Gold in my back yard creek!

[Gold4Mike]

My wife and I started prospecting this past spring and summer and went out at least 15 times in a variety of places around the state of Washington and had a lot of fun (and got some gold). We also have a small creek in our back yard. It transports a lot of gravel off of the hill top that it starts on, us more or less in the alluvial fan area. I looked at it all summer thinking I should check to see if there's any gold in it, but not really expecting anything, so I never got around to trying. This past weekend the wife was busy doing stuff we've put off all summer and I was trying to decide if I should begin watching NFL again but decided it was a good day to try digging in my creek. This past weeks rain had brought the flow back up to where I could use my Grizzly Explorer so I picked a random easy spot to shovel right into the sluice. The fly poop didn't really surprise me, but I was happy to see it. The one bigger flake was what really got me excited. Hard to count buckets when you are directly shoveling, but this was from probably about one bucket of unclassified into the GGT sluice. When your gold mining is only 50 feet away from your kegerator, life is good! I think I will be digging gravel all winter.

 

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[Prospector70]

LOVE the lawn brick hold down!
Gold in your backyard... could it get any better than that?

 

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[N-Lionberger]

I'm with Reed on a dredge.

 

[et1955]

Not really sure. I would think bedrock would be down a ways. We are pretty flat here after the creek comes down off the hillside. If the historical floodplain of the creek is at the same level as the current creek, even in my yard or the surrounding benches would be 3-4 feet of digging through the matted roots of the surrounding cedar trees to reach gravel. My house is about 50 feet away and is surrounded by clay soil. The loamy soil was all scraped off to build the neighborhood. Would the clay layer mean that gravel would be down below it? I guess I will have to try and dig some holes through the root mass to find out.

It is no surprise you have gold on your property considering where you live, the river delta of the Skagit River and hopefully you have water and mineral rights to your property. The deltas of all the gold bearing rivers in our state are full of gold. You are not the first to find gold in these area's, George Massie " The Buzzard " creator of the GPAA told me about a guy that pulled out 30 ounces a year working a highbanker just off I5 somewhere ?, witch river he would not say. Ed

 

[scruggs]

I hope you hit the mother lode, good luck to you!

 

[SaltwaterServr]

A lady friend of mine had a neighbor who was digging out a swimming pool next door and they were dumping the excavated dirt on a vacant lot before hauling it off. She ran a few buckets through her drywasher on a whim and sure enough it had decent gold in it. This is in Cave Creek, AZ. One of the nearby golf courses has a few reclaimed adits/shafts under the fairways.

 

[Gold4Mike]

I finally had time today after work to do some more digging in the back yard creek, unfortunately the flow had dropped so much that I had to classify and use my AM sluice. I dug about another bucket from in and around the hole where I found the previous gold, and got three more small flecks. I also tried 1/2 bucket at two other gravel bars in my yard, digging only the top 4-6 inches of gravel, and got nothing. I don't really have a bonafide inside bend in my yard, the creek runs pretty straight, but I was hoping that I would find gold spread throughout the gravel. I guess I need to figure out why the gold is depositing in the spot that I've found it so far. But, the kegerator was close by, and I can skip the gym workout tomorrow morning, so it was a good afternoon!

 

[smokeythecat]

I also discovered gold in my FRONT yard once upon a time ago. This year, we moved to the back yard to try and see if I threw any specs away in the flower bed when I put the already panned dirt in it. We found a little, and then found two small nuggets. At that point we decided I wasn't THAT bad at panning and tried something else. The house sits at the base of a hill and when we dug the carport out, we hit bedrock. The concrete floor literally sits on bedrock in a couple places. The dirt got dozed out front, out the side and the back and leveled and seeded. Nice grass now. So, since we decided I was fairly good at panning and could not explain the NUGGETS in the flower bed, I bought a cement mixer from one of the big box stores. I have a thread on it somewhere here. We went 10' behind the house and dug some just plain dirt and ran it threw the cement mixer with a lot of water to make a wonderful, juicy mud paste! After running most of the now liquified mud out, we got to what was left. Found (of all things) an arrowhead, first one from the property, a newer Lincoln cent and small gold, proving part of the source of the flowerbed gold is native and not just from slopping panning.

It does get tiring however, and the gold is tiny. You go for it. Most of the gold in my creek has come out of sands floods washed OUT of the creek. It's small, try running any sandbars off the side of the creek or from a now dry floodplain into the sluice.

 

[Hoser John]

Teach her to pan and them make some jewelry with the flakes-spread the fever and your marriage will improve if done together. John

 

[Gold4Mike]

I've gotten out into the creek a few times now and so far all the gold I've found has been in the same spot, so I will concentrate on that area for a while. I have about 80 feet of frontage to play with but the other spots I've tried have come up dry so far. In the one spot I seem to have about an inch or two of soil, then 4 inches of gravel and sand, and then a layer of clay. What I've found has been above the clay, and each time has been a bucket or less. Today I was able to use the GGT again (last picture). Aside from the biggest one in the first picture, all of the rest are much smaller. I'm starting to wonder if that bigger piece was stuck in my sluice from a previous trip somewhere else.
I'm trying not to attract the attention of the neighbors but I did have one watching me.

 

[Gold4Mike]

The area rivers were flooding this week so I took the opportunity to dig a little more in the back yard creek. This is from about 1 1/3 bucket of half inch classified. I am still seeing stuff that keeps me interested, lol. I am still trying to figure out where the best gravel is, but that is part of the fun I guess. My little glory hole is getting pretty muddy though with all the rain and I'm having trouble just digging and also keeping some sort of berm between my digging and the creek. The hole I'm digging in has about 10-12 inches of dirt over the sand/gravel. I'm finding pretty good cobble and gravel below that and I wish I could scrape off all the dirt without making the area a muddy pit. I want to work my hole toward the 3 foot bank in the hopes that it was an historical inside bend and there's a little higher concentration of gold. I'm also going to try to compare going deeper vs scraping the top level of gravel and see where my better gold is. I should have good creek flow all winter to sluice here. I have a couple more spots of low bench out of the stream that abuts up against the 3 foot bank. I'm hoping those areas turn out productive.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Here's a better picture of the two bigger pieces. They're small, but they look great when you zoom in.

 

[Johnnybravo300]

Awesome man! I wish I could walk out my back door and get gold! Actually I'd probably never get my chores done hehe.

 

[Gold4Mike]

Did a little more digging in the back yard today, about 1.5 buckets (7.5 gallons) of 1/2 inch classified, and got this.

I have worked down through some nice gravel and cobble and have found a layer of clay. I'm surprised at my growing cobble pile.

The clay is a very interesting yellow/orange color. Does anyone have any ideas on the cause of that color?

I squished several clumps of it into loose silt and panned it and found nothing. I guess my next effort will be to try digging through it to see how thick that layer is and if there is more gravel beneath it.

 

[DDancer]

Cool that you dont have to go far to scratch the itch for gold As to the clay, the coloration is usually a combination of tannin from organics *decaying leaves* and iron. You might try using a post hole digger to punch thru it to see if there are gravels below it.

 

[RTR]

How about a 'probe rod' (in the hole you have dug).To see how deep bedrock is ?>>> https://www.humboldtmfg.com/probe-rod-steel.html

 

[Gold4Mike]

How about a 'probe rod' (in the hole you have dug).To see how deep bedrock is ?>>> https://www.humboldtmfg.com/probe-rod-steel.html

I have pounded rebar down into the creek bed before when I was anchoring some logs, but I wasn't thinking of trying to find bedrock then, I might just give that a try. Post hole digger is another good idea.

 

[RTR]

Good luck Mike

 

[RTR]

Someplace you mentioned a recirculating sluice. Here is a DIY that I keep in the heated garage in the winter.Might work for your situation.

 

[RTR]

I have pounded rebar down into the creek bed before when I was anchoring some logs, but I wasn't thinking of trying to find bedrock then, I might just give that a try. Post hole digger is another good idea.

Post hole digger might work.But getting thru the root system might be a problem.Rent one of these babies for half a day
>

 

[Gold4Mike]

View attachment 1528459
Someplace you mentioned a recirculating sluice. Here is a DIY that I keep in the heated garage in the winter.Might work for your situation.

RTR, I've been looking at that picture of your recirculating sluice. I have an AM that I could use. What do you use for your end cap and how do you secure it. I would still like to use my AM as a stream sluice so I wouldn't want to cap it permanently (ie: no glue).