Pocket Gold

IMAUDIGGER said:
That wasn’t intended to be an insult..I apologize if it came across that way.
It just sounded like your old timer was chasing black sand as an indicator of a pocket load deposit, which I’ve never heard of before.

Thanks for that link.

Matt did a video too that shows some that gold a little better...couple extra chunks of specimen ore in the mix. Someone posted it here awhile back.

Here it is...http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/gold-prospecting/538941-pocket-gold-little-gold-porn-motavation.html


Very nice gold, I must say. :laughing7:

You don’t get to see much of that stuff posted on the internet.
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While the posting of what Glen Young told me about pocket gold is interesting; the most valuable thing I learned from him was his life of being an active placer gold miner. My grandfather knew him well. Glen Lived in a dirt floor cabin with his wife...had straw beds and wild pet skunks that came for dinner each night. I heard stories of him beginning in 1957 and he was 84 years old when I visited him in 1973. (he had coal black hair and huge hands that looked like they were an old gnarled oak tree). He had a degree in engineering from OSU...but chose to be a remote miner....his claim and cabin was back in the public lands before any roads were close. He packed his wife on his back one winter (she had appendicitis) 15 miles to the nearest road way back then....and got her to a hosp. He moved his cabin 5 times over the years.....simply to work the placer deposits under his cabin. What he did as a miner was second to none and he shared his stories with my grandfather, my father (who always took him a case of beer) and then me as well. He ate salt pork and beans and shared a plate with me as well. He carved the riffles of his sluice in the bedrock and had a huge dam built in the headwaters of his creek. He had a way of opening the dam and sending the water to specific places he would wash out...sending the material down over his riffles. You would have to see it to believe it. The USFS took him to court to try to get him off his claim (he never patented it......because of taxes...as most old timers avoiding such things) He won in court and was allowed to stay on his claim until he died. The stories about his mining and techniques are extremely valuable to me to this very day. The "pocket gold" sharing was just one of many; and I found it interesting that the internet link even existed after you questioned the concept he proposed.

Bejay
 

Bejay said:
While the posting of what Glen Young told me about pocket gold is interesting; the most valuable thing I learned from him was his life of being an active placer gold miner. My grandfather knew him well. Glen Lived in a dirt floor cabin with his wife...had straw beds and wild pet skunks that came for dinner each night. I heard stories of him beginning in 1957 and he was 84 years old when I visited him in 1973. (he had coal black hair and huge hands that looked like they were an old gnarled oak tree). He had a degree in engineering from OSU...but chose to be a remote miner....his claim and cabin was back in the public lands before any roads were close. He packed his wife on his back one winter (she had appendicitis) 15 miles to the nearest road way back then....and got her to a hosp. He moved his cabin 5 times over the years.....simply to work the placer deposits under his cabin. What he did as a miner was second to none and he shared his stories with my grandfather, my father (who always took him a case of beer) and then me as well. He ate salt pork and beans and shared a plate with me as well. He carved the riffles of his sluice in the bedrock and had a huge dam built in the headwaters of his creek. He had a way of opening the dam and sending the water to specific places he would wash out...sending the material down over his riffles. You would have to see it to believe it. The USFS took him to court to try to get him off his claim (he never patented it......because of taxes...as most old timers avoiding such things) He won in court and was allowed to stay on his claim until he died. The stories about his mining and techniques are extremely valuable to me to this very day. The "pocket gold" sharing was just one of many; and I found it interesting that the internet link even existed after you questioned the concept he proposed.

Bejay
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Neat story. You were lucky to spend that time with those folks. I'm familiar with the concept of sampling and following the triangle of eroded float gold to the source. It's discussed in many of the books of that era.

A mineral deposit certainly erodes other heavy minerals along with the gold..the black sand threw me off.
Many people call concentrated deposits of placer gold "pockets of gold" or "pocket gold" and likely associate black sands as an indicator. That's why I was thinking pocket hunting was getting confused with placer mining.

Funny thing...the USFS would now declare Glen's cabin a historic landmark (if they had not burned and razed it)....at first glance this declaration would appear to be a tip of the hat to the old miners...then you see they only did it to withdraw another 40 acres from mineral entry.
 

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ASMBandits makes badass prospecting vids

Asmbandits said:
It wasn't directed at any one post or person. I've been lurking here long enough here and on to know what it feels like, It's not easy to put yourself out there i'll just say that.
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I caught a little hostility in those replies as well Bandits. Whatever happened to, “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.”?

Checked out your vids. Subscribed. You do great work. (Second only to Two Toes). ;0)

Cheers Bandits and keep up the good work.
Gary
P.S. Just spent a month in Colfax at my boy’s place.
 

IMAUDIGGER said:
I think YOUR being salty now because someone said the title was click bait, you had a saggy old butt and your gold looked like extruded stew (didn’t quite get that joke). Which one is incorrect? ;)

Title of the video was a joke...there were some joking replies. What do you expect?

You guys are doing some good work. Keep it up. Don’t read more into the comments than was probably intended.
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Really !!, Sorry you miss what we see, I think some people need to go dig some dirt and get rid of there negativity.
 

Ok Ed. Thank you for the suggestions.

To the folks involved in the videos, I apologize if I offended you.

I really like all of the videos that the OP has posted. Real detecting.
You guys are doing some good work. Keep it up.
 

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IMAUDIGGER said:
Neat story. You were lucky to spend that time with those folks. I'm familiar with the concept of sampling and following the triangle of eroded float gold to the source. It's discussed in many of the books of that era.

A mineral deposit certainly erodes other heavy minerals along with the gold..the black sand threw me off.
Many people call concentrated deposits of placer gold "pockets of gold" or "pocket gold" and likely associate black sands as an indicator. That's why I was thinking pocket hunting was getting confused with placer mining.

Funny thing...the USFS would now declare Glen's cabin a historic landmark (if they had not burned and razed it)....at first glance this declaration would appear to be a tip of the hat to the old miners...then you see they only did it to withdraw another 40 acres from mineral entry.
Click to expand...

Glen told a very interesting story. The USFS brought in many logging roads and one such road crossed his creek. When Glenn tripped his dam and washed out placer deposits many of the rocks that were sent downstream under the bridge were the size of Volkswagens or larger. The USFS was very fearful they would take out their bridge. The USFS and many engineers would often show up and try to explain to him that he was losing gold allowing this to happen. BUT Glen knew better....as he would go out with his quart jar and pick up the nuggets/pickers. His wife would later go out with tweezers and get the finer gold....then he would clean out his riffles as best he could and pan that material. Now the only thing Glen ever bought (that I knew of) was a real bed....an international pickup.....and two accordions. The reason I mention the huge boulders is it taught me that setting a sluice is dependent on how large the rocks can be going down over your riffles. As long as the water is deeper than the size of the rocks you are good to go. The shallower the water....the smaller the rocks.

Bejay
 

I think they call that “booming” on a large scale.
I’m betting there were many miners downstream that took advantage of that.
Sounds like he was the last of his kind.

Around my area, they would construct a series of ditches and ponds. Each one separated by some mining ground. They would shovel material into long toms while they were waiting for the pond to fill. The water would be cut loose washing all their material in a matter of hours. The tail water would catch in ditches and flow to the next pond...and so on for a couple miles down the hillside.

I think they also ran that water directly on the ground to move material (ground sluicing).

My dad knew an old miner (long gone) that had a system on a float...it would automatically release when the pond was full, sending water down this small ravine. All he had to do is pick nuggets in the evening and shovel some material into the draw to be washed. He was a teacher in a one room school house if I remember correctly.

Did you ever get a photo of Glen?
 

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The old timers knew how to "get er done". Glen took me up and showed me his dam. It was more than impressive. He had two boulders...about the size of a small house/or garage and he would move and position them so when he tripped his dam he could direct the water to different spots. I asked" How do you possibly move those boulders?" His reply was "using mud"...and I acted like that made sense to me...but I really was clueless what that meant.

Many years ago......I was poking around one of my placer claims and found the remnants of such a dam on a small side creek. It still had two old growth logs/trees across it (they being about 5-6 ft in diameter. It appeared two others had washed downstream and laid diagonally in the stream bed. I noticed a ditch had been cut along the hillside parallel to the stream where water could be channeled to a high bar placer deposit. Further examination showed where they had worked the high bar. On my claims creek that was below the high bar I would find mercury covered gold while dredging. My mining partner and I each set up our dredges somewhat downstream of the high bar and spent some time dredging. He was downstream from me about 60 yds or so and one day shortly after we began he started excitingly hollering. He was dredging a slack water stretch and was on the bedrock. He hit a big bowl shaped pocket in the bedrock....his 4 inch proline dredge sluice was literally covered in gold...mostly pickers and nuggets. He had a very good day that day. But often if one finds where the old timers put in a lot of effort/work one knows they did not do that for nothing.

On mylandmatters there is the claims advantage and Barry often sees well established claim areas open.

Bejay
 

No...I never took his pic of Glen. My Grandfather may have but he died while I was over in Nam and I was not able to be a part of his things. My dad never showed where he had taken Glen's pic either. When I saw Glen last....his hair was still coal black at age 84 and I (being a young man of 24) had trouble keeping up with him as he took me up the mountainside trail to his dam.

Bejay
 

There are some other memories and stories that I think people would enjoy reading and learn from if you were to put them down in a book or blog.

As a child, I used to sit for hours late into the night and listen to my grandparents and my dad talk about politics..then the subject would switch to old miners and loggers that lived along the river..I was always half asleep and it was usually after midnight. I don’t remember specific stories...just the ambience of it all. They clarified who they were talking about by the mile marker (before the county changed them), the curves in the road, and the creeks. Maybe someone’s house was sitting below the old road..not the wagon road, but the old road before they moved it in 55 after the flood....it was right before the “kinks”, Joe’s curve, or some other local name. I’d catch a piece here and there that I understood. Then the topic would change to someone else and where they used to mine or live. All of the people they talked about are now gone except my dad’s generation. I don’t remember how, but I’d always wake up in bed. The people they spoke of...their homes..what were sturdy log cabins, burned to the ground and are now only piles of stacked rocks...daffodils, and broken down fruit tree orchards. I often think about the pain they went through seeing their homes burned and the financial burden they must have had buying another home so late in life.

In a couple weeks, if you know where to look, there will be asparagus sprouting at some of the places. Occasionally I will run into someone in town and by chance they will mention growing up on the river..I will ask where and they will describe one of the flats along the river.

Fond memories for me remembering my grandparents and the stories they told.
 

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IMAUDIGGER said:
There are some other memories and stories that I think people would enjoy reading and learn from if you were to put them down in a book or blog.

As a child, I used to sit for hours late into the night and listen to my grandparents and my dad talk about politics..then the subject would switch to old miners and loggers that lived along the river..I was always half asleep and it was usually after midnight. I don’t remember specific stories...just the ambience of it all. They clarified who they were talking about by the mile marker (before the county changed them), the curves in the road, and the creeks. Maybe someone’s house was sitting below the old road..not the wagon road, but the old road before they moved it in 55 after the flood....it was right before the “kinks”, Joe’s curve, or some other local name. I’d catch a piece here and there that I understood. Then the topic would change to someone else and where they used to mine or live. All of the people they talked about are now gone except my dad’s generation. I don’t remember how, but I’d always wake up in bed. The people they spoke of...their homes..what were sturdy log cabins, burned to the ground and are now only piles of stacked rocks...daffodils, and broken down fruit tree orchards. I often think about the pain they went through seeing their homes burned and the financial burden they must have had buying another home so late in life.

In a couple weeks, if you know where to look, there will be asparagus sprouting at some of the places. Occasionally I will run into someone in town and by chance they will mention growing up on the river..I will ask where and they will describe one of the flats along the river.

Fond memories for me remembering my grandparents and the stories they told.
Click to expand...

I actually attempted to start another thread titled "Old Timers Lessons". spent about 45 min writing the post only to have it disappear saying I was no longer logged in. Pretty frustrating. This sight ought to fix that problem

Bejay
 

Bejay said:
I actually attempted to start another thread titled "Old Timers Lessons". spent about 45 min writing the post only to have it disappear saying I was no longer logged in. Pretty frustrating. This sight ought to fix that problem

Bejay
Click to expand...

Unless it's a quick short message, cooy your message to your clipboard before hitting "submit"
 

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