crystalpayne
Full Member
Just some quick background about me, I have panned a couple of times and did really good! We are looking into buying a Highbanker so we decided to go to Alabama Gold Camp first and Rent one and see how we like it! I have gold fever big time, and I want this to be a hobby the family can do together! We have done hours and hours of research and I am passionate about this! I set goals and I will work my butt off to achieve them! My husband is a Construction Executive and I am now a stay at home mom! We are not use to a lot of manual labor, but we are up for any challenge!
So its Saturday and we are going to Alabama Gold Camp and we are going to rent us a highbanker and see what all the fuss is about! So we drive the 100 miles and we are ready to start! We get there and they were short handed they had people out sick, so they had one of the locals that came out all the time set us up on a highbanker! We don't know anything about highbanking other than the videos we have watched online! They didn't give us instruction at all basically put the dirt in here and wash the rocks! So we went to work! We rented it for 2 hours because we knew we could extend it if need be! Well 60 buckets (which is impressive for us, trust me) and 2 hours later its time for clean out! There is NO GOLD!!!!!!!! What are you serious!? Now we found out that the machine was set up wrong, then we find out you dont dig at the top, or the middle of the pile you are suppose to dig at the bottom of the pile! You are suppose to look at the type of material! Riverbed is good, shovel that in....Are you kidding me!? This advice would have been amazing before we dug 60 buckets and fought with a million rocks that kept getting clogged in the machine! So at this point the momentum is gone, but my drive is still there! This girl don't give up that easy!
So the gentleman that just told us all this information moves us to another machine (the people 3 machines down had alot of gold, they left we went on their machine) he told us to dig where they were digging! So now we start digging away...About 10 buckets into it the water stops! UGGGGGG Not to mention we had to keep using a stick to unclog rocks on almost every pour! So he comes and cleans the machine out, we have gold! Well a tiny bit but its a whole lot better then the first machine! But now we have to move to another machine! So we keep digging for about another hour! We get cleaned out! The one part I thought was weird when he cleaned out the carpet stuff he just did a quick rinse and rolled it up and set it to the side! Dont you rinse them better then that? Anyways I have a few flakes out of quick panning!
At this point we are tired, hurting, cold and defeated! We take our bucket of Cons (which had big rocks in it, I do not understand that) and we are heading home! Well 100 hundred Miles later we are home its about 10:30 at night, and I am determined to pan this stuff because I will not be defeated!!!!!!! So my master bathroom is huge so I decided that I am going to pan in there... Its warm! I fill one bucket with hot water and start panning away! I keep telling myself empty pan after empty pan still fighting with big rocks that the gold must be sitting at the bottom of the bucket! Yea...It wasn't! About 4 flour gold specs later and I am finished! I am so discourage at this point!
Here is my thing, If we did everything right and we had no gold I would have felt better about that! The fact is, we did nothing right apparently and did all that work for nothing! I know we lost gold! I wish they would have gave us more information! When I spoke with a lady there at the beginning of the week she said that they are very helpful! Yes they were short handed, I get that! But it would have only took 5 minutes to tell us! They knew it was our first time!
So Price Breakdown
40-equipment rental
15-park fee
50-for a 8inch screen and Trinity Hex Pan (which I would take or leave)
50-gas
35-dinner
So roughly 200 bucks not even including the supplies we purchased prior to this..Buckets, shovels,gloves,rubber boots..ect
Now for the gold total! Well that would be nice to tell you if I had enough to weigh! My scale does .01 grams, I didn't even have that! No small pickers just a little bit of flour gold!
I really want to like this place, I do! Its a super cool place, and if I want to do this on my own I would feel safe there if I went without my husband! Being a girl it can get a little scary being alone at a river somewhere and I need to be more careful! One thing we did get out of this is experience is what not to do! Like don't ever touch the mat when water is running or you can loose your gold! Well that would have been nice to know prior! UGGGGG But then again we had 2 people telling us 2 different things!
Let me just say this! Everyone was very nice and I know that they were shorthanded and I would hope our experience would be different if they had everyone there! In no way am I bashing them, I am just trying to understand it all!
So now I don't even know if I like the highbanker or not because I am pretty convinced this one was possessed by the devil himself and I am completely back at square one! Any advice, comments or answers to some of the questions above would greatly be appreciated!
Update:First, I would like to thank everyone for their overwhelming support and feed back on this forum! This website has some amazing people on it, your advice and encouragement is priceless in my opinion.
I have been Re-Panning my cons from this trip and with a little dawn dish soap in my pan, I didn't have any jetdry and didn't want to seem like a panning addict and siphon the Jetdry out of my dishwasher, my husband would have me committed for sure( just like The day before the trip I bought a black shirt and some Gold Sparkly iron on letters, the front said IMA, the back said GOLD DIGGER...lol No one really appreciated the shirt but me! Nothing says you cant be themed while doing this) anyways back to the point, I am finding more flour gold not alot, but anything is better then none! Thank you again for your support, I need all the help I can get!
Update On Saturday I received a call from Mike at Alabama Gold Camp, he had read the forum and was very apologetic. As I said in the Blog they had people out sick, and assured us that things would have been very different if they were there. Mike invited us to come back and get the true experience of AGC. Apparently the Gentlemen that stays around the Highbankers was out also, Mike didn't want our experience to be like this one. He wants everyone to leave happy!
Let me say this, I respect that phone call and for that I will be back. The fact is, He didn't have to make the phone call! I know that our experience wasn't all Alabama Gold Camp, I am sure if someone knew what they were doing they would have had a different experience then us. We did have fun and a lot of the clubs around my area have outings there once a month. I believe that this will be a great place to meet fellow prospectors and build our knowledge to send us out on our own. I am excited to give it another try, not just for the gold but for the knowledge! I will keep yall posted!
Please see my 2nd outing post http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/335101-my-2nd-outing-very-scary-nightmare-talladega-national-forest-bust.html
So its Saturday and we are going to Alabama Gold Camp and we are going to rent us a highbanker and see what all the fuss is about! So we drive the 100 miles and we are ready to start! We get there and they were short handed they had people out sick, so they had one of the locals that came out all the time set us up on a highbanker! We don't know anything about highbanking other than the videos we have watched online! They didn't give us instruction at all basically put the dirt in here and wash the rocks! So we went to work! We rented it for 2 hours because we knew we could extend it if need be! Well 60 buckets (which is impressive for us, trust me) and 2 hours later its time for clean out! There is NO GOLD!!!!!!!! What are you serious!? Now we found out that the machine was set up wrong, then we find out you dont dig at the top, or the middle of the pile you are suppose to dig at the bottom of the pile! You are suppose to look at the type of material! Riverbed is good, shovel that in....Are you kidding me!? This advice would have been amazing before we dug 60 buckets and fought with a million rocks that kept getting clogged in the machine! So at this point the momentum is gone, but my drive is still there! This girl don't give up that easy!
So the gentleman that just told us all this information moves us to another machine (the people 3 machines down had alot of gold, they left we went on their machine) he told us to dig where they were digging! So now we start digging away...About 10 buckets into it the water stops! UGGGGGG Not to mention we had to keep using a stick to unclog rocks on almost every pour! So he comes and cleans the machine out, we have gold! Well a tiny bit but its a whole lot better then the first machine! But now we have to move to another machine! So we keep digging for about another hour! We get cleaned out! The one part I thought was weird when he cleaned out the carpet stuff he just did a quick rinse and rolled it up and set it to the side! Dont you rinse them better then that? Anyways I have a few flakes out of quick panning!
At this point we are tired, hurting, cold and defeated! We take our bucket of Cons (which had big rocks in it, I do not understand that) and we are heading home! Well 100 hundred Miles later we are home its about 10:30 at night, and I am determined to pan this stuff because I will not be defeated!!!!!!! So my master bathroom is huge so I decided that I am going to pan in there... Its warm! I fill one bucket with hot water and start panning away! I keep telling myself empty pan after empty pan still fighting with big rocks that the gold must be sitting at the bottom of the bucket! Yea...It wasn't! About 4 flour gold specs later and I am finished! I am so discourage at this point!
Here is my thing, If we did everything right and we had no gold I would have felt better about that! The fact is, we did nothing right apparently and did all that work for nothing! I know we lost gold! I wish they would have gave us more information! When I spoke with a lady there at the beginning of the week she said that they are very helpful! Yes they were short handed, I get that! But it would have only took 5 minutes to tell us! They knew it was our first time!
So Price Breakdown
40-equipment rental
15-park fee
50-for a 8inch screen and Trinity Hex Pan (which I would take or leave)
50-gas
35-dinner
So roughly 200 bucks not even including the supplies we purchased prior to this..Buckets, shovels,gloves,rubber boots..ect
Now for the gold total! Well that would be nice to tell you if I had enough to weigh! My scale does .01 grams, I didn't even have that! No small pickers just a little bit of flour gold!
I really want to like this place, I do! Its a super cool place, and if I want to do this on my own I would feel safe there if I went without my husband! Being a girl it can get a little scary being alone at a river somewhere and I need to be more careful! One thing we did get out of this is experience is what not to do! Like don't ever touch the mat when water is running or you can loose your gold! Well that would have been nice to know prior! UGGGGG But then again we had 2 people telling us 2 different things!
Let me just say this! Everyone was very nice and I know that they were shorthanded and I would hope our experience would be different if they had everyone there! In no way am I bashing them, I am just trying to understand it all!
So now I don't even know if I like the highbanker or not because I am pretty convinced this one was possessed by the devil himself and I am completely back at square one! Any advice, comments or answers to some of the questions above would greatly be appreciated!
Update:First, I would like to thank everyone for their overwhelming support and feed back on this forum! This website has some amazing people on it, your advice and encouragement is priceless in my opinion.
I have been Re-Panning my cons from this trip and with a little dawn dish soap in my pan, I didn't have any jetdry and didn't want to seem like a panning addict and siphon the Jetdry out of my dishwasher, my husband would have me committed for sure( just like The day before the trip I bought a black shirt and some Gold Sparkly iron on letters, the front said IMA, the back said GOLD DIGGER...lol No one really appreciated the shirt but me! Nothing says you cant be themed while doing this) anyways back to the point, I am finding more flour gold not alot, but anything is better then none! Thank you again for your support, I need all the help I can get!
Update On Saturday I received a call from Mike at Alabama Gold Camp, he had read the forum and was very apologetic. As I said in the Blog they had people out sick, and assured us that things would have been very different if they were there. Mike invited us to come back and get the true experience of AGC. Apparently the Gentlemen that stays around the Highbankers was out also, Mike didn't want our experience to be like this one. He wants everyone to leave happy!
Let me say this, I respect that phone call and for that I will be back. The fact is, He didn't have to make the phone call! I know that our experience wasn't all Alabama Gold Camp, I am sure if someone knew what they were doing they would have had a different experience then us. We did have fun and a lot of the clubs around my area have outings there once a month. I believe that this will be a great place to meet fellow prospectors and build our knowledge to send us out on our own. I am excited to give it another try, not just for the gold but for the knowledge! I will keep yall posted!
Please see my 2nd outing post http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/335101-my-2nd-outing-very-scary-nightmare-talladega-national-forest-bust.html
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Note: That nugget near Nev. City was kind of a hoax, as it came from somewhere else.
?Instead of going to the Pay-To-Dig-Ripoff-City, join a club that has claim access as part of the membership like the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA) or some other, that way your not paying parking or any access fee everytime you go out. Owning a powersluice is great goal, but need to get some gold finding skills without breaking the bank. It's so easy spending a ton of money in the begining and it's a morale killer throwing money into something without results. Since you have the hand tools and buckets already, all you really need for now are some hand sluices and a concentrator to work your concentrates. Since you have a family you might want to get two hand sluices, roughly less than $300 depending on brand, a concentrator like a Blue Bowl, less than $100 for the kit, and several more gold pans for no more than $10-$15 each. Make sure you get several snuffer bottles to suck up your fine gold out of your pans, and some plastic vials for your gold. If you use glass in the field, you can drop them and break them then your SOL. Depending on the type of sluice you pick, there might be a few other accessories that you'll need. So for less than $500 you have the equipment you need for you and your family to begin to learn the hobby, rather than spending $2000+ and not really knowing what your doing. Ask a lot of questions, we'll answer them.
