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.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks so much for your encouragement Jim--I'm posting another installment of the story. I've never been to the Cassiar--but I would love to go some day. I've gone way past it and mined in Alaska, and Atlin is still on my list of places to visit too! Some huge gold came out of there.

All the best,

Lanny

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Family Maps of Hinds County, Mississippi, Deluxe Edition - Grab it through Amazon!

[Lanny in AB]

Patches--you're spot-on about the bedrock. It's a master deceiver, as I too have gotten gold out of what appeared to be super-thin cracks. I like how you explained how it all came to be--nicely done. I've used the "hammer the bedrock" and look for the smoke/dust technique as well, and--it works. I can't take credit for it, as a friend of mine from California was the first one to tip me off to it years ago.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Well, I’ve come up with a little more time for the telling, so I’ll see if I can get around to informing you about the beautiful things that happened on that awful bedrock, and I just hope I get to talk about what other goodies we found in their test piles. But, maybe not. For the sake of clarification, I must confess to a bit of a problem with writing down my gold hunting stories. I often get reminiscing about one outing, and it reminds me of the details of either a related outing, or a similar experience on a completely different outing, or some kind of linked connection to other outings! It’s a bit of a strange brain dance that keeps my mind moving, but doesn't always keep in on track, that’s for sure.

So, the intrepid miners left us to our devices . . . . My poor prospecting buddy was struggling with the frustration of his busted wrist. It was nothing but a cruel test for him. He was distressed that all this great gold producing ground was right there at his feet, and he couldn’t do a thing about it! Yes, he could swing the detector, but trying to dig, pick, sort, and capture with only one hand is a serious pain, to say the least.

In fact, we were compelled to work together, one swinging the coil over the ground, and the other picking, digging, sorting, and retrieving. There was no way he was going to miss out on all the fun. So teamwork was the only option. At least, that’s what mostly happened.

But, I have to back up here for a moment. You do remember that fractured, wet bedrock that I referred to earlier, not the skunk patch filled with false signals, but the one that produced the nugget? Well, since the placer miners were washing dirt again, I went back to where I’d found the gold. I’m kind of oriented that way, because I’ve found through the years that if a trap worked well enough to grab and hold one piece of gold, it would often work its magic on other pieces as well.

So, I went back to that spot and started detecting again. I located on a place where they’d scooped out some of that rotten bedrock with the excavator. The location was right where the excavator had left a rise of about two feet, right even with the level of that awful graphite schist. I started detecting up and down that little hump. Pretty soon, right near the top, I got a nice hit! I approached it perpendicularly, and the tone was that reassuring Minelab low-high-low tone. It wasn’t as strong a signal as the first signal was, but it was the perfect sound all right. And, since the signal was close to the top, it was an easy matter to get the target response in the scoop. As I mentioned earlier, the material was wet, so it just fell apart in the scoop; moreover, it was very easy to separate the sassy little beauty from the busted rock. A one gram wonder it was. A nice rich yellow with lots of bumpy character.

Perhaps I should digress for a moment and tell you what had happened to this area geologically. From what the geologists and the miners have been able to decode about this particular goldfield, the glaciers were pretty much masters of that northern kingdom for untold ages. There were frequent placer concentration sites where six and seven channels had been laid down over each other, all oriented in different directions of deposition. What that means is that over countless years, the area had been glaciated continuously. Consequently, as the glacial streams were constantly re-oriented and angled, they dropped their loads in brand new runs.

However, some of those super-streams were carrying magnificent gold content, while other runs were downright stingy, or outright barren. The ongoing detective work, from the Sourdoughs down, went into solving the mystery of which runs were carrying coarse gold. Where we were, Mother Nature had actually helped out some. A super glacier had bulldozed through this narrow choke point, scooping out most of the overlying channels as it worked its way down-slope. Then, with mysterious motives I'll never understand, it hauled the works off to dump it's load on some dim long forgotten slope, or in the belly of a secret swamp.

But, the beauty of this spot was that it was only about six feet from where the fir and pine trunks intersected the green and yellow carpet of moss, close to the bedrock proper. Moreover, this lowest run had been packing a considerable amount of coarse nuggetty gold. In fact, this honey-hole appeared to have been a side channel offshoot or gush of higher than average velocity, one that was rolling big boulders and large gold.

Anyway, I got one smaller piece, about match-head size, from the crumbling rock, and then the ground went silent. Well, what to do next, right? So we wandered back to the hot zone, and we just couldn’t get a thing out of that mess but a world of false signals. (I’d love to hit that spot again with one of the newest generation Minelabs, like my GPX 5000, just to see if I couldn’t exorcise some of those black devils from that hotter-than-the-hubs-of-Hell bedrock!) But, after finding only bits of blade on the surface, we wandered down-slope to where there was a four to six-foot wall of virgin rock and dirt. It was the spot where the bedrock dove under the forest floor. It marked the farthest advance of the miner’s efforts.

At this location, there was a slump of maybe a foot or two in front of the aforementioned wall, and then there was a sheet of that atomic graphite schist fronting it all. To my dismay, this spot was insanely hot as well. The detector would not run on both sides. Well, you know what that means, you lose depth when you cut to one channel. So, you have to sacrifice depth to run on the other side, but at least you can detect. (The new machines have this problem nicely in hand.)

Even then, the battery-powered ballyhoo from the 2100 sounded like a cat fight crossed with screeching train brakes gone wild! Regardless, I kept at it. My buddy wasn’t familiar enough with the machine, nor with how to filter (with the human brain) that racket. So, because he couldn't run the detector, he waited there like a bird-dog on point, ready for the game to flush. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have to be on point for long. You see, out of all that tortured electronic noise there came the unmistakable low-high-low sound that lights up the brain like the sudden yank of a ten-pound rainbow.

However, it's at this point where I have to break this tale off so that I can continue this story another day.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lake Placers Continued:

You’ll remember that in the last installment, my buddy wasn’t familiar enough with the nuances of the Minelab, nor with all of the electronic racket being thrown off by that super-heated bedrock to feel comfortable enough to run the detector, so he just went on point like a gold birddog waiting for a piece of gold to jump up and flush (fly into the air). Well, he wasn’t on point for long. For, out of all that electronic din there came the unmistakable “oohh—weee—oohh” sound that gets any nugget hunter worth his salt hyper-engaged in a big hurry, the sound of a positive response!

So, I approached the target at right angles from the last sound signature, and all at once I heard this series of terrible high pitched wails, followed by screeching sounds I’d never heard before while detecting. I thought the mineralization in the bedrock had finally won the battle until I noted it was only my partner’s sudden reaction that a squadron of black-flies had crawled down the front of his shirt and left a bright, red patch of oozing raw skin right in the middle of his chest! (If you know nothing of the evil denizens of the North—the Blackus-Flyus-Disgustingus-Annoyus—you know nothing at all of weeks of pain, scratching, and possible madness.) Well, after my partner's screeches, there was now a heavier tapestry of colorful words hanging over the lake fringing the placers, and after hosing my buddy down with what amounted to a bug dope shower, I got back to detecting.

Once again, I approached the target at a right angle to the last response, and through the racket came the unmistakable sound of a good response. So, my partner scraped as well as he could with one hand, and I used the flat side of my pick to clear the rest of the residue of stone and clay right down to shallow pockets in the bedrock.

My dim brain (yup, it's true!) remembered that the DD coil might be much quieter than the little 8-inch mono-loop, so I made the switch, and then got back to analyzing the bedrock, but before I got down on my knees to investigate, I swung the DD in a wider arc and heard several quiet signals—things were rapidly getting interesting, but lots of interference was still continuously there, even with the DD!! Putting the detector aside, I knelt down to scrutinize the rock. What faced me was a perplexing visual mystery. It was solid bedrock. I mean there were no crevices at all! I couldn’t fit a knife blade in anywhere.

So, immediately your brain begins to second-guess the target response, and you assume that it’s another patch of ground noise, or a series of false signals. Writer’s note—at this point, I’ll paste in parts of my actual journal entry (with annotations in brackets, [ ]), for that day. (Some of you may have read accounts of this part of the story on other forums in the years past. If so, scan forward through this thread and read another story). Included in the aforementioned journal entry are references to how we’d tried out different manufacturers’ specialized gold-hunting VLF's (Fisher Gold Bug, Whites Goldmaster, Garret Stinger, two Minelabs—16000/17000). VLF technology on this horrible bedrock was futile as none of them would even come close to maintaining a threshold. (As a side note, I contacted a trusted Treasurenet Forum friend from Arizona before heading up to chase the gold, asking his opinion about which machine could handle such extreme ground, and he flat out told me the 2100 would do the job, if anything in the world could. So I hauled one up with me to try it out).

“After learning to run the Minelab SD 2100 on the one patch of hot black bedrock [this is an account I have not set down in story format yet], and finding four nuggets imbedded in the bedrock (some kind of mineralized calcification in ancient crevices, I believe) I thought of another patch I had visited . . . with five different gold detecting metal detectors, only to be shut out due to the extreme mineralization. So, my partner and I headed off to see how well the 2100 would hunt. [To an area with this same kind of black bedrock. This is the reference to the account you’ve been reading.] T

The first thing that was evident was that the machine would not hunt with both balance one and balance two operating. The ground was way too hot. So, I balanced the machine as closely as I could in balance one. (There was still some interference in balance one but it was easily identifiable after studying the inclusions and variances in the color scheme of the bedrock.) [After visually studying those varying shades of coloration, and intrusions of quartz-stringers lacing the surface of the rock, and then learning to synchronize the visual clues with the audio output, you could predict with quite a bit of certainty when the machine would respond to patches of mineralization.]

After scanning the area, I got several weak signals that peaked in the middle of the tone (characteristic of gold near the surface). So I dug down with a little pick and hit solid bedrock again. After scanning again, the signals had increased slightly. We already knew that hammer and chisel work had liberated nuggets in the other area, so we flew at it again. After going down about four inches into the solid matrix, a black chunk flew out of the hole and we saw the nugget gleaming where the rock had fractured. [It stuck out like a fat raisin in a thin cookie!] I scanned the hole again and got another signal. I dug back (uphill) another couple of inches and liberated a five-gram nugget! It looks like a fat little couch potato. Scanning the hole again produced no signal so I moved on. For the next four hours I chased weak signals and whispers [some only an imperceptible disruption in the threshold actually]. All of them were in the hard stuff and all of them had to be chiseled out. We wound up with thirteen nuggets freed from the country rock. (I used the eight-inch coil after I had used the 11inch double D. The eight-inch was noisier [much!!], but it did find three I missed with the eleven inch.) I spent about an hour scanning old piles [test piles]. Then it started to rain. The 2100 doesn't like rain, so I quickly got it into the truck and retired for the day, very tired, but very happy with my little poke of nuggets.

It's hard to believe someone finally came up with a technology that allows a detector to hunt in such awful ground, but my small success story is proof that they did invent such a machine. The best part was that the Minelab was relatively simple to use. I had one more successful outing on my summer prospecting trip with the 2100, but that's a story for another day. [I’ve still to write that one in story format!]”

By way of enlightenment, that bedrock was hard! I don’t really deal with many details in my journaling entry of how hard it was. I’ll see if I can describe it in greater detail for you:

We had a small sledge back in the truck, and an assortment of rock chisels; as well as, one of the most useful little mining tools ever invented, the Estwing pry-bar that has the pointed chisel end, and the flat L-shaped head on the top, with the sharpened chisel-edge on the L that can be used to scrape or used like a chisel to hammer into a crevice—absolutely beautiful little tool.

So, I hustled back up the trail to my drooling, still on point like a birddog, partner. As I’ve stated, the surface of that bedrock had dips and hollows as all bedrock will have, but there were no visible crevices. The most amazing part was that once I started to hammer out chunks of that mother rock, you could see that it was a two-part natural cement-like vice. It was clear to see that the original bedrock was that graphite schist, but the other was a concreted combination of fine-grained crushed black slate (I assume this only, as it’s the most ubiquitous rock in the vicinity. But, I’m not positive . . .). The black filler had obviously been running in that glacial gush that had propelled the gold down to the level where we’d found it. However, there was something else in that run that acted as a concrete binder of some sort—some chemical catalyst that caused the bits of slate to bind solidly to the schist, and it was an perfect color match. Nature had done a masterful job of caching this gold.

So, I’d take the small sledge, one of the various chisels or the Estwing bar, and I’d carefully tap my way down. (Well, not always carefully. I was rather excited and somewhat overzealous in the beginning, but gravity and the natural laws of physics and object mass soon took care of that.) I'd work my way down well outside the edge of the signal’s midpoint. I usually had to go down two to four inches to get below the signal, and then I’d insert a longer bar, reef on it, chisel in on the either end, insert the longer bar, and reef on it until the piece popped out. Sometimes the piece (if it was shallow in depth, like the one described in the journal entry) would simply bust out and fly up in the air like a game bird! (No wonder my partner was on point. Now it made sense.) After that nugget flew out, we always made sure we had one of those big green gold-pans in front of the predicted angle of launch. We didn't want any gold bearing chunks to fly into adjacent cobble piles just so we could experience the unknown adventure of a heart attack.

After recovering the nuggets, I took the chunks of bedrock and I’d turn the small sledge on its side and very carefully tap on the bedrock-matrix cement until it started to fracture and crumble. (The interesting thing is the matrix and the bedrock were of the same hardness. You never knew where the piece was going to fracture.) Then, I’d break it into smaller pieces, pass the pieces under the coil to verify the target chunk, discard the silent ones, and repeat the process until I had the gold-bearing piece in my hand.

Then I’d carefully tap away with the aforementioned technique until I’d liberated the nugget. But, these were no ordinary nuggets. They all had wonderful character. Oh, but they were gorgeous!! A sassier troop of nuggets has never been routed from their hiding places. Moreover, it was laborious, time-intensive work, bit it ranked extremely high on the fun scale. A ten plus for sure. By evening, we had well over a dozen nice character nuggets and they were all the size of my various fingernails! It was incredible fun.

Did I smash any fingers with all of that hammering? Absolutely. Did it hurt? If your fingernail goes black and falls off later, does that rank somewhere on the pain scale that you can relate to? Regardless of the minor inconveniences of bloodthirsty bugs, tortured limbs from hours of kneeling, or the unnerving alien sounds emitted by my partner, the gold adventure was well worth the effort.

But, I forget myself again—I’ve yet to tell you about the test-piles farther up that placer claim. Well, that’s definitely a story for another day.

All the best, until then,

Lanny

 

[strickman]

keep it going!

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks for your encouragement, Strickman--I appreciate you kindness.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

This is excellent material Lanny, you really work for your gold and that doubtless accounts for much of your success. I enjoy reading about your equipment and methods to get at those sassy little nuggets. I'm already thinking that when I head off looking for gold, I'm gonna need more chisels, and a good Estwing pry bar.

For a silver hunter who merely need a dig a hole to retrieve very large, but much less relative value pieces, your information serves as a kick-in-the-pants reality check. Looking forward to reading more, More, MORE!!!

Jim.

 

[extractor]

This is just a good thread to follow

 

[Lanny in AB]

Jim--as you know, regardless of which of Nature's metals you chase, Nature places them with a will of her own, and the metal really is where you find it. Who knows, with that excellent research you do, and the places you hike around in, sooner or later you may make a major discovery. Actually, as far as specimens go, I think you've already reached that benchmark!

And, as concerns your other comment, that little Estwing bar is a real treasure, no doubt about it.

I appreciate your kindness about the stories and narratives, and I'm glad that you're enjoying them.

Thanks so much, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Extractor--thanks! Hope it helps in some way.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lake Placer Tales, Last Installment: Success and Regrets.

After chiseling over two dozen of those pesky, entrapped nuggets out of that scorching hot bedrock the day before, we moved on up the claim a bit. The increased elevation allowed us to see all the way to the end of the stream fed lake. The sky was a perfect, faultless blue, and in the far distance, the hills and mountains undulated peacefully to where they seamed perfectly in a majestic oneness with the unblemished horizon.

The halcyon water of the lake was bordered by twisted ranks of toughened Aspen and taller companies of leafy birch. Higher on the slopes that led away from the lake standing at guard were stalwart battalions of ramrod-straight pine and sturdy green fir.

In addition to the scenery, an added bonus was that being up-slope as we were, there was a breeze off the lake that kept most of the bugs at bay. The strange, unnatural screeching noises I’d heard the day before had almost ceased. My partner was finally getting a break from his winged persecutors.

We were now in an area where the bedrock rose in steps to where it ran under the forest floor. Along the edge of the formation, there was a bedrock drain dug all along the side closest to the trees. It contained some standing water, but it revealed areas that were dry as well. The bedrock was shot through with quartz stringers in a gray-black schist that had once been twisted and reformed by unimaginable forces. Furthermore, the rock was so tortured in the days of its formation that there were frequent “S” curves snaking down its entire length! There was such a high level of graphite included in it that the gray material floated on the surface of the water like oil, quite a rare and curious sight.

Well, I detected the entire stretch of that bedrock drain. It was only about thirty feet long, and I hunted up little bits of blade from the cat and excavator, pieces of rusted tin can, snags of ancient wire, and heads and tips of square nails from the days of the Argonauts. Detecting these metallic outcasts gave me the tip-off that the old-timer’s had worked up at this elevation, which presented quite a different detecting challenge from the lower, much cleaner area we had so recently freed those nuggets from.

I continued detecting up past the bedrock drain and found the remains of some old cabins, and I’ll tell you, I hit the mother lode of trash! Too bad no one was paying big money for it as I really could have cashed in.

If you can imagine almost anything that anyone could have thrown out, it was there—in excess. I finally gave up and returned to some mesomorphic test piles I’d passed on the way up. These stacks were about six to seven feet high, and they were formed of piled ancient rust-colored river-run from the bench channel. The miners weren’t going to process the piles just yet as they’d finished their current run (they told me I could detect the outside of the piles, but not to knock them flat), and that they were quickly taking apart their equipment so they could move it up a canyon, over a mountain, and down to a great river claim, one staked in a steep bedrock canyon on the other side.

In fact, they’d been getting excellent test results from a wash-plant they’d set up over there, and maybe some day I’ll get around to telling you the story of the sacks of gold they recovered from that deep-canyon operation. It was incredibly rich dirt! (Anytime you can look in the pay-seam and see the nuggets and flip them out with your fingers as you work your way along the seam, you know you’re into extremely rich dirt! It blew me away as I’ve only ever seen dirt like that once in my life. But, not only did I have the opportunity to flip coarse gold out of the seam, I got to pan the dirt and keep the gold too. As well, they let me detect for nuggets after they’d finished mining it all out. As you can imagine, it was phenomenal stuff.)

So, here I was, facing these three piles of dirt, spaced about ten feet apart, all the while issuing me a silent challenge. Well, I fired up the detector and started to scan their sides. Almost at once I got a screamer that about blew the headphones right off. I figured because it was so loud that it had to be steel or iron. But, I dug into the pile anyway (dig everything is my philosophy), and not long afterwards, I had recovered a length of curled and twisted strap-iron, very rusted, and very obviously junk.

Upon reflection, scanning those piles wasn’t a lot of fun. For instance, if you’ve scanned hills or piles before, you know it’s a much harder task than scrubbing the coil along the ground because you’re using an entirely different set of muscles to keep that detector running in a vertical fashion. Plus, it was getting hotter, and those headphones were running rivulets of sweat down my ears. In other words, I was getting a bit cranky, and when you get cranky, you should quit detecting for a bit. So, I did!

I pulled off the phones, wandered down-slope to a settling pond, sat on a cream-colored boulder, and had myself a refreshing break. I’ve found through the years that if you’re getting a bit like a bear fresh from hibernation, it’s best to throw your mind out of gear, shut the mental engine off, and let the radiator cool for a while. Eventually, your mind comes back to a clearer thinking mode, and you’re much more efficient when you head back to the hunt.

While I rested, the trout did their slap and whap water-dance as they rose for flies. In addition, I enjoyed the territorial aerial battles of those fearless, miniature helicopters of the Northern Boreal Forests, the brightly hued male hummingbirds. With that, being quite rested, I was ready to get back to chasing the gold.

As my arm and shoulders had recovered, and my metal detecting melon was well cooled, I was able to make nice, slow sweeps of the sides of those piles, vertical and horizontal ones. As a reward, I received a very faint tone in the headphones. The sound was weak, but it had the proper signature. I scraped away several inches of gravel and stone. I scanned the hole with the coil, keeping it the same distance away from the target response as it was before. I then removed the river-run. Scanning again, the signal was much clearer now.

I poked the leading edge of the coil into the hole. Louder still. A nice rich signal. I scooped out more dirt and widened the hole. The signal was sharper and harsher now. I knew the object was close. I took my plastic scoop and dug where I anticipated the target would be. The scoop came away and the top of the hole flopped in. No target in the scoop. I had to widen and deepen the hole again. Regardless, scanning once more, I got a crisp retort. I scooped yet again, and this time whatever the target composition, it was nestled in the scoop. I started shaking the material to settle anything heavy, scooted the lighter pieces to the nose of the scoop, then dropped it in my hand. I then scanned the material in my fist, no response.

I tossed the waste bits away, and then I repeated the gravitational classifying process until the signal was in my hand. I started to sift the material onto the coil head until I heard a “whap!” and a scream. But, it wasn't my bug smacking partner this time. Nope. It was a beautiful 3.2 gram nugget, one with a nice, chunky character. That little beauty also held some of that black matrix referred to earlier, all tightly packed in a couple of little pockets on its surface; however, the rest of the nugget's color was that glorious gold that all nugget shooters dream of seeing.

It was long in shape, about equal in circumference along its entire length, and rounded. I stashed it in my plastic bottle and stored the container securely in the button-down pocket on my shirt. I kept hammering the piles electronically and teased out two more nuggets, one weighing in at 2.8 grams, and the other at 2.3 grams. All in all, over eight grams of nice, chunky, sassy Northern nugget gold had been cached within inches of the edges of those piles. Remember, I was only able to detect the outside of those stacks of ancient river-run. I makes you wonder what a field day I’d have had raking them down and hammering the works with the detector!

But, that’s not the only regret I have about that area. Remember the spot where I chiseled out the palm full of nuggets? I know it’s hard to believe now (as I think back on it), but there was a foot or two of slump that had fallen on the bedrock shelf, running out about three feet, and we didn't clean it off so we could detect the bedrock under it!! To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking, because I sure do think about it all the time now.

But there’s more regrets yet, for all of that matrix that we broke up and crushed to get the nuggets out, well we didn’t pan one bit of it out. We just chucked it away.

I have another story somewhere about a similar experience on another sheet of nugget-embedded bedrock where my partner finally convinced me to pan that crushed matrix out. It was full of gold. Chock full. I about puked when I saw the coarse pickers running with those nuggets, and that sure enough made me think back on what I’d tossed away. Sitting here at the computer today, it only makes sense, as I can think it all through clearly now.

I don’t recall what our overriding reasons were back then. Perhaps we were too tired to think about shifting more dirt, or too excited to get to the new, incredibly rich placer pit I’ve referred to earlier in this post. In any case, I really don’t know what we were thinking.

Yet, incredibly, there’s more regret entwined in this sorry part of this gold tale.

There was a second placer excavation above the one where we detected and retrieved all of those aforementioned nuggets.

The pit was flooded by about a foot and a half of water. The entire bottom of that excavation was iron-hard rock. It was made up of a formation the locals called pinnacles, where the bedrock rose in kind of cone-shaped patterns. Furthermore, there were lots of places the miners could not excavate between the more closely spaced pinnacles. All we had to do was pump the water out and detect those pinnacles, but once again, we declined to do it. We were a bit obsessed by the lure of that golden bonanza over the mountain, the one down by the river.

Nevertheless, the bad part of that pinnacle pit is that the miners with the rock pile where the big flat nugget was found, well they let one of their cousins high-bank in amongst a pinnacle formation in one of their pits that they'd mined out, and he took out ounces of coarse gold and nice nuggets!! I have a little story about that pit as well, but that’s a tale for another day, as is the story of the gold on the other side of the mountain.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Hi Lanny,

Tuned in late tonight to see whats new. Just read your latest addition, a very fine continuation. Your theme about not doing what you should have is very common in the farther places. My brother remarked to me about two years ago " I don't know what gets in to me, or happens when I get up here", meaning a bit of laziness seems to settle in.

Now it won't apply to you at all, but I've often seen guys on northern mining sites who seem quite happy with just being able to arrive there intact. Should they happen to find anything, why it's a great bonus. Usually city people.

I liked your reference about needing a break from detecting. Its the mark of experienced hunters who have learned to pace themselves, regroup and continue on with searching. I always keep a handy Zane Grey western, or a small paperback on geology in my knapsack with a small thermos of coffee for such times. I tend to be good for three to four hours, than need a break. Twilight usually finds me still at it, a beautiful way to end the day.

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Jim--isn't that something--I've never thought of packing a smaller book to read during downtime--that would work when I'm farther south, but up North I'd just be a living blood bank. However, a good suggestion for when I'm in the south--a great suggestion actually!

One way I unwind up north is to hop on the quad and then take a spin up a logging road I've never explored, or I'll take my fishing rod and wander up a section of stream I've never scouted out before. Believe it or not, gold and trout like to settle in the same places! Seen it countless times while under the water dredging, and I've found some great gold locations by finding where the trout are holding in the stream.

So, after I catch the trout, I'll head back up with my prospecting outfit to test the spots where the trout were holding. And, it makes sense, if you think it out. Trout are ambush experts--they hang out wherever the current slackens (the same places gold likes to drop), and then they charge out to hammer anything interesting that goes by in the faster water--conserves a lot of energy to hang out in the low pressure areas (I've watched them employ this technique and tactic many, many times while dredging). In fact, wherever there's an underwater obstruction (a prime gold trap), there's a trout hanging out immediately downstream of the obstacle--ready to dart out and ambush. Gold and trout really do rest in the same low pressure areas.

Thanks for your tips Jim, and all the best finding the precious metals. And, one day, I still plan on taking a trek to Atlin.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[strickman]

here in n. ga. sometimes when trout are cleaned they have nuggetts in their belly .never can tell while you are cleaning them go ahead and check!you would be suprized how many have had a nuggett dinner!

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Lanny, I think Atlin would be a good bet.
How would you suggest getting permission from claimholders? Would you do what is possible before arriving, or would you get whatever contact information is available right at the gold commissioner's office in Atlin?

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

here in n. ga. sometimes when trout are cleaned they have nuggetts in their belly .never can tell while you are cleaning them go ahead and check!you would be suprized how many have had a nuggett dinner!

You know, I've heard of strange things being found in fish before, and if the fish were hanging out in drop zones and saw a flash, they may just strike and swallow--it seems likely from that outlook. I guess I'll have to check out some of those trout stomachs the next time I'm out!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny, I think Atlin would be a good bet.
How would you suggest getting permission from claimholders? Would you do what is possible before arriving, or would you get whatever contact information is available right at the gold commissioner's office in Atlin?

Jim.

I had an invitation a couple of years back to go to Atlin with a fellow prospector from Ontario--I couldn't go. He said he had permission to detect several claims. Most of the time when I'm new to an area, I'll hang out with the locals for a bit, get to know some of the business people, start to ask around about places where people have been allowed to detect in the past, find out who doesn't want anyone around for any reason, and then branch out from there--often many claim holders seem to only want you to let them know if you find anything if they grant you permission to detect (and, it's critical that you follow that request to the utmost!!), and where you found it. You really do have to take the time to gain the trust of the miners, and of course that takes time--but if you're a straight-up person, they'll soon figure that out and that often opens many doors. The only thing better, of course, is if you know someone who knows someone--that's always an easy way in. The only easier way in that I know of is if you've got family connections somehow.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[strickman]

straight forward and honest is definantly the best approach!this will open more doors than anything.a man is only as good as his word...........so you have to make them count.plus if you always do right thing,karma is in your favor.bad karma will kick your @$$.once people find out you are honest,you would be suprized how helpfull they can be.but you can't blame them for not trusting just anyone,bad people are what ruin it for the rest of us.it's not 100% but usually a gut feeling has a lot of merit.i met a man in auraria that let me prospect on his land.spent half of a day with him, helped him out a little.then we wen't to his creek.i gave him a pan and a sucker bottle(that already had some color in it)i looked at it as seed gold.also a couple of vials.we panned ,i showed him the basics,and i found a nice large flake,really a small picker,and a few smaller pieces.not much for the amount of material i processed.but it was real,and off of his property(he was really tickled)this was an older fellow.when we left i stopped by his house ,his wife was having a yard sale-my 12yr. old and i talked to his wife and bought a few items-nothing significant-but had good conversation.we sat down and drank a coke with them.thanked them for thier time--then i gave him my gold i found .to help get him started.he didn't want it because he said it was like him keeping my trophy.but i assured him that was not the case.he accepted.now i have a friend,that has a friend with river acces .bear in mind i did not do this for any alterior motives-just being nice and doing the right thing.....nothing else.karma kicked in and the river access was a bonus. now for the good part.we left there and went to dahlonaga,(not far)but it was late in the day.maybe 3 or so.i had my dredge with me and wanted to use a hour or so to sample around.i found a place but did not have enough time to unload set up dredge etc....so i used a pan and shovel only i found a good crack in the bedrock that opened up ,and did very well,very well indeed.found about $200-$250 dollars worth in a couple of hours with a pan....... this was better than the last 4 times using a 3"dredge all day.MORAL OF THE STORY be honest,nice ,helpfull and new doors will open for you .and karma will be on your side. strick's 2 cents

 

[Lanny in AB]

I posted this a while back on another forum--the link is now inactive.

Gettin’ High On Placer Diggin’s



(I have taken some liberties in enhancing some details of this adventure, but I have not exaggerated any of the facts about the gold.)

Sorry in advance to those of you into illegal substances, or those of you hardy enough to have actually smoked gold, or ground it finely enough to inject, or snort it, because this tale does not deal with banned chemicals or hallucinogenic substances. (Except I do think I have hallucinated while dreaming about gold in the past, that is, when the fever's bad.) However, the effects of this prospecting tale are nonetheless mind-altering, not without risk, and perhaps worthy of reflection.

One summer, when the snows had melted and the rivers had receded to make the trip possible, I headed up North to the gold fields. Up north means a sixteen hour drive (north and west) from my home. Why drive sixteen hours when there are other gold fields much closer?

Well, far less people that’s why. In fact, where the pay dirt hides out there's less than thirty souls.
Furthermore, it’s true that some of the local boys dig test-pits dug right in their front yards (where they run little sluices and get good, coarse gold), because the yards around their cabins hold good pay!

But, I digress again, and as you'll see, I'm pretty good at digressing.

So, on with the story. Anyway, less people is good, but the bugs? Bad! There are tens of millions of nasty blood-sucking bugs that fly!! You really can't hide or outrun them. In comparison, the bears are less of a concern, mainly because they can’t fly. (Wouldn't that be something? A flying Grizzly?!) But, because the bears are huge, smelly, and can be mighty cranky (sounds like a prospecting buddy I once had, or maybe he was saying that about me?), they deserve honorable mention and respect.

To return to my story, the gold field's location is in low mountains with lots of streams, thick northern boreal forests of pine and fir cover them, swamps abound, and mounds of glacial till are everywhere. Moreover, as some of the ancient glaciers were miles thick, when they melted they generated numerous rivers, so some placer pits contain seven or eight various stream deposits that intersect and overlap each other, thus the different stratigraphic levels. To complicate things, the glaciers wrecked the natural watercourses by dramatically changing the watershed's orientation, often stranding streams far above those of the present day, and that takes me to my story.

Picture this, I was sitting near the wash plant one day fixing a broken six-inch pump when I saw something across the river up on the opposite slope. A line of boulders and river rock ran along the side of the mountain. That line indicated an ancient riverbed perched atop the bedrock, about sixty feet above the modern-day stream. Clearly, sections of that high channel had sloughed off. So, I scanned the hillside with my binoculars to gather more information, and found that the channel rested on a bedrock rim, covered with eighty or so feet of boulder clay, further capped with thick forest. All at once, my pea-sized brain was hammered by a giant, golden brainwave . . . I must sample that channel! No argument or thought of personal safety holds me back if there's a shot at some gold! Fever fired my resolve.

I grabbed my five-gallon (20-liter) plastic pail, shovel, pry/digging bar, and a small sledge, items that all fit handily inside. Next, I shouldered into my prospecting backpack. (I keep all of my essentials in the backpack for easy transport. Nonetheless, when fully loaded, it weighs just a tad under a fully loaded B-52 bomber.) But rather than worry about gear in my backpack, I should have packed a back-up brain in it instead. It could have saved me a lot of trouble.

So, all packed up, I headed over to the river. Now, in Canada, even in mid-summer (which it was), the rivers that far north in B.C. NEVER get warm. In fact, if you dunk your head, you get an instant case of brain-freeze on steroids! Nevertheless, I had the clever idea I'd delicately pick my way across the stream in my rubber boots, hopping lightly from rock to rock, almost ballet-like. I danced across, losing more control with every step, until I put all my weight on a nice slippery cobble, and then prospector, pail, and pack plunged below the surface. (Any comments uttered after surfacing will be kept under publication ban to protect the innocent.)

Now that I was wet and cold, I enjoyed the rest of the crossing (which is a big lie). I felt somewhat refreshed (another lie) after dragging my cold, soggy carcass out of the water. On a brighter note, after dumping eighty or so pounds of ice water from each boot, it was way easier to walk, soggy socks aside.

Working my way up the bank, I hit a new obstacle. Boulder clay, the stuff I mentioned earlier, is a nasty mixture of tan to yellow clay and boulders the glaciers dumped wherever they wanted. It sloughs down hillsides when it's wet, then hardens into bomb-proof bunker concrete, though it's not quite as soft. Moreover, getting a toehold on that obnoxious stuff is the devil. Regardless, I cut steps into it with my shovel. Working a third of the distance upslope, I wound up in a wash filled with massive cobbles dropped from the channel and boulder clay above. The wash included a nest of ill-tempered branches and larger limbs as well. Regardless of my still squishy boots, I made it through while avoiding Mother Nature’s hazards and random obstacles. So, I continued upslope and worked my way into some pines. At that elevation, the smell of the pines is a wondrous thing; it's a smell I'll always associate with chasing the gold and the freedom to do so.

At last, I hit the high placer diggin's and started to work. (A little description here: I must say it's tricky to perch one rubber boot on a three-inch ledge of bedrock, while the the other boot powers the shovel as everything is kept balanced, with the pick and bar manipulated to carve three feet into the face of the boulder clay, while uncovering the unpredictable contours of the bedrock rim.)

My work exposed the top of the black slate rim at the bottom of that high channel. Pulling my sniping tools from my backpack, I cleaned every little crevice, pothole, and cranny in the slate. Then finding some promising oxidized dirt, I placed it in my bucket as well.
Being a long haul back down to the river, and as I had no desire to repeat it, I loaded that bucket as heavy as I could to make that one trip worth my time. So, with the bucket full, I gathered all my stuff and turned around. Instantly, I realized something shocking; that slope was a lot steeper now that I was facing a trip back down it! How the heck had I even got up there? Had an anti-gravity time warp transported me or something?

Well, we all know it wasn't any effect of anti-gravity or worm-hole travel, just caused by some moron that got himself into a place no sane person ever would. To get myself into such fixes, I somehow deny the laws of physics, probability, etc. so I believe I defeat them when I'm gold crazy. I carry on happily until I realize too late what I've done. However, one law never surrenders to my delusions, and that law, as we shall see, is the iron-bound law of gravity!

Well, I was faced with a problem. I had to go down, no option, because I couldn't go up a vertical wall of boulder clay no matter how high I was on the effects of prospecting. So, I took the first step down. (This in spite of my brain trying too late to warn me of something. Come to think of it, I often override my brain's warnings while chasing the gold.)

The first step really wasn't that bad. I just leaned into the hill and put all of my weight on a squishy boot heel. Miraculously, it stuck, and the eight-thousand pound bucket of gravel and I took another step forward. (Could it be that the bucket was so heavy because of its high gold content? Or, was I just an idiot that had severely overloaded it?)

I kept at it, leaning and stepping, and soon found myself in the branches and cobbles that littered the gulch. I took several more steps but then a root or a branch snagged my boot. Well, that bucket just kicked out in front of me like it was rocket-boosted. Now, Sir Isaac Newton sure was right about gravity—his law grabbed me right then and there, all at about twice the speed of light.

Immediately my brain switched to salvation mode as I flung myself backward as hard as I could, yanking the bucket towards me.

However, the problem was, my feet no longer cared having already chosen to head down the mountain. My clumsy attempts at correction and salvation only magnified the effects of gravity by hurrying my feet on their way.

When viewed from the other side of the canyon, it must have looked as if someone had shot and wounded a strange forest creature up on my side of the slope: some ugly beast, a raging bull-moose perhaps, or other smelly, obnoxious critter (a classification I easily qualify for after spending three glorious weeks in the bush!). It probably looked as if some tortured victim, the last of its death-throes a hopeless attempt, was hurtling down the slope to certain and speedy destruction.

The real truth, however, is that instead of being out of control, I was magnificently in control--most supremely so in fact. In spite of my rubber boots throwing off more smoke than an Alaskan smudge fire, it was only my clever attempt to keep the bugs at bay, so I kept the smoke pouring from those hot boots while I then chose to find my brakes among the boulders. As a side note, the fact that the three spare gold pans in my backpack were absorbing more shock than a crash-test-dummy at mach-five was only a minor annoyance. Bashing off the face of the boulder clay was only a slight test of my prospecting mettle, so to speak.

At last, still breathing (though hot and ragged breaths those breaths were), I came to a sudden stop. Some friendly tree branches gracefully halted my ballet-like plunge. (It's rumored a Russian judge gave me a 9!)

Now, for those with a sense of the divine in nature, this was the perfect moment. The moment that finds the human at one with the mountain (and miraculously still alive). However, more remarkable than my survival was that none of the dirt had spilled from my bucket! Yes, that is the wonder in this high placer tale—not a stone was lost from the bucket, not a single grain of sand!

Nevertheless, somehow I rearranged my joints to make them work again, more or less; the pain was less than severe, more or less. However, with renewed confidence and something like desperation to make it back to camp alive, I was on my way once again. The only obstacle remaining was the sullen boulder clay.

At some point, you'd think the brain would revolt, refusing to power the major muscles in a descent like this after such a close call where the whole body has just faced imminent extinction at the hands of an ambitious idiot bent on sampling something so unfathomable as a bucket of dirt! But no, the brain can always be overridden! I've located the master switch to disarm it. I've used it many times, yet somehow still I live to tell this tale. (This is proof that life is full of mysteries, not easily solved by rational thought, or predictable theories.)

At any rate, about a dozen steps down, the clay remembered one of its admirable qualities, the slicker than greased Teflon one, and off I went again. This time it was only a playful smashing, with the odd bone-jarring bash thrown in for variety. It lasted for a mere twenty or so feet, then I came to a feather-like stop on the gravel below, the contents of the bucket still undisturbed.

Regardless, after I'd picked a pan full of golf ball-sized gravel out of my mouth, pushed several teeth back into their sockets, and replaced my left eyeball, I took a bit of time to check the bony protrusion between my shoulders to see what it was. Finding that it was my neck, and finding that it was still attached to my head, it was off to the river to pan the dirt!

Three flakes, in five gallons. . . . You can't make this stuff up!

I guess there's a lesson to be learned here, but far be it from me to get preachy, or to force my hard-earned wisdom on any of you. I'll let you figure out the drug-induced mysteries of this tale all on your own.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

straight forward and honest is definantly the best approach!this will open more doors than anything.a man is only as good as his word...........so you have to make them count.plus if you always do right thing,karma is in your favor.bad karma will kick your @$$.once people find out you are honest,you would be suprized how helpfull they can be.but you can't blame them for not trusting just anyone,bad people are what ruin it for the rest of us.it's not 100% but usually a gut feeling has a lot of merit.i met a man in auraria that let me prospect on his land.spent half of a day with him, helped him out a little.then we wen't to his creek.i gave him a pan and a sucker bottle(that already had some color in it)i looked at it as seed gold.also a couple of vials.we panned ,i showed him the basics,and i found a nice large flake,really a small picker,and a few smaller pieces.not much for the amount of material i processed.but it was real,and off of his property(he was really tickled)this was an older fellow.when we left i stopped by his house ,his wife was having a yard sale-my 12yr. old and i talked to his wife and bought a few items-nothing significant-but had good conversation.we sat down and drank a coke with them.thanked them for thier time--then i gave him my gold i found .to help get him started.he didn't want it because he said it was like him keeping my trophy.but i assured him that was not the case.he accepted.now i have a friend,that has a friend with river acces .bear in mind i did not do this for any alterior motives-just being nice and doing the right thing.....nothing else.karma kicked in and the river access was a bonus. now for the good part.we left there and went to dahlonaga,(not far)but it was late in the day.maybe 3 or so.i had my dredge with me and wanted to use a hour or so to sample around.i found a place but did not have enough time to unload set up dredge etc....so i used a pan and shovel only i found a good crack in the bedrock that opened up ,and did very well,very well indeed.found about $200-$250 dollars worth in a couple of hours with a pan....... this was better than the last 4 times using a 3"dredge all day.MORAL OF THE STORY be honest,nice ,helpfull and new doors will open for you .and karma will be on your side. strick's 2 cents

Strickman--everyone that's serious about getting permission to hunt should read and re-read your posting--well said. It should be their new motto--follow strick's 2 cents if you want to open any doors. I've followed that line of thinking ever since I started chasing the gold--people are far more interested in knowing if you're interested in them than anything else--that's why it all has to be genuine. People can spot a phony a mile away, and if you're dishonest to boot, well, you'll get the boot!! If you're honest, sincere, and genuine--it opens all kinds of doors, and "karma" as strickman states will work for you, not against you.

All the best, and thanks again for the good exemplar Strickman,

Lanny