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]

Drift Mine Part II

The rest of the way in, we spotted a wide variety of wildlife along the rough trail. In addition, the road’s elevation changed constantly as a series of steep climbs crested in the foothills, and then rushed downhill to cross numerous wooden bridges and multiple streams, after which the elevation rose yet again. But with each series of climbs and falls, the overall elevation increased until we found ourselves much higher, in the mountains proper.

Snow still capped the highest peaks as summer is a very brief visitor at this latitude, and plants and animals must maximize the short warm season to prepare for the inevitable return of winter.

The last stretch of logging road paralleled a chain of lakes, their clear surfaces alive with countless ripples left by feeding trout.

The road forked, with one branch running almost straight north, the other heading west. We took the west fork and soon found ourselves at our destination.

Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of what I saw. To say we had travelled back in time would not do it justice. There were many old log cabins nestled among the aspens and pines. Little roads ran off the main road to connect with these structures, some of them on the upside, others on the downside of the mountain. Rarely did we see a yard that did not have some type of mining equipment standing in it: dozers, backhoes, excavators, power plants, trommels, wash plants, etc. The selection of powered equipment consisted of many that had been patched multiple times, and more than a few gold washing machines were unique, homemade creations.

We stopped at the local store as a courtesy to introduce ourselves. The log structure had a large propane tank next to it in the yard for filling cylinders and vehicles, and it had two gas pumps, one for regular fuel, and one for diesel. There was a small cabin with two beds for rent next to the store. Not far off was a tiny combination laundry and shower building located near a large storage building constructed entirely of sturdy logs. Furthermore, there was a satellite tower for communications attached to the store as well.

After we left the store, we realized there were no power-lines anywhere in the little community as everything ran on generated electricity, either from burning diesel, or from collecting solar through panels. As well, there were no water or gas lines, but there every cabin had a large pile of firewood stacked along the side for cooking and heating purposes.

We continued down the road until we found a large clearing with grass. We set up the wall tent, unpacked the rest of the contents from the Green Dragon, including the Honda, and then we built a nice, hot fire in the wood-burning stove. We cooked our supper, ate a hearty meal, then crawled into our sleeping bags and slept like the dead until the next morning.

(More later, as I find the time.)

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Drift Mine: Part III

The next day, we hopped on the quad and went exploring. I have no idea how many unmeasured miles of logging roads there are in that region, but we certainly never came close to trying even a small portion of them. But that first day out, as we were cruising along the base of a mountain, off on the left we noticed a dark tunnel that opened into a large deposit of crisscrossing channel material.

There were at least six channels of deposition exposed in that face. The modern day placer miners had been working down the face with heavy equipment, and they’d inadvertently opened an old drift mine.

At that point in my prospecting, it was the first drift mine I’d ever seen. I’d read about them in books, but I’d never seen one before. We stopped to take a peek, and the miners saw us looking. Being the friendly types, they asked us if we’d like to take a look inside the tunnel. The problem was, the only way to get into the tunnel (as it was on that straight up face of the excavation) was to get into the bucket of an excavator, get hoisted up to the tunnel, then squirm out of the bucket to enter the tunnel!

As they’d told me it was an old drift, one hand dug in the 1800’s, I declined. Who knows, maybe it would have been safe, but the sight of twenty feet of cobbles, boulders, and assorted river run topping that tunnel made me nervous that if I made one wrong move, I’d find myself a permanent resting place. Instead, I’d made the long trip to that area to find some gold, so we headed up the trail instead, after I thanked the miners for their hospitality.

We scouted around for several days, panned some creeks, found some gold, and spent some time just getting our bearings.

We continued to meet as many locals as we could that were working along the creeks, and river, gleaning every tidbit of information we could about the area. And the more people we met, the more we learned.

Later in the week, we headed up to visit some miners that had given us an invitation to see their workings. They were using large equipment to strip off boulder clay, and large equipment to get the pay from the exposed channels to their wash-plant. The wash-plant was a big volume machine as well. Their operation was gold placering on a large scale, unlike anything I’d experienced before.

They quickly invited us to stick around once they’d put us through a few tests and realized we knew a thing or two about equipment, and that we could repair things as well. Because of their invitation, I learned about big pumps, big generators, and big machinery. It was nothing like the small-scale mining I’d done previously.

Furthermore, as soon as they found out that my partner and I were good panners, they set us up in a testing role on their claims. We had instant access to hundreds of acres of ground! Moreover, everything we found while testing their claims, we could keep. All we had to do was report where our finds were, and we had to report how much gold we’d found, whether it was found panning, sluicing, or metal detecting. And, the gold we found was glorious!

I’d never been in an area where the gold was coarse like it was there. The vast majority of the gold was rounded and bumpy, true character gold, not flat and hammered. To relate a connected story, on the river bench claim we were working, the guy that bought it was wading the shallow water across a bedrock stretch in the river, when something in the water caught his eye. He looked down and there was a fat nugget stuck in a crevice! He tried prying it out with his fingers, but it was jammed in tight and wouldn’t budge. So, he returned with a screwdriver and pried it out. I don’t remember exactly how much it weighed (I have it written down somewhere), but I know it was over an ounce. What a way to find a beautiful, sassy nugget!

In one of the excavations we were working on that bench, they broke through some old drift mines. There’s one in particular I’ll always remember, as I got to visit it up close and personal. It was on the north end of the pit. With the excavator, they’d worked down to bedrock where the formation dropped sharply and changed from smooth to fractured. To elaborate, as they worked the pit, the gold got better and better as they excavated from the front [south] to the back of the pit [north] where it dropped, before it started to rise again. In fact, just as nice nuggets and coarse gold were turning up in the sluice to make things very interesting, they hit a massive series of old drifts that stopped production. There was no more pay to work. But the drift mine on the north end where they’d ripped into the tunnel was still in good shape. I went down into the pit to check it out.

Now, I’ve done a bunch of caving and rappelling, but the tunnel workings had been there for well over a hundred years, so I barely entered the open end of the drift. I stayed at the tunnel entrance where they’d broken through. The wet lumber had changed somehow in the decades of its burial, and chunks of it broke off in my fingers kind of like it had the consistency of celery instead of wood. There was lots of seepage (from the ceiling, sides, and floor) running back into that dark tunnel, and the lagging on the ceiling was all cracked and caving. However, the drift mine was sure a cool thing to look at, and my imagination propelled me back to when the original miner was working that drift. He must have been one tough son-of-a-gun.

All of the timbers were hand-hewn. The roof was a low construction, somewhere from four to five feet high only (meaning the miner was hunched over the entire time while working), but the pillars and posts supporting the roof were large, round logs. They had to be, as that drift had been punched under about sixty feet of boulder clay, and that stuff is incredibly hard, and unimaginably heavy.

I had the green light from the miners to test whatever ground was left in the pit, as the series of tunnels they’d broken into had forced them to relocate to another location where they had a better chance of hitting undisturbed bedrock (And they sure hit it. What a bonanza they uncovered while I was there! But, that’s a whole other story.) So, they let me poke around as long as I could stay ahead of the seepage that was filling the pit.

Well, I figured if someone had gone to that amount of trouble to dig all of those drifts in that one spot, there must have been good gold there. And, what I’d seen in the sluice had sure impressed me that great character gold was there, so I decided that I’d test the floor of that drift (at the entrance). My first pan wasn’t very impressive, small flakes, and not a lot of them. Several more tests of the same material produced like results. So, I decided I’d try where some of those big pillars had been knocked over by the excavator right where they’d broke into the tunnel.

That pan of dirt took my breath away.

Nice, coarse pickers lay in the crease of the pan.

So, I became a bit of a specialist for the rest of the day. I only worked what dirt remained where those pillars had once met the wall, right around their base, and what a fun time I had. I had a great collection of pickers and fat flakes in my bottle when the darkness forced my retreat back to camp.

But, I went back the next morning as soon as it was light enough to see to have at it again. And, what I found was a pleasant mystery.

As usual, that’s a story for another day, when I’ve got more time for the telling.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

All the best,

Lanny

 

[calisdad]

Thanks for sharing such a wonderful adventure with us. I always say I love country with no fences. You've taken it to an entirely different level. Keep the photos coming.

enjoy-
Calisdad

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks for sharing such a wonderful adventure with us. I always say I love country with no fences. You've taken it to an entirely different level. Keep the photos coming. enjoy- Calisdad

You're most welcome. And, by the way, thanks for dropping in to say that you enjoyed it; that's what keeps us writers going.

As for chasing the gold up here right now, it's just starting to warm up a bit here. Who knows, maybe Old Man Winter's on the retreat after all. But, I know we'll be battling with the Old Man for some time to come, as he sure likes to counter-attack as many times as possible on his slow and stubborn retreat.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

To begin, for those of you that hunt for nuggets and have a VLF machine, the VLF’s limitations are that you'll always be dealing with hotrocks, and hotrocks are always, always in gold producing areas that I’ve ever visited. But, that doesn't mean you can't learn to deal with them. Find every article and youtube video you can on VLF’s, and find every article and youtube video you can on dealing with hotrocks while using a VLF. What you'll find is that there are positive and negative hotrocks, and that you deal with them in different manners.

Hotrocks will be one of your biggest challenges when you start out. So, you really need to do your research carefully.

Back to VLF generalizations: I've run into and know personally three VLF users that have found pounds of gold with their machines. They all told me the same thing. Read and reread your manual until you know it front to back without thinking. Put it on your bedside table and read it until you black out.

VLF's are great where the ground minerals are mild to moderately severe, but they are no good in extreme ground. They are the wrong platform for that. PI's excel at severe and extreme ground. So, if your ground is mild to moderately severe, you've got a chance with a VLF. If it's extreme ground, you'll need a PI.

Some of my stories on my main thread deal with finding nuggets in extreme ground with PI’s.

The VLF hunters that I know that have found pounds of gold have found it in areas that are not extreme or severe! They know exceptionally well how to handle hotrocks, and they are masters at it.

One of the big secrets to finding gold nuggets is proper ground balance, whether it's a VLF or a Pulse Induction machine. Even though I have the world's finest machine, the GPX 5000, if I don't watch my ground balance, I might as well be swinging a wooden stick. You really need to know everything you can about ground balance or you'll walk right over gold.

One of my buddies that has found many, many pounds of gold only uses the Gold Bug II which has no auto ground balance, but he loves to tell me of how, when he first started, he took his machine and hunted for two years without finding a single nugget!! But, he found pounds of trash (nails, brass, copper, cast iron, can-slaw, etc., etc.). So, how could he find all that trash but no gold? He was never properly ground balanced.

He ran into a pro one day out in the field while hunting and told the pro his woes. The pro asked to see his machine. He ground balanced it properly for my buddy, and the pro walked back over the exact ground my friend had just finished detecting (and had only gathered trash) and the Pro pulled three nuggets out of the ground right where my buddy had been! My buddy then detected the rest of the day paying precise attention to ground balance and found his first nuggets. (He just about went insane dealing with all of the hotrocks too, but he now knows how to deal with them.) He refuses to buy an auto balance machine, but that's just his preference. The other two VLF pros I know also refuse auto ground balance as you'll always run the chance of missing something when there’s a sudden transition, but that's only a personal preference and choice. Other pros use auto-ground balance and all of them are very successful.

Next is iron reject: you'll always lose gold. But, it saves you time. But, you'll always lose gold. So, every pro I know always digs everything. It's tiring, and it's boring, but I've dug nuggets that sounded exactly like trash or the machines I was using read them as trash, but I have the nuggets to prove they were not trash. Take that for what it's worth as it means you'll dig more trash, but you'll catch nuggets that you'd miss for sure too. It's a tradeoff you may not wish to tolerate. Some nugget shooters only dig targets that register as good, and they're very happy regardless.

The sound of gold: unless it's close to the surface or big, don't think you'll get a large sound or a solid sound. Gold usually registers as a very soft sound, or a tiny disturbance in your threshold, or it only registers as a mere "bump" in the threshold, especially in areas that have been worked hard. This is solid gold advice that many choose to ignore. Especially former amateur metal detectorists that hunt other targets than gold, like coin and relic hunters. They just can't fathom it. But, that one secret will lead you to many nuggets you'd just walk over.

Trust your machine's electronics, and if that threshold gets disturbed for any reason whatsoever, go back and move some dirt and investigate. Sometimes just scraping a little dirt off (a quarter of an inch, for instance) will get you an increased signal that may only be a lager disturbance (as opposed to a positive signal), but that means to get busy moving more dirt and to keep investigating until the signal either gets positive, or until it stops. I've found many nuggets that way.

Go slow: Go extremely slow when you're in a patch. Too many people are in a hurry and want to cover as much ground as possible regardless of where they are. That going faster tactic only applies with a big coil when you're looking for new ground. If you're detecting a pit that's produced good gold (an abandoned placer pit for example), creep across that bedrock and investigate every signal or disturbance.

Small coils are great for close to the surface gold, and for target separation (if trash is near, they'll let you hear the gold next to it). Big coils are for covering ground and going deep. But, with any coil, you need to overlap your sweeps, and you need to keep the coil parallel to the ground throughout your sweep. Memorize this. Go slow on highly mineralized bedrock, or on bedrock that's produced good gold. Memorize this too.

Mono coils hunt in a cone-shaped pattern and go deeper in milder soils. They require more overlapping of your sweep. DD coils hunt in a blade pattern, and you still need to overlap your sweep, but not as much. Monos are noisier and more susceptible to hotrocks and ground mineralization, but not as sensitive to electrical interfernce. DD coils ignore more hotrocks, but don't go as deep in milder soil, but do have more depth in extreme conditions. Once again, there are tradeoffs and benefits.

Never be a serious nugget hunter without monos and dd's. You need both, and you'll need different sizes of both.

All coils have a sweet spot, a place where they are most sensitive. To find that sweet spot, put a target on dead ground (no other signal) and learn where the sweet spot is on your coil as you go back and forth, front to back over the target. The spot will be different for different coils and for different manufacturers’ coils.

On a different topic related to pinpointing targets, test the nose, and the edge of your coils (edge perpendicular to the ground, and the nose sometimes too). They are often supersensitive and can really help you to pinpoint a target with ease.

Pulse machines ignore most hotrocks. If a pulse machine manufacturer says they ignore all hotrocks it's BS. But, they sure make life wonderful when you're in an area littered with hotrocks as you'll soon be able to quickly ID the hotrocks by sound or visually. That saves you a ton of time.

Pulse machines will also allow you to find nuggets in extreme ground where VLF’s just die.

I've rambled long enough, but always remember that you need an excellent set of headphones too; don't forget that. If you do, you'll flat out miss those disturbances and bumps that are so critical to investigate.

A big thanks to Jim for his input.


All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

As always Lanny, your stories and pictures are awesome! The country shown in the pictures is as rugged as it is beautiful and brings to mind an old side canyon
I've always passed by deciding it was just not the time yet to go "in there". I'm talking about serious mountain country with many avalanche chutes if not complete
canyon walls totally covered with avalanche material, very limited growth anywhere on them. And yet there is the one canyon who's opening is totally clogged
by poison oak, jumbles of downed trees with a seeming impenetrable forest behind as well as a pile of round river rubble leading right up into that canyon. What's in
there? Maybe only the story of the adventure along with all the bugs, vine and tree roots that reach up to grab one's foot, likely some large bears, rattle snakes and
maybe, just maybe some placer workings along with a long lost hardrock mine and what's left of an old cabin or lean to. And maybe someday I will get back to
explore that one. Till then good friend, keep sharing with us your adventures!..................63bkpkr

 

[Lanny in AB]

As always Lanny, your stories and pictures are awesome! The country shown in the pictures is as rugged as it is beautiful and brings to mind an old side canyon I've always passed by deciding it was just not the time yet to go "in there". I'm talking about serious mountain country with many avalanche chutes if not complete canyon walls totally covered with avalanche material, very limited growth anywhere on them. And yet there is the one canyon who's opening is totally clogged by poison oak, jumbles of downed trees with a seeming impenetrable forest behind as well as a pile of round river rubble leading right up into that canyon. What's in there? Maybe only the story of the adventure along with all the bugs, vine and tree roots that reach up to grab one's foot, likely some large bears, rattle snakes and maybe, just maybe some placer workings along with a long lost hardrock mine and what's left of an old cabin or lean to. And maybe someday I will get back to explore that one. Till then good friend, keep sharing with us your adventures!..................63bkpkr

Many thanks buddy! It's great that you're around the forum again, giving your advice and writing a few of your memories for others to read about. I'm sure you've got a bunch of stories to tell that you've never written down.

If you'd like to post some more of them here, I'm sure others would love to read about them. I know I would.

All the best, and thanks for your support and friendship,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

I don’t want to come off as a flatterer yet again Lance, but there really ought to be a Banner Award category that recognizes extraordinary contributions to this forum as exemplified by this thread.

Frankly.... in that environment, I'm certain I would be a rank cheechako by comparison. Thankyou for these excellent works!!!!

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I don’t want to come off as a flatterer yet again Lance, but there really ought to be a Banner Award category that recognizes extraordinary contributions to this forum as exemplified by this thread. Frankly.... in that environment, I'm certain I would be a rank cheechako by comparison. Thankyou for these excellent works!!!! Jim.

Any time you'd like to entertain us with a story of some of your silver finds Jim, you know you're always welcome.

All the best to one of the best,

Lanny

 

[Notsuredomus]

Ouch... I'd be butt hurt to. Man if that happened to me I'd rather not know lol. I was detecting once in Rattlesnake Canyon Near Big Bear Lake and I got a strong hit on a rock that was about 2ft in diameter. I scanned the sides and nothing but on the top of this rock I got a strong zip-zip. The rock was just like the thousands of others in the canyon deposited the year before from a landslide. So i came back a couple hours later with a sledge hammer and started beating this boulder into fragments (Not Easy) I would check each chunk carefully that I broke off (Nope still in the main body) When I finally split that sucker in half and pulled out each chunk to scan and nothing So I Scan the ground and That big damn rock was sitting right on top of a rusty tin can. Funny some days you just get beat down and walk away thinking screw this hobby. Then the sun comes up the next morning and your itching to go exploring again. Its almost like being bi-polar your excited with anticipation of amazing one second and an instant later you feel like you just got kicked in the nutz. Thats why people play poker, slot machines, lotto, if you want to win big you gotta be the loser enough times to earn your spot. Great thread thanks for sharing )><))'>

 

[Lanny in AB]

A note on crevices:

When I was way up north, many hours from anywhere, I noticed an old set of workings. Of course, I went over to investigate.

Someone quite a while back had most likely used a small cat (D-4?) to work the side of a bench as far in as they could go against the bank. There was bedrock at the bottom of the cut, but the boulder clay wall of the bench was just too high for them to work more of a cut than about forty feet long, for the boulder clay rose sharply on either end. There was a bit of a drop in the middle, and that's where they worked back into the bank until they could go no farther.

The width of the cut was only about fifteen feet, but the entire cut was bedrock based. I know this is hard to believe, but as I was to heck and gone that day, I didn't have my detector with me because I'd left it back in camp, but I did have my sniping tools with me in my backpack.

I have a good quality backpack that's wide enough to fit a couple of gold pans, my chisels and other sniping tools, a small sledge, some water, bug spray, snacks, first-aid kit, matches, small sewing kit, leather gloves, knife, small coil of wire, tape, rubber gloves, magnifying loupe, and knee pads.

Well, I started poking around and noticed that right back where the bedrock met the boulder clay, there was very irregular bedrock buried under a layer of clay. By irregular I mean that it had swirls and bumps that created pockets. So, I decided to clean some pockets out. I got zero gold, as the other miners had probably cleaned the bedrock carefully, and all that was in the pockets was garden variety clay. But I'd learned the year before to scrape hard along the bottom of all pockets and crevices to see if there was any softer material in the bottom. That technique had led to some nice pickers.

I was using an angled screwdriver at that time, and the flat part of the 90 degree bend dropped on one side on the return stroke of a hard scrape. I got a smaller sniping tool and scraped where the edge had dropped. The smaller tool went deeper. It was a very tight fit, but it kept going down and the material coming from the crack was a very different color from the tan color of the boulder clay I'd removed from the pocket earlier. It was much darker, and very dry.

I kept at it and all at once, I broke through and the sniping tool dropped several inches. I widened the crack as much as I could, but I was in some kind of iron hard rock, and the chisels I had with me (I have since bought a quality mason/concrete chisel) would not let me widen it any more. I opened it enough to get the angled crevicing screwdriver into the hole.

I could wiggle the angled driver around in the hole. There was a little pocket there, much wider in diameter than the small opening I'd been able to make. I used my crevicing tool like a little shovel and pulled up all of the material that I could. The material coming out of the pocket was a deep purple color, and some of it was right black. I'd never seen anything like it before (I've since found it in other old, virgin crevices). Furthermore, all of the material was wet and sticky. So, whatever was in that pocket had been sealed off long, long ago, as the top of the crack was tight and dry.

I took the material, which only amounted to about a third of a cup and put it in my pan. I made the short hike through the dense, tangled Alders to the creek (crashing through thick brush is never any fun). I put some water in the pan and started mashing and moving the material around. There were lots of little rounded stones under my fingers!

For those of you that know, those little rounded rocks are a good sign. For those of you that don't, it means that if the crevice, at whatever stage in its dim past, had allowed small stones in, it could also let chunks of gold in.

I kept mashing the material around on the bottom of the pan to release the stones and other pieces of material from the purple and black stained clay.

When I made my first cut with the water from the front to the back of the pan, I instantly saw chunks of gold! It was everywhere.

By the time I was finished cleaning that little pocket, I had a quarter of an ounce of coarse gold. Even the small bits were chunky.

That was my last day there as we left the far north the next day.

The following year when I went back to check on the spot, it had been opened up with big machinery and mined out! I made the mistake of telling one of the locals where I'd found the gold.

Oh well, lesson learned.

The tip here is to investigate pockets, crevices, and cracks to make sure they aren't just camouflaged and jammed shut with tightly packed materials. Work pockets and crevices hard until you know if there's any material that will yield and allow for further investigation. The other thing to keep in mind as a tip is that the opening was much, much smaller than the cavity below the opening. Don't be fooled by the size of the opening.

On a different note, in a different area, I learned that crevices can sometimes be cemented shut with material that is so hard, it's just as hard or harder than the mother rock! But, that's a different story altogether, yet something to keep in mind as I retrieved multi-gram nuggets from a bunch of cemented crevices like that. (The sniping tools were of no use on those occasions as it was the metal detector that led me to the cemented crevices, not scraping and scratching with sniping tools.)

If you ever have the opportunity to check bedrock that's been placer mined, always scrape the bedrock. You'll be amazed at the crevices and cracks that will turn up, especially when there's a thin coating of clay on what appears to be solid rock. Many times it is not solid; it just looks like it is. Moreover, the scraping technique may just lead you to a sassy little pocket with some sassy gold.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Ouch... I'd be butt hurt to. Man if that happened to me I'd rather not know lol. I was detecting once in Rattlesnake Canyon Near Big Bear Lake and I got a strong hit on a rock that was about 2ft in diameter. I scanned the sides and nothing but on the top of this rock I got a strong zip-zip. The rock was just like the thousands of others in the canyon deposited the year before from a landslide. So i came back a couple hours later with a sledge hammer and started beating this boulder into fragments (Not Easy) I would check each chunk carefully that I broke off (Nope still in the main body) When I finally split that sucker in half and pulled out each chunk to scan and nothing So I Scan the ground and That big damn rock was sitting right on top of a rusty tin can. Funny some days you just get beat down and walk away thinking screw this hobby. Then the sun comes up the next morning and your itching to go exploring again. Its almost like being bi-polar your excited with anticipation of amazing one second and an instant later you feel like you just got kicked in the nutz. Thats why people play poker, slot machines, lotto, if you want to win big you gotta be the loser enough times to earn your spot. Great thread thanks for sharing )><))'>

That is such a great story! Painful to have lived through it I'd bet, but a great story nonetheless.

Thanks for sharing it here on my thread, and thanks for dropping in to say hello. Moreover, thanks for your kind words.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

All the best,

Lanny

 

[GarretDiggingAz]

Lanny
Great story for one.
Great lessons for us not so equals. Lol

Still searching for that nugget. I know it's out there somewhere. I just think I've got to move material for the sluice and then detect the wall after taking out a couple inches.
This guy was working my buddy's spot. We call it the glory hole. My buddy thought it was worked out so I didn't say anything to the guy working it. I know this spot well and know I can take a shovel load of dirt and there will be some color.
So I asked the guy if he found anything (one of my spots is just above this hole). He told me he got a .7 gr nugget. Didn't tell me of the other stuff. I just asked him to leave some for my kids scholarship fund. Lol.

It's definitely springtime here. Upper 70's in the valley. Cooler in the hills of coarse.

I really appreciate you posting about the VLFs. Since that's what I use anyway. I'm dedicated to get a PI, but want to find my money's worth with mine. Have done some relic, and of coarse gold hunting. For the most part I'm cleaning the forest lands. I don't mind it though.
I go slow period. It's amazing on how much you could miss just by moving 6". Especially since it does go in a cone like shape.

So a question I've got is: How often should you ground balance?

Threshold should sound like a bug correct?
It seems like it'd be crazy to dig everytime the threshold has a disturbance. Especially if going through washes. Though I'd bet it'd be great going over bedrock. I actually try to follow the iron that way in the washes. It's compacted enough but not a huge deposit to get detected.

Thanks to Jim to for his input. I only wish I was half as good as you guys. I am trying though. Only problem is that lately I've only been digging instead of swinging the detector.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny Great story for one. Great lessons for us not so equals. Lol Still searching for that nugget. I know it's out there somewhere. I just think I've got to move material for the sluice and then detect the wall after taking out a couple inches. This guy was working my buddy's spot. We call it the glory hole. My buddy thought it was worked out so I didn't say anything to the guy working it. I know this spot well and know I can take a shovel load of dirt and there will be some color. So I asked the guy if he found anything (one of my spots is just above this hole). He told me he got a .7 gr nugget. Didn't tell me of the other stuff. I just asked him to leave some for my kids scholarship fund. Lol. It's definitely springtime here. Upper 70's in the valley. Cooler in the hills of coarse. I really appreciate you posting about the VLFs. Since that's what I use anyway. I'm dedicated to get a PI, but want to find my money's worth with mine. Have done some relic, and of coarse gold hunting. For the most part I'm cleaning the forest lands. I don't mind it though. I go slow period. It's amazing on how much you could miss just by moving 6". Especially since it does go in a cone like shape. So a question I've got is: How often should you ground balance? Threshold should sound like a bug correct? It seems like it'd be crazy to dig everytime the threshold has a disturbance. Especially if going through washes. Though I'd bet it'd be great going over bedrock. I actually try to follow the iron that way in the washes. It's compacted enough but not a huge deposit to get detected. Thanks to Jim to for his input. I only wish I was half as good as you guys. I am trying though. Only problem is that lately I've only been digging instead of swinging the detector.

Keep at it and the nugget will come. It seems like after you get that first one, the next one always seems to come easier for some reason.

I remember how long I went before I found my first nugget. I'd dug untold buckets of trash: canslaw, a wide variety of lead from bullets of various calibers, pieces of wire (iron and copper), boot tacks (steel and brass), casings (rifle and shotgun), BB's (from birdshot to buckshot), meat tin keys made of lead, electrical bits and pieces of fittings, blasting caps, and the list goes on and on. (I've cleaned lots of forest land too!)

The problem with some of the objects from the previous list of finds was that many items were highly conductive, so they made the right sounds, and they weren't magnetic either while I was in the recovery process. In other words, they behaved like a piece of gold would when you're hunting in all metal mode (with no discrimination), and they passed the proper early tests right up until I'd visually ID'd them.

On that "hundreds of useless items" journey, I'm not even sure why I kept at it except that I'd read so much about finding a nugget that I believed if I stuck to it long enough, I'd eventually overcome the odds and actually find a chunk of gold.

By the way, that's exactly what happened. I finally beat the odds. However, on the day I found my first nugget, I'd dug yet another bucket of trash with a high number of those finds passing the early tests (the right sounds, non-magnetic, being in an area where coarse gold and nuggets had already been found), but when I finally finished quartering the lump of dirt that passed the same early tests that day as I've already mentioned, instead of having the wrong item in my hand, there was a beautiful, sassy, thick nugget the size of my thumbnail resting in the palm of my hand.

I'll never forget that moment, that magical first moment, and neither will you.

As far as a detector goes, you don't need a pulse machine if you have a good, dedicated VLF gold machine. The research is on your side as the engineers have put together a machine with the right electronics to get the job done by "seeing" through the mineralization in gold bearing area by having the circuitry to balance the ground properly.

I have buddies with many pounds of nuggets each that hunt exclusively with VLF machines. For if the ground is cooperative enough to allow a gold-programmed VLF to hunt, the detector will find the nuggets and find them well. By way of clarification, you don't need a pulse machine unless you're hunting extreme ground. Even if there's a large number of hotrocks, you can still learn what the negative and positive ones sound like, and often, you can learn what more than a few of them look like as well.

In answer to the question, how often should you ground balance, it depends on how often or how quickly the ground minerals are changing. I hunt in transition areas (sometimes it's different types of bedrock, or different pockets of mineral concentrations) where the ground conditions change very quickly, and often, it requires frequent ground balancing. However, I hunt in areas where you can go for long periods that seldom require ground balance changes. It all depends.

As for your threshold, it should be a quiet hum in your ear. Many pros say it should sound like the soft buzz of a mosquito. You have to have a quiet, constant threshold or you can't hear when the threshold breaks with a subtle disruption. It's when you investigate those disruptions that you'll find whether it's ground mineralization or a real target.

If you have auto ground balance and you don't outpace your machine's electronics by moving too fast, the machine should keep up to the minerals so that they won't be falsing your threshold level. Often when you're hunting nuggets, the only tipoff you'll get will be that tiny break in the threshold. So, yes, you'll be investigating many of those breaks or bumps, but eventually one of them will be a nugget. Many beginners make the mistake of thinking they need a solid signal or they won't investigate. I'm convinced that's why I find nuggets in areas that are "worked out". I go slow where nuggets have been found, and I investigate those breaks.

By investigating that doesn't mean that I dig every bump or whisper. Many times I'll quickly scrape the surface with my boot and then scan again. Often, that's all it takes and the signal disappears. Other times, with the boot scrape, the signal will firm up. That requires another scrape, or I may use the pick to scrape a thicker layer of dirt off. All of these actions happen quickly or I'd never cover any ground, and if the signal continues to strengthen, I'll keep digging until I find out what's generating the positive response. Sometimes it's hotrocks. Sometimes it's concentrated pockets or lumps of mineralization. Other times it's strange things like burned items, or it's bedrock heavy in iron or lead. But, if you don't go, you'll never know.

The longer you're at the process, the faster your brain will help you filter the various small sounds you'll hear as well, until you've trained it to listen for subtle differences that matter. It's rather difficult to explain how you get to that point, but it requires a bit of advanced training and programming for the brain. Furthermore, it only comes after many hours of trial and error while out in the field.

One other thing to remember, if you're hunting with a mono, you'll need to overlap your swings more than with a DD. Don't be afraid you're not covering as much ground with a mono if you're in a known nugget area, be afraid you might miss a nugget instead.

By the way, don't worry about being as good as anyone else, just keep at it until you are good enough.

You'll find that first nugget by swinging that detector smarter, not necessarily by swinging it longer. But, you will have to put in the time, however long that detecting time may be.

Hang in there and one day you'll have your own nugget story to share with others.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Lanny your comments are so true and I believe they apply to anyone/everyone that sticks with prospecting, "I remember how long I went before I found my first nugget. I'd dug untold buckets of trash"! I'd 'worked' at prospecting for many years in between fishing, general hiking, exploring, enjoying the beauty of where I was at at any given moment and then I got a bit more serious about the 'hand' methods I was using as well as doing more checking of the "usual places" gold was liable to accumulate.

I was using a modified wire waste basket as my classifier as it just goes into a typical 5 gallon bucket. I'd set aside all of the larger river gravel in one pile and then had panned the fines. I'd pulled out some fines and flakes and these told me I was in the right spot. I looked over at the mound of washed gravel and groaned inside myself that if a nugget existed it was in that pile. I started fast panning the clean gravel: half pan full of gravel, water, liquify the sample really well to allow the heavies to sink and then hand clear (shove the top gravel off) and resettle the pile and repeat. Sure enough there was a nice picker/nugget waiting in that pile. I'd picked a rock that was usually under water and had started working the gravel on the down river side of the rock and sure enough the gold was there.

After I started finding gold that way and once I'd found gold with the GMT it is just like you've stated, "it just got easier to find another piece of gold". Keep working at searching the typical gold locations and you will come across your own first nugget................63bkpkr

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny your comments are so true and I believe they apply to anyone/everyone that sticks with prospecting, "I remember how long I went before I found my first nugget. I'd dug untold buckets of trash"! I'd 'worked' at prospecting for many years in between fishing, general hiking, exploring, enjoying the beauty of where I was at at any given moment and then I got a bit more serious about the 'hand' methods I was using as well as doing more checking of the "usual places" gold was liable to accumulate. I was using a modified wire waste basket as my classifier as it just goes into a typical 5 gallon bucket. I'd set aside all of the larger river gravel in one pile and then had panned the fines. I'd pulled out some fines and flakes and these told me I was in the right spot. I looked over at the mound of washed gravel and groaned inside myself that if a nugget existed it was in that pile. I started fast panning the clean gravel: half pan full of gravel, water, liquify the sample really well to allow the heavies to sink and then hand clear (shove the top gravel off) and resettle the pile and repeat. Sure enough there was a nice picker/nugget waiting in that pile. I'd picked a rock that was usually under water and had started working the gravel on the down river side of the rock and sure enough the gold was there. After I started finding gold that way and once I'd found gold with the GMT it is just like you've stated, "it just got easier to find another piece of gold". Keep working at searching the typical gold locations and you will come across your own first nugget................63bkpkr

Great comments! Because, they're so true.

I enjoyed reading your adventure of discovery. I wish you'd write some more too.

Thanks for posting it here so others can read of how the process does produce results.

Thanks again, and all the best my friend,

Lanny