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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[parttime_miner]

Lanny,

First off, your stories are great!.. I always check this thread for your newly posted stories while visiting the forum...

Secondly,
The cow and gold in stomach story...

Well, I read a old historical account about something very similar...
It involved sheep and a sheephurder, in or around the Black Rock Desert in nevada.

The way I remeber reading it is that the hurder noticed one day that his sheep had gold plated teeth.
The tops of the teeth and in between the teeth where heavily plated with gold.

It didnt take long for the hurder to find that his sheep were eating the grass clumps, Roots and all.
The roots and dirt attached contained the placer gold that plated the teeth.

So, I dont remember all the rest in detail, but I believe that he went into the nearest town and told too many people... starting a gold rush into that part of the desert.

He was credited in the book for bringing gold miners to Northern Nevada.

very interesting..

Moral of the story... Check the roots... And tell people... after you get your share!

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Hey Parttime,

Thanks!

That's quite a story about the sheep. I like your caution at the end as well.

Thanks for posting it.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

On The Prospecting Blues, as caused by Cabin Fever



It's winter, and boy am I blue,
I feel that there's nuthin' to do.
My pan's in my pack,
The dredge is out back
And my fever's a hundred and two.


That fever, it's burnin' my brain.
I want to be out there again
A diggin' the dirt
With dust on my shirt
To ease up a bit of this pain.


My fever, it's surely the pits
It frazzles my prospectin' wits!
Gold tales from the mouth,
Of diggers down south,
It sets me to shakin' with fits.


It stinks to be here with no fun
The snow and the ice? Well, I'm done!
The Aussies and Yanks
Are pullin' their pranks
With pictures of gold in the sun.


Oh, wretched the miner that's cold
While others get warm gold to hold.
This winter's too long
It's nothin' but wrong!
I'd rather be chasin' the gold!!


The end of this woeful tirade
Will end when my fever does fade;
When the sun starts to shine
I'll no longer whine
While I'm digging for gold with my spade.




By William Shake's Peer (His former classmate, I believe.)[]


All the best,


Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Invisible Gold in Plain Sight

I know I've commented in the past on the tenacity of stubborn gold: gold that is wedged far down in crevices; gold that is concreted in a matrix that perfectly matches the color of the mother rock--the matrix perfectly cemented and blended so as to negate the possibility of differentiating the former cracks from the nurturing bedrock; also, gold that is carefully cached in Mother Nature's natural concrete, a brawny blend of smaller rocks and sand that looks much like the concrete of boring, common sidewalks.

However, not long ago, I had the opportunity to chase nuggets with my detector in a most challenging formation. I had been granted the privilege of detecting the down-slope of what can best be described as the exit ramp for an excavator: the ramp emerging from a steep, gorge-like placer pit. To detect in the pit itself would have been madness, as the face was an active weeping wall of numerous springs, strangled fountains endlessly forcing a living ooze of cobbles, clay, and boulders into the watery pit below. To say there was a water problem at this excavation would be gross understatement. It most likely was a hindrance to the old-timers down as well.

But, as a matter of record, the entire placer deposit comprised the remains of at least seven ancient stream-beds, ones that crisscrossed at a hectic and confused conjunction, one formed where the lower ends of two stalwart canyons met. Atop those black canyons, their mute rims existed as stubborn proof to their resistance of dim ice ages long past; they remained as stout geological survivors of that ever-restless glacial grinding.

Because of these rims, ancient glacial-melt rivers were ultimately funneled through their timeless gates, and the gold they carried was given temporary sanctuary in deep beds of rock and bolder clay. Long before we ever arrived, the Argonauts of the 1800's had sunk many shafts down to various layers and levels of pay, drifting along until the gold ran out, or before it was mysteriously stripped away by some intersecting channel; or, until water, financial downturn, backbreaking labor, or unknown disaster had closed the workings for good.

Moreover, the primary reason for the aforementioned pit's location was due to the discovery of a roomed-out section of drift-mined bedrock on the claim. No one rooms-out, by hand, a piece of bedrock some thirty feet below the surface of the boulder clay unless the gold there is mighty good! On a different note, the large boulders the excavator pulled out some forty feet below that shelf of bedrock also proved why the hand-miners had not sunk their shaft there, as the seepage of that low sump would have inundated any attempts as well.

But, I must get back to my detecting story. So, I found myself detecting only the top of the escape ramp. The bedrock, as is the norm for this location, was red-hot electronically. I used a double-D coil, sensitive to nuggets a gram and larger, and was still getting chatter. But, between the pops and snaps, I heard definite cresting sounds in the threshold--those welcome golden hums that serve up secrets too long buried and lost.

I scraped off the gumbo of overburden and was faced with black and purplish bedrock, all laced with quartz stringers. Not a crack or a fissure in sight. I scrubbed the coil along the mother rock and was rewarded with a series of sharper tones amidst the background chatter.

Looking at the coil's path, the sounds it traced trended diagonally across, and then down the slope of the rock. I slowly perceived that the detector was likely following invisible crevices, ones whose borders rolled off into the yawning placer pit. Knowing that the detector wouldn't lie, I got out my wide-bladed, thin crevicing chisel and carefully chipped the actual bedrock-sides of the crevice into the material of the crevice itself; for in this case, the crevice material was not solidly concreted. It was more of a crumbly composition; however, it mimicked exactly the color of the bedrock, perfectly hiding the fissures and thus any material they contained.

So, using a right-angled gouging tool, I drug the material upslope of one of the diagonal cracks into a plastic scoop. Next, I passed the scoop under the coil and got a nice crisp tone. I shook the scoop, settled the heavies, and at the same time gingerly sluffed the lighter material out the end of the scoop.

There were five rugged nuggets in the scoop. None were over a gram and a half. Additionally, I located two other crevices using the detector, garnering more of those small, yet sassy nuggets.

By the way, I like to put my nuggets in a pliable plastic bottle, and nothing lights me up like the happy rumble of nuggets wrestling each other in that bottle. You know, I really don't know why, but I just love the sound of gold dancing on gold.

Oh yes, it's at this point in the tale where you can brand me dumb, again, for I've made the same mistake before! It seems I always get preoccupied with the nuggets, and I forget about the bedding the nuggets are nestled in (I guess I'm a slow learner, or maybe just incorrigible--perhaps both. . . ). Anyway, my partner, bless his soul, did not forget. He gathered all of that surplus crevice material together into a pan and took the works to the creek, under some murky premise that gold of various sizes travels together--what a windy hypothesis thought I. (Shows how dumb I am.)

I almost had an apoplectic seizure when I saw how much chunky gold there was in that pan!

And to think, every bit of that gold, nuggets and all, would still be there today if the detector hadn't seen what my eyes couldn't see in plain sight.

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

Small Bedrock Bonanza

I was on what can best be described as a prospecting walkabout one midsummer day. The festive sun, bronzing itself against a perfect backdrop of cobalt blueness, was radiating a glorious wave of welcome heat. Somewhat cheered by this break from several days of cold drizzle and outright rain, I began investigating some old workings near a most crowded creek, one nearly strangled by thick stands of willow. Deep green horse-tails, small waxy butter-cups, and meadow grasses slowed the flow even more.

The day's new-heated air was waxing humid by the little creek, and no breeze disturbed the calm. Now, I know this setting sounds serene, but not when one is far removed from civilization, as in the great northern Boreal forests. In fact, the conditions were perfect for an all out assault by the deep woods own pernicious blood bank, that living wall, that suffocating all-enveloping cloud of black flies, mosquitoes, and no-seeums. The air was so thick with them that I had to breathe through my nose only, as any oral intake of air resulted in an unwelcome repast of Insecticus Wingdus Yuckus. I whipped out my can of near-nuclear grade Deet and gave myself the prospector's equivalent of a sheep-dip dunk. With that, the flies bugged out of my airspace to swarm testily around me, about four inches out.

With enough bug paste in my mouth to last a lifetime, I cut up the creek bank and wove my way through a stand of hundred-year-old pine, the floor carpeted with dewy ferns and juniper. I then turned parallel to the creek, about thirty feet upslope. There was a gentle breeze blowing, enough of one to send the bugs back to the creek.

All about me were ample signs of old workings, and more modern ones as well, ones done in the thirty's. I happened upon a spot where the bedrock had been left exposed. It appeared that a small operation had stripped off about ten feet of yellowish boulder clay (a stubborn solid deposit of boulders and clay dumped by the receding glaciers of the last ice age) to expose an old stream channel resting on the mother rock, one that cut back under the rising boulder clay for an undetermined distance.

The excavation I scouted was about twenty feet wide at its widest, and about sixty feet long. It ended abruptly where the shoulder of the mountain thrust through on the downstream end at a place where the old channel took a sharp turn to dive back under about fifty feet of boulder clay?far too much overburden for a small depression era operation to work. I walked back to the spot where the bedrock remained exposed, dropped my pack, and pulled out my sniping tools and my gold pan.

I scraped around for any low spots that still held accumulations of original ancient placer material?small tightly packed river stones and gray clay. I found a few and cleaned them out. I made the trek back to the creek and panned them out. Almost no black sand, and no gold. I went back up to the workings and sat on a flat boulder. I took a long look at the topography. I noticed a spot where the bedrock rose sharply from the exposed sheet, then leveled off as it ran back under the boulder clay. I also noticed that at that point the bedrock was covered with about two feet of clay slump.

Well, I don't know about you, but I'd rather not dig if there's nice exposed bedrock to work, but as the exposed bedrock was not giving up any secrets, I somewhat dispassionately took my shovel and cleared a spot about four feet square. The bedrock here was all uneven, with lots of irregular little pockets. I cleaned a few out but got no satisfying results. As I was about to leave, I hesitated, then decided to dig under the boulder clay a bit where the bedrock started to dip down, before it disappeared entirely under the boulder clay. I was quite surprised to find that the rock dropped off about a foot, before it leveled off again. But what interested me most was the composition of the material between the boulder clay and the bedrock. It was a gray colored sand atop a clay and rock mixture, a mixture composed of compacted clay and small pebbles.

This is the stuff you only hope to find. It's virgin ground. What I had unearthed was bottom edge of the face, as exposed by the small operation. I was working intact ancient placer, tens of thousands of years in the waiting. The series of irregular pockets I'd cleaned right before this drop-off were an encouraging sign. This was a bigger pocket, about a foot across?a likely looking trap. Much renewed, I cleaned out several pans of material to the bare bedrock, then trucked them one by one to the creek. No gold! What was going on here? Everything was so perfect. I pulled out some lunch and ate moodily while I pondered some more.

After eating, I went back to examine the hole. The air had dried the moisture from the bedrock, and I was staring at some reddish bedrock, different from the larger section of exposed bedrock behind me. But, that was not what caught my attention. The bottom of the hole was laced with what looked like a network of blood vessels, purple veins standing out in living relief against the red rock. This was a never before to me?never before had I seen such an occurrence. I didn't know what to make of it, much less what to do. However, eventually my prospecting curiosity got the better of me, and I took a screwdriver and scraped at the veins. They were nowhere near as hard as the rock. In fact, they were more like a purple clay, and I soon discerned they were sealing cracks in the bedrock! Well, I dug and scraped and soon had about a tablespoon of material.

I hurriedly took it to the creek and sunk the pan. The bugs were back, but I didn't care. I'd gladly donate a little blood to get a look at this stuff. As I mashed the material under the water against the bottom of the pan, the watery contents turned an ugly purple color. The creek water was crystal clear, but I couldn't see the bottom of my green pan. I sunk the pan flat in the creek and continued to let the creek carry off the discolored water. Then I tilted the pan to settle the heavies in the crease, and began a gentle washing motion, the pan at a sharp angle to the creek, using very little water to wash. The water was now clear in the pan and I saw a riotous array of very dark, heavily stained small BB-sized stones. This was new. I tipped the pan back to pick out some of the stones and saw that ever welcome, never jaded yellow flash. There in the crease were three saucy pickers, close to the same size as the darkened stones. No fine gold whatsoever.

To say I raced back to that hole would be to do my Olympic sprint a grave injustice. I flew. I gouged as far as I could into the cracks, but very little material remained. I took out an awl and probed the crevices and was rewarded with a soft resistance at the junction of two veins. I pushed harder and the awl dropped three inches. I twisted the probe and it spun around in an ever widening circle. I'd found a little pocket, one fed by gold-bearing crevices! I popped that very hard bedrock with a chisel and opened a hole large enough to insert the bent handle of a spoon. In this manner, I gouged out about three tablespoons of wet, purplish clay, sand, and small stones. With no material left in the hole, I casually sauntered back to the creek. Not! On reflection, I don't think my feet ever dented the moss on the downslope.

I got the same result as earlier when I sunk the pan and kneaded the material?a cloud of heavily oxidized sediments dyed and discolored the water. The stones were slightly larger than BB's when I could finally see them in the crease, but this time the gold was protruding in a most sassy manner! A nice clutch of pickers they were, in the quarter to half gram range. And, no flattened run-of-the-mill flakes either. Every piece had a rugged, most handsome character.

I never found any more gold at that place as the bedrock dipped again, rushing down beneath that ever mysterious guardian of the north, that enigmatic formation of boulders and stubborn clay that ever riddles the eager prospector: riddles him by hiding away to cache so many of the north's ancient golden placers.

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thought I'd post a shot of this past summer's gold that I took out with my four-inch dredge. For reference, the biggest chunk is about half an inch long. (Since my pictures keep disappearing, I'll just substitute with what I can find.)


All the best you fellow goldseekers,

Lanny

 

[JACKOJohn Stanwix]

I haven't dug it yet, but there are two very strong signals in the caliche that's near a treasure site. How would you go about getting into caliche? is it harder that bed rock ? My pick won' touch it. Grap flies everywhere when you hit this stuff.

Jacko

 

[Lanny in AB]

You'll probably need a masonary chisel. And to keep the stuff from flying, you can lay a piece of burlap/heavy fabric over it--leave a hole for the chisel.

What detector are you using? Is it a PI? What coil? Sometimes there's some pretty hot rocks in that caliche that really give off sweet signals. If you've got a PI and a good DD try that on the spot, if you already haven't. In fact, last winter I got a couple of nice signals with a DD, but I bought a new nuggetfinder 16"DD, and it weeded those nasty hot rocks right out that my other DD was reading. Wish I'd have had it the trip before, and for most of the last trip, but I bought it near the end, and boy was I impressed with how quiet on bad ground/over known hotrocks it was, and how sensitive it was.

Lanny

 

[parttime_miner]

I haven't dug it yet, but there are two very strong signals in the caliche that's near a treasure site. How would you go about getting into caliche? is it harder that bed rock ? My pick won' touch it. Grap flies everywhere when you hit this stuff.

Jacko

Just an idea... no guarantees... but what about a jack-hammer :P

I've read reports that Gypsum and/or Sulfur solution will help, but not positive...

Dont know the story, but if this was intentionally buried, then it sounds like a great way make sure nobody digs up any treasure...

Now i'm imagining a big "X" on the ground, left to taunt...

 

[Lanny in AB]

Looks like the other links to some of my dredge gold have expired, so, hope this works as this is nice coarse gold.

All the best,

Lanny

(A lot of my pictures have disappeared--not sure why, so I'll just substitute pictures that I can find. Sorry for any inconvenience.)

 

[Lanny in AB]

Here's a shot of some more gold that I found prospecting,

Lanny

 

[ghost surf]

A person along # 51 in Wisconsin down by the Dells..Found a load of gold when he dug up a new spot for a well 6 feet down! !100s of thousands of dollars worth too!Pretty impressive and there is a lot around here that no-one knows about!I know of the spot but they do not allow people any where near there!It was in the bed rock.

 

[ghost surf]

Now that would be right up my alley..GOLD! Someday I am going to look for gold..Meteorites are my favorite ...But gold I dream of! Diamonds too! But GOLD!!..... Ah yes!

 

[ghost surf]

Here is a good book to read about gold...On GOLDEN GROUND.....By Yukon Younder and Dexter Clark..I have a signed book from both writers and know his brother..Nice man!They own a gold mine in Fair Banks Ankorage, Alaska...Well known gold minning camp!

 

[parttime_miner]

Lanny,

Nice gold!

 

[Lanny in AB]

Ghost Surf,

Thanks for the book title,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Parttime,

It's good for me to post pics during the off season, as it reminds me what I get to do once the weather warms up.

Lanny

 

[Leon]

I'm a newbie coin-shooter, & your giv'n me GOLD FEVER!
Anyone want to buy any fishing equipment
Great stories,,, Cool poem...

 

[Lanny in AB]

Leon,

I used to shoot coins, but then I got into hunting nuggets, and, well, I just sort of lost my edge to hunt coins. But you can take a lot of the same skills forward into your nugget hunting, if you decide to take the plunge. However, once you get a healthy case of the fever, I'll promise you this, you'll never quite be the same again. Now, I'm not sure whether that's good or bad, but it's just the way that it is.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

The Rooster, The Corn, and The Slug

This is an unlikely sounding title for a gold tale, I completely agree. But, it really is a gold story, even with its puzzling name.

This tale began twenty-four hours before any gold chasing happened. In fact, the first eight hours were nothing but the usual boring tasks required of any gold trip: organizing the grub, bedding, tools, fuel, equipment, firearms, and other bits and pieces necessary to sustain and protect life for several weeks while living in the deep northern woods, a unforgiving destination where self-sufficiency is an absolute requirement.

After the organization of our supplies, we loaded the mechanized equipment on the trailer: a small wash plant, a variety of pumps, and a small home-made backhoe. In other years, the much lighter freight was a gold jig, or various sizes of smaller sluice boxes with their required pumps and hoses.

As with any prospecting expedition, we'd packed the signature accommodation of generations of prospectors, a white canvas wall tent. As well, we packed the essential wood-burning stove with its proper lengths of stove pipe. Even in summer those northern nights will put ice on the fire bucket in the tent.

In the back of the 3/4 ton diesel, we stowed the pack boxes of food, the duffel bags of bedding and clothes, and the chainsaw and axe. All items were snugly arranged around the four-wheeler in the truck bed.

On a connected note, when it comes to prospecting in the north, I've fallen in love with the sound of the Cummin's engine that powers the truck; its throaty song is both comforting and reassuring. Undoubtedly, this bond is a result of its uncompromising endurance and reliability over great distances. So, its very sound is a symbol to me of summer gold hunts. Gold hunts in regions so vast they steadfastly defy man's development, easily hiding them in its profound immensity.

There are places where you can top a mountain on a dimming trail to gaze off into the distance and see nothing but deep-green soldiered ranks of pine, fir, and cedar. This undulating forest of marching trees crests rugged peak after endless ridge, until the distance melts and blurs them all into one surreal horizon.

This vista contains no sign, no hint even of human disturbance or occupation. No power-lines, no cat-trails, no cut-lines, no excavation scars; no, nothing but the vast splendor of untamed nature. This sight always leaves me feeling insignificant in its presence, yet awed by its savage beauty and raw majesty.

As is often the case, I'm wandering while admiring Mother Nature. So, back to my gold tale.

After a sixteen-hour drive all night and well into the next day, we arrived at the gold fields of North Central British Columbia. The black flies, the no-seeums, and the mosquitoes were having a bloodsucking banner year. In a gesture of self-preservation, before I stepped out of the 4X4, I made certain my can of survival sauce (bug dope), was in-hand, ready to hose myself down as soon as I stepped from the vehicle.

That necessity accomplished, including the top of my pant legs where they tucked into my socks, shirt cuffs and collar, hair on the back and top of my head, ear canals and hat brim (I'm not kidding!), I grabbed the Minelab and fired it up. It gave a nice reassuring hum, letting me know it had survived the brutal last leg of the trip. (This last leg takes five hours, all while traveling over unforgiving logging roads. These washboarded, hole infested roads are minefields of obstacles. A sample of the obstacles are moose, elk, deer, black bear, grizzly bear, wolverine, bits and pieces of lost freight, and of course, logging trucks.)

My detector was outfitted with the standard eleven-inch DD coil, and I had on a nice set of headphones which did nothing but annoy the swarms of bugs, by denying them a taste of my tender ears! Moreover, I learned earlier to keep my mouth shut as well to avoid a meal of flying protein.

Making my way over to an old site, I walked over to the exposed bedrock.

We were working an abandoned excavation containing a small shelf that dropped down from a larger formation above. This was a minor site, one worked where the bedrock faulted. It was a spot where black-graphite-schist met a harder iron-red formation. The wall behind it was a combination of pockets of slump, all serrated with sheets of broken slate from the canyon-wall above.

The pines stood sentinel along the top of the wall, oblivious to our efforts. The songbirds in the bordering forest filled the air with their timeless melodies. Mountain flowers tossed their heads gently in the slight meadow breeze, scenting the air with their perfume briefly as an irredescent humming bird zipped past my head.

What a glorious place to look for gold.

I was eager to detect the place where the two bedrock types met. There was folding and faulting that had undoubtedly created gold traps. This site, abandoned only a day earlier, was what the locals called an old Tertiary channel, composed of virgin bedrock that hadn't seen the light of day in untold eons. However, as it was a small site, my hopes were slim. I slid down some bordering slump and planted my feet on the bedrock. The lower portion was covered with water. The seepage from an unseen spring was already drowning the site.

I skidded the coil over the bedrock, and after only two sweeps I had a signal. Now, I've learned over the years, that detecting old workings is condition that can promote madness, the madness brought on by dealing with undesirable signals. These signals are generated mostly by bits of blade and track; the head, tip or entire body of a square nail; can-slaw, bits of wire, or other trash that's made its way into the pit. The aforementioned nails and assorted trash are the ghostly remnants of long lost sluices, flumes, or cabins.

So, with some trepidation, I scanned the spot again and still got a solid response. I scraped the bedrock off, passed the coil over the place again and got a sweet signal. A visual examination showed nothing. Dragging the super-magnet over the bedrock was fruitless too. Detecting the spot again produced a nice, low on the sides, peaked in the middle nugget-like sound. My pulse increased.

I got out my small sledge and chisel and carefully chipped around the signal area. I broke out a piece of cemented bedrock, baseball-sized. I passed it under the coil: the signal was in the chunk of rock. Carefully, I began tapping on the rock, hoping to get it to crumble. A golf ball-sized piece broke free. I checked it. A nice, steady signal. I gingerly broke it down, hammering carefully, and out popped a nice nugget that looked like a rooster's head, complete with a comb and beak! The sculpture was a nice five-gram piece of Mother Nature's finest craft. Caching it in my plastic sniffer bottle, I scanned the area again, but this time expanding my search. Approximately a meter away, I got another nice signal. This one seemed longer in its length. Could it be an old square nail? I scraped the host rock and could see no such thing. The next scan produced a slightly stronger signal, though not as strong as the rooster nugget. This tone was softer, but still a characteristic mellow sound. I chipped along the bedrock and opened a spot that hid a crevice. The compacted material was not cemented, but it was the exact color of the black bedrock. I took out a bent sniping tool and drug it the length of the crevice to where that crevice hit the next drop in the bedrock. Out popped four quadruplets, four identical kernels of corn. They each weighed in at almost a half a gram, making two grams of corn for the rooster perhaps?

The remaining bedrock was a very small area. I scanned it with the DD and got no response. I pulled out the 18-inch mono and slid it around the entire area. It was considerably noisier than the DD, and I could only get the SD-2100 to run on balance one. I skidded the area again and faintly heard something, but I had no idea what I was hearing. I'd never heard such a whispered response before. The sound was just a slight break, a bump in the threshold. Now, that big 18-inch was severely pounding that graphite schist with electronic pulses, and I started to wonder about ghosting, the false signals generated by super-hot bedrock.

Intrigued, I took out the chisel and carved off about an inch of rock. I scanned again and this time there was a faint signal, not a whisper or a bump, but a signal. I worked off more rock and scanned again. This time there was a louder signal. I broke out a piece of bedrock, gently crushed it, and out slid a smooth golden slug. Four grams of hammered gold. No character, no definition, just a fat, little slug.

So, what was this experience all about? Near as I can figure it, it had something to do with a rooster, four kernels of corn and a slug.