Bedrock and Gold: The mysteries . . .

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,670
6,412
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
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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cool installment Lanny, I didn't notice the pics on my phone now on the computer looks like a nice spot.
Your telling of the thunderstorm did a great job of bringing back my memories of my favorite storm. We had a place at Donner Lake when i was a kid must have been about eight or ten years old, my dad took me fishing on the Truckee river and a storm kindled,got real dark real fast. With the first crack of thunder my dad ran me up the hill underneath an overpass. My dad didn't get excited too often but his eyes got big that day.We both swore to everyone when we got back that one of the bolts had to have struck the overpass, four lanes of freeway cement shook like ten trains were on top of us.

Thanks again Lanny and keep em coming!!
OBD
 

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Thanks Lanny, for another great instalment of your story. I've been learning a lot around here, and I thank you all.


Hey--no problem at all! I'm glad you've broken the ice and found some gold. The further I get into learning about chasing the gold, the more I realize I still need to learn. So, you've got the right attitude.

All the best,

Lanny
 

cool installment Lanny, I didn't notice the pics on my phone now on the computer looks like a nice spot.
Your telling of the thunderstorm did a great job of bringing back my memories of my favorite storm. We had a place at Donner Lake when i was a kid must have been about eight or ten years old, my dad took me fishing on the Truckee river and a storm kindled,got real dark real fast. With the first crack of thunder my dad ran me up the hill underneath an overpass. My dad didn't get excited too often but his eyes got big that day.We both swore to everyone when we got back that one of the bolts had to have struck the overpass, four lanes of freeway cement shook like ten trains were on top of us.

Thanks again Lanny and keep em coming!!
OBD

Wow--I love your lightning tale--it must have been a real thumper that day beneath the underpass. There's just so much raw, unharnessed power during those magnificent storms --there's nothing to do but to stand in awe before Nature's majesty.

All the best, and thanks for taking the time to leave such a nice comment,

Lanny
 

Excellent work Lanny. I'll keep this brief...and say again that you are the real treasure here. I absolutely love these manuscripts, please carry forward as time permits!!!! :icon_thumleft:

Jim.

PS: Silver country is intricately laced with trenching, they make great travel routes to detect in the bush.
 

Hey Lanny! I just hit page 38. Just wanted to let you know that I'm trying to catch up to this 80 something page thread. Great stuff! I just ready the snoring stories and I had some good laughs really! Thanks again!
-Danny
 

Excellent work Lanny. I'll keep this brief...and say again that you are the real treasure here. I absolutely love these manuscripts, please carry forward as time permits!!!! :icon_thumleft:

Jim.

PS: Silver country is intricately laced with trenching, they make great travel routes to detect in the bush.

Jim,

You are most welcome sir!

And, as to the trenches--you're on the money there as well--particularly when you need to get under the really thick stuff and the deadfall.

All the best,

Lanny
 

Hey Lanny! I just hit page 38. Just wanted to let you know that I'm trying to catch up to this 80 something page thread. Great stuff! I just ready the snoring stories and I had some good laughs really! Thanks again!
-Danny

Thanks so much Danny. I hadn't thought about the snoring stories in a while--that brings back a smile or two.

All the best,

Lanny
 

Great read as always Lanny, thank you!

You're very welcome trsrseeker. Thanks for taking the time to drop in to say hello.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny, thx for the stories. Very descriptive. The lightning story sends me back to a time when I fished "all" the time. Oh the joys of youth. Then again the stupid stuff we all did.
Lets just say don't fish with a fly rod in a lightning storm.
Being in natures control was confirmed once again when a buddy, my baseball coach, and I went fishing at Roosevelt Lake. We had been catching a lot of largemouth bass that day and decided to head back across the lake to camp. I had my trusty 12' aluminum boat with a 6 horse power motor. Not very fast. We had our gear, big Coleman ice chest and the three of us in the boat. Not much clearwater space but a couple inches. As we started to speed away towards our camp, a summer storm popped up.
Well, since my boat had no way to outrun the storm, and the wind and waves got higher and deeper, we decided to head to closest shore. Fortunately, there was an island close by. Unfortunately, I let my baseball coach drive the boat.
Experienced boaters know that you ride parallel to the ways, with a slight angle towards where you need to go. I didn't think to ask my coach if he knew how to handle boats in a storm. I was young and dumb then. Lol. We were about 10' from shore when we decided to turn to shore. As he turned the boat, and the back end became a barrier for the waves, the water rushed over. Down went the boat. At this point we were about 8' from shore. Fortunately the water was only 5' deep and the waves pushed us to the shore.
So after dragging up the boat, gear, cooler and ourselves, we went over what we had and didn't have.
Our dry goods got soaked. Cooler goods ok, no dry clothes, plenty of beer.
So we made the boat into a type of lean-to, made a fire and only hoped the storm would let up. It wasn't and surely looked like it was going to be a long night with nothing to eat but beer, mustard, mayo and more beer. I then remembered, that when we were coming out of the lake there were a "ton" of crawdads scampering along the shoreline. So I jumped into the storm and grabbed them up.
So I opened the top off a can, put it in the fire, and set it to boil. Then I started to take off the tails and used the mustard as a seasoning.
I asked me fellow castaways if they wanted some to eat. They said no. I couldn't believe that they'd rather starve than eat the poor mans lobster. By the way, this was my first time eating crawfish. Man, it was sure good. So as I was eating and drinking a cold beer and being warmed by the fire in a BIG rainstorm, I'm singing the theme song for "Gilligans Island" and laughing while my friends only sat hunched over with a cold beer.

The next day we used them as bait. Saw one of the biggest bass ever in my life eat my coaches bait. Had to be upper teens. Looked like a turkey serving platter about 14' down. He wound up loosing that fish.

Sure do love that memory, and sure was lucky that we weren't in the middle of the lake when that happened. I'll never forget that feeling when one moment your floating on the water. The next, the boat sinks like a rock with you in it and you're in the water at natures mercy.
 

WVU done a study here in West Virginia in fayette co on the new river gorge and in the cliffs they found flour gold in the sand rock
 

Garrett--I love fishing, and so I loved your fishing story! That was quite the wild ride you went on, and the crawdad feast was simply a bonus. Thanks for your story, and all the best,

Lanny
 

WVU done a study here in West Virginia in fayette co on the new river gorge and in the cliffs they found flour gold in the sand rock

You hear about gold in sandstone from time to time, and a few times there's reports of gold in other sedimentary rocks as well--but it's more the exception than the rule. Thanks for that Wildman, and all the best,

Lanny
 

thank you so much for posting this for someone who is really new at prospecting this is a really big help
 

Thx Lanny, I figure you share so much that I would return the favor.
 

thank you so much for posting this for someone who is really new at prospecting this is a really big help

No problem! Glad you've enjoyed the thread, and thanks for taking the time to post a note of thanks.

All the best,

Lanny
 

Lanny, I've been reading this extraordinary thread each night from page one forward. Very well illustrated with spectacular pictures. Regards, Bill
 

Hello Bill... I too have been working my way back and forth through Lanny's thread. I even re-read many of the posts because I enjoy them so much. If I ever grow tired of reading such entertaining and informative manuscripts written in a familiar humor that I thoroughly enjoy... then I might as well give up on life altogether.

Unfortunately I guess in some ways, the demand for more installments is going to keep Lanny writing and photographing more than maybe he'd planned, which could infringe on his actual prospecting time!! :)

Jim.
 

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