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]

Goldseeker--I see from your nugget pictures that you found a nugget with a hole in it! I found one very much like that a few years back--remarkably like it in fact. I haven't seen too many like it, so I was quite surprised to see yours.

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Hi there--I don't often plug other links or sites, but I have to tell you that Jennifer over at prelovedplacer.com http://www.prelovedplacer.com/forums/has done an exceptional job with her site. There are all kinds of links for learning on almost anything you can imagine that has to do with gold exploration or gold recovery. She has put in tons and tons of time to supply her site with fascinating information. It is truly a first-class site for information. Plus, it's a great place to hang out for a while--it feels very comfortable. (Explanation and Cautionary note: she ain't shy, and she ain't afraid to cuss when she's worked up about something! Lots of healthy fire in Jennifer.)

Anyway, here's a link to a fascinating article about understanding blacksands, and a few other very interesting things that are often quite puzzling. However, the author presents it in such a laid back manner, it's a breeze to read: http://www.prelovedplacer.com/forums/index.php?topic=380.0 (I pulled this off of her page on Geology.)

http://www.prelovedplacer.com/forums/index.php?topic=380.0

All the best, and hope you enjoy it (and I hope you check out some of the other links as well--you can read and investigate fascinating links [video and text] for hours and hours),

Lanny

 

[goldseeker4000]

Lanny, thanks for the comment on my nugget wth the hole in it. I saw a pic of your with a hole in it. Very cool. Yah my 4000 does a great job. I have an 8" commander mono coil for it also standard 11" DD and a 11x17 mono Nuggetfinder coil. I have dug alot of very deep holes with that coil. Spent alot of mony on it and I still haven't found a nugget with that coil yet. Maybe this year. Chris Gholson said I sould be able to reach down around 1 and 1/2 feet on sub gram nuggets with it and bigger stuff around down to 3 ' depending on size of nugget. The 4000 does handle mineralization well and so does my x-terra 705. that detector is such a joy to detect with. To me, way more fun than the 4000. It is so powerful for a VLF and it has the most advanced technology available today in a VLF. Hot ground with lots of hot rocks becomes very smooth with the ground tracking offset. I sur wish the batteries for the 4000 didn't cost around $500.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I hear you on the cost of those batteries! Makes you cringe thinking about it.

I'm doing some reading on that little detector of yours--I see Chris sells it with a gold finding kit--it's not a bad price either. I'll do some more research on it.

I've dug tons of deep holes chasing targets over the years--those Minelabs have a deep reach, that's for sure.

All the best, and good luck with your research on that new ground!

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks to all of you that read my posts, and for all of your input, feedback, advice, and sincere help. I really appreciate it, and I'm honored to have you visit.

I've decided that the next story I'll post is one I'll call, "The Midnight Caller". It's a crazy story about a guy that used to come through our camp at midnight each and every night, and he wasn't the least bit concerned about how much noise he was making! It's quite a story, with a very satisfactory ending.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[strickman]

can't wait ........

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Strickman--hope to have it posted in several days.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Hefty1]

More,More,More, gotta have More, More, More.

Thanks Lanny

Hefty

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Hefty!!

It's coming--just doing some revisions and checking my notes.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

My apologies to those that are waiting--I'm getting close to finishing that story, but in the meantime, I posted a reply to a comment on a bedrock article about bedrock to detect when hunting for gold.
http://www.arizonaoutback.com/azoroot/shop/custom.aspx?recid=74
The article is excellent, and I agree with many of the things in the article; nonetheless, I felt to add this tip:

Most of the time, smooth bedrock doesn't hold gold, but I have run across some spectacular nugget finds in smooth bedrock. Even if the surface has been hammered flat, and pounded smooth, it doesn't mean that there weren't cracks in the bedrock before those titanic re-shaping events occurred. So, when I'm in gold country, I always check smooth bedrock as well, and have been rewarded, from time to time, with some incredible results because it's often overlooked, as most nugget shooters give it a pass.

What the uninitiated don't realize is that bedrock in gold country has an excellent chance of holding gold, it's just not proportionately as high as rough bedrock, but it's a chance I don't pass up, as the rough stuff has usually been hammered to death.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

(Here's the first installment.)

The Midnight Caller Enigma.

Well, this is a story I've promised to write, and so I've pored over my notes and reflections and arrived at this:

The day we started up that logging road amid the vast forests of re-seeded spruce and pine, things appeared to be going fine. It was a hot and dry northern, mid-summer’s day. You know, the kind of day in the North Country where the sun sets at about eleven at night, and it’s still light at eleven-thirty—the kind of day where you’re in no real hurry, and all seems fine and right with the world.

Well, that’s the kind of day it was. I’d driven all night, putting in the twelve hours it took to get to the junction by the little gas station and café, where we teed off the main highway onto the North-West trending logging road. After about a mile on that packed gravel, things began to change. The road was an active logging road, and if you’ve never driven one, you’ve missed out on some real excitement and adventure.

The adventure started after that first mile. All at once the truck began to shimmy and shake like some dance-crazed single on steroids at an all night disco. I thought for sure that we had at least one flat tire, but when I stopped to check, all the tires were up. But, scanning the gravel trail we rested on, it looked like someone had been trying to replicate the effect of corrugated metal on that roadbed—like they’d run the corrugated metal pattern across the road, perpendicular to the sides, for unending miles in the distance. I had no idea at the time that the road’s pattern was the result of heavily loaded logging trucks, nor did I have any idea that we’d be driving on it’s extreme-sport’s surface for the next four hours!

But hey, I got the best free back and overall body massage of my life; however, anyone tires of a massage after four hours. Nonetheless, I didn’t start this tale to talk about spa treatments, but about getting in to where we could hunt the gold. So, I’d best get back on track.

On that memorable logging road, we had to drive quite slowly, for in the back of the truck we carried a substantial load. We had the quad in the back, along with cases of food and water (enough for a month), a large waterproof bundle containing our bedding and changes of clothing, the large, white outfitter’s wall tent, the wood-burning stove, the steel poles for the tent frame, a chainsaw, a hatchet, a couple of axes, sledgehammers, pry-bars, buckets, river sluices, and a variety of shovels. Yup, we were loaded right up, and we didn’t want to get part way down that obnoxious road and wind up with a busted spring or two, so we plugged along at a moderate pace.

For the first while, that road was bone dry, and the clay dust rose, and then fell, to hang about us, all the while sifting down to cling and coat everything. Our whole outfit got coated up real nice—we could have pulled into Afghanistan or Iraq and not had to bother with the desert camouflage paint scheme at all.

However, we were only beginning to get our initial coating of dust. Down the road, heading in our direction, we saw a massive self-propelled dust cloud of powdered clay boring down on us. It was intensely alarming, and it was traveling so fast, that we pulled off to the side of the road to avoid it. Lucky for us, we did, for that freight train of swirling clay dust roared past us, and inside of it was a fully loaded logging truck—the ultimate terror of the north—the ground jumped and shook as it thundered by. The accompanying tan-colored and trailing cloud, blocked the sun. We couldn’t see anything at all for the next few minutes. After everything settled out, our evolving camouflage scheme was upgraded to a whole new level.

After about an hour of alternately pulling over for clouds of mechanized, frenzied death, and then moving cautiously forward again, the skies started to change. Clouds of the rainy gray variety started to spot the horizon. Then moving towards us swiftly, they came on with a vengeance, and soon a cloudburst poured down for half an hour. The bonus to this deluge was that the dust went away, a fresh, pine-filled pungent scent filled the air, but everything in the back of the truck now had a slick coating of damp clay. However, after the rain, the logging trucks were definitely easier to spot--that was a nice bonus.

But as we were climbing in elevation, entering into terrain with more lakes and swamps, a new hazard was about to present itself. And, it was a doozy—it was a brand-new experience endowed with a steep learning curve—and packed with a powerful surprise.

 

[EagleDown]

Halito Lanny. You're off to a good start in re. "The Midnight Caller Inigma". You're getting as bad as me, leaving readers hanging.

Incidentally, I neglected to answer an ealier question. You asked how long I was planning on "staying".

Uuh, how long is a lifetime??

If I ever get disgusted enough to leave California, I gar-an-tee you, I don't intend to return. EVER!!

 

[Lanny in AB]

Halito Lanny. You're off to a good start in re. "The Midnight Caller Inigma". You're getting as bad as me, leaving readers hanging.

Incidentally, I neglected to answer an ealier question. You asked how long I was planning on "staying".

Uuh, how long is a lifetime??

If I ever get disgusted enough to leave California, I gar-an-tee you, I don't intend to return. EVER!!

I've been to California a few times, but I've never been there as a gold-hunter. However, from what I recall, California is an awfully beautiful place, with way more nice weather for prospecting than we ever get up here in the land of the frozen chosen, or the land of the chosen frozen--whichever way you want to look at it.

Staying forever would probably be just about right, as any longer would be somewhat difficult to define!

I'll post the next part of the story as soon as I get it done.

All the best, and thanks for dropping in,

Lanny

 

[strickman]

I am sure this will be a great book .can't wait.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Strickman--I am reviewing my notes, organizing my journals and posts, writing, and reviewing stories I've written in the past. I hope to have it all organized one day to put together in a book. It is quite a bit more work than I thought it would be, and I think it's going to take longer than I thought. However, I appreciate the many people that have so kindly encouraged me to gather my stories together so that I can get them organized into a book.

All the best, and thanks again,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

(Sushi, Hefty, Strickman, Eagle, anyone else that reads these posts--while reviewing notes, emails, etc. for my gold stories, I came upon this one that I'd written for a great, helpful fellow prospector about six years ago. The story was just sitting there with my sent emails--I hadn't even saved a copy of it to my writing folder. Hope you enjoy it.)


Here's a little tale for you. I remember prospecting out this river a while back. It was to heck and gone up north, down in a steep canyon, one lined with lots of brush, pine, fir, and balsam. Very rugged slopes they were that led down to that river. I was trying to find a spot where I could detect or pan, and get some nice coarse gold. I was in an area that was known for coarse, round gold, and I wanted some.

Well, I wrestled my way through some obnoxious brush, in fact I got smacked in the face by a piece of said brush that I'd stepped on to try to get down to what had obviously been a very active suction eddy during Spring Flood--I can still taste that bark and those leaves from that brawny brush when I think on it!

Anyway, this spot was straight down the mountain slope from where an old drift mine went in, about a hundred feet up slope. In fact, that old drift mine went in on a bedrock hump, one located about seventy feet above the river. The oldtimers had seen the hump and then those sourdoughs just drifted along the up-sloping bedrock, under about fifty feet of boulder clay. And who knows how far back they went, or of they roomed it out. It's still there, but the entrance is caved in.

Some modern miners had come in with big equipment and made a road around that point on the hill, and they'd taken it right down to bedrock and as they widened it, they beat the bejeepers out of that drift mine entrance.

Now, what a dummy I was--I didn't detect that scraped off bedrock hump where the drift mine had gone in. Instead, I went over to what was left of the entrance, and hauled exceptionally heavy buckets of material down to the river to pan.

If you don't think hauling that prospective paydirt down-slope like that was fun, then you don't know what fun is! Or, you probably think a double root canal is fun too. Man, what a miserable time I had getting those buckets down to the river, what with walking down a 30-40 degree slope, covered in broken bedrock and loose cobbles. Fun? Way over the legal limit for fun, that's for sure.

Now, every bucket had gold in it, but only flakes, and I wanted coarse gold, none of that flake stuff for me. No sir. But, after three buckets (five gallon plastic ones) of that goo from the bottom of what had been uncovered from the floor of the drift, I'd had enough fun. (I wanted more fun, but absolutely no more of that kind!)

Well, back to my story. So, I'd located this spot down on the river where there'd been this back-tailing of water during spring run-off, and low and behold, it was exactly below that bedrock hump, the one I told you about where the oldtimer's had drifted in. Well, after getting slapped around and abused some more by those aforementioned branches, I finally dropped into what can best be described as a truck-box sized hole in the river bank, one with all of these bread-loaf sized cobbles plastered all over that sucked-out section of the river bank.

I was in my own little enclave down there, and I couldn't be seen from the cat-trail above, nor could I be seen from up or down the river on my side of the bank. And the opposite bank was some scene from prospecting hell--a solid cliff of vertical insanity! I had packed down my old VLF detector with me, and I'd carried in my shovel. I fired up the detector, and I started scanning the cobbled section. I immediately got a loud signal.

So, I chucked a load of cobbles into the river and scanned again. The target was still there. I moved some of the smaller, underlying loose stuff and there it was--a nice square nail. What the . . .? That wasn't what I wanted. I was after coarse gold, and I definitely didn't want old squares, but as I found out through repeated digging, they were deposited all over that bank!

Well, being the dummy that I was, I never made the connection that this could be a good sign; in fact, I scanned more bank and got more signals and just gave up with the detecting because I KNEW every signal was nothing but square nails.

I decided to clean off the rest of the loose stuff from under the cobbles, and I chucked all the material into the river, into a hole, some eight-feet deep. A hole, by the way, that was just below a series of bedrock drops--the only calm water in quite a ways. Another clue that should have slapped me in the face just as hard as that stupid bush had earlier; but no, my mind was like a steel trap, bent on finding coarse gold, not on paying attention to blatant and obvious clues. (I figured out later that my mind really was like a trap--snapped shut, and not open to obvious logic and thinking.) I'll just blame the whole regrettable experience on Northern Brain Fever, or some other equally useless excuse.

Anyway, to somewhat shorten this rambling tale, I found a layer of soft decomposing bedrock, with lots of vertical shingling, under the loose stuff (friable rock, apparently), and so I scraped it off and panned it out. Immediately I had coarse gold in my pan! What the . . .?

All along that section, of about eight feet in length, there was great color, not good color, insanely great color! I sat down and started looking at that cut in the bank. The bedrock I'd uncovered was rising up right into the bank. Then my pea-sized brain made the obvious connection.

You'll no doubt remember this, that directly above me was the bedrock hump, and here was steeply rising bedrock heading up and trending in the exact same direction. Talk about a cross-wired brain (and one snapped shut, remember?) that I was using that day.

In hindsight, I was obviously on a shelf that must have connected to the hump. Of course there were tons and tons of overburden between me, the rest of that rising shelf, and the hump. Anyway, my somewhat tweaked, trapped brain did a flip-flop out of its largely unconscious mode and I scraped all of that exposed bedrock and sluiced the remaining material--I had an aluminum river sluice in my vehicle up on the cat-trail. I won't bore you with the near-death experience from the header I took while coming down what I thought would be an easier route than the so obviously inferior face-slapping, bush-whacking route discovered on my prior descent!

Whatever--I made it to the river alive, sort of in one ragged disheveled piece; nonetheless, I commenced sluicing. The first shovel of dirt that hit the sluice produced a nugget. It was around two grams, and L shaped. It didn't even get into the first riffle--it just sat there in the header on that aluminum plate--immovable and entirely sassy--the sun winking a flashing off its golden little hide.

I sluiced the remainder of the remaining dirt and got great color all through it. It was getting dark, so I reluctantly went back to camp, which was a long way off, but sited and nestled in a very comfortable log cabin nonetheless. (Oh, did I mention that it had been raining for three days straight prior to my find on the river?)

Well, the next day, the river had dropped about four inches. When I weaseled my way back through the now obviously serene, highly enjoyable, and ever-more safe face-slapping route, I could see the edge of the previous waterline on that soft bedrock, and there in the morning sun was a nugget! The little stinker was just basking there on the bank like it was occupying a spot on a sunbather's beach or something. My mind did a triple flip, and the trap sprung wide open.

What was going on here? There was consistent gold right up to the bank where the suction-eddied portion terminated in the boulder clay, and now it was heading down into the pool. I scraped out into the pool as much as I could with my long-handled shovel, but the bedrock dropped off quite sharply, and for those of you that have tried scraping off river run under running water's hydraulic pressure, it's no easy task, as it's like the stuff becomes Teflon super-slippery or something.

Anyway, you should have seen the coarse gold that came up with the river-run nonetheless. Well, by the time I'd finished teasing all of the material I could up that watery slope, and after I'd run it, I had a quarter-ounce of nice rounded coarse gold, and several nice nuggets to boot.

So, what's the purpose of this rambling, bushwhacking, mind-trapping tale? Why, those square nails that showed up way early in the story were all over the place because the suction eddy had robbed them from the flood level of that river's waters, and the bedrock had stopped their descent. Moreover, the painful truth that is now so clear to me is that the gold had been yanked from the flood stage along with those pesky nails. But the really horrible fact is that quite a few of those annoying, so obviously square nail signals were undoubtedly thrown off and sent by coarse gold, or sassy nuggets! Now, the killer double-root-canal reality is, what the heck did I throw into that eight-foot deep pool? What the heck indeed . . . .

Well, if I think about that too much, I'll just go crazy, so why bother? I'd rather just admit that I'm plumb dumb, get over it, and get on with finding some more gold.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

[Author's note--I heard the next year that some dredgers went into that pool--one of the workers had seen my truck parked on the trail, had walked down to the river to investigate after I'd left, seen the suction eddy, my diggin's, and had sent his buddies in to work it. Well, they had a field day in that hole and they dredged out ounces of gold! It's very obvious to me now that this was where the river had cut into an old channel that trended up the river bank to that drift mine--oh well . . . .]

 

[Lanny in AB]

(Part II of The Midnight Caller.)

Apparently in the North Country, they have these little things they like to call “punch outs”. Well, if you’ve never been “punched out” before (bar fights, sporting disagreements, and scraps over women don’t count), you’ve never lived the true northern experience.

For those of you unfamiliar with this phenomenon, I’ll try to explain what a punch out is. As you remember, the terrain and elevation had changed on our route in, and we were in an area with more crystalline lakes, low-lying areas with extensive swamps, and little streams. However, every once in a while, we’d be rumbling down the road when all at once the front end of the truck would dive into the road, and I do mean dive. The truck would drop, and it smash into that big steel guard under the engine that stops the oil pan from being crushed when you hit a rock or an obstacle on the road. The shocks would bottom out, and then we’d be through it and the back end would then bottom out with a terrific crash—the full effect was quite like a violent chiropractic adjustment, one trying to adjust and realign every joint in the body!

As you can imagine, this was very disconcerting and quite alarming, as we had no idea whatsoever we were encountering. However, after a couple of episodes, we soon learned to notice the subtle indications in the road that one of these free chiropractic treatments would soon be coming—the color of the road was slightly darker, and sometimes you could even see a little moisture leaking from the road bed around a slight depression (deeper than the aforementioned ubiquitous, corrugated road ruts). Upon cresting a rise in a stand of older timber, we found a van nose down in a big one, unable to move.

We stopped to see if we could help, but they’d already radioed some friends that were coming to tow them out to take them back to the garage at the little café back at the junction on the highway. After chatting with them a bit, we learned the name of this aforementioned menace—the dreaded punch-out! These vehicle traps, apparently, are caused by late, deep frost coming out of the roadbed (areas with more moisture appeared to be worse than dry stretches). As a result, the accompanying moisture, and resultant spongy bottom that comprises a punch-out, won’t support the weight of a vehicle—thus letting the nose of the vehicle dive violently down, punching out the vehicle (mechanically), and sometimes the driver!

Needless to say, we kept a very sharp eye out for theses menaces the rest of the trip, and thus avoided any serious consequences by slowing down whenever we felt we were approaching any. After that, we would detour carefully around them.

However, our risks were not at an end. As we were working our way up a winding hill where the road was narrowing, and just as we were about to top out, a fully loaded logging truck came flying down it heading straight for us. Well sir, we had no place to go, and that bit of road was too small for both of us, so we did the only thing we could to save our lives—we hit the ditch.

The logging truck roared straight on through, as there was no way he could stop that hurtling mass, even if he wanted to. Well, we sat there, nose down in the ditch, and shook for the next five minutes. We learned afterward that we needed to travel with radios so that we could talk to the truck drivers and let them know where we were on the road by calling out the mile markers along the route, or travel on a Saturday or Sunday when the trucks weren’t running.

After recovering, and then by four-wheeling a bit, we worked our way out of the ditch (It was a good thing we didn’t go into the ditch on a flat surrounded by all of that swamp land!).

The greatest surprises after that point in the journey were spotting a wolverine crossing the road (I understand they travel mostly by night, and it’s the only one I’ve seen in the open), seeing a couple of black bears, a moose and her calf, and spying a few deer.

At last we came to a chain of lakes, which signaled that we were getting close to the goldfield. The road forked, and we took the one to the left and soon found ourselves climbing a long grade up to a small settlement. The residents had no electricity (except for generators), no phones (sattelite phone at the store only), no natural gas for heat (wood-burning stoves or propane only), and no water or sewer services (wells or river water, and septic tanks).

We stopped at the store to get oriented, bought a few items, and inquired where we could pitch our outfitter’s tent. We were directed down the road a ways, across a creek, and then up to a flat where several historic cabins were sited in the forest surrounding the campsite. We then started the necessary process of unpacking and setting up camp.

 

[strickman]

great stories Lannny,worth waiting for .Looks like you have been busy . Look I have to know ,what is this boulder clay stuff ? That's a new one on me ,remember I live in the south don't see much of that around here. l.o.l.

 

[Lanny in AB]

When the glaciers were running many miles deep, and countless miles wide during the ice age, they dragged all kinds of rock and soil with them. Often, they packed along great amounts of boulders mixed in with massive amounts of stubborn clay. When they parked, and melted, or when they were melting and retreating, they dumped this gooey brew all over the mountains, into the valleys, etc.

As there were such titanic forces involved in the movement capabilities of these glaciers, when they dropped their loads, they often dropped forty feet or more of this boulder clay to cover former stream beds. This protected the river and stream-bed deposits for untold eons. Over countless thousands of years, post-glacial streams chewed away at the boulder clay in the canyons, eroding their way down to those hidden deposits. When they cut into that former river-run (now exposed), they started to re-concentrate the gold into the existing streams.

Sometimes, the early prospectors would get lucky enough to find a bedrock outcrop containing the remnants of an ancient channel along a river, and then tunnel in, drifting along the bedrock to mine out the deposit under the huge deposits of boulder clay bordering the existing streams.

So, boulder clay (sometimes called armor clay), is a solid deposit of boulders and heavy clay that overlies old stream deposits and ancient channels. It is the bane of modern miners as it has to be stripped away to get at the channels underneath, and it often requires ripper teeth on the back of huge bulldozers to break it up sufficiently so that it can be bladed and moved out of the way. It takes a lot of time and money to strip it off.

But, once that overburden is stripped away, and if the old-timer's haven't beaten the modern miners to the deposits underneath, it is sometimes a glorious bonanza to behold--you can see (a foot or two off the bedrock) the nuggets in the sidewalls of the channel--I'll never forget that incredible sight--nuggets spaced eight to ten inches apart. I've been lucky enough to view it twice so far, and to move along the face, flipping the nuggets out of the channel material--too bad the nuggets weren't mine to keep!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Good Morning Lanny,
With yarns, words and pictures like yours the book should sell quite well to the niche market of prospectors of all grades even 2nd class novices like myself.

For some of my stories people think I'm making them up and I suspect like you all I'm doing is telling the truth as some of the stuff I've done or have had happen to me are strange or unique and they sound made up. Like hiking out on a broken leg with a sprained ankle or having a bear tear up my equipment and I pieced it back together enough so I could stay for another 9 days. Once I found a sizeable section of historic stream bed perched high up on the side of a mountain and I just kept on walking. Some 20 years later I tried to find it, spent two weeks looking in that gold bearing area but never found a single thing and the brush had done some amazing growing in all those years so a lot more was covered .Seems like this sort of stuff sounds made up but I've the x-rays as well as pictures for some of it to prove it.

Keep relating and spinning......63bkpkr