Gold hunting prospecting tips.

[Lanny in AB]

Tips and little stories for anyone that wants to learn a bit more about chasing the gold. Whether you're a rookie or a Sourdough (a Pro), you might find something to read. My main thread, http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries.html on the metal detecting for gold page has been up for many years, and it has some tips too along with many, many stories of me out chasing the gold, but it takes a long time to wade through all of the almost 80 pages now.

So, I thought I'd start a thread over here dedicated to more of the tips and techniques on how to find gold, and I may transfer some tips from my older thread over to here as well.

Essential gold fact.
(This fact is one that's often ignored, if not undervalued or forgotten in the rush to find the gold.)

Gold fact: Gold is heavy.

Rookie prospector fact: Most rookies forget this.

Prospecting reality: many "seasoned" prospectors forget this.

Prospecting mantra: never forget that gold is heavy.


(Yes, lead is heavy too, but gold is nearly twice as heavy as lead (19320 kg/cu.m VS 11340 kg/cu.m).



For example, if you want to look for gold in a stream, don't start digging in a sandbar. Don't start digging in clay or mud. While it's true that gold will stick to clay, usually if you dig a bunch of clay, you'll get a lot of clay in your pan. . . .

Look at the stream and see where the bigger stuff is collecting.



If you're in an area where there's flour gold (glaciated gold that's been hammered and ground to a powder consistency), look for gravel bars where the rocks are fist-sized and larger. Why? Specific gravity rules specify that if the stream was traveling with enough velocity to carry rocks fist-sized and larger, flour gold was also traveling with them (if there's gold in the stream). Remember? Gold is heavy, so it takes force from water velocity to move it during a flood or during high water. (This also applies to bench deposits and old channels.)

If you're in an area where there's flake and picker gold (or maybe even nuggets), look for a place in the stream where rocks the size of couch cushions or big round watermelons or trashcans were moving during high water. Then, get a vantage point where you can look downstream to see if there's any pattern to their disposition. (I'm referring where the stream is fairly shallow to bedrock or hardpan as the bigger rocks won't disappear as they sink themselves with the stratifying action of the stream. Big, wide, slow moving streams that are deep to bedrock sometimes won't follow the same rules.) Look downstream and if you can see the big rocks lined out (running in a consecutive line downstream from each other) in a linear pattern, each following the others downstream, I'd get in those rocks and start digging. Why? Gold is heavy. Just think about the energy involved in the stream velocity that moved those rocks: pickers and flakes and maybe nuggets were running with that big stuff. Dig, dig, dig. Test, test, test.



Flashback time: When I was working with a large placer operation and they'd hit large boulders (the size of your couch at least, not the cushions), and we were working ground where nuggets were common, everyone would get excited about the possibilities. (I say possibilities because sometimes Mother Nature plays tricks and only drops the big boulders because she shifted the gold run off somewhere else.) So, when those big boulders were moved out of the way, everyone would get down in the pit after the machines were shut down for the day to start panning. (I'd often be panning the material as we went down as well to keep the feedback going to the excavator operator to let him know what size of gold, or how much gold was showing in the pan at the various levels, or in the varying layers of materials as they changed from level to level.)

On one unforgettable day, the gold run was so heavy after the big rocks were moved that we walked along the face of the wall where it met the bedrock (from about two feet above and down to the bedrock that is), and we were able to see the nuggets packed in the gravel and then flick them out of the wall into a pan!

Now I know that some of you are going to think that I was smoking cheap crack, and that there's no way anything like that could ever be possible, but I was there and it happened anyway. Moreover, once you've seen pay with that much gold in it, and once you've experienced a sight like that, you can never forget it either. There was so much gold in the pay layer that because the boss was gone to town for supplies, the sluice crew messed up and fed the sluice at the wrong rate (they fed it as if they were running normal material). The boss arrived back in camp just as the run ended and the crew was just shutting down the wash-plant. To his horror when the water stopped flowing, there were nuggets all the way from the header boxes right to the end of the last riffle in both sluices, and this was a big wash-plant!

So, as you undoubtedly remember (by now in this post) that gold is heavy, what do you think was happening while the nuggets were being deposited all the way to the last riffle in the sluices?

That's right, the nuggets were going over the end of the sluice and heading down into the settling ponds too. What a fiasco! I'll not bore you with the colorful adjectives the boss launched at the sluice crew.



But, what an unimaginable sight regardless. Nuggets from the header boxes all the way to the last riffle!! I had my video camera with me and wanted so badly to shoot video of the sluices; moreover, I had my regular camera with me and wanted to shoot some stills as well, but the investor wouldn't let me do it. He was quite an uptight fellow, to say the least.

Some other miners were working their way down the mountain along our road on their way to cross the river with their equipment, so they could get started on running dirt at their claim. They stopped by to see how things were going. Their jaws hit the ground, hard. They'd never seen the like, and I certainly never have since. Pounds and pounds of beautiful nuggets, with pounds and pounds of galena in all different sizes left to be separated from the gold. (What a pain that was as you can't remove galena with magnets, so it's hard to speed up the cleanup process.)



So, when you're looking for gold, think heavy. Try to think heavy thoughts because gold certainly thinks that way. Moreover, if you're working a stream where it's shallow to bedrock, always, always check the bedrock very carefully. Why? As gold is heavy, and as the stream materials are constantly agitated by the water, the gold will continue to drop through the liquified, moving materials of the stream to eventually come to rest. Why does it stop? It hits something that won't move or give way, and in the case of bedrock, it meets all of the immovable object criteria.

While dredging, I've had to pry enough nuggets from cracks and crevices to know how well fractured or rough bedrock works when it comes to stopping gold.



(Note: I shot this picture with an underwater camera (the glacial melt water is crystal clear and bone-chilling cold). It's a nugget that's sitting on the bedrock, and the water is moving along at a really good clip. I'd just finished moving and then carefully sucking all of the surrounding material away from the nugget on the bedrock with the dredge nozzle kept far enough away to only move the lighter material. The natural velocity of the water was not a factor when it came to the specific gravity of that chunk of gold: that nugget would not move after it was uncovered! It sat right there. If you look around, you'll see other gold resting in the stream run as well.)

Fun fact: while dredging, I've disturbed gold on the bedrock, but because gold is so heavy, the velocity of the stream drags (and I do mean drags) it along the bedrock until it reaches a crevice, and the gold disappears right quick I can tell you! If it's a good sized nugget, once you uncover it, that sassy chunk of gold will sit there in the water right tight on the bedrock waiting for you to make a move. That's how well gold can resist the velocity of the water. That's why some writers say that gold is "lazy". It's so sluggish because due to its specific gravity that it takes the shortest route between two points. So, if you're in an area with coarse gold, always remember this weighty fact as you're plotting where to test your stream materials. In your head, draw some imaginary lines (straight lines) from point A to point B.





Go to bed tonight reviewing the fact that gold is heavy: almost twenty times as heavy as the water that's transporting it, and almost ten times heavier than the other materials the stream's water is moving along with the gold. Knowing this may just have you rethinking things the next time you're out working a stream where it's shallow to bedrock (or other stream deposits as well).

All the best,

Lanny

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries.html

By the way, it's far too cold here right now to chase the gold. So, since I'm snowbound, I'll kick out a few posts from time to time, and at other times I may get a chance to post a few more as well.

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Gelmac,

It must be fascinating to hunt the Sudan! I've seen some of the video of the monster finds that come from the Sudan, and they most certainly are amazing pieces.

It's also good to know that the X-Terra finds the nuggets in your area as well. As for your local nugget shooters that won't use one or don't want to use one, it's their loss, for the more I use that little machine, the more impressed with it I am.

Minelab has pushed their GPX, their 2300, and their new pulse machines very hard, but hardly any push on the 705, and maybe that's why, because they've spent so much effort and money on promoting their super machines. Well, the X-Terra is a great little secret that too many people know nothing about, but it's a wonderful machine that surely does the job in a fine way.

All the best, and thanks again for your input,

Lanny

 

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[Gelmac]

Gelmac,

It must be fascinating to hunt the Sudan! I've seen some of the video of the monster finds that come from the Sudan, and they most certainly are amazing pieces.

It's also good to know that the X-Terra finds the nuggets in your area as well. As for your local nugget shooters that won't use one or don't want to use one, it's their loss, for the more I use that little machine, the more impressed with it I am.

Minelab has pushed their GPX, their 2300, and their new pulse machines very hard, but hardly any push on the 705, and maybe that's why, because they've spent so much effort and money on promoting their super machines. Well, the X-Terra is a great little secret that too many people know nothing about, but it's a wonderful machine that surely does the job in a fine way.

All the best, and thanks again for your input,

Lanny

Thanks Lanny for your kind words, it means a lot.

It is really fascinating to hunt for gold on this part of the world. Many challenges and obstacles but it is worth it, IMHO.

Most of the easy gold is gone ! The one that can be found by any metal detector is no longer easy target. But as the saying goes "There is Gold in them thar Hills ! " there is still lots of it in the vast plain lands of the Sudan and many parts of Africa in general !

As the news from the worked (over and over) areas in such places like Australia or the U.S , gives hope of finding big pieces.

The magic ingredient is a good Machine coupled with the correct setup or (tuning in) for the type of the ground, and in the hands of an experienced hunter , that will make the difference .

I am really sure those big beauties are a waiting for the (Master) to unearth them and show them the light of the day !

Appreciate your generosity in sharing your knowledge with the rest of us. This amazingly informative thread is expanding like a chapter in a book !

Who knows , how it might end

Thank you too Sir for your time and effort in giving such invaluable lessons in getting the yellow elusive metal.

Best to you !

 

[Lanny in AB]

A few thoughts on detecting bedrock for the rookies:

The last time I hit the bedrock (a few weeks ago), I was reminded of a few things.

Of course, one of the big issues while detecting bedrock is mineralization. As well, with mineralization that's embedded in the bedrock, as well as the soil that clings to it, there are the mineralized hot rocks, the hot ones and the cold ones--trouble rocks. Either type of hot or cold rock can cause false readings and knowing a little about how to read, interpret, or ignore them can make an otherwise miserable and confusing experience turn into something interesting and enjoyable. Furthermore, knowing how to "read" the highly mineralized soil that's stuck in the cracks or that's left in small pockets on the bedrock will demystify the process as well.

So, while out on my last excursion, I was reminded of a few things I've learned over the years while swinging gold coils over the bedrock.

One thing that causes confusion is when a signal pops up that sounds pretty good, but there's no defined center to the signal. By defined center I mean that the signal sounds good all the way across the sweep or significant tone area, but there's no point in the signal process where it peaks, gets louder, or is separated by any volume increase moving from right to left from edge to edge across the target response area. When I get a signal like this, of course I investigate it, but I'm already processing that it's likely ground noise. So, I'll scrape off some of the soil and detect the spot again, keeping the coil at the same height as I had it during the initial find. If the signal is slightly weaker, I'm leaning more toward ground noise. So, I'll remove some more soil and swing the coil again at the same height. If the signal is weaker, still the same, and still has no defined center, it's pretty certain it's not a metal target as by now it should be louder, and if I dip the coil and it's still the same broad response (same strength all the way across), it's a pocket of hot mineralized soil. I don't know how many of these types of signals I've investigated over the years, but it's a whole lot, and eventually if I dig deep enough and remove all of the soil, all I end up with is a hole and a pile of barren dirt.

So, when I investigate a signal like I've mentioned, and if I don't get an increase in signal strength, or if I don't get a defined center to the signal as I remove some overburden, I'm ready to move on.

Now hot and cold rocks are another story as some of them sound very, very good. Having used both PI's and VLF's, I'll tell you that you'll hear far fewer annoying rocks with PI's, they really make life simpler, but you will still hear them. This bit of information is important as PI manufacturers like to make it sound like PI's ignore highly mineralized rocks, and they do ignore many, but they do not ignore all of them. So, don't put out the big bucks thinking you'll never hear a trouble rock again, because you will, and the ones that still sound off with PI's can be very annoying.

There is hope however as the general rule of thumb is that troublesome rocks are mostly near the surface, but I've found enough exceptions to this old rule to also know it's not always true, and there's a particular honey hole where I've gathered sassy nuggets that has hot rocks that defy that logic, and I've dug those specific trouble causing rocks many times, and at depth to boot! In all fairness, they have a high iron content, but they're definitely not nuggets, and they definitely waste a lot of my time. So, for those types of hot rocks, I just have to dig to tell until someone develops a far better discriminator for PI's, and no, the new GPZ does not ignore all hot rocks either.

But, the old rule of surface rocks causing most of the trouble will help you ID many other problem rocks as most of them do hang out close to the surface, and as others have written, you'll get so you can visually ID many of them and simply kick them out of the way. Moreover, using other coil varieties, like DD's with a PI (and with VLF's) will help eliminate hot rocks that mono's will sound off on, but once again, you'll still be left with some to deal with. If you remember that trouble rocks will rapidly produce a weaker signal as you increase coil height, or that sometimes as you approach from a 90 degree angle the signal disappears or breaks up, that will also give you information that you might be onto a trouble rock instead of a good target.

Good targets produce a nice, sharp, clear signal if you're close to them, and they'll keep producing a clear signal with a center as you move the coil up slightly away from them whereas bad rocks will lose that sharp response and any center quickly. That is, most bad rocks will, as I clarified earlier.

Now, if you're using a VLF, your life will be more complicated, much more so. VLF's really hit hard on hot rocks; they love to sound off on them. In some areas I've detected, you can't move the coil with any small amount of movement in any direction without hitting other ones. Other nugget shooters have written about strategies on dealing with them, like tuning to problem rocks or waiting for the "boing" as you move away from them, and those are good tips, but they won't get you away from hearing all trouble rocks. So, the ones that aren't easily ruled out will require closer investigation and sometimes you'll be digging a bit, but my experience is you won't be digging as deep as you will for those exceptional problem rocks that set PI's off. So, that's one bit of effort a VLF may save you from.

So, while I'm at this tip list, I'll mention something I've brought up before. Too many rookies swing far too fast, and they raise their coil sweeps at the end of their sweeps, plus they don't overlap their swings. It seems that speed and coverage become everything, and trust me, I've been there, far too often. True, sometimes you want speed, but when you hit nuggets in a patch, of even find that first nugget, forget about speed altogether and slow down, way down, with multiple seconds elapsing on your sweeps as you cover the find area. Moreover, you'll have to get a whole new set of ears because when you hit a patch for rarely are you getting a series of sharp signals (my last outing was a huge exception to this, with crisp signals throughout my sweeps!), and you'll have to retrain your ears to hear tiny breaks in the threshold which will be very hard to hear with an external speaker. The variations of sound are so small, it's hard to believe they could ever signal a good target, but they most certainly do. Because of this, great headphones pay off as they'll let you hear those tiny disruptions that you'll virtually always miss with an external speaker, and please don't go cheap on the headphones either; you want to be able to distinguish the tiniest disruption in that threshold, especially with VLF's as they excel at finding tiny gold.

I hope some of this helps, and another time I may get a chance to write some more about this subject.

All the best, and I hope you get your coil over some sassy gold that you otherwise would have missed,

Lanny

 

[Echoplex]

Hi Lanny,

I was hoping to pick your brain on something. I was at a good spot on a big river that always yields lots of small flakes and noticed some treasure-chest-sized boulders mixed in on the bank that had 1/4" crevices running all through them that appear to go deep. The crevices were filled with VERY hard clay that is almost cement like. Of course this was the one day that I did not have my crevicing tools in the vehicle. Do you think it would be worth it to go back and start chiseling apart these types of boulders? What's been your experience with boulders like this? Clearly, they can catch gold, but I wonder how well they would retain it over thousands of years of tumbling down a big river. I know the simplest answer is: Go do it and find out! But I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on how well these kinds of boulders retain gold compared to fixed bedrock.

Thanks and best wishes,

Mike

 

[KevinInColorado]

No matter what he says...how can you resist going to find out?!

 

[Echoplex]

Yeah, it's a spot I wasn't planning on going back to anytime soon, but those boulders have me thinking about the what-ifs. They are interesting and craggy looking boulders. The crevices are packed solid. I managed to find a scrap piece of metal out there and tried to scrape some of the material out, but it is cemented in there so hard I couldn't get anything out, which makes me think they may have actually retained some gold.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I do know of prospectors that have got gold from cracks in boulders, you bet. It's a technique I have not used to extract gold yet.

I know of one quite famous nugget shooter that got a beautiful nugget (close to an ounce) from a crack in a boulder that sat unmolested in the middle of the river for years; all other nugget shooters left it undetected. It was a huge boulder however.

As for the packed material in the crevices, if it's concreted, it may or may not contain gold (just as conglomerated bench deposits may or may not be gold bearing), and the only way to find out is to get something that will let you examine the contents of those crevices. (There are liquid "explosives" that you'll need drill a hole for, then will necessitate pouring the slowly expanding material into the drill holes so that the material will fracture the rock apart to expose the crevice's contents. Or, you could go old school with hammer and chisel.

Be careful and wear eye protection as hammers, chisels, and resultant rock fragments are never eye friendly.

I personally know two prospectors that went to a remote claim in Alaska where there was excellent placer gold, and the cracks in the boulders on that claim had nice placer in them. And, if you think about it, it makes sense; the cracks allowed a place for the stream-borne gold to drop.

So, yes it is possible, but the saying, "You'll only know if you go" comes to mind on this one.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[kengold]

Lanny many thanks for your great thread which I have just been reading through from the start. Marvellous stuff and answers questions I have thought about when out in the field. For example, on rocky outcrops above good gold bearing rivers I sometimes find little piles of rock and gravel in bowl shaped depressions. I believed that these should have been good places to find flood gold but I never have found any. However those rocks did not meet your "fist sized or above" criteria so that is an explanation.
One question relating to one of your earlier threads.You mentioned using a suction gun. I have tried two commercial ones and made one myself but came to the conclusion that they were not really useful ways of pulling up gravel because they only pulled up a relatively small amount, required a lot of effort, did not work as expected and a shovel was so much better. However, since you use one I will have to think again. Do you use a commercially available one or did you make your own?

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny many thanks for your great thread which I have just been reading through from the start. Marvellous stuff and answers questions I have thought about when out in the field. For example, on rocky outcrops above good gold bearing rivers I sometimes find little piles of rock and gravel in bowl shaped depressions. I believed that these should have been good places to find flood gold but I never have found any. However those rocks did not meet your "fist sized or above" criteria so that is an explanation.
One question relating to one of your earlier threads.You mentioned using a suction gun. I have tried two commercial ones and made one myself but came to the conclusion that they were not really useful ways of pulling up gravel because they only pulled up a relatively small amount, required a lot of effort, did not work as expected and a shovel was so much better. However, since you use one I will have to think again. Do you use a commercially available one or did you make your own?

I only use them (mine are commercial) when I'm trying to work a crevice. So, when I'm working bedrock, and there's a promising crack or crevice that I can't get a shovel or bar into, or when I've cleaned out everything I can with a crevice tool, but there's still smaller material in the bottom of the crack, the suction gun will get the gold that's at the bottom of the water column sitting on the lowest part of the bedrock.

I've never used one to do gravel, but some people try it that way, but I've only seen them try that on existing bedrock or where they find a very heavy concentration of black sand or lumps of magnetite that indicates a deposit of super heavies.

For me, the suction gun's nozzle clogs far too easily, and it will even clog when you're working a tight crevice, but it will get the gold that you can't recover any other way in a tight area.

So, that's how I use them, and I've got nuggets with them that way. Nothing large of course as the opening on the ones I have is quite restricted.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Oregon Viking]

This thread rules! Thanks for taking the time to share your extensive knowledge and experience.

 

[Lanny in AB]

This thread rules! Thanks for taking the time to share your extensive knowledge and experience.

What a kind, thoughtful thing to say, and I really appreciate it.

Thanks sincerely for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Rake your way to the nuggets:

http://

I remember once there was a spot I'd looked at several times. It was situated in a place the Oldtimers had worked very hard in the 1800's and then again in the 1930's. Speaking of the '30's, a lot of people probably know that there were more people mining for gold then in some of the goldfields than there were in the 1800's, that's how tough things were. But people could scratch out enough gold to feed their families when there just weren't the social safety nets there are now.

As I've prospected for quite a while, I've gained an appreciation for how hard it is to recover gold, the intensive physical labor involved in the process, and it's given me a whole lot of respect for those early miners. I recently visited a site where a very small drift was uncovered by modern day placer miners. The height of the drift is only a couple of feet, and the drift miners were of course following the contours of the bedrock up from the river under a solid overburden of boulder clay while lying in water doing their work! And, that water is never, ever warm.

It boggles my mind, the intense physical work required to work around boulders underground in such a small space, to drag rocks and muck out of that narrow drift. But, in the 1800's or the 1930's, they were working to provide for their families, and oftentimes because of depressed economic times, those Sourdoughs had no other options. So, working in that cramped drift must have been worth it as they went back in a very long way under that sketchy overburden chasing the nuggets.

As usual, I've drifted from my story, but I'll get back to it by saying that after I'd studied the spot a few times, I decided to give it a try as the amount of workings suggested there must have been some good gold present.

Well, to get to where I needed to be, I had to lug my equipment down a very steep incline, and as I don't like to make more than one trip while navigating such slopes, of course I rigged all of my equipment around my body (thank heavens for bungee madness) to make it all in one trip. Sometimes it works, and other times it results in spectacular failure. Nevertheless, this time, I made it to the bottom of the slope without any traumatic reversals.

I'd lugged a heavy bar down with me for nosing boulders, and I'd packed a manure fork modified for raking cobbles. I'd used that fork before to good effect raking down old hand-stacks, then detecting nuggets still trapped in the bedrock that hadn't been molested since the 1800's. That's one of the possible good effects of raking off all of those old cobbles, the bedrock underneath might yield something to modern electronics that the Oldtimers had no chance to recover.

I headed for the spot I'd selected, but when I got there, I realized that it had never been mined before. All of the indicators showed rock, clay, and gravel that had never been moved, ancient river run still in place. I was a bit puzzled at first, but as I investigated more, I realized that this material had been left because it was likely a spot where they'd run a sluice box through, and the dirt had supported the sluice end that had shot the material over a cliff to discharge its contents into the river, not something that would fly today. Nope, that's for sure!

So, I got busy with the rock rake and started to pull out cobbles, smaller river run, and clay. I'd stop to detect the raked material from time to time, but all I got were lots of square nails that were running in predictable lines, nails left over from where ancient wood had rotted back into the earth, leaving only the rusted nails that held together the sides of the sluice. That was a frustrating time with so many bad targets, but eventually I'd removed a pretty good chunk of ground, and I noticed with some excitement that I'd hit bedrock.

http://

Now, whenever I hit virgin bedrock, I get a bit worked up as the chance for finding gold with the detector is much greater than in areas that have been exposed and hammered endlessly by every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a nugget machine.

So, I fired up the detector once more, but this time I used it to scan the bedrock. Almost instantly I got a loud "whack" of a signal. Naturally I assumed it was another square nail (the detector being a pulse machine, not an excellent discriminating VLF). Well, imagine my surprise when I moved some clay around and saw a sassy nugget trapped in a pocket in that bedrock! Talk about blood pumping to my brain!! It was a three gram beauty of a piece, but flatter than a Kansas corn field.

Naturally, I started to move rocks like an episode off of some fantasy show like Rakes Gone Wild or something. I really let the dirt fly. I kept checking the top cover of dirt and rocks with the detector, but all I collected from the overburden were enough nails to build my own sluice. However, when I hit the bedrock again on another cleared spot, more nuggets, smaller this time, between one and a half to two grams, and still flat and hammered, but what little beauties they were. Those pieces of gold actually seemed glad to see the sun again after so much time underground.

Now, I don't know about you, but when the dirt's paying, it's got to fly. So, I cleared another spot, and once again, there were nuggets right down in the bedrock, but this time I had to use the hammer and chisel I always pack when I know there's a chance of working bedrock. The last two nuggets were trapped in a crevice with a whack of black sand, but the hammer and chisel rooted them out, and they were both slightly under a gram, and yes, flatter than a pancake made without baking soda.

To make the rock rake, we took a multi-tined manure fork, heated it with a torch, bent the tines to 90 degrees, cooled the metal to keep a temper in the steel, then cut off the sharp ends. One tough rock-raking fork resulted! It has a nice long handle to produce a long, easy sweep as well. Plus, it saves your back from all of that bending, and chucking, bending and chucking that you get to do without a fork, never mind the fact that the fork method is way, way faster.

Nonetheless, the time came when I hit a barren spot, and by then, I'd moved enough rock in the hot summer sun to make me remember that I still had to climb a mountainside, while packing all of my gear, to get back to my truck. Common sense overwhelmed the gold fever and cooled the blood, and I made my way out.

http://

Did I get all of the gold? Heck no, but it's like a little bank that I can visit again and again, hoping to make a withdrawal, knowing that there's a good chance that there'll still be something on deposit in that virgin branch of Mother Nature's timeless treasure vault.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

​Knowing Where to Look

I remember one of the first trips I ever made up north to chase the gold. I was quite green and needed a lot of learning.

Well, I was lucky enough to be visiting a father and son pair that had chased the gold for many years. The father a lot longer than his son, but the son was a good listener and observer, and what he'd absorbed from this dad had made him a successful, large scale placer miner.

One day on our way back from prospecting some new claims, we'd just crossed a large river in four-wheel-drive (For those of you that have never crossed rivers in a truck, if you don't use a 4X4 vs. a regular truck, when you hit a difficult spot and the wheels start to spin, the truck simply digs itself down into the gravels, and you're done. The nose points to the sky, the truck box becomes a swimming pool, and when you open the doors to get out, the cab gets a nice flow-through cleaning!), and the brakes and belts were wet, so we'd pulled over to the side of the road to let things dry before we headed off through the mountains.

As the northern summer days are very long when the mining season is on, the miners go hard every minute (plus running 24/7 when they have enough crew), so there's rarely a chance for a break of any kind. However, this short break to dry things provided an opportunity for some learning on my part.

The son pointed to a series of little draws that led down to the river and he said, "Do you see that?" Of course, I could see the side of the mountain that fringed the river, and I saw the gulches, but I had no idea what else he was talking about. So like the dummy I was, I said, "See what?"

Well, he hooked his thumb in the air in the direction of the draws, gave a follow me nod of his head, and told me to grab a gold pan.

In the northern Boreal forests, the high rainfall and the long warmth of the summer days creates the perfect growing climate for undergrowth. I mean it's like regeneration of ground cover on steroids. But as we entered one little draw, he pointed to the sides of the draw and asked, "Now do you see it?" Well, as I looked up the sides of the gulch, I now saw what I'd missed from farther away. Rising and falling along the gulch's sides were hand stacks, but they were carpeted in so much growth I'd completely missed their telltale patterns from the river bank below.

He asked me for the pan, took out a knife and got down on a knee. He moved off some undergrowth and right there where he scraped was bedrock, exposed long ago by the early Sourdoughs of the 1800's gold rush that swept like a forest fire through the area as the gold seekers hopped from one shallow diggings bonanza to another, as they worked their way ever further north. He scratched and dug in the cracks and crevices, removing every bit of gritty material and clay still left therein. He kept at it this way as he went from spot to spot up the gulch. When he was finished, there wasn't a lot of material in his pan, and I wondered what he was possibly going to find in such a small pile of dirt. (Remember, I was a green rookie, one with book-learning but not a lot of practical experience. Of course, you seasoned snipers know the value of little piles of dirt gathered from just the right places in the bedrock.)

We picked our way back down to the river, careful of the deadfall and rocks, and he dipped the pan in the crystal waters of the river.

A humming bird buzzed the air as it zipped past my head. The scent of the pines and cedar hung pungent and wonderful in the air. Lazy white clouds drifted through the cobalt blue sky that crowned the higher peaks upriver. The piercing cry of a soaring hawk reached my ears. So different from my day to day life back home . . .

After a few shakes, swirls, taps, and some expert fanning motions, there in the bottom of the pan were meaty pickers! It's just lucky my eyeballs didn't drop in the pan as well, for that's how far they'd popped out of my head! (With the detectors I own today, I'd have had a time of wonder hitting those gulches, but the technology I had with me at the time couldn't handle the extreme bedrock Mother Nature had bedded that gold in, not even close.)

He told me to get my bottle, and I listened as each chunk of gold clunked as it whacked against the plastic bottom. I spun the bottle close to my ear and listened to the golden growl, a magic moment.

For the rest of the trip, I looked with a new set of eyes and marveled at the insane amount of manual labor those early Argonauts expended as they freed the gold from the shallow diggings (gold resting in deposits very shallow to bedrock). There were camouflaged hand stacks in every little draw and gulch along the rivers and streams, and many more on upper benches to boot. Thousands of motivated men moved a lot of dirt when they knew the gold was that easy to get to. Moreover, the gold had been unmolested for eons, concentrating and re-concentrating as water and gravity worked their magic in those gulches. (What I'd give to have been there at that time, to see what they saw: pounds of coarse gold in the sluices, ounces in the pans, nuggets deep in the bedrock, for the gold of that region is coarse and chunky and the finding of it does a miner's heart good.) So, after learning to see the signs of their workings, I earned a new respect for how hard they worked to get the gold to make those wages of long ago.

Prior to that trip, I'd only seen hand-stacks in very dry areas, ones that were clearly obvious, and even a dummy like me couldn't have missed those.

Of course, I think about going back one day with the new technology at my disposal to gather some of that sassy gold, for I know just where to look, but only because someone took the time to teach me, and only because his father had taken the care to show him.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

We picked our way back down to the river, careful of the deadfall and rocks, and he dipped the pan in the crystal waters of the river.

A humming bird buzzed the air as it zipped past my head. The scent of the pines and cedar hung pungent and wonderful in the air. Lazy white clouds drifted through the cobalt blue sky that crowned the higher peaks upriver. The piercing cry of a soaring hawk reached my ears. So different from my day to day life back home . . .

Lanny, your writing is like magic as it brings back so many memories of my time out in the hills of NorCal, especially the humming bird. There is a certain crack way up a mountain creek that never fails to yield some gold from among all the dirt and pebbles I clean out of it so I can understand and appreciate your story of what the young man showed you, taught you. Yes, they worked miracles with muscle and sweat and I've marveled about this at times when I was copying what they had done and it is always hard work.

Thanks for your wonderful sharing of days gone by..........................63bkpkr

PS - I'm steadily working on my physical fitness program so that when the time comes I will be ready willing And Able to hit the trails again! Herb

 

[Lanny in AB]

We picked our way back down to the river, careful of the deadfall and rocks, and he dipped the pan in the crystal waters of the river.

A humming bird buzzed the air as it zipped past my head. The scent of the pines and cedar hung pungent and wonderful in the air. Lazy white clouds drifted through the cobalt blue sky that crowned the higher peaks upriver. The piercing cry of a soaring hawk reached my ears. So different from my day to day life back home . . .

Lanny, your writing is like magic as it brings back so many memories of my time out in the hills of NorCal, especially the humming bird. There is a certain crack way up a mountain creek that never fails to yield some gold from among all the dirt and pebbles I clean out of it so I can understand and appreciate your story of what the young man showed you, taught you. Yes, they worked miracles with muscle and sweat and I've marveled about this at times when I was copying what they had done and it is always hard work.

Thanks for your wonderful sharing of days gone by..........................63bkpkr

PS - I'm steadily working on my physical fitness program so that when the time comes I will be ready willing And Able to hit the trails again! Herb

Herb,

It's always great when you drop in to say hello. I'm glad you're getting ready to hit the hills again, and I know how you must long for your treks through the California mountains. Being in Texas just isn't the same, but I know why you have to be there right now. The good thing is that the mountains will be ready for you when you're ready for them; they've learned patience down through the eons . . .

I appreciate you taking a moment to comment on the story with some kind words. I realized I forgot to post the other part of the story on this thread, so I'll get right to it.

All the best, and thanks again,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

​Hitting The Ancient Channel

In the last story, I'd travelled to that remote gold field because I'd researched the area carefully to see what kind of gold the Oldtimers had found in the 1800's. The importance of research should not be a surprise to any serious gold hunter, and if you're chasing nuggets with a specialized purpose, such as metal detecting for gold, then the research will make the difference between a very disappointing and long drive into a difficult area, versus a very satisfying expedition that produces happy results.

One of the particular problems with the aforementioned area was they kept terrible records for the region. And, that was quite common in the 1800's where paper was precious as every item had to be packed in by animals at great expense. So, the result was that even the government records were scarce for the area, and personal accounts were almost nonexistent.

Luckily, I was able to find a copy of a book, written as a first-person account, that's no longer in print. Moreover, the book was self published, which as any researcher knows, makes finding a surviving copy that much harder. However, as I'd obtained a copy, I found out that the area had very coarse (chunky, rounded, large pieces) gold.

Now, this information is very helpful if your focus is to chase nuggets with a detector. Furthermore, I found out that there'd been extensive hand workings in shallow diggings (six feet or less to bedrock). When I shoot for nuggets, this kind of information gets the blood pumping, as when the Sourdoughs were working shallow deposits, they left behind lots of hand stacks of rocks, and there's often large portions of exposed bedrock left behind as well.

If you think about it, back in the 1800's they only had simple tools and simple methods. They dug, scratched, and scraped to get the gold out of the bedrock. They broke up the bedrock when they could, and left it when they couldn't. However, what they could not do was "see" into the bedrock that they could not break, but metal detectors excel at such work in today's modern outings. And, the gold field I'm referring to is special in that it has large sections of bedrock that fall into the "iron hard" category, as well as being insanely hot with mineralization. Both of these features meant that gold had likely been left behind.

Of course my research didn't tell me about the nature of the mineralization of the bedrock, but being in the field did. The research about there being coarse gold in abundance led me there; the boots on the ground is why I found out about the state of the mineralization: thus, the need to research proved out, as well as physically getting into an area.

But, back to the book for a moment. In the book, the author told of how there was a mining company he worked for that was driving tunnels through boulder clay and channel to try to hit a buried bedrock rim that cradled a very ancient channel. The Oldtimers knew the channel was there as they'd hit part of it lower down in elevation where they could access it as the overburden was light, but the glaciers had done their work and heavily buried the remainder higher up. The part the Sourdoughs had worked was incredibly rich with large, chunky gold and this drove the later miners in the 1930's.

I'd read about the author's account of how he and the small mining company had labored for many, many months driving various tunnels to try to strike the wall of the bedrock rim. The first couple of attempts failed, but at last they punched through the rim. Nonetheless, the channel was full of water left over from the age of the dinosaurs! To make a long story short, they couldn't stay ahead of the water and lost the opportunity to retrieve the full portion of the gold, but the gold samples they got out before the pumps were overwhelmed were glorious!

When I visited the area, I was able to look down one of the original vertical shafts from where they branched off horizontally to try to hit that ancient bedrock rim. (A bedrock rim is an area that used to be where an original stream channel ran, with the rim protecting the contents from letting the glaciers scour down to rob the contents of the channel bottom clean of all its gold.) What an experience that was to see those old workings!

Moreover, I brought back some sassy nuggets from the area as the modern day miners had removed all of the overburden with huge equipment, then drained the Tertiary channel with lots of powerful pumps, leaving bare ancient channel bedrock for me to detect, and yes, the gold was still trapped there after all of those countless eons.

Research led me to the area, and boots on the ground filled in the missing details.

All the best,

Lanny

P.S. The area produced a bunch of nuggets in the 25 ounce plus range!