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]

A bit more of an add on as well, but with a slightly different focus:

If you're in an area where large-scale (dozers, excavators, loaders, etc.) placer equipment has been at work, you need to check around those excavations as well.

With all of that dirt being moved, it only makes sense that gold was disturbed, relocated, or dropped.

Of course if you're ever lucky enough to test the bedrock they've cleared, you'll have a great chance at some nuggets if nuggets were running with the pay. For, if it was all fine and flour gold, the odds will be stacked against you, stacked just as high as those useless piles of washed rock piled by the stacker.

There are a few interesting places to check out: check where the actual excavation took place (all around the margins where any dirt was disturbed, the slopes and walls, etc.); check the ramps where they ran the dirt up to the washplant; check the roads they used to truck the dirt to the ramps; check where the loader had dirt piled for it to scoop and then run up to the washplant; and as I stated in an earlier post, check around the feeder belt, the hopper, and the general area of the washplant.

I've found nuggets in all of the areas I've just mentioned. I even found a nice catch of small nuggets under the base of a washplant once where there must have been a leak in the sluice. There was a spot under the plant were you could see a little trench cut into the clay and cobble they'd built the pad on. Being curious about why such a place was where it was (directly under the sluice run) and knowing that running water concentrates gold, I tested the dirt and got some nice pickers, small nuggets, and quite a bit of flake gold. This recovery told me there'd definitely been a leak in the sluice somewhere. But the trick was looking, realizing something was out of place, and then recognizing a small hydraulic event that looked like it had the potential to have concentrated gold.

This was the same derelict washplant I've written about somewhere else that had a pan in a small mechanical area near the top of the hopper. The pan covered the electric motor that ran the offset shaker weight, and it protected the electric motor from dirt and water that inadvertently slopped in while they were loading the hopper. The pan had edges that flared up, so it made a perfect trap as it was about three-feet square and it functioned as a bit of a concentrator for the water and the shaking helped the process along.

I decided to test that dirt, and whatever dirt they were running, it was rich, as I recovered enough gold to cover the bottom of a styrofoam cup! (I dumped my bottle into the cup to show the miners what I'd recovered.) Once again, the gold gathered was diverse in size, running from flakes, to pickers, to small nuggets. That whole region was famous for coarse gold, and it sure showed.

I'll tell you a little story about the claim owner back at the spot where I'd been invited to ride in the excavator bucket to check out the old drift mine. (If you haven't read the other stories, or are a bit lost when I refer to other stories, you can catch up on my http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/metal-detecting-gold/69-bedrock-gold-mysteries.html thread, or my http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/392994-prospecting-tales.html. There's also some video and stills of incredible gold on my http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/g...-north-american-placer-freakin-fantastic.html
thread as well, if you like to drool over beautiful gold.)

They were running a multi-million dollar operation with huge rock trucks and all of the super-sized earth moving equipment common to a large placer operation. He was walking back to the washplant one day (his half-ton had broken down) and right there on the road was a five-gram nugget! It had fallen from one of the rock trucks on its way to the washplant. You can bet that if I ever get back up there I'll be detecting that road!! Moreover, they were running dirt that produced six-grams of coarse gold to the yard, so the potential for some nuggets to fall from the trucks was good.

So, detect all around any old placer operation, and now that you know the places to focus on, good luck!

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

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[Lanny in AB]

I found an inexpensive way to make a black sand extraction magnet to use while panning.

I'm sure some of you have used this as well: take an old 35mm plastic film container with the tight snap on lid style, put in a round super-magnet slightly smaller than the diameter of the canister, snap the lid on, and you're ready to go. (A prescription pill bottle with a child-proof locking lid would work as well.)

Spin the canister above the black sand and gold concentrates in your plastic gold pan, and the gold will jump to the magnet, no problem, as those types of magnets have lots of pull.

Have another plastic gold pan ready. Shake the canister up and down over the other pan (making the magnet jump vertically) and that pesky black sand will drop right off in a heartbeat into your dump pan.

Spin the magnet closer to the material in your original gold pan this time, then transfer the new load to your other pan, and repeat the process by gradually dropping lower and getting closer until there's nothing left but gold and other non-magnetic super-heavies in the pan.

Now, always pan the black sand in the other pan again, as sometimes flakes will get picked up with the black sand, or there will be gold that's actually attached to black sand. It's always worth a check to be sure you haven't transferred any of your hard-earned gold to the other pan.

The trick about swirling the magnet over the black sand was one I picked up while working with a big outfit way up north of here, sixteen hours away. The black sand and galena we were dealing with was loaded with gold, and if you got the magnet too close, lots of gold got pulled up with the black sand to the magnet.

Starting well above the concentrates and spinning the magnet seems to create a little vortex that lets any gold coming up drop back down easier as the black sand will realign itself with the spinning? I'm not sure that's exactly why, but it works better than having a big clump of black sand jump straight to the magnet by just holding it over the concentrates. (I tested the process by simply holding the magnet stationary over the black sand, and they were right, the magnetite did pull gold flakes right up in the clump to the super-magnet.)

Moving lower with each series of spins and drops will get you to where the last pieces to jump will be the ones with the smallest magnetic pull, and you shouldn't have any gold in the other pan except for pieces of magnetite and gold that are actually attached. However, I always test, and from time to time, I have been surprised.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Cariboo5]

"A bit more of an add on as well, but with a slightly different focus:

If you're in an area where large-scale (dozers, excavators, loaders, etc.) placer equipment has been at work, you need to check around those excavations as well.

With all of that dirt being moved, it only makes sense that gold was disturbed, relocated, or dropped."


Case in point to your above comment..........My son at the end of the day was going to brush off the mud from his boots and decided to put the mud in his pan and panned it...A nice 0.4 gram nugget was in the mud.....Good point Lanny and when in gold country it some times shows up when least expected..

 

[Lanny in AB]

"A bit more of an add on as well, but with a slightly different focus:

If you're in an area where large-scale (dozers, excavators, loaders, etc.) placer equipment has been at work, you need to check around those excavations as well.

With all of that dirt being moved, it only makes sense that gold was disturbed, relocated, or dropped."


Case in point to your above comment..........My son at the end of the day was going to brush off the mud from his boots and decided to put the mud in his pan and panned it...A nice 0.4 gram nugget was in the mud.....Good point Lanny and when in gold country it some times shows up when least expected..

The story about your son and the chunk of gold from the mud on his boots is a great little story.

For sure, if you're in an area where they're getting good gold, check all of the dirt in the active zone, but I'd have never thought to pan the mud from my boots.

Your son was thinking outside the box, and it paid off. Nicely done.

Here's a little story about gold in a completely unexpected area.

My son was working construction once, and as he'd been nugget hunting with me numerous times, he noticed something poking out of the dust while they were doing a demolition project whose color didn't fit with any of the other debris. He walked by it several times during the day, and finally his curiosity made him look at it closely.

It was a five gram nugget!

How or why it was there, he'll never know, and no one else had the slightest clue, but at least he bent down to take a look or it would have been buried by the big machines the next day.

Go figure.

All the best, and thanks for your post,

Lanny

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

 

[Bejay]

Nice posting. Years of experience allow knowledge to be gained....no question about that.

I have experienced many such things and always look for the bigger gold if it is characteristic of my location. With in-stream placers (having dredged fore 35 years)I have found my biggest gold in/on bedrock "shoots" (channels) : where the water is channeled down the deepest place. Big gold likes to follow a path of least resistance and follows those bedrock channels.

If, and when, these channels create what I call a "blocker" one can often find the really nice nuggets pocketed. The channel blockers can be rocks wedged into the channel or they can be an abrupt vertical ending. Sometimes they even progress at a diagonal across the river/stream and end at the rivers/stream bank.
I often look for these channels where the stream/river flows across open bedrock.

On one occasion I noticed some small channels coming down/across the bedrock. It did not look like much pocketing of gravel but the nozzle could reach the channels so I began quickly working upstream in them. I hit a "blow hole" where hydraulic plucking had made a hole about 3 feet deep and 18 inches across. In that hole was a number of very large nuggets. It made for some easy recovery and a good day.

So your info on where and how gold is deposited is very true. This point I am making is when I want to find big gold; in areas where it is known to occur.

Bejay

 

[Lanny in AB]

Nice posting. Years of experience allow knowledge to be gained....no question about that.

I have experienced many such things and always look for the bigger gold if it is characteristic of my location. With in-stream placers (having dredged fore 35 years)I have found my biggest gold in/on bedrock "shoots" (channels) : where the water is channeled down the deepest place. Big gold likes to follow a path of least resistance and follows those bedrock channels.

If, and when, these channels create what I call a "blocker" one can often find the really nice nuggets pocketed. The channel blockers can be rocks wedged into the channel or they can be an abrupt vertical ending. Sometimes they even progress at a diagonal across the river/stream and end at the rivers/stream bank.
I often look for these channels where the stream/river flows across open bedrock.

On one occasion I noticed some small channels coming down/across the bedrock. It did not look like much pocketing of gravel but the nozzle could reach the channels so I began quickly working upstream in them. I hit a "blow hole" where hydraulic plucking had made a hole about 3 feet deep and 18 inches across. In that hole was a number of very large nuggets. It made for some easy recovery and a good day.

So your info on where and how gold is deposited is very true. This point I am making is when I want to find big gold; in areas where it is known to occur.

Bejay

Bejay,

I really enjoyed your post. Moreover, I enjoyed your description of those bedrock channels.

That blow hole with the big nuggets in it was a great find, and I can imagine what a fantastic day that was.

I too have experienced the same type of gold deposition in those channels.

One summer I was working a spot in a bedrock canyon. I'd got down through the boulders and river run, and I found one of those channels. I worked it upstream, but it was gradually narrowing. Because it was pinching tighter, there were some large rocks jammed tightly in it. Because those rocks had blocked the channel, three nuggets were jammed between the outside edge of the channel and the rocks. It was the perfect trap. Flake gold was present too, but it's the memory of seeing the nuggets trapped there that sticks with me.

Slightly to the left of the jam, the bedrock was rising in little steps as it headed off to meet the canyon wall. It was a very tough spot to work as the current was very strong, but I stuck with it and kept cleaning those little steps out. Then, as the nozzle took a big gulp and the dirt stopped sifting down with the current, all at once a nugget appeared! But then the cascade of river run and rocks from the face covered it right back up again. However, I knew where it was, so I worked the material carefully away and there it sat, just like it had done for who knows how long, trapped right there on that little step.

I really enjoyed your story Bejay, and if you'd like to, why not post another one on here.

I'd love to read it.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Underburden]

Lanny
I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts. You've taken the edge off these long winters waiting to return to the claim.
As I read your descriptive accounts, I can picture in my mind all the submerged and exposed bedrock on my own claim.
We work it by hand but so far have neglected to pass a coil over any...you can bet that will change in 2014. I recently invested in a new tool to help open up those bedrock cracks called a Sod Buster.(see pic) It's designed for fur trapping but I could see a use for it in my attempts to rescue any trapped nuggets.

Back in 2010, I was working a 2" wide opening in the bedrock, midstream. Found a few colors so I chased it toward the bank.
More colors and chunkier than the previous. At the bank, the crack continued, so like a raccoon feeling for a crawdad. I blindly scraped material elbow deep into the bank. When I finally had a pan full, I found a comfortable rock and started washing.
Much to my surprise, the pan revealed 72 pieces of gold with a majority being nice pickers. More on this can be viewed on my BLOG...just click on the 2010 archives.


I'm really grateful for all your posts and I know that once you start collecting pine duff in the treads of your own boots, these posts will be fewer, but that only means that next winter, we'll have more great posts to follow.

All the best,
Bob...aka Underburden

 

[Bejay]

No doubt us long time gold miners could tell our great stories. I could probably write a book of such knowledge and experiences.

There is a spot on the lower end of my dredge claim where the old timers were working an adjacent hi bar placer about 10 feet above the current riverbed. The work they had done showed they were after really great gold...as NO ONE would have done what they did for a pittance of gold. One winter a huge old growth fir blew over into the creek and caused the creek bank to wash out and expose some great looking placers (old rusty river rocks...boulders...cobbles of considerable size) adjacent to their workings. So I set the dredge up below that spot where the bedrock channels were obvious (lots of bedrock showing). I had my partner set up about 100 yds below me where the water had slowed and pooled. There was considerable white water bubbles so it was hard for me to see everything at the nozzle, but I used my hands to feel and explore the bedrock. The water was about 2-3 feet deep and I stood up to change positions. It was a sunny day, and when I stood up it looked like there was a bright gold shinny fishing lure laying down on the bottom. I reached down and pulled up a large shinny bright gold nugget. NICE!

About 15 minutes later my long time mining partner started hooping and hollering to no end (he is deaf). I ran down to see if he was in trouble and he was jumping up and down with joy. His 4 inch dredge sluice was engulfed with gold....of all sizes. He had hit a spot in the bedrock shaped like a huge bowl...and it was full of gold. Of course he did not see it while on the nozzle because my turbidity had fogged his water...( he was down about 4 ft depth of water).

Of course I could tell such stories forever and ever, and those of us who have been chasing the gold for a long time have had our moments. I might point out that I have had zilch days as well....especially in the first few years of having my claim and trying to figure it out.

But I will say this: I learned to chase the easy bedrock that mother nature had exposed.....and the 1st fifteen years allowed me the opportunity to get easy gold. Now I have to do some prospecting in the deeper gravels and try to hit those special places....been on the same dredge claim for 30 plus years.

Currently I am on my new Az claim and the game is all together different. Desert gold has its own issues.....as it is not always on bedrock in the dry washes....it gets layered in, and not put down. People always want to know: where is a good place to look for gold? I have a major university geology background and I get fooled all the time. Mother nature can throw all kinds of wrenches into the search.

I'll tell more stories if there is an interest. I am not a pic guy and don't do much....always too busy on the nozzle.

Bejay

 

[Lanny in AB]

No doubt us long time gold miners could tell our great stories. I could probably write a book of such knowledge and experiences.

There is a spot on the lower end of my dredge claim where the old timers were working an adjacent hi bar placer about 10 feet above the current riverbed. The work they had done showed they were after really great gold...as NO ONE would have done what they did for a pittance of gold. One winter a huge old growth fir blew over into the creek and caused the creek bank to wash out and expose some great looking placers (old rusty river rocks...boulders...cobbles of considerable size) adjacent to their workings. So I set the dredge up below that spot where the bedrock channels were obvious (lots of bedrock showing). I had my partner set up about 100 yds below me where the water had slowed and pooled. There was considerable white water bubbles so it was hard for me to see everything at the nozzle, but I used my hands to feel and explore the bedrock. The water was about 2-3 feet deep and I stood up to change positions. It was a sunny day, and when I stood up it looked like there was a bright gold shinny fishing lure laying down on the bottom. I reached down and pulled up a large shinny bright gold nugget. NICE!

About 15 minutes later my long time mining partner started hooping and hollering to no end (he is deaf). I ran down to see if he was in trouble and he was jumping up and down with joy. His 4 inch dredge sluice was engulfed with gold....of all sizes. He had hit a spot in the bedrock shaped like a huge bowl...and it was full of gold. Of course he did not see it while on the nozzle because my turbidity had fogged his water...( he was down about 4 ft depth of water).

Of course I could tell such stories forever and ever, and those of us who have been chasing the gold for a long time have had our moments. I might point out that I have had zilch days as well....especially in the first few years of having my claim and trying to figure it out.

But I will say this: I learned to chase the easy bedrock that mother nature had exposed.....and the 1st fifteen years allowed me the opportunity to get easy gold. Now I have to do some prospecting in the deeper gravels and try to hit those special places....been on the same dredge claim for 30 plus years.

Currently I am on my new Az claim and the game is all together different. Desert gold has its own issues.....as it is not always on bedrock in the dry washes....it gets layered in, and not put down. People always want to know: where is a good place to look for gold? I have a major university geology background and I get fooled all the time. Mother nature can throw all kinds of wrenches into the search.

I'll tell more stories if there is an interest. I am not a pic guy and don't do much....always too busy on the nozzle.

Bejay

Bejay,

Now that's the kind of gold story I love reading!!

Please post some more so that we can all enjoy them.

I can only imagine how happy your partner was, and what a thrill that must have been for him to find his sluice loaded with gold!

The nugget that you spotted and then picked up doesn't happen very often, but there's nothing better than the glint of gold under the water in the bright sunshine.

Are you currently mining? Or, is it too early yet?

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny
I thoroughly enjoy reading your posts. You've taken the edge off these long winters waiting to return to the claim.
As I read your descriptive accounts, I can picture in my mind all the submerged and exposed bedrock on my own claim.
We work it by hand but so far have neglected to pass a coil over any...you can bet that will change in 2014. I recently invested in a new tool to help open up those bedrock cracks called a Sod Buster.(see pic) It's designed for fur trapping but I could see a use for it in my attempts to rescue any trapped nuggets.

Back in 2010, I was working a 2" wide opening in the bedrock, midstream. Found a few colors so I chased it toward the bank.
More colors and chunkier than the previous. At the bank, the crack continued, so like a raccoon feeling for a crawdad. I blindly scraped material elbow deep into the bank. When I finally had a pan full, I found a comfortable rock and started washing.
Much to my surprise, the pan revealed 72 pieces of gold with a majority being nice pickers. More on this can be viewed on my BLOG...just click on the 2010 archives.


I'm really grateful for all your posts and I know that once you start collecting pine duff in the treads of your own boots, these posts will be fewer, but that only means that next winter, we'll have more great posts to follow.

All the best,
Bob...aka Underburden

Thanks for dropping in and thanks for your compliments and kind words.

Your story about the crack is a great one. Far too many people miss spots like that simply because they either don't know what they're looking at, they don't know how to work it, or because they think it's too much work.

In fact, in lots of places along the rivers where there are large rocks, rookies will only scape up what they can to get some dirt in their pan; however, if they would get a pick and dig down around those big rocks to cut a trench so they could look at the layers of deposition, then test the different layers to learn which ones are producing gold, they'd be able to leave with a nice catch of gold instead of a few tiny flakes. (Of course, that's if there's gold present: that's always the catch.)

All the best, and thanks for the link to your blog,

Lanny

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

 

[Bejay]

I am currently mining my claim in Az. For us old gold "use to water guys" the desert is a challenge. When I first got down to this area I did dredge........ when everyone said there was no water. But the interesting thing is water does come out of the mtns and flow to the desert. When the flow is not "flood stage" there are still springs that feed the upper portions of the drainage systems. If you go up far enough you can find it before it goes into the ground....disappearing. So for 4 years I dredged and found good gold. And we moved some humongous boulders. Now I must work the dry wash's on my claim...as I dredged the other area out.

Intermittent water flow does not always put the gold down...but rather can lay it in.......even on top in the fluff. We need some major winter flooding here to move material and replenish the washes.

I been laid up with a crud bug for the past couple days and hope to get back out to the claim tomorrow. My main dredging activity may occur on my Great Northwest claims this summer. Most of my 45 years mining has been on my dredge claims up north. Lots of stories and geology from up there.

Bejay

 

[Bejay]

I was reading Underburden's previous thread and it really struck home....but in a different way.
I decided to start dredging a spot I thought looked promising on my claim many years ago. I found a crack in the bedrock that was simply perfect. It crossed the stream bed and was about 6 inches wide at the top and narrowed to about 3 inches at the bottom. It was about two feet deep and five feet long. The gravels in the crevice were extremely high silica type (gabbros, feldspare, quartz etc). The sand/sedimenbt matrix was almost white...but really light grey as well. I spent the day on the spot with a 3 inch dredge.

I got zilch. Not a color. So I abandoned the spot and went to other places on the claim. A few years later I had finished early dredging my other spots and thought I might go back to that great crevice spot again....as it was right next to camp.

This time though I thought I would approach the spot differently. Instead of going directly down into the High silica impacted gravels I thought I would simply dredge out the lose gravel in and amongst the larger rocks....moving the larger rocks as well. I was able to dredge a large area down to a brown hardpan pack in about an hour. I then went to the sluice and found 18 nuggets in the upper portion of the matt.

So what was the story here? This was a major learning experience for me. This made all the difference in the world to my future success working my claims there.

The white impacted gravels were the quaternary formations. Absent of free gold. They depicted ancient river bed though. So anytime I found these types of gravels I knew I was in the right spot and going to find gold. Ancient is good!

The brown impacted gravels lying on top did have a lot of gold but the majority of the find that day was because an upstream big hole placer deposit had blown out and all the gold had traveled over the "catch" I had just spent an hour on. Later this spot ended up being under 5 feet of gravels...then blew out again last year.

I pay attention to what happens on my claims. Mother nature does wonderful things!

Bejay

 

[KevinInColorado]

Very interesting and educational story, thanks!

 

[Lanny in AB]

I am currently mining my claim in Az. For us old gold "use to water guys" the desert is a challenge. When I first got down to this area I did dredge........ when everyone said there was no water. But the interesting thing is water does come out of the mtns and flow to the desert. When the flow is not "flood stage" there are still springs that feed the upper portions of the drainage systems. If you go up far enough you can find it before it goes into the ground....disappearing. So for 4 years I dredged and found good gold. And we moved some humongous boulders. Now I must work the dry wash's on my claim...as I dredged the other area out.

Intermittent water flow does not always put the gold down...but rather can lay it in.......even on top in the fluff. We need some major winter flooding here to move material and replenish the washes.

I been laid up with a crud bug for the past couple days and hope to get back out to the claim tomorrow. My main dredging activity may occur on my Great Northwest claims this summer. Most of my 45 years mining has been on my dredge claims up north. Lots of stories and geology from up there.

Bejay

Sorry to hear that some kind of a microorganism is keeping you down. There's nothing worse than that, especially when there's gold to be got.

I admire your tenacity for finding places to dredge in the desert, and I'm happy it paid off so well for you. However, without all of your previous experience, you probably wouldn't have been able to figure it out like you did.

It's all of those years of knowledge gained through lots of hard work that pays on a consistent basis.

When I was detecting in the desert in Arizona, I noticed a lot of strange deposition patterns as well, as in heavy rocks, etc. that would be down deeper in the areas I work. To add to this anomaly of the heavies being on the surface, my partner that winters in Arizona found nuggets right on the surface and big pieces of specimen gold on the surface as well. As I'm not all that familiar with how the gold was deposited in Arizona, it's been a bit of a puzzle to me.

Where I spend most of my time chasing the gold, we too get surface runs, but that's from glacial blowouts. We've also found nuggets right on the surface in some of those blowout runs, but I'm unfamiliar with how the gold was deposited in Arizona. Did the glaciers get that far south? I'd have to do some research to find out, but it seems a long way to have an icecap run, but nature does do the unexplained from time to time as well.

Thanks for your post, and thanks for the information as well.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[kazcoro]

Lanny, I don't think we had glaciers this far south. Our most primary erosion is wind. Followed by monsoon storms. As the monsoon storms are far and few between, not to metion their infrequent arrivals, any alluvial movement is slow and not deep seated. I am sure that glacier melting to the north concentrated our heavy mineral deposits, but those have all been discovered and worked by the sourdoughs. Any recent deposits that have yet to be discovered and mined have to be closer to the lode erosion points. Also, on the same idea, these undiscovered deposits will be located on benches. This relates to the glacial flooding. Thinking about the Colorado River. It drains from the high Rockies in Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. I hope that others will step in and educate (or correct me) us further on gold deposits here in AZ.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I was reading Underburden's previous thread and it really struck home....but in a different way.
I decided to start dredging a spot I thought looked promising on my claim many years ago. I found a crack in the bedrock that was simply perfect. It crossed the stream bed and was about 6 inches wide at the top and narrowed to about 3 inches at the bottom. It was about two feet deep and five feet long. The gravels in the crevice were extremely high silica type (gabbros, feldspare, quartz etc). The sand/sedimenbt matrix was almost white...but really light grey as well. I spent the day on the spot with a 3 inch dredge.

I got zilch. Not a color. So I abandoned the spot and went to other places on the claim. A few years later I had finished early dredging my other spots and thought I might go back to that great crevice spot again....as it was right next to camp.

This time though I thought I would approach the spot differently. Instead of going directly down into the High silica impacted gravels I thought I would simply dredge out the lose gravel in and amongst the larger rocks....moving the larger rocks as well. I was able to dredge a large area down to a brown hardpan pack in about an hour. I then went to the sluice and found 18 nuggets in the upper portion of the matt.

So what was the story here? This was a major learning experience for me. This made all the difference in the world to my future success working my claims there.

The white impacted gravels were the quaternary formations. Absent of free gold. They depicted ancient river bed though. So anytime I found these types of gravels I knew I was in the right spot and going to find gold. Ancient is good!

The brown impacted gravels lying on top did have a lot of gold but the majority of the find that day was because an upstream big hole placer deposit had blown out and all the gold had traveled over the "catch" I had just spent an hour on. Later this spot ended up being under 5 feet of gravels...then blew out again last year.

I pay attention to what happens on my claims. Mother nature does wonderful things!

Bejay

You do indeed have great gold tales to tell Bejay,

And you've learned an awful lot in your 45 years of mining that you're able to draw on, even in new areas.

That's one thing that has always thrown me a bit when I hunt the gold in a new area, the fact that gold gets put down in different ways in different areas.

I've dug holes while prospecting before thinking that I needed to get down to bedrock to find the gold, only to find when I hit bedrock that there was no gold on it at all! But by giving myself a reality check after getting skunked, I was forced to look at the different layers of deposition I'd cut through on the way down. This forced reflection made me see things that should have been very obvious when I was digging, but because I was so obsessed with getting to bedrock, I completely missed the signs that were clearly screaming gold as I cut through them.

In the case of the hole mentioned above, the pay layer was a band that contained heavily iron stained rocks and materials. When I finally tested that layer, there were lots of stream rounded pieces of magnetite showing in the pan, and big chunks of pyrite as well. Even though there was hardly any black sand at all, there was good gold in that layer. The gold was coarse and rounded; it was a pickers paradise of many small nuggets.

In another case in a completely different location, I noticed orange-stained dirt right on the surface among the pine trees. I tested that material and was shocked to find that it was a good run of large flakes! I never found any nuggets in that surface run, but I recovered a good whack of flake gold.

On a different claim where it was swampy because the spot formed a natural catch basin collecting the water from several small streams, the place was littered with boulders, but the nuggets had been running with the boulders (most-likely a blowout deposit), and we found them quite close to the surface as well.

Your stories of working underwater bring back a lot of memories too. I've spent a lot of time working in the wrong spot just because I thought it looked good. Later, as I learned a bit more and got used to the deposition in that "new to me" area, I started to notice patterns in the layers where the gold was running. This saved me a lot of time during other sessions, and I recovered a lot more gold because of it. Moreover, when I was testing new spots in the river, I learned the telltale signs of places that had already been worked. This in turn saved me a lot of time that only would have been wasted.

But as I worked the gravels and would hit compacted layers with lots of rusty colored material and big chunks of magnetite, hematite, and galena, I learned I was in the right zone, and that ancient was indeed good. The added bonus of working the stream layers while submerged in crystal clear water was that it helped me recognize what pay zones would frequently look like in old channels on the surface.

On a different note, I enjoy reading your stories because of your obvious well-rounded understanding of geology that you've worked so hard to obtain. You're way ahead of me as I still don't know the names of most of the rocks I'm constantly shifting.

However, I have learned what to look for, but once again, if I head to a new area, I'll have to start learning all over again, even though some of the indicators will sometimes be the same.

All the best, and thanks again for our tips and stories,

Lanny

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

 

[Bejay]

Free placer gold in the desert is derived by a number of happenings. Have you ever noticed how large granite rocks appear as shapes? Granite absorbs water uniformly around the mass. This water can freeze and actually cause the rock to sheer apart in layers. So water penetration into any rock mass can freeze and the freezing has tremendous power to break apart the rock. Also when rain water percolates through the ground it can form a weak carbolic acid from the decaying vegetable/plant matter on the surface. Wind plays a huge role in excavating the surface of the desert.
We see lots of alluvial deposits and ancient debris flows (when and if the area was completely saturated and steep slopes let lose)....as seen in Wash with the current debris flow.

But gold in lode here is often associated with pyrite and galena. The pyrites rust out of exposed vein rock and thus releases the gold. Often the ore we find in the desert has these cubic pockets where the pyrites were.

But water is not predominant in the desert like we see in the northern hemisphere. Major glacial ice is not a factor here in central to southern Az. That is not to say there were not some ice effects during the glacial periods. There are granite mtn ranges worn down to nothing here.....simply slight hills now. If and when they held intrusionnary vein mineralization we can find free gold.....and nugget patches.

For those of us who have been used to lots of water the desert gold is a lot different...and takes some getting used to. There are washes and they get gold in them.....but it takes some major erosionary events to move the gold.

My morning of metal detecting produced nothing but lead: bullets....shot.....pieces. The 44 cal lead bullet was about 10 inches deep imbedded in a rock vein outcrop. Go figure....thought I had a nuggy for sure.

Bejay

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny, I don't think we had glaciers this far south. Our most primary erosion is wind. Followed by monsoon storms. As the monsoon storms are far and few between, not to metion their infrequent arrivals, any alluvial movement is slow and not deep seated. I am sure that glacier melting to the north concentrated our heavy mineral deposits, but those have all been discovered and worked by the sourdoughs. Any recent deposits that have yet to be discovered and mined have to be closer to the lode erosion points. Also, on the same idea, these undiscovered deposits will be located on benches. This relates to the glacial flooding. Thinking about the Colorado River. It drains from the high Rockies in Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. I hope that others will step in and educate (or correct me) us further on gold deposits here in AZ.

Thanks for taking the time to post the reply.

I appreciate any and all new information about areas I have worked or will be working in again.

I think I'm starting to better understand how gold gets moved in the desert.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

Free placer gold in the desert is derived by a number of happenings. Have you ever noticed how large granite rocks appear as shapes? Granite absorbs water uniformly around the mass. This water can freeze and actually cause the rock to sheer apart in layers. So water penetration into any rock mass can freeze and the freezing has tremendous power to break apart the rock. Also when rain water percolates through the ground it can form a weak carbolic acid from the decaying vegetable/plant matter on the surface. Wind plays a huge role in excavating the surface of the desert.
We see lots of alluvial deposits and ancient debris flows (when and if the area was completely saturated and steep slopes let lose)....as seen in Wash with the current debris flow.

But gold in lode here is often associated with pyrite and galena. The pyrites rust out of exposed vein rock and thus releases the gold. Often the ore we find in the desert has these cubic pockets where the pyrites were.

But water is not predominant in the desert like we see in the northern hemisphere. Major glacial ice is not a factor here in central to southern Az. That is not to say there were not some ice effects during the glacial periods. There are granite mtn ranges worn down to nothing here.....simply slight hills now. If and when they held intrusionnary vein mineralization we can find free gold.....and nugget patches.

For those of us who have been used to lots of water the desert gold is a lot different...and takes some getting used to. There are washes and they get gold in them.....but it takes some major erosionary events to move the gold.

My morning of metal detecting produced nothing but lead: bullets....shot.....pieces. The 44 cal lead bullet was about 10 inches deep imbedded in a rock vein outcrop. Go figure....thought I had a nuggy for sure.

Bejay

I'm glad you had a chance to get out today.

Finding lead is always the tricky part of the game as it sounds right, it's not magnetic, and it moves and drops much like gold does, sometimes making it more difficult to get it in the scoop, especially when trying to trap the target in loose material.

Bejay thanks for the geological event information about the desert, and the information on gold deposition in the desert. I am definitely out of my element when I hunt gold in the desert as I've been trained to look for the signs of the effects of what moving water produces. Your explanations are helping me build a new knowledge base. I particularly liked your explanation of the results of weathered granite: "If and when they held intrusionnary vein mineralization we can find free gold.....and nugget patches."

I've also chased signals into the bedrock, sure they were gold, only to find they were chunks of lead or the tips of old square nails, though your 44 slug sounds like someone shot it into the vein.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Bejay]

Having been dredging the same claim for 35 years I can attest to the fact that at first the gold I found was skimp. I was actually prospecting trying to find and learn what was/had happened. It took years to learn what was good and what was not. On my main claim I realized that a large rock slide had damned the creek and formed a lake; in ancient geologic time. The tree growth, flats, silts in the ancient lake bottom became obvious after awhile. But at first I only looked at the creek and stuck the dredge in places where the creek looked good but the gold was sparse.

With two main creeks feeding the lake it became obvious finding the spot where the fast water entered the lake would be hot spots....and so they were. It is understandable that gold would not enter the main body of a lake. And the down cutting of the channel through the silts was observed.

Additionally when the rock damn broke it scattered huge boulders down the creek for about 1/4mile. In and around these huge boulders was always gold....and the richest part of the claim was in this stretch. I dredged it out in about 15 years and the gold does not replenish willingly.

For a long time I looked down into the canyon where the huge boulders were still strewn down about a 100 yd section of creek. So of course I thought it was time to lower the dredge down into the canyon....which I did. I set the dredge up and saw a huge boulder embedded along the bank of the creek....and it had a lot of pea gravel laying on bedrock immediately below it.....maybe about 3x4 ft area......4-6 inches deep. I did the spot in about 10 minutes and went to the sluice to check. In the lower riffles were a number of nuggets about the size of marbles.....they could not pass thru the griz and punch plate so they were in the riffles.

I looked up stream and counted about 35 such huge boulders; basically laying on bedrock. I got a little excited. BUT in three weeks of dredging I found that the additional boulders I saw and worked had their rusty bottoms in the "UP POSITION". They had moved and released their cache of gold...which I had found further downstream.

Thus the secret to finding the gold in the canyon was to find the old "boulder nests" where they had sat where the bedrock was showing to be rusty stained....yet much of the gold had washed away....only the cracks and crevices still held gold.

There is always some things to figure out....and often it takes time to see it. When we do we think: "Why did I not see that sooner"? When we find gold such things tend to become obvious...but it is always a learning experience.

Bejay