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]

Here's what the coarse gold from up in the area sixteen hours from here looks like. The big stuff looks exactly the same, except bigger. It's very rough with lots of character. The slug I found is a true exception to the rule.



Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

This is what the smoother nuggets from the southern gold fields here looks like. I found these metal detecting. They were all hiding in the bedrock--bedrock the locals told me the oldtimers, including the Chinese, had worked to death. Don't believe it--where there was good gold, there still is--you just need the help of modern technology to "see" into the rock.



All the best,

Lanny

 

[nebraskadad]

dang fine flakes all.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Improved Technology is Better.

T'was the summer of '05. The day was cloudy. The gold had been elusive.

The chance to use a new 3500 was appealing.

My buddy had just purchased a new Minelab 3500. As most of you know, I'm still a die-hard 2100 man. I love that machine. It's found a lot of gold nuggets for me, and it still does. But, after all, I would never have tried a 2100 either, as the old VLF's had found a lot of gold too. So, why switch or try? However, I did try the 2100, and it blew the boots right off of my VLF detecting experiences. And, that's because the ground I hunt it very often openly hostile and red hot electronically; it's far too hot for VLF's.

Thus, the Minelab pulse machines began my love affair with the mellower SD's, and the results have been splendid, solid, and satisfying. (I also had some satisfying nugget hunts with different brand name pulse machine, a Tesoro, but those are other stories for other days.)

To begin, we make summer-camp up in the Boreal Forests of British Columbia, Canada's most western province. Its mountains dive steeply into the Pacific Ocean, and a chain of outer islands continue the province's extension, until all land eventually submits to the ocean's depths. B.C. is a magnificent province (we have provinces instead of states here in Canada), with all kinds of mountains, rivers, lakes and breath-taking endless forests. All kinds of genuine wilderness remains, and while chasing the gold, I've seen lots of wildnerness in the United States and in Alberta too. By the way, British Columbia's Eastern neighbor is Alberta, and the two provinces share the Rocky Mountains, but the one that meets the ocean has the lion's share of the gold. Nevertheless, Alberta has one of the world's largest oil reserves, so things even out.

But, enough of that, it's time to get back to my story. So, there I was, with a nice, new 3500, and my friend kept begging me to try it out. After all, he'd been a true-blue 2100 user, but then he switched to the 3000, and being duly impressed, rolled happily on to fully embrace the 3500. Moreover, I confess to turning on his machine a time or two just to listen to that unique threshold, and it had a pleasantly different, intriguing threshold from my war worn 2100.

So, I scoured my mind for a place to try the gadget out. Through reflection, I remembered a place that had always intrigued me, one that I'd hammered with the 2100, but was only ever rewarded with bits of metal from Cat tracks and blades, plus old bullet leads from the 1800's, square nails from the same period, and other assorted bits of magnetic and nonmetallic metallic odds and ends. It was not what could be termed an easy spot to hunt, as it bore many past dig marks from other skilled hunters, and the bedrock base there was the foundation of an old hydraulic operation. Some parts were recently worked to the mother rock, leaving crevices filled with rock-hard gumbo clay and stone. A place like this was not the friendliest place to hunt indeed.

But, the present day placer miners were moving things about a bit, digging test holes here and there, uncovering interesting formations, ones where the gumbo clay was still tight on the bedrock right in the crevices. Finding this is a good sign, and it often produces promising sites for detecting. So, I fired up the 3500. The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was vs. the 2100 and how soothing the sound of that new threshold was. In those hydraulic workings, I'd always had my 2100 chirp like a bird gone mad, and I'd spend considerable time trying to quiet down the annoying electronic interference, with mixed results in adverse sound reduction, yet never what I would classify as "quiet" results. But that 3500 just acted like the pit was a minor annoyance, one to be quieted quickly, and it had an attitude like, "Let's get on with this! So, I did.

I worked the exposed bedrock and found lots of bits of steel, and more bullet lead from the 1800's, along with modern buckshot, old squares, etc. You get the picture. I went and worked the crevices exposed by the test holes and found more of the same, and even found a door hinge tight on the bedrock under 15 feet of boulder clay! How it got there? Well, that's an unsolved mystery. But, it could have been driven in by the argonauts of old and then buried by the hydraulic operation. Well, I detected lower in the strata and got into some very interesting bedrock formations, but no gold. (That happens frequently.) I even hammered the ground where my buddy had found a nice nugget in a rising crevice, just above the bedrock in the clay, but no luck.

Hours had passed. You know how sweaty you get in the summer, and the sun was out now, beating a tattoo on my head and shoulders. I was getting somewhat jaded, nice threshold or not! I looked at some broken bedrock where they'd raked down an up-welling reef with the teeth of the excavator bucket. I hit it and was rewarded with the usual suspects, and hordes of that old metal to boot. I reached up above the scrape-down to well above the bedrock where the over-wash from the hydraulic operation merged with the bedrock, and I got a signal. It sounded like the pointed tip of another square nail (for those of you that don't know, those little tips of square nails sound awful sweet, often like nuggets do), and because it was up high, and because I was really stretching to get my arm to the target, I almost didn't dig it. (There's a lesson in here somewhere . . . )

Now I'm a prospector that realizes that thinking of not digging on a target is the height of gold-nugget detecting blasphemy, but it happens! You get zoned-in to the thinking that you've been digging trash all day, so the target logically has to be more trash. Why bother, right? Deadly thinking for sure, but prevalent nonetheless. Well, I resisted the urge to quit and dug the target. It moved down the hill, and what a nightmare digging it, what with me hanging onto the hillside with my toenails and all. But, the target moved, so I reached up with my super-magnet and pushed that dirt around, fully expecting to see the tip of a square nail smiling back at me from the face of the magnet.

No smile, and no nail.

This is always when things get interesting, but I didn't allow myself to get too pumped, as I'd previously dug a lot of lead that day as well. So, somewhat juiced, but somewhat sobered, I reached up with my plastic scoop and tried a clever capture maneuver. Nontheless, I missed, then skidded down the broken bedrock, barking one of my already tender shins. There must still be a tapestry of curses woven out there somewhere in that vast, wild blue bowl of northern sky . . .

Regardless, I climbed again, and this time snagged the clutch of rock and dirt that cradled the signal. I worked my way down to a level spot and started the sift, cast out, resift, detect, cast out resift, detect loop technique, and eventually was left with a couple of tablespoons of material in the scoop. Happily, the scoop held the signal. I gently started sifting material onto the head of the coil and, WHAP, the fat-splat growling sound that no detectorist can ever forget sang its beefy song in my ears.

Now, we all know that lead makes the same sound, but something in the dim recesses of my brain told me this was not lead. (Ever had that sensation?) I poked my finger onto the coil and moved the bits and pieces around until something growled in response to my movements.

I picked the target up. The weight was sure right. But, it was clay-covered, a mystery. I used nature's ever ready emergency liquid supply, a shot of saliva, to remove the stubborn clay, and there it was, a sassy nugget. Long it was, the shape of a shoe sole in fact, quite flattened, but weighing in at almost two grams. Not the biggest nugget I've found, no way. But one that brought a contented smile as I realized what a fine machine the 3500 was, for this ground had been hit many times, by many others, myself included.

All the best, and the other nugget find will have to wait for another day,

Lanny


A rookie checking out a suction eddy on some bedrock--he's cleaned all of the big rocks off.

 

[Lanny in AB]

What lies in the clay . . .

Well, here's the follow-up story to the last nugget find, but one that presented a far different challenge.

After I'd worked myself into a gritty sweat finding the two gram nugget, I decided that the day wasn't quite the waste I'd started to believe, so I made a decision to head down onto the level ground and detect the abandoned placer pit.

(As it was a beautiful day, with a cobalt blue sky that commonly sets off the mountain chain I hunt in, and as it was a sunny, warm afternoon, the finding of the first nugget made me hopeful that the new machine might have another find in it yet.)

For those of you that have detected abandoned placer pits, you know well of the challenges. An abandoned placer mine is a mine indeed of fine pieces of blade and metal shavings (for example, bits of the blade of the cat, and the tracks of the cat and the excavator), hundreds and hundreds of them, and everyone of those pesky bits are willing to sound off in the headphones.

For those of you that don't know what a placer pit is, it's a large excavation made where placer gold is common. However, finding the residence of gold is something people have been trying to discover for millennia, and today's operations are no different. Anyway, a placer pit is started, in my neck of the woods, by digging through anywhere from ten to eighty feet of boulder clay. For the uniformed, your generic, run of the mill boulder clay is an ancient jumble of mess discarded when the glaciers got tired of packing that load around during the last ice age.

The huge sheets of moving ice simply hadn't the time or energy, or perhaps the will to carry all of that gumbo of rock-infested trash around anymore. So, they dumped it. Often, it was dumped haphazardly and part of that haphazard deposit involved covering up wonderful gold bearing stream channels, active and ancient! You must remember that some of those glaciers were miles high and many miles long and wide, and so when they dumped, well, there was a huge event. (Makes some of today's environmental dumping seem like tiny and insignificant by comparison.)

At any rate, the mighty glaciers dumped multiple annoying tons of clay, boulders, broken bedrock, etc., on pristine gold locations. So, today, you've got to get through the stern stuff to get to the old channels. Nevertheless, sometimes you punch all the way down through only to find that a prior glacier, had already scraped all the way to underlying bedrock to steal everything: gold, stream material, all! But, on those rare occasions when you find intact river-run, the fun sure begins; or it doesn't, depending on what that ancient run was carrying.

(As a side note, boulder clay made great stuff for tunneling. In drift mining, it supported itself as walls and roof very well. However, it was awful stuff to work through for those early placer miners armed only with pick and shovel while they chased the yellow metal using time-proven drifting methods. The
Sourdoughs tried to follow an exposed shelf of bedrock, or they estimated where the bedrock would be, and then they drifted horizontally along the bedrock to get the richest catch of gold. I could tell you quite the stories of some of those drift mines I've seen exposed by modern mining methods, but that's a tale for another day.)

Nonetheless, this particular pit, whose ground was definitely gold-bearing in the corner I was detecting, was productive. So much so that it had been hammered very hard, leaving all of the aforementioned bits of metal that buzzed in the headphones while detecting the bedrock. The reality is that it generated a detecting nightmare! However, it helps to remain positive, and hearing lots of targets signals the place wasn't worked out. So I kept at it while making the super-magnet look like a hedgehog on steroids, with iron hair shooting out in a dozen different directions.

Regardless, I finally worked over to a place that held a pile of clay. For those that have worked with clay, the stuff seems to have a lasting value as it keeps turning up, no matter how much of it you get rid of. In fact, in old placer pits, or hydraulic pits, the clay creeps and oozes its way back down into the pit, eventually reclaiming the ground. Clay is relentless and tenacious to a fault.

Still, I decided to swing the coil over the clay, but it proved deathly quiet. Actually, my ears enjoyed the break! So I decided to stick with it, and went around and around the area which was about the size of two yards of material. All at once I got a screamer, a genuine screamer! So my brain said, "Square nail, dummy!!" And you know what? It was a square nail, in great condition for a hundred and thirty-year-old survivor. But, that's all the signal was.

The clay got quiet again and then a hit. It was rather harsh sounding, and it proved to be the head of an old square, nothing more. I kept working the lumpy clay and then I got a faint break in the threshold. Not really a target, just a disturbance. I almost left it alone, as the electromagnetic influences around the pit are notorious for generating false signals. But, I decided to carve off several inches of clay and swing again. This time there was a sweet little signal, very soft, yet distinct.

For those of you that hunt gold with the SD's, or with the 3500's, know that those soft, sweet sounds are almost always generated by the upper-class metals: copper, brass, silver, lead, gold, not the false chirps of iron and steel. Moreover, the signal was distinct, soft and sweet. So, I ruled out another false signal from the baser, unworthy metals.

I scraped off several more inches and the signal was getting louder, but not harsher, still nice and sweet. This is a definite blood-pumper, when the signal stays soft and sweet as you get closer. I dug around the signal carefully and popped out a chunk of clay. I checked the hole, and there was still a signal. I detected the chunk, and there was a signal in it. I was thinking, "What the . . .!?" So, I placed the chunk aside and kept digging. Finally, the sound got louder, yet harsher, and I uncovered a rusty, bent, gum-boot ugly square nail. The rotten thing.

However, I still had the clump of clay to detect, so I picked it back up to scan the signal in it, to prove that it wasn't just a trick of the nail farther down on the bedrock. Well, the clump still had a signal, nice and soft. So, I started breaking off pieces and passed them under the coil until I got a chunk that had a signal. I took the clay and started to break it up in my scoop. Then I sifted it bits onto the coil, and, "Whap!", that happy sound cuffed my ears for the second time that day.

"Well, it's either gold or lead", I thought, as no previous passes with the magnet had grabbed anything. So, I pushed the stuff around on the coil until one object growled back. What a great little sound it made. I cleaned the clay off, with my previously mentioned secret technique, and there, smiling back at me was a sassy little 1.5 gram piece of gold, almost square in shape, and sporting quite the attitude. (It most likely had something to do with the fact that I'd disturbed its ancient slumber, who knows.) At any rate, I had the beefy little chunk, and I rattled it around in the bottle with its two gram partner, just to hear that lovely golden growl, a noise I'll never tire of.

As far as the noise from all those other targets detected that day, well, you can flat-out have every one of them! I'll gladly keep the golden rumblers.

Good hunting,

Lanny

(A true "incognito" photo of a medium-stage rookie, who wishes to remain anonymous--not me.)

 

[TreasureTales]

Lanny in AB, I have read this thread from top to bottom and just have to tell you that your stories are great! Not only did I enjoy the stories themselves, but they are crammed-full of such educational information that each story is a "nugget" in its own special way. I hope that you have written a book (or a dozen books) about your adventures. You have the best way with words since Robert Service. Sincerely, I pray you are keeping a book or log or diary of your stories so that others may relish these ounces of wisdom and pounds of excitement. I'd buy a book authored by you in a hot-spot minute!!!

Did you ever return to Arizona to metal detect the vast desert that awaits the eager detectorist there? Man, I'd make a special trip to AZ just to get the chance to meet you in person. Well, I guess I sound like a groupy now, but I do enjoy your stories immensely and hope you will post more, and soon. Good luck to you, and long may you seek the elusive gold nugget!

 

[Lanny in AB]

I've been to Arizona to detect in the desert four different times--I've been skunked all four times (one time, my battery pack was malfunctioning and I walked right over a very nice nugget that the guy behind me picked out of a drywash tailings pile!) I've also missed some nice gold-quartz specimens that my other buddy got right beside the old hardrock where I was detecting.

As the desert is newer territory to me, I love to get out and wander, and I'll often stray far afield from where my buddies tell me to hunt. In other words, I need to listen more and walk less--they always put me in their hot, nugget patches. One of those buddies is Doc from Las Vegas--he was ready to shoot me for wandering so far away from his nugget patch. But, he didn't shoot me, he just found a very nice nugget instead, and left me drooling! Well, I learned my lesson the hard way.

He did give me a beautiful meteorite so I'd have something to remember the desert by, and he took me on a bunch of tours to fascinating, old abandoned hardrock mines--incredible stuff--in fact, if you listen hard enough, you can still hear the oldtimers scratching around in the shafts and stopes.

The desert is a vast expanse of nothing to those that don't know it, and a treasurehouse of abundance to those that know and respect it--I've certainly found that out.

I'll get back again, and maybe this time I'll follow the hot tips my buddies give me, so that I can spend more time detecting in the hot zone and less time wandering the desert looking at all of the fascinating new formations I'm unfamiliar with.

Thanks for your kind words--they are much appreciated.

Later,

Lanny in AB

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi all,

Yes, I'm still alive, and yes, I'm still out hunting the gold. I did some dredging last year and had a lot of fun. I took along a couple of my nephews and my brother-in-law and we really enjoyed ourselves. I taught them how to pan and where to look to find the gold. We ran some dirt with some equipment as well. Plus, we did some metal detecting and found some interesting artifacts.

I'm planning on getting out again this Spring as soon as I can. I've learned a lot more about getting the gold--now, all I need to do is write some more of my stories and when the weather cooperates, I'm heading out there to get some more gold.

I hope the rest of you, especially those of you that are new at this, never give up. The gold is out there--some really nice gold too. Just be persistent, follow the excellent tips you'll find all over this site, and by sticking to it, you'll eventually discover the excitement and fun that never grows old--the fun and excitement of finding the gold--especially when you find that first nugget with a detector--you'll never forget it. By the way, I had to dig a lot of trash, nails, bottle caps, and toss all kinds of hot rocks before I found my first nugget--but I will never, never forget that moment, or that beautiful nugget--I still have it for that very reason.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[stellaf]

Hi,
I am Stella Fernandis and I am visiting your site first time. I think this is a great way to communicate with others and share your problems and experiences with others.

Stella

 

[Lanny in AB]

A while back, when I was first learning how to hunt nuggets with the incredible 2100, I was in an area, way up north, that had some of the hottest bedrock I’ve ever come across in my life—black graphite schist. I’d tried a bunch of detectors and none of them would handle that rock—the entire goldfield was infused with it—so it wasn’t like you could find very many places to hunt where you didn’t have to deal with it.

Now, a couple of memories surface in connection with this hunt, and one involves a huge sheet of this bedrock that was part of the road into a claim where I found a stunningly beautiful 6 gram nugget that ran at 92% fine! It had the most character of any nugget I’ve ever found, but that’s another story, and I digress, as I usually do in one of my gold reminiscing moods.

This sheet of mother rock, as I’ve stated, was part of the road. I’ll back up for just a minute to give a few details about the drive into this claim. We had to take an old, unmaintained logging road to get in, and as we’d never been there before, we were following verbal directions given to us by the miners that had the lease on the claim. So, we got about half way up this canyon and that road turned downright hairy! There were lots of places where we scraped bottom and this was in a high clearance Dodge diesel 4X4. In fact, it got so bad, my partner wanted to turn around, if only he could have found a spot to do so. The road was bordered on the high side by huge pines, fir, and balsam—it was in an area with a lot of mature trees. The sunlight did its “golden rays filtering through the treetops” light show at frequent intervals and ravens and humming birds made regular appearances. However, the downside of the road was not like nature’s warm and friendly encounters at all, and we had to be alert at every turn and blind rise in the road, as we were completely unfamiliar with the risk potential of terrain and the condition of the roadbed.

Well, we finally got to where we could see an excavation in the distance and all at once there was a long dip in the road, and it had, what I can best describe as, a small lake nestled in it. The water extended for about thirty feet. Upon reaching it, we took the outside edge of that hole, keeping one wheel riding the rim of that steep, outside slope. We got through, but the driver’s side dipped way down into the water and it was a close thing. Regardless, we got to that excavation I’ve mentioned, which was an old open-pit placer operation where a previously large drift mine had been excavated and opened. As fate would have it, there was a caretaker there—even though this area was remote.

Well that caretaker, his mouth dropped open at seeing us, and he asked us how we’d managed to get in. We told him about our sketchy trip in and then he questioned us about the watery stretch on the road. We told him how we’d negotiated it, and he went on to explain how lucky we’d been. The week before, they’d driven one of those huge British Army Surplus six-wheel drives into the middle of that hole, sunk it up to the box, and had to bring in a D-8 to pull it out! We just looked at him and shook our heads, glad that somehow we’d straddled the lip and stayed upright. After a few more exchanges of greetings and updates on the news of the outside world, we got additional directions on how to reach the claim. We headed uphill again, the grade was now quite extreme, and we came to the sheet of bedrock I’ve mentioned.

It formed the middle of the road for about twenty-five feet. I had my partner pull over so I could detect it with the Minelab. I got square nail after square nail, all of them medium sized and down. Let me tell you, that ground was hot—I could only run the machine by flipping the switch to access just one side of the electronics. That dark hotbed was stepped up like a stairway carved from stone—it had natural traps all over it. I wasn’t very experienced in nugget hunting at the time, and I quickly came to the conclusion that this place had only trapped square nails; however, now that I reflect on it, I repeatedly wonder what I truly left behind. I only detected a fraction of that sheet, as I was in a hurry to get to the claim! Hindsight is often a cruel master of delayed recognition and missed opportunities—no one with a VLF had detected that rock—it was far too extreme and still littered with targets. I’m sure I left gold—that specific area was loaded with it, and those square nails were a sure sign it hadn’t been cleaned.

Not too long afterwards, we came to an excavation that someone had dug right beside the road. They’d moved some big boulders and had hit bedrock at about the eight-foot level. The bottom of the hole was filled with water and all around its perimeter was piled the muck from the bottom of the hole. I made a mental note to detect it on the way out. After a bit, we reached the claim. There were hand-stacked cobbles and boulders all over the bedrock that bordered the creek. I detected quite a bit of area and only came away with some lead meat-tin keys, some brass boot eyelets, coat fasteners, lead sealing’s from 1800’s tin cans, bits of rusted metal from a variety of source materials, some wire brush bristle bits, and of course, the ubiquitous square nails of all sizes. I finally got out of the creek proper and detected some test pits and found the gorgeous six-gram nugget I alluded to earlier, but as I expressed before, that’s another self-contained story.

I found another test pit that was filled with water, and for some inexplicable reason—didn’t detect the throw out piles! (When I got back to camp, the miners with the lease on the claim informed me that they’d taken a great sample of corn-kernel-sized gold from that hole!! Dumb me, dumb, dumb, dumb!) However dumb I was, on the way out, I stopped to detect the throw out material of the hole I’d spotted on the way in. The detecting started out with me getting a huge signal off a massive hot rock—one of those grey-lead wonders—it was the size of a watermelon, and was lodged under a boulder. Then the usual suspects revealed themselves, square nails, bits of tin can, and pieces of copper and iron wire. But then, I got a sweet signal right on the top of a throw out pile. It was a bright and sassy four-gram heart-shaped nugget—my Sister-in-law still has it. Her husband has promised to make it into a necklace pendant for her.

I stubbed around there for another hour and a half, sticking to the rim of that excavation, and I pulled out two other smaller nuggets, one just under three grams, and one just over two. They were round nuggets, very typical of the gold in that area—it’s just not hammered at all. In fact, when you’re panning in the streams you have to be very careful as the nuggets will roll right past all of the riffles in those green gold pans!!

On the way out, we stopped and said goodbye to the caretaker, and were very careful to stay on the high side of that pond in the road. That afternoon, we detected another spot down by a lake and had a good hunt, but that’s a story for another day.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

To continue my previous gold tale, we worked our way out of the high mountains (avoiding the hole in the road) back down to the lower elevations in the valley where the gold field flattened itself out. On the way off that mountain, we scraped bottom with the Dodge diesel a few more times, and as a bonus, we even got a quick glimpse of a fat Black Bear hightailing it over a hump of brush and trees right close to the river.

Soon afterwards at the river, we threw that truck into four-wheel drive and did the river dance all the way across—the river dance where the wheels slip, bounce up, down, and then squirt the truck sideways over the large cobbles and bigger rocks that make up the river-run. It’s rather like being jiggled around in some giant jello-filled bowl or something. That’s the closest explanation I can come up with.

Anyway, we finally got across that fast moving stream and started the uphill climb to the other side of the valley.

But, I’ve got to leave a little reminder right here in this story of an experience about a spot I visited just the other side of the river where there was a whack of exposed bedrock that was being reclaimed by the brush and forest, as on a previous trip, a mining buddy of mine pulled his truck over and told me to tag along. He walked up a little gulch, took out a screwdriver and went to popping coarse gold right out of a small crevice in that bedrock! (On a return trip, I will detect that bedrock very, very carefully.) But, I’m digressing again, and that little story, and what I did and didn’t do, can wait for another day.

So, having negotiated the river and the hill coming out of the river bottom, we slowly motored up a rough winding logging road to check out a couple of bedrock bench claims that paralleled a little trout-filled lake. The body of water was man-made at a pinch point where the old-timer’s had dammed the creek off so they could flume the water to various downstream claims for sluicing. Moreover, the dam had been left intact as it made a great little fishery as a side benefit. We discovered that in the Great Depression there were all kinds of squatters camped beside that little lake. You can still see the groupings of foundation pits, along with some old plank-cabins held together with round nails (that's an easy way to date structures to peg them in the 1900's vs. the 1800's).

Of course, all that remains of the log cabins from the 1800’s are the indentations in the ground, yet I was too dumb to detect around them while I was there. I had my gold-only brain fired up, and it wouldn’t be denied. I've always wondered what artifacts or coins I could have found.

However, we got distracted where the lake met the dam, as it had a huge rock pile just downstream of it. So, I’ll take a side route here for just a minute to tell you an intriguing little story. As I walked over to eyeball that rock pile, one of the miners working the adjoining claim stepped right out of the brush in front of me! (Their outhouse was located just inside the bush, in a little clearing.)

He asked us what we were doing in the area, and we told him we were working our way up the trail beside the creek to the lake claims we were going to detect. After giving him the claim-owner’s name, he realized we were legit, and that made him right friendly. (There’s only a few dozen people that live in the entire area, and the locals find out real fast if you’re trying to scam them or not.) He asked us what kind of prospecting we were going to do, and when we said, “nugget shooting”, he gave a little chuckle. You see, he didn’t think much of metal detectors as he’d seen nugget shooter after nugget shooter get skunked. The ground was just too hot for the gold searcher's machines to handle. I didn’t want to tip my hand about the super-technology I was packing, so I let him keep talking. Luckily he obliged and said he wanted to tell us a little story.

He motioned toward the rock pile and told us it was from an old dragline operation—one from many decades ago. The former claim owners worked that dragline up the narrow canyon bottom building a huge stack of stream-run and broken bedrock at the head of the works. They’d netted a lot of coarse gold: it was a good run. The drug the actual stream bed itself. That technique sure wouldn't fly today!

He told us that a few years back a fellow had come along and begged permission to climb that rock pile to look for rock specimens. If you know anything about those dragline rock piles, you’ll know some of the rarest and heaviest rocks from the bottom of old stream channels can be found stacked there. (It’s rather like when I’m dredging as I see rocks that I’ve never seen on the surface before, and sometimes I’ll only ever see one example of a particular kind. I think it’s got something to do with their rarity based on specific gravity perhaps.) Anyway, he told this Rock Hound to have at ‘er. He only asked him to return and show and tell about whatever he found. The rock collector was free to keep anything he found—the only requirement was to return and show it. (I’ve run into that request numerous times myself while prospecting on someone else’s claim.)

So imagine the miner's surprise when around suppertime this fellow showed up with a nugget! The claim owner’s jaw hit the ground because that nugget was huge! Taking it from the finder to look at it, he could not believe what he was seeing, or hardly comprehend what he was hefting. The specimen was only a Iquarter to a third of an inch thick. But it was solid gold. Moreover, it covered the back of his hand from the base of the knuckles to his wrist joint!! As the nugget was flat, that’s why it made its way through the punch-plates and screens of the dragline’s trommels and sluices.

With a very sober face, the claim holder related what a tough day it was to follow the “You can keep whatever you find” axiom, but he kept his word. After seeing that find, the miner said he’d scoured that entire rock pile with his two sons, but they never found a thing.

It was just dumb Rock Hound luck for the guy that got that gorgeous nugget, I guess.

Well, I’ll have to tell you the rest of this story, the part about working the lake-shore bench placers, another day.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi there,

Just a quick little story from this summer's prospecting adventures. Two semi-cheechako's (semi-greenhorns/semi-pro rookies) were visiting the claim this summer. They are both nice, budding prospectors with a knack for finding the noble metal. They were working a patch of fractured bedrock that had produced consistent flake-gold and pickers the previous summer. Both of them had spent time with me on previous trips at this spot, and they'd learned a few tricks about how to find the gold.

Well, semi-cheechako one really went to town cleaning off the overburden on that bedrock--the cobbles, the clay, the boulders, the gravel--he went hard at it, working a couple of feet right down to the bedrock. It was a lot of sweaty work. Let me tell you, there were some big old boulders jammed into that bedrock. After he'd removed all the bigger stuff, and when he got done scraping everything off, he ran his takin's through a little sluice, and he had a respectable catch of some nice bright-yellow flake gold, all riding company with a few chunky pickers.

Not long after that, semi-cheechako two came along with his detector, and he asked number one if he could detect the bedrock he'd just cleaned off. Number one said he had no problem with that, as he'd carefully cleared the cracks and crevices already. He told number two to have at 'er. So, number two ran his detector along the bedrock and got a nice signal that really screamed! You see, it was a sassy little nugget right along the surface, just hiding in plain sight, cleverly disguised in some muddy clay!

Well, number one really went all Trojan after that--he cleared off another four feet of bedrock, man did the dirt and rock fly! It took him a long time, and he really made sure each and every crevice was scraped extra clean--including any clay stuck on the bedrock (he's a quick study). As before, he had a nice take of gold in his sluice-box. Number two came along one more time and asked if he could detect the bedrock again. Number one, being very confident he'd gotten all of the gold this time, graciously gave his consent.

Budding prospector number two ran his detector over the bedrock and got a nice soft signal out of a crevice. Number one was getting nervous. Number two got out his pick and broke off some perpendicular sheets of bedrock and scanned again--the signal was much louder now. He cleaned the crevice out, portioned the dirt until only the signal remained--dropped it on the coil, splashed a little water on it to remove the clay, and there with all the attitude of the unbridled wilderness-world sat a nice, sassy, butter-yellow pumpkin-seed-sized nugget! To say that number one was not a happy camper is to use understatement on steroids (strangely enough, things went flying-- dark words were given vibrant colors--nature's gentler creatures headed for higher ground--you get the picture); but, eventually number one was a good sport about it--he had given his permission after all--so, as you can imagine, they both had some great stories to tell back in camp that night--painful though it was for number one to do so. And now--only a scant five months later--they both have a good laugh when they tell the story. I'm thinking number one may be investing in a metal detector soon, and scanning his own bedrock!

All the best,

Lanny

Here's a shot of some of a picker and some flakes:

 

[Lanny in AB]

Fluke or Destiny

Now, this is a nugget story that’s a bit different from your average hunt. It took place in a very steep canyon with black slate bedrock running from the rim, about eighty feet above the stream level in fact, all the way down to the river proper. The pitch of the canyon walls is about sixty-five to seventy degrees. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to climb rock walls that are even forty-five degrees in pitch—it’s no easy task, what with the loose, jagged slabs, and the stray cobbles and bits of river-run from the old channel placers, but if you bump that pitch up around the 65-70 degree range, well—downright dangerous and pretty-much impossible are some descriptors that invade the brain. Moreover, I’ve often overridden my dim prospector’s brain to engage in feats of nugget shooting that never should have gotten off the ground—if you’ll just excuse the pun, why I’ll engage you in the tale.

Well, I found myself staring down at that glacial river far below. I’d been detecting the bench high above the black slate and had found a pouch full of square nails, bits of tin can, pieces of lead, some big bore black powder slugs with grease grooves, and some rifled balls of round black powder pistol shot; as well as, small, rusted pieces of iron wire. In addition, there were these crazy, white little round magnetic balls—some kind of natural iron I’m guessing—as they sure weren’t magnetite—but were nothing but trouble nonetheless. (I don’t use discrimination mode—I dig and visually ID it all—found a great nugget once that was supposed to be iron—it even sounded exactly like a round nail sounds, but it sure was a dandy nugget instead!)

So, what I hadn’t found yet in my frenzied diggings was any gold. I’d been unnerved once or twice by some loud snapping twigs and even by some heavyweight crashing through the brush of some large, Boreal forest animals, but nothing of the carnivore family had yet to preset itself—just a cow moose (dangerous and crazy in their own right) and a couple of deer. The day was hot and sunny—summer was feeling its mid-solar bloom—the rustling, conspiratorial pines and fir were gossipy neighbors whispering their secretive comments as I went about my strange, seemingly ritualistic diggings. Furthermore, in the busybody branches of those trees, a brusque brown squirrel scorched the air several times with his colorful tapestry of harsh, disapproving dialogue, all of it directed energetically toward me as he chattered his displeasure at my unwanted intrusions.

After his last, lengthy chastisement, I stood back and surveyed the ground once again. Stretching before me was an area the Argonauts had worked extensively in the 1800’s—thousands and thousands of them had stacked the cobbles and boulders on the bedrock in this now secluded area. Known as shallow diggin’s—there was only three to six feet of overburden covering the gold on the rock. In places, the hosting bedrock was heavily fractured, in others, it was smooth and harder than bunker concrete. I had been working an area with fractured bedrock, next to the lip of the canyon, and it's irregular composition is why it had trapped all of the trash I’ve previously mentioned. However, on closer inspection of the bordering ground, I noticed areas where the old-timers had pushed rock and debris over the canyon rim—perhaps as part of a sluicing operation. I postulated that gold might have been pushed over, or washed over during mining as well. I tried to detect down the slope, but it was impossible to maintain any footing, and the razor-edged slabs of up-thrusting slate will slice you deep in seconds. So, I decided to walk along the rim until I intersected the cut that led down to the river.

I made my way to the river bottom and found myself looking back up at the cliff face. I walked along until I located a patch of river-run clinging to an out-thrust of bedrock just beneath the rim’s lip, directly below where I’d been detecting. I started swinging the detector and came up with the usual suspects—a cornucopia of iron trash, along with a couple of flattened slugs—one modern with its metal jacket, the other ancient with its gray patina. I struggled to make headway up the slope, but kept slipping and sliding. I reached down once with my free hand to slow my descent as I stumbled and stared to slide, and I got a quick gash in the meaty part of my palm for my efforts.

Nevertheless, since I had dragged a shovel along, I cut some steps in the slump that collects where the bedrock thrusts away from the face in random areas. With these efforts, I gained some temporary purchase. I arced the detector around as far as I could to each side, got a couple of targets, worked my way over to them with the aforementioned precarious technique, but found only the head of a large square nail, and the tip of a smaller one. I’d worked my way up about a quarter of the way from the valley floor, but could not go much farther. I decided that I’d extend the detector shaft as far as I could, and reach up as high as I could—thank heavens I was using the little Joey coil on the Minelab—even then, my arm was lobbying like a union lawyer for a break!

Nonetheless, I persisted. At the top of the uphill swing, and I mean with the tip of the coil straight overhead, I got a scream! Of course, the first thing that goes through your mind with a screamer is iron, close to the surface, right? Well, I was tired, and I’d already collected enough iron that day to make several horseshoes, but I’m a rather stubborn sort when it comes to signals. So, I swung the detector up again and got the same screech. Then, I hacked away some new footholds and gingerly worked my way up. After all of those efforts, there was no way I wasn't going to see what that target was. At last, I finally got up to where I could stretch my arm enough to reach the signal with my plastic scoop—there was only a thin layer of crushed bedrock clinging to that slope, but when I pulled the scoop back down, the target was securely captured—the detector bore witness to that.

The surprising thing was that there were only several tablespoons of material in that scoop, but there was definitely a noisy little something hiding underneath it. After only a bit of shaking, quartering, tossing and sifting, I had that sassy two gram and a quarter beauty in my hand. It was flat, curved and crinkled all along one edge—just the kind of nugget that might get flipped up and over the riffles of a big sluice box, or maybe it had just been hanging out on that black bedrock slope for untold eons patiently watching the river go by. Who knows? But, what a fluke, right? Perhaps, or maybe it was destiny, fueled by stubbornness and dumb-risk. Regardless, it’s now mine, as is the tale of its discovery.

Here's a picture of some bedrock running down into the river:






All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Hi Lanny,

This thread is a wonderful read. Your writing style, the quiet humor that pokes through your descriptive narratives is one that I find familiarly enjoyable. I particularly laughed over the ever present "sassy" nuggets.

I don't know why I have not taken the time to read this thread previously. I spent several hours going through it the other night. I've long since concluded wilderness solitude is mighty fertile ground for the written word.

Thanks ever so much,

Jim.

 

[Wildcat]

Ahh Lanny, You've got me thinking now. My property is 40 acres in size and while a lot of it is natural bush, It is basically on a Sandstone ridge.
There are patches of what looks like mineralized gravels here and there but I have never given these a serious workover with my detectors.
I always thought that the gravel looked good, but never believed that I would find anything in such a heavy sandstone locality. We have several sandstone mines a couple of klms away. However, there are also a couple of gold areas within 2 - 7 klms and my property is in between.
Yes I have panned some patches but nothing showed. In fact, when I used the posthole digger I retrieved some good looking sand/gravel mix and panned it, but got nothing. However, after your comments re sandstone sediments, I think I will be spending more time looking. In fact the digger is on the tractor at present, so I just might go down the bush and dig some pilot holes.
Love your posting mate.

Regards
The Cat

 

[Lanny in AB]

Jim--you are much too kind in your praise, but I thank you warmly for your generous nature, and for taking the time to write a few encouraging words. It takes many hours to put together the stories--I have binders full of them--and it's nice to have some positive feedback, some genuine appreciation.

I'm very glad you enjoyed the gold hunting tales, and those sassy and pesky nuggets certainly are recurring main characters in many of my ramblings!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi there--I see you sign off as "The Cat"--not quite sure how to address you properly--don't want to offend you in any way, so I guess I'll just stick to The Cat unless you notify me otherwise. So, I hope you do find some gold in that sandstone--I know it gets in there from time to time, and I've even been in limestone caverns where I saw deposits right in the cave walls of entrapped river run! Ancient stuff of course, but it just goes to show how strangely nature goes about putting things together, and gold is certainly found in strange places, from time to time. (I've found manganese nodules and iron pyrite embedded in the sandstone formations in the banks of a trout stream that I fish. What's that all about?) So, let me know how it goes, as the way you describe the relatively close proximity of the neighboring gold--you may just get lucky enough to find something after all. Good luck in the searching, just don't be gone bush for too long!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

A continuation of the lake placer tales:

So, after we’d jawed with the rock-pile owner for a bit more, we decided we’d better head up the trail to check out the lake placers. The gold runs up both sides of the lake, so we picked a side and headed on up. We weren’t in much of a hurry that day. My partner had a badly broken wrist, complete with a new cast, done just before we’d departed our home base. So we were moving kind of slow anyway, and it was one of those gorgeous, long northern summer days—the warm, calm ones you wish you could bottle to save and open on a cold, winter’s day. Moreover, this particular day would be light until after well after eleven or so, and then it would be twilighty for a nice stretch after that.

Nevertheless, as we walked along the lake, you could see the cutthroat rising, systematically hammering the various insects that had strayed a bit too close to the surface of that mountain fast food outlet. It was right pleasant, seeing all those ambush experts in a feeding frenzy. Now I knew why the locals had never taken the dam out. It was one great place to catch a mess of trout.

Every once in a while a breeze would playfully stir the surface of the water, but it calmed quickly, allowing the trout to continue feeding. The willows along the lake patiently waited for another gust of wind so they could whisper the news of our coming.

At last we reached the claims we had permission to hunt. There was evidence of a lot of shallow surface mining in many spots for the bedrock was exposed in great sheets. The bedrock itself was particularly hard, and the D-8 cat they’d used to clear the bedrock was only able to work down to any degree where the bedrock was rather rotten, and this only occurred in small patches. The rest of the mother rock was a solid, hardened nightmare. Moreover, the excavator could get no purchase in it either.

So, the miners had done the best they could—scraping off the bedrock and running the scraped up pay through the wash-plant to get the coarse gold the area's famous for. And, what do I mean by coarse gold? Well, if you’ll bear with me, I’ll tell you a little story.

About a month earlier, I’d been up on what I can best describe as a gold-scouting, fact-finding expedition. I’d gone up to check out the area and had made the journey with a relative of one of the miners. This little claim was the first place he and I visited, once we got in.

The placer miners were hard at it, but when they saw us, they shut down to have a well-deserved yak. That’s the way of the north, not a lot of visitors, especially in this remote area, and visitors bring news from the outside. Anyway, we talked and updated them for a bit, and then one of the miners started to clean up the header on the wash-plant's sluice. He lifted the screen off the box and started to scrape some material into a pan. All at once he stopped, reached into the header-box and tossed something straight at me.

I was caught off guard, and the only thing that saved me was dumb reflex.

I caught what he’d chucked at me, and let me tell you, it was heavy! I looked into my hand at this ugly black rock. But its weight sure gave it attitude. Now, there’s no way this could be gold, I thought? I mean I was standing on a huge pile of washed cobbles and the miner had hucked this thing straight at me, a complete stranger.

If it was gold, and I’d missed it, it would have dropped way down in that stack of cobbles, never to be seen again without dismantling that entire rock pile! Regardless, I stared at the rock and couldn’t help wonder what it was. It did have a genuine heft to it. So, I asked the gold miner about it, telling him it sure didn't look like anything very valuable.

He pulled me up short by telling me it was a gold nugget. I was stunned.

This thing had to be over an ounce for sure, but it didn’t look remotely like gold at all. He sauntered over to me, took out a pocket-knife and very, very gently started to scratch away at a corner of the chunk. Off came this gnarly black scale and right there he made a believer out of me! The glint of gold was undeniable! It weighed out at over an ounce and a quarter, and it was solid gold—no quartz at all.

To clean up the black gold they found on that claim, they’d just put it in a vinegar bath overnight, and the next day this pile of disgusting sludge was all that was left of the black, that is except for the beautiful gold nuggets.

My apologies, I’ve certainly gotten off track again. I haven’t even arrived at the nugget shooting part of my story yet.

To get back on track with my story, we fired up our detectors and asked the miners where we could start. They commenced to laughing--loudly! They told us to have at it, but we’d get nothing but grief. They'd seen too many people get skunked in that gold-field over the years just trying to get their detectors to, as they put it, “squeak” on some gold. It was never anything but a shutout.

You see, that bedrock was too hot. It ate detectors for lunch. (Their telling of the story was salted liberally with colorful language, of course. In fact there’s likely a little tapestry of profanity still floating over that lake!)

Due to their stories, I mentally debated the merits of pointing out the virtues of the Minelab to these fellows, but I stopped myself and started off hunting instead.

You remember of course that I’ve told you how there was decomposed bedrock in pockets. Well much of that fragmented stuff was wet too. I wasn't sure how that would affect things, but I went to work on a patch of it anyway and right away I got a nice mellow tone. Once quick scoop and I had it.

I quartered the sharp little chunks of bedrock out of the scoop and soon had a sassy, chubby little gram and a half nugget! That got the claim owner's eyes popping! They said, “Come here.” And with that command, they walked me over to another similar area and told me to try that. So, I tried it and got a signal right away. However, this time I never found a nugget—only false signal, after false signal. They soon tired of watching, and shaking their heads trundled off to get back to the mining. I knew from their body language that they figured that the first find was nothing but a fluke. To them, the rest of my time was only wasted digging, proving what they’d known all along. Detectors were useless in that horrid black graphite schist. (I know it sounds like I'm cussing, but it’s only a type of bedrock I'm referring to.)

Yikes. As usual, I ran myself right out of story telling time again, and I’ve still got to get around to informing you about the beautiful things connected with that awful bedrock. As well, I've yet to tell about the other goodies we found in their test piles.

However, those are stories for another day, when I’ve freed up a bit for time for the telling.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Lanny, you've got me interested so don't wait too long to carry this tale forwards. Thank goodness for long winter nights for those of us who enjoy writing. Don't forget us newbies to PI use, please add anything and everything technical that comes to mind. Are you by chance working near the Cassiars? I wondered about your reference earlier to "central" BC.

Jim.

 

[patches63]

smooth looking bedrock lies like a rug sometimes.what i mean is,could be pounded shut crevices in it.say in a flood year,or many many flood years,boulders smashing their way downstream will actualy seal the crevices off,even make them invisible.one dredging strategy,grab yer orange painted 3 lb crack hammer,the one used for chiseling,and pound the newly exposed bedrock in your dredge hole.an impacted crevice will kinda smoke.or throw up a tiny plume.keep some dental picks attatched to a painted dive weight,scratch away at any suspicious areas.you can turn a hairline crack into some gold that way.have recovered 1/2 oz nugs from hairline looking cracks.mind-boggling.until you study the river during a few el nino floods.good luck