Colorado Prospecting. South Platte, Clear Creek and Denver.

[shofs]

So where to start...I've been to clear creek a couple of times recently. Just up from Golden and not much past that first tunnel on 6. The wife and I wanted to get outside and enjoy the weather, followed by some gambling at Blackhawk (a mountain town where gambling is legal here in Colorado). I had my bazooka in the car so I set it up just for fun while we enjoyed some fresh air and beautiful scenery. The area has been dug out probably 10 times over but I did spot about 10 flakes in my cleanout pan.





See the sluice?

 

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[shofs]

I also found a small honey hole on the creek about two weeks ago.
I was sampling pretty far down stream from my usual digging area and found a little spot at the end of a short incline in the creek where I got about 50 colors in one test pan! I couldn't believe my eyes. I had to head home shortly after finding the honey sadly. But of course I went back the next day and dug it out completely giving me almost a gram woohoo! I dug around the area and the honey hole ended but being pretty small...but still sweet.

Here's my cleanout of the day I was out test panning around. This is from about 4 different spots running the sluice .78g

My little honey hole behind me

This much of a sample....

Gave this much gold!

The second day cleanout at .95g

Here's a video after I dug it out

 

[mytimetoshine]

awesome gold, seems you tend to do better then most in the same area with the same equipment. winning

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[shofs]

awesome gold, seems you tend to do better than most in the same area with the same equipment. winning

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That was just a lucky day. I will admit I'm lucky at least

 

[Hunt4gold]

Nice color Shofs! Keep posting - we are encouraged to get out after looking at your pans.

 

[mytimetoshine]

That was just a lucky day. I will admit I'm lucky at least

it's not luck, happens to me all the time. I call it skill.

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[KevinInColorado]

Love the pics and results...mytime is right, it's called skill

 

[Au dave]

Professionising the crap out of it ... lol

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[shofs]

I've also had some trips down to the South Platte with Hunt4gold. We went out prospecting on some really promising spots where the river ran down to some strange clay formations and some interesting gravel bars. There was some gold there but nothing crazy. I did find some nice garnet though! The next trip I brought Hunt4gold to my "honey hole" of fine gold. It's a dry high bar of gravel that has monstrous amounts of black sand but also a constant 20 (small) colors per pan.

Look at this weird clay! and some great garnet from a close by gravel bar!


Here's the consistency of the dry bar and lots of tiny gold

 

[shofs]

Awesome journal - just read it from the first post to here! Great to see how many good spots there are right in Denver if you look around enough. Loving all the chunky gold, good to see it really exists in CO!

I just moved to Denver and I'm planning to get into some urban prospecting of my own starting next week. Went on a few digs with Kevin back in October when I was living in Frisco and had a blast.

Shofs (or anyone else in the Denver area) - would love to meetup at some point for a dig after work or on the weekend. Still a newbie prospector but I'm in it for the long haul and will be happy to share some spots as I discover 'em.

I sent you a pm, lets meet up!

 

[typejta]

Just wanted to thank you for putting together such a helpful post. I am in similar position to agolddigger and just getting into this and loving it so far. There's something about the combination of being on the water, manual labor, and the chance of discovery that clears the brain of pretty much any stress. I shot you a pm about your map shofs and actually spoke with Kevin (currently traveling) a bit yesterday. Would love to meet up at some point and see how you pros are doing it.
Thanks again for putting together this post.

 

[shofs]

Just wanted to thank you for putting together such a helpful post. I am in similar position to agolddigger and just getting into this and loving it so far. There's something about the combination of being on the water, manual labor, and the chance of discovery that clears the brain of pretty much any stress. I shot you a pm about your map shofs and actually spoke with Kevin (currently traveling) a bit yesterday. Would love to meet up at some point and see how you pros are doing it.
Thanks again for putting together this post.

Thanks for the kind words!
I sent you a PM back. Lets meet up and get gold sometime.

 

[shofs]

I went to big dry creek today. I don't mind sharing this location because it's already pretty well documented. I heard a few reports of decent sized gold being found close to the confluence of the creek and the Platte River, at least in comparison to the Platte's normal -100 size gold. I parked at the confluence and found another prospector digging down closer to the river, a nice guy around my age who was just getting into the hobby, we talked for a bit and afterwards I walked upstream for maybe a half mile along the path which follows the creek. The creek bed has a lot of sandy overburden for some long stretches but there are a few small, short sections where I found cobble. I test panned one of the cobble areas and found a flake in the pan so I set up the sluice and dug a little 15 min hole. I finished processing the cons a minute ago and found a little bit. It is in fact larger than the river gold but I didn't find too much. I got nothing bigger than -30 but nothing smaller than -60 which is interesting. Either way it's a little more gold for the vial

 

[shofs]

Speaking of vials I'm at 33% of the goal! I just hit 9 grams woohoo!

 

[GoldpannerDave]

Wow, I'm just jealous!

Me, too.

 

[mytimetoshine]

nice poke!

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[shofs]

I went to explore a new creek in my area a little bit ago but I just now got the pic's uploaded to share. It's in an non-residential area of town and I found some good access that no one would causualy find

Here's the creek where I entered.


After walking it for a while I came across some old wooden structure.


Does anyone know what it is? It looks like it bridged across the water but the bank was too high up on the side not in the picture for that. There was a bit of water coming out of the side of the creek across the way maybe it was a spring or something.


Here's the area across the way where water was coming up from the ground.


A little way up from there I started finding some cobble in the creek bed and some color in my pan along with that. Not much though. Looking up the hillside I found the gold bearing layer about 80' up from the creek! I usually look for that layer to be much closer to the water. That would explain why I was getting a little color but not enough to really be a good spot. I climbed up the hillside and found a roadway cut a few feet in the soil and right across the gold layer. Too bad I don't have a high frequency metal detector. It would be a fun spot to look for little pickers The picture is what I looked up and saw from way down below after I climbed up to inspect it.

 

[mytimetoshine]

That's cool almost like the tertiary channels we have here in Ca. tell me you grabbed a sample from up there?

The first wooden structure looks like one of those barriers on the roadside that keep you (hopefully) from driving off a cliff. The 2nd one looks like it could have been a platform of some sort for the possible spring you mention hard to tell with out seeing the immediate area and terrain around it. Probably whatever it was has been forgotten after the houses were built. I love mystery like this.

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[utah mason]

Looks like drywasher time

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[shofs]

@mytimetoshine
I looked for structures like a house site close by but I couldn't find anything other than what was in the stream. I might bring my metal detector down there anyways and see what I can turn up in the area.