Prospecting Tales

[Lanny in AB]

Prospecting stories, tips, a few poems on gold hunting, and all are about chasing the gold. Just fly past the poems if you'd rather read stories.

The Tale of Sourdough Sue

It’s time for the tale of Sourdough Sue,
A right salty gal she was, through and through.
She’d followed the strikes all over the west,
And chasin’ the gold was what Sue liked best.

As summer was fadin’ there came word to her
A rush was a hapnin’, for certain, for sure
Yes, gold had been found, big nuggets, coarse flakes
“I’m goin’”, said Sue, “Whatever it takes.”



It seems in Montanny they had them a strike
And word of a rush, them gold diggers like.
So Sue grabbed her gear and loaded her mules
With beans, bacon, flour and stout minin’ tools

At last she was ready to head on up north
Sue knew t’would be tough, but still she set forth.
Why, week after week it was lonely and cold,
But Sue couldn’t shake the lure of that gold.

The weather degraded the farther she went
The storms she encountered seemed not heaven sent
The trek was slow, the wind howled in the trees
The snow was so deep Sue wished she’d brung skis.



Them passes was chokin’ with oodles of snow
The air in them mountains was forty below
Now Sue weren’t no Pilgrim, but this here was tough
The sun had skedaddled, and things were plumb rough.



Sue needed a spot to ride out that storm
A shelter and fire to get herself warm
Well, off in the spindrift she spied her a light
To Sue there weren't never a more welcome sight.

A cabin it was, for certain, for sure
The warmth that it offered was likely a cure
For cold toes and fingers with needle-like pains
(Escape from that storm didn’t take many brains.)

The cabin was home to one Hook-Nosed Bob Brown
His spirits was up, for they never was down.
As looks weren’t his strong suit, Bob’d loaded his mind
With right clever sayin’s from book quotes he’d find.



Now Sue came a stumblin’ from out of that storm
And Hook-Nosed old Bobby just turned on the charm
He sat Suzie down, right close to the heat
Then went to his stable—those mules got a treat,

Bob stripped off their harness, their cold heavy packs
He rubbed them right down with dry gunnysacks
He broke out some oats, some sweet meadow hay
Then forked them some bedding where both mules could lay.

Then back to the cabin he flew off to check
How Sue was a doin’, but she’d hit the deck
A buffalo hide, she’d found near the bed
And close to the fire, she lay like the dead

Well Bob had read somewheres to let such things lie
(T’was somethin’ on canines, to wake them you’d die?)
So Bob settled in for the last of that night
While the storm shook the cabin with all of its might.

The mornin’ it came with a hushed quiet chill
The wind had died out, but the cold was there still.
Bob built up the fire, then snuck off outside
To check on those mules, who thanked him bright-eyed.

Then back to his cabin he sped to his guest
For Sue was a stirrin’, so Bob did his best.
He threw on some bacon, them beans got a stir
Whatever Bob did, he did it for her.

For up on the wall, on a peg near the fire,
A stockin' was hung! For what you enquire?
T’was Christmas of course, and Bob had desired
A gift from old Santa, just like he’d enquired.

Right here lay a woman, fresh in from the storm
And on Christmas eve, he’d made his place warm.
He’d trusted in Santa to grant him his wish
This Sourdough Sue was a right purty dish.

Well Sue and Bob bonded. His nose wasn’t right,
But Bob was so witty, it fled from Sue’s sight;
She saw there, instead of what others had seen,
The solid-gold-Bob that'd always there been.


So, this is the tale of Sourdough Sue
Who went in a rush to find gold, it’s true.
But Sue wasn't savvy to Nick’s crafty plan
To scoot her off northward to find there a man.

And just so you’re certain, so there's not a doubt
(I’m sure in your mind you’ve figured it out)
In Bob’s Christmas stocking, hung there on his wall
Was a note from old Santa explaining it all.


All the best,

Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

An explanation on the nature of boulder clay, and glacial gold action

People have asked me what boulder clay is. Well, the only explanation I have comes from local knowledge shared with me by the placer miners in the northlands.

When the glaciers were running many miles deep, and countless miles wide during the ice age, they dragged unsized rock and soil with them. They packed along serious boulders mixed within stubborn clay. While parked and melting, or when melting and retreating, they dumped this nasty mess all over the lower areas, as well as the mountains and valleys. To understand this, it’s necessary to remember those huge glaciers were miles thick, covering many mountains completely.

With such titanic forces moving these glaciers, and when they dropped their loads, they often left forty feet and more of this boulder clay which smothered the existing stream beds. This protected any golden stream deposits for untold eons. Over countless thousands of years, successive glaciers and post-glacial streams chewed away at the boulder clay in the canyons, erosion working its way down to those hidden deposits. When they cut into that former river-run (freshly exposed), they started re-concentrating the gold in those existing streams.

Sometimes, the early prospectors got lucky enough to find a bedrock outcrop that was the rim protecting an ancient channel from glacial gouging along a river, and then they’d tunnel in, drifting along the bedrock to mine out the deposit under the huge deposits of adjacent boulder clay bordering the streams.

So, boulder clay (sometimes called armour clay), is a solid deposit of boulders and heavy clay that overlies old stream deposits and ancient channels. It is the bane of modern miners, as it has to be stripped away to get at the channels underneath, and it often requires ripper teeth on the back of huge bulldozers to break it up sufficiently so it can be bladed out of the way. Clearly, it takes a lot of time and money to strip it off.

But, once that overburden is stripped away, and if the Oldtimer's haven't beaten the modern miners to the deposits underneath, it is sometimes a glorious bonanza to behold! The nuggets in the sidewalls of the channel are easily seen (a foot or two off the bedrock). I’ll never forget that incredible sight twice seen: multi-gram nuggets spaced eight to ten inches apart, making it easy to finger-flip the nuggets out of the channel material into a pan. Too bad those nuggets weren't mine to keep!

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Local miners and exploration

Way up north where the wolverines roam, we were out one day cutting firewood, then took off to find drinking water. We found a local spring up the canyon with sweet water whose taste finished with a slight buzz on the tongue, strange, but great stuff.

The next morning, after starting a fire to kill the chill in the wall tent (water in the fire bucket covered in ice), and after a miners’ breakfast cooked on the wood-burning stove, we lathered up with bug-dope, hopped on the ATV, and bounced along the rough, twisting road through pines, fir, and stands of aspen and birch. Fresh yellow and purple mountain flowers grew thick along the road-side. Lazy bumblebees tumbled from flower to flower while butterflies and humming birds sipped nectar as the pleasing smell of new-growth pine filled the air.

The ATV climbed in elevation toward the active upstream placer claims. We stopped and introduced ourselves in every mining camp along the way. Two upstream operations bordered the main logging road, with a total of eight workers. Both operations had exposed old drift mines from the 1800’s and 1930’s.

Staring at those now open tunnels was fascinating, and one of the miners offered to lift me up in the bucket of the excavator if I wanted to poke around inside. But looking at the collapsed and rotting timbering, I passed on his generosity.

The larger of the two placer mines was working upper-strata dirt that ran six grams to the yard, but when they hit bedrock, it ran eight grams to the yard. The bedrock gold was coarse, with nuggets in the half-ounce to ounce-and-a-half range. That coarse gold had tons of character, bumpy and rough. The bedrock that held it was graphite schist and slate.

The other operation was smaller, their equipment much older, with lots of down-time to repair equipment. Moreover, both mines were located where several ancient channels intersected, and the smaller mine was getting the same gorgeous gold. At both locations, the friendly miners shut down their wash-plant and excavation machinery to chat with us.

Both groups of miners invited us to detect their claims whenever we wished. We just had to tell them what we found and where. Furthermore, they told us to keep all the gold we detected, great people! (We went home with some fantastic nuggets thanks to them.)

Leaving the two mines, we took a branch off the main logging road, exploring an inactive logging trail. Along the way, we noticed where old growth trees were cut long ago in the canyon, their massive, moss-covered stumps accompanying the new growth. To our surprise, we found a placer miner far up that trail, located downslope in an adjoining gulch. With an old WWII-era D-8 Cat, he was patiently working a small-scale operation with a pay layer that was six feet off the bedrock. Strangely, there was no gold on the bedrock (lots of pyrite though), yet the gold he was getting was magnificent—some of it was crystalline, and all of it was coarse.

He was a very trusting sort, and at the end of the day, when the cleanup was taken from the wash-plant, he gave us the concentrates and told us to pan them out! (They were loaded with coarse gold.) He left us to keep panning, then headed off to have a bath in his outdoor tub, heated by a clever invention he’d connected to the water-jacket of the engine block of his Gen-Set.

From him, we learned the gold deposits in that area required real detective work. The pay-layers had to found and worked wherever they were; they weren’t deposited in a normal way due to multiple glaciation events. It required forgetting former gold ideas, keeping the mind open so as to accept new techniques and strategies hard-earned by the locals. So, we threw out the idea that gold always concentrated on bedrock and accepted his new teachings.

We spent the entire day exploring, meeting people, and asking lots of questions. While cruising from mine to mine, we also oriented ourselves to our new surroundings. By the time we got back to camp, it was getting dusky (about 11:30 at night). We were both bone tired, not yet recovered from the sketchy trip in to our base camp.

So, back at camp, we were eager to drive the bugs out of the tent by firing up the wood-burning stove, as well as making sure the Winchester 30-30 was loaded for business and within easy reach, just in case an apex predator decided to call.

With the tent nice and warm, we crawled into our sleeping bags, and we drifted off accompanied by the solid heat, and lulling crackle of the logs burning in the stove.

We spent weeks in the area and had many adventures. It is a nugget-shooter’s paradise for sure, and I hope to return one day. But the trip is hard on vehicles and tires, and the air is filled with bugs. So, perhaps I’ll visit one year in the fall, after the frost has knocked the bugs down, and it has firmed the roads up a bit.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Bedrock Drain Gold

Back in March of 2011, I did some reading/research about a goldfield (rare, out-of-print book) that was worked in the 1890's, and found a couple of fascinating accounts.

In one of the references, a company of men was hired to cut a bedrock drain for a hydraulic operation; they cut a trench in solid rock to drain the water to stop the hydraulic wash from pooling, thus stopping the sluicing recovery.

(I've seen cuts like that before, anywhere from 3-4, all the way up to 8-9 feet deep. Deeper ones are rarer.) The cuts discussed in the book were in bedrock that was cleaned, with the pay shallow to bedrock (laying 3-4 feet above), with lots of coarse gold recovered.

The miners had to cut 300 feet of bedrock drain. While cutting the drain, they must have seen pay trapped deep in the bedrock (this has to be implied from the context of the narrative). Moreover, enough gold was found trapped in the bedrock to fund the entire project!

That fact is interesting enough, but later in the chapter, there’s a discussion about the Chinese claim holders and their workings. The Celestials (as they were called) were also working a bedrock area previously cleaned, and yet, with their bedrock drain completed, they recovered 625 ounces of gold!

While reading those stories, it struck me as odd how the Oldtimer's seemingly rushed to work bedrock yet left so much gold behind! That seemed to be the case. However, I reflected on bedrock I've broken and worked by hand, and unless there’s some surface indication of gold under solid bedrock (the Oldtimer's were limited to hand-tools, no electronic advantage), like an obvious crevice to break open, there’s no way I’d cut down into bedrock six to eight feet either!

After reading that out-of-print book, it really made me wonder what might still be buried under the stacked, washed rock and gravel that covers so many areas of bedrock once worked by hand.

Quite the thing to ponder, as the book really jarred me. (Some of you may have had success working such bedrock. I know I’ve chiseled nuggets from bedrock that had no indications of any crevices whatsoever—a perfectly smooth surface. The only indication of gold beneath was given by my metal detector, and the nuggets were sure there, multi-gram beauties to boot.)

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Rookie Bedrock Gold

Looking back at some earlier writing, I came across a note about a Greenie panning session one day. It illustrates how too many people don't respect bedrock's ability to hold gold.

I was helping a rookie one day who wanted to learn to chase the gold. He'd studied up on the basics of panning. He'd read a lot of books and articles on the subject. He'd seen some videos on techniques and practices, and he was ready to tear up the hills to get some gold.

He really ripped up the dirt. He dug holes on slopes packed with river-run, dug holes on the downstream side of boulders, dug holes in gravel bars, and he dug holes in the stream-bed as well. But, he only got little specks. He was one discouraged greenhorn. All of his book learning and knowledge, and all of his sweat equity produced almost no gold.

I took him back to a spot on the river I’d shown him earlier in the day, right before he set off to light the panning world on fire. While he was gone, I had stayed in that one spot. It was a place where the river had shifted course that spring, and in doing so it had exposed some nice bedrock.

The bedrock was now a foot or so above the water. It didn't look like much, as there was no gravel covering it, and that's why he'd left. He wanted to run a whack of dirt, so he did. But now his back was sore, along with lots of muscles he never knew he had.

As I was panning, he peeked over my shoulder, and I showed him about three tablespoons of material in my gold pan. I’d freed it all from cracks and crevices in the bedrock. I told him how It had taken patience and time to get that tiny pile of material. Still, I could tell by looking at his face he was unimpressed with my small sample of pay-dirt.

After all he'd read, listened to, and watched about prospecting, his head was filled with the grand idea that a good spot had to be a place where you could dig, sort, screen, work and wash volume to find gold.

So, I asked him if wanted to wait while I panned my little bit of pay-dirt. And, with a pessimistic shrug, he waited.

It took hardly any time before things, beautiful golden things, started peeking through the black sand. And what do you know, lots of fines, nice flake gold and pickers to boot!

In fairness to him, I knew what to look for. This wasn't ordinary bedrock. It had been under the water for ten years at least (the river channel had shifted). However, just being under water wasn't what made it so sweet. Its structure was engineered with hundreds of perpendicular plates, from two to three inches high, bedded on top of more solid bedrock. I knew that these little plates had been sluicing and holding heavies for many years. All I did was clean those riffles out.

There was no movement of volume to get gold that day, just patience, past knowledge, and the understanding to recognize a likely spot.

So, guess what the rookie did the rest of the day? He staked his spot then and there on the bedrock and worked until the sun went to bed. When he stumbled back to camp that night, he had a nice catch of sassy gold, and his very first picker! You'd have thought he'd found the Hand of Faith nugget the way he carried on around the fire, and I was proud of him for what he’d learned and earned.

The lesson in this tale is with bedrock, rookies don't give it the respect it’s due. Most prospecting books don't give it due respect either. Yet, it's one of the most productive places to check to catch a nice little pile of gold, and often enough, a nugget or two.

Too many rookies head off to dig holes, move big rocks, strain muscles, sweat and swear to find a speck or two of gold. But, for a solid shot at getting nice gold in a small area with a small amount of volume, good bedrock can’t be beat.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Gold Field Invasion

Well, it’s time for another story about the land of bedrock and gold. However, I have to give a backstory before I get into my gold tale (that will be the next story after this one).

I had a chance to head to the goldfields one day. The problem was, I would only be there part of a day, spend the night, and then come right back out.

The main reason for the trip was to head to camp and see how everything had wintered. (I’d tried, but failed to get to camp earlier, due to the ice and snow of the high elevation.) When I arrived, everything looked fine on the outside of the two living quarters. To check the inside, I opened the first one. All was tight and dry, nothing damaged after six months of snowy isolation, high in the cedar and pine covered mountains of the Rockies.

I checked the other outfit to see how it had wintered. As soon as I opened the door, disaster! There were bits of foam all over the floor, and a large corner of the table cushion was torn open, with chunks of foam on the other cushions as well.

Stepping farther inside to look at the sleeping area, the curtains above the windows, on all three sides, had holes torn all along the tops! Some had smaller holes in their mid-sections too. The bed cushions had fragments of the fabric torn loose as well. Yet, there was no strong rodent stench that accompanies a packrat invasion. That stumped me, as the place sure looked like the packrats had hit it.

Stumped, I searched the entire trailer. I found that one of the curtain rods over a side window was knocked loose from its brackets, but that was it.

To see what had happened in invisible places, I removed all the cushions, opened all the forward storage, but found nothing. Even the stash of toilet paper was unmolested, as were all of the other items stored up front.

I checked out the bathroom, but no ratty guests had been there. It was exactly the way I’d left it in the fall.

I opened the drawers by the sink and stove next, a true scene of mayhem. All kinds of organic things were stuffed into them that weren’t there in the fall, with regular items rearranged, all shoved into different drawers. Searching further, I found a nest on the shelf under the sink, a nest the size of a basketball! It was round, made of soft ferns and moss, and the vegetation was fresh and moist.

After, I removed the nest and cleaned the drawers, I opened every space and searched every spot with a powerful flashlight, but no intruders. This only deepened the mystery.

Determined to solve it, I went outside and crawled under the RV with my eye-ball melting flashlight and searched from stem to stern. The bottom was covered in solid metal, no entry points anywhere.

I went back inside to see if I’d missed something. While searching the compartments under the bed, I heard the sound of little running feet above my head. “Oh rats”, I thought. “The home-wrecker must be in the ceiling!” But, as I listened to it running around, it moved far too fast for something plowing through ceiling insulation. So, I hopped outside and quickly climbed to the roof of the other unit to look back to see what was going on.

There on the roof was a squirrel with a pinecone clutched in its paws, all frantic and stressed out, while continually looking over the far edge of the outfit. I hopped down and ran to that far side, and there I saw something I’d completely missed while pulling in to camp. A small spruce was bent over (most likely by heavy snowfall), and it was leaning against the small vent window of the sleeping area. A hole had been torn in the window screen that allowed year-round ventilation. All at once it made sense to me; the break-in mystery was solved.

I had been the victim of a squirrel home invasion, and it had only happened a few days before I’d hit camp or the unit would have been torn to bits. Thank heavens there was no nest of babies to deal with, or worse still, an entire family of squirrels partying inside.

Regardless, it was clear that mama had loads of fun tearing around on my curtains, her fabric amusement ride for a few days. I was so lucky it hadn’t been a packrat, or I’d have had to set fire to the whole outfit. Nothing gets rid of the disgusting smell of packrat.

After I’d secured camp, I only a few hours of daylight left to play with my GPX 5000. But that story will have to wait for another day.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

A little tip about chasing gold signals in the dirt.

Because gold is so heavy, when you're trying to chase a nugget in a pile of loose ground on bedrock or packed clay (with a scoop or by hand), as soon as you disturb the soil, the target drops quickly or hugs the bottom as it slides around. When you're moving the dirt trying to pinpoint the target (with a pin-pointer or coil), any searching movement, and the target slides around, hugging the ground.

You can reproduce similar results by getting chunks of lead (flattened BB's or spent 22 caliber lead) and get a very close result as you try to capture the lead targets in loose soil. Iron or steel pieces and other lighter metals, by comparison, seem to "ride higher" in the dirt, making them easier to capture. They won't have that sluggish slow slide along the bottom that gold does.

I don't know how many times I've experienced this peculiar to gold and heavy metals quirk, it's happened a lot, but I just thought I'd share it, as for me, when I get a sluggish target in the dirt, it can be a good sign.

All the best, and hope you get some nice gold,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Pesky Black Objects

Having solved the squirrel mystery, I went off to hunt some exposed bedrock nearby. It was beside the main trail in an open spot. There was lots of trash and lots of hot rocks. As well, the bedrock itself was hot, too hot for the VLF’s others had used in the past.

I’d taken out a nice catch of nuggets with my 2100 from that spot in the past. To recap, after I got the first mellow tone, my buddy and chiseled the nuggets out of tight contact-zone crevices. The crevices weren’t cemented shut like other areas where I’d chiseled nuggets out, but they were so tightly pinched together there was no other way to free the nuggets. However, chiseling was a challenge due to the bedrock’s hardness, and sharp fragments flew everywhere while working beside the target signals. I had to block the flying bits (with a tilted gold pan) in case a nugget also went flying.

Armed with my 5000 this time, I wanted to test to see how it handled this spot. I tried different settings, timings, sweep speeds, and various amounts of gain. Sometimes I ran it so noisy it reminded me of the 2100’s screeches on steroids! Other times it ran so smooth, I wondered if it was even working. But, I took my time and scanned every part of the exposed bedrock sheet. I got some very faint signals while experimenting, which were only tiny fragments of steel (and I do mean tiny).

After my fruitless search, I wandered off to a small gulch where the large-scale placer miners had trenched to get a bulk sample, one tight on the bedrock. The material was ancient, all orange and red-stained, good looking stuff. Regardless, working the virgin dirt was a huge frustration.

The frustration came from small pieces of native iron, ones encased in concretions of small rocks and sand, all heavily oxidized and completely black. They gave off good positive signals that drove me crazy. I adjusted the discrimination, fiddled with the tuning, but it was useless. I knew I didn't know the machine well enough. The tones remained as positive dig signals, and I couldn’t blank them out.

After that outing, I wanted to get deep into the contents of my owner’s manual by reading and rereading specific sections in order to fine tune my brain’s interaction with the machine. So, over the next week, I did just that.

Luckily, the following weekend, it paid off.

But, that’s a story for another day.

All the best,

 

[Lanny in AB]

Squirrel Follow-up Gold

As I was setting up to detect the next week, one of the mine partners came down to the excavation to see me. He told me the best gold ran along the main drift-mine’s bedrock cut, found inside an area resembling a roughly shaped, reversed L. However, he wanted me to check the entire placer pit to see how well his crew had stripped for pay, and if they’d cut deeply enough into the softer bedrock.

I was welcome to keep anything I found. All I had to do was let him know where I found it and how much I found.

I quickly assembled the GPX 5000. The wind slashed terribly through the pit. It even rolled the detector bag across the bedrock toward a small bedrock pond, but the bag suddenly lodged in a low cut recently pumped dry. Even my five-gallon bucket of sniping tools took a header. That wind was trouble. Another trouble-maker was the heavy equipment operating upstream, throwing off EMI, and I didn’t know how well the 5000 would handle it.

After starting the detector, and keeping the coil elevated while held perpendicular to the ground, I slowly moved around in a half circle, locating the area of greatest EMI. It was coming from the equipment upstream.

I found a pile of rubble to rest the coil on, with the bottom directly facing the EMI. I did an automatic tune out for sixty seconds, and the detector settled to a quiet hum. The tuning of the GPX was impressive.

Knowing interference isn’t a worry is great while trying to hear the soft sound of gold. That’s one thing a lot of rookies mess up on. They think gold should be a loud, sharp signal. However, since gold ground is often heavily mineralized, the struggle to separate a gold signal from background mineralization may only leave a small whisper, a “bump” in the threshold.

That “bump” communicates a target possibility—a brief change in the mineralization balance.

Removing a few inches of overburden and swinging over the same spot again might produce a soft, target signal. And frankly, that’s how many nuggets are found. It’s not the loud scream or snappy zippy tone of online video finds. So, go slow, and listen very carefully. Then, if the threshold gets interrupted for any reason, remove some soil, and scan the spot again.

Getting back to my story, I walked along a shelf that skirted a deep, excavated pool in the softer bedrock where they’d chased a richer concentration of gold. The shelf beside it was composed of harder bedrock. I got a nice solid signal, used the pick and magnet as I dug and sorted, and retrieved an inch square chunk of oxidized, cast iron. That was the largest chunk of metal found so far that day.

I next detected over to where the main drift tunnel first entered the side of the pit. I noticed numerous contact zones where differing sheets of bedrock met, which included areas of obvious faulting. I detected along them, but all was silent.

The wind was nasty and would fling the coil and stem assembly off to either one side or the other from time to time.

Making it to the inverted L area at last, I quickly had a loud, growling, in-your-face signal. Disappointingly, it sounded just like the cast iron junk I’d found earlier. But I scraped off several inches of material, and the signal became a boomer. It had to be trash, as that whole, long day I’d dug countless slivers of steel and trash. Regardless, I dug down deeper suddenly noticing the blackened nature of the trapped river run in the bedrock. This was ancient material, super oxidized with lots of deep purple, red, and dark orange staining. The surrounding clay had completely lost its natural color.

I drug the material from the hole with the pick and smoothed it so that I could pass the magnet through it, checking for ferrous. Nothing on the magnet. So, I ran it back through the muck again. No ferrous. I scanned the hole—the signal was still there, a loud growler. (As the signal came from ancient material, tight on the bedrock, I started to doubt my trash theory.) Digging down about an inch more, I spread the material out on some quiet bedrock beside the hole.

The signal was in the flattened-out material, growling so loudly I was convinced it was iron or steel. I passed the magnet through the spread-out material, but no steel or iron jumped to the magnet. And I couldn’t believe it would be copper or aluminum trash at that depth, in such oxidized material, but I was stumped by the loud sound.

Using the edge of the coil to pinpoint the signal, I grabbed a lump of that stained mess. Plucking out stones one at a time, I passed them under the coil to check for hot rocks. Not a sound. Looking back where I’d pressed the coil edge while pinpointing, I saw a narrow mark in the clay where a small lump of goo clung to the bedrock. I picked it up, passed it under the coil, and bam! A rumbling blast of sound.

The target was in the material, with the clay-goo far too heavy in my hand. Squeezing with my fingers, I hit something solid in the clay. I rolled the object between my thumb and index finger. Then the sun began to shine—right there between my fingers, the unmistakable shine of a solid gold sassy nugget.

At last, I’d found my first gold with the GPX 5000, a golden moment I’ll never forget.

Scanning a bit more, I checked the hole carefully, nothing. I switched the speed to very slow and checked the surrounding ground. A bit to the left, facing upslope, I got a bump in the threshold. Removing several inches of muck produced a definite whisper. Scraping some more, I had a tone. Digging down and flattening the material, I now had a solid signal. Finding no ferrous on the magnet from the material, I scanned again. Scraping the bedrock with my scoop, I captured the signal. Sectioning the material and scanning, I had the target on the coil. It too was covered in that deep, dark stain. While rolling the material in my fingers, out popped a half-gram nugget, very coarse and sassy.

Its big brother weighed in at just under five grams.

All the best,

Lanny

P.S. I found two more in the same area the next week: one that was a gram and a half, and one that was a quarter of a gram.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Little Beauty

I was out detecting with my GPX 5000, the air scented by pine, cedar, and fir. The sun was bright and hot, and there was no wind. It was a glorious day to be in the Rocky Mountains. Luckily, most of the mosquitoes had died off from the earlier cold, and there was no sign of the bear that had paraded through camp earlier in the week.

My machine was set to fine gold as I detected a patch of bedrock that had been heavily hammered by others over the years.

I used the elliptical Joey coil, a nice, sensitive little coil. I worked friable bedrock (bedrock in closely arranged plates or sheets) that rose at about a forty-five-degree angle close to a huge pile of old hand-stacked boulders. Cresting the top of the outcrop with the coil produced a subtle change in the threshold. So, I slowed down and scanned the uppermost edge again. The signal was still there. Something had changed that threshold.

Quite a few things can change the detector threshold: ground mineralization, tree roots, forest fire charcoal, hot rocks, and tiny bits of iron or steel. As well, passing the coil over a bedrock crest in either direction generates a very brief signal change while “cresting that curve”.

Nevertheless, this particular signal had a small center tone, making it unlikely to be a cresting tone. So, I grabbed my pick and removed some dirt from a pocket near the top.

The signal was stronger, and being a hot day, I used my amplified external speaker, rigging it up right below my left ear, making it much easier to hear quiet tones.

I chipped off more pieces of bedrock and scanned again. The signal was almost gone, so whatever it was had been moved. Scanning while heading down-slope proved the target had dropped lower.

Having chased signals in plates of bedrock before, when a nugget drops, it drops right quick into those plates. So, I used the pick and gently pried the bedrock pieces apart. However, I couldn’t find the target anywhere. This let me know it had indeed dropped into the bedrock.

Using a strategy I’ve used before, I tore the bedrock apart until I hit a perpendicular ledge at the base of the plates. These ledges stop anything that works its way down. Furthermore, a small pile of sandy clay, little river stones and some heavily oxidized pyrite had gathered there. This was a good sign. No one had cleaned this bedrock—ever.

I took a stainless-steel tablespoon I use for sniping, and along with some thin, flat scraping tools, I collected every bit of material, then placed it in a plastic gold pan. Taking the pan to a little seep of water located in a mossy gulch adjacent to an old Chinese wall, I panned the material.

Due to the small amount of material, I quickly had it cut down to concentrates. As I fanned the material, I noticed red, oxidized bits of pyrite, black sand, bits of ironstone, and tiny river stones. Fanning the cons some more, a sassy little nugget emerged from the super-heavies! A sub-gram nugget, it was the source of that small signal.

Never wanting to leave gold behind, I went back and scanned the bedrock, but it was now quiet.

Try this method the next time you’re out if you’re unsure of a faint signal on bedrock.

(If you’re near water, it works great. If not, drop the material in a zip-lock bag to pan it later.)

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Really, How Heavy is Gold?

One fact that stumps more beginning gold prospectors than any other is super heavy character of gold.

Gold’s weight and density (as compared to other items in the stream), makes it behave in predictable ways. For instance, it continually works downward through the pull of gravity, until it reaches "absolute bottom."

Of course, most have read in prospecting or panning books or have watched videos or read online about how gold will "collect" downstream from boulders, and lodge behind trees that transverse the stream, or hide itself behind bedrock outcrops that thrust out into the current, and then collect on inside stream bends, and head to the bottom where there’s bedrock or a stout clay layer—all good prospecting information.

But, what is missing is the understanding of how gold behaves, how it moves on the bedrock and into the bedrock while under hydraulic pressure in a stream.

How does a rookie chasing the gold have the opportunity to watch gold interact with stream material and deposit itself on or in bedrock in real time? It’s likely impossible (unless someone gets a gold dredger or underwater sniper to show them gold’s behaviour at the moment it's uncovered and impacted by the stream's current). However, this is unlikely for most people.

There are Internet videos with gold sprinkled into artificial, model streams that include obstructions and bends, and it’s amazing how quickly gold collects in the "likely" spots, but it still doesn’t show what happens to gold when it hits fractures in the bedrock.

To backtrack a bit, If it's possible to run some water through a piece of eaves trough/rain gutter, just drop some gold or lead, of various sizes, into the current and watch what the water does to the different sizes of gold. And, this is important, carefully watch how slowly the gold moves, how the water struggles to move it, even when it’s deliberately disturbed. Now, magnify that lazy effect by imagining the gold in a stream, resting on the bedrock, but protected by a heavy layer of overburden. It's going to take a massive amount of force to move that gold on the bedrock.

That's why gold is often called "lazy". It really doesn’t want to move, unless it absolutely has to, because it takes the laziest, shortest route between two points. Furthermore, when gold is uncovered underwater in a stream, it sits on the bedrock and shimmies in the current and won’t move at all (if it's a big enough piece), or it slowly moves along the bedrock until it finds a crack to drop into, or it finds an obstacle it can’t get under or over.

Why is this understanding of gold’s movement important? When looking for gold, it’s critical to work down to the stream’s underlying bedrock to uncover openings and crevices in the bedrock (smooth bedrock will likely be a bust, unless it’s been altered, and then a metal detector will be necessary). Exposing the bedrock creates the chance to find gold trapped in fractured, rough bedrock. Never overlook a good crack/crevice. Always clean them out completely, taking every bit of material. Simply scraping the surface of exposed bedrock is no good. Use smaller crevicing tools to get to the very bottom. (As a shovel is too big for the job, gold will definitely be left behind.)

This is an important fact to remember: gold is heavy! It’s 19X as heavy as the water and about 10X heavier than the regular stream materials. So, remove all of the overlying materials, and then very carefully clean out any bedrock nooks and crannies. If not, all that hard work done to uncover the bedrock will leave the good stuff for someone else with better gold savvy to find later.

Some different advice, for those detecting for gold on bedrock, when gold is found in a crevice, always chisel down as far as possible to open the crevice all the way. In fact, go a bit deeper and wash every bit of recovered material in a gold pan. Opening a crevice and heading deep allows gold targets to be heard that were silent on the surface.

Lastly, cracking bedrock may open an ancient crevice sealed when the dinosaurs last tiptoed across it. I’ve found them enough times that I always excavate as deeply as possible. (I carefully check what appears to be the absolute bottom to see if there's any lines running with red, orange, or purple iron stain, as those clues may indicate cracks below, ones that once snapped shut hiding an ancient opening deeper down, as that's where the really fun stuff is hiding!)

All the best,

Lanny