attack in diverse, unmentionable places—moreover, ones impossible to relieve of that infernal, itching without inviting public censure and outcry.

On a related note, remember the horseflies I alluded to earlier, well the TNP has been known to work them with a rope—not to swat or slash at them, but to lasso them, and some hardy sourdoughs have even bragged of saddling the smaller ones, and using them for bizarre northern rodeos; rodeos where the mosquitoes are let out of the shoot, roped, and hogtied, then timed for the requisite eight seconds. Moreover, some people even blatantly exaggerate by saying you can shoot mosquitoes up north with a shotgun—this is a wholesale fallacy and blatant lie. A shotgun simply will not bring them down, but a lucky burst from a 20mm cannon has been known to blow off a wing or a leg now and again.

But, seriously, the doomed TNP finally made it to his friend, who was leisurely swinging his detector over a patch of exposed graphite-schist (that hotter than the hubs-of-hell bedrock!). However, the TNP, on hearing a low moan, followed by a screeching sound, and then another low moan, quite naturally thought his erstwhile friend had stumbled on some good luck and had found a chunk of sassy gold in that bedrock.

Imagine his stunned surprise when he looked up to see the sound was merely emanating from his partner's body; that screeching, writhing, tortured form, was bursting forth from a swarming, living, blood-bank—the cloud entirely alive with its unified purpose! Yet, once the poor partner prospector stopped running, the bloodthirsty insects were hotly upon him again, a living factory bent on collecting blood.

The TNP raced toward his stricken partner, by every appearance to offer assistance. (As a side note, that wall of bugs was incredibly thick. So substantial in fact, that the pursued TNP took out his Bowie knife, and cut a square hole right through those bugs so he could clearly see his buddy.) However, the TNP, with a wild and horribly glazed look in his eye, appeared to lunge straight for the throat of his partner (through the hole) with that same aforementioned Bowie knife still in hand, but at the last second, he purposefully shredded his partner’s pocket jacket with the knife instead, just to get the Bug Dope from his partner’s front pocket, and then the TNP hastily departed, cloud in tow.

Now, this whole tale may seem like a simple everyday matter to most of you northern types—indeed, almost of no consequence to the hearty majority. But I assure you—it was quite a serious and stressing matter to those involved.

And what about the tenderly referred to TNP you inquire? Why, it’s rumored he’s still holed up somewhere deep in an abandoned drift mine, where it’s dark and cold—far too cold for Bugs, but not too cold for Dopes.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[EagleDown]

You know what? I think I met him once. I hiked for days to get to this "guru" I'd been told about. I finally found him in a dank, cold old drift mine. When I asked him the meaning of life, he held up an empty can of bug spray and said: "Don't leave home without it"!!