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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[Hoser John]

What a hoot. We do meet some a the strangest charactors in the middle of the forest. Nice tag along through Canadian forests and criks Lanny. Hope Herb arrives in Tejas ok and gets to see this great post as he sure loves the great out a doors life ....thanx much-John

 

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[Lanny in AB]

There was a legendary miner named Flat Nose Bob up here in The N. Cal Sierras. He died a few years back. He was a true loner and mined
for gold all year long, and got a lot of it, I'm told.

My miner friends knew him well, and one stayed in a dilapidated cabin a few days with him.

Epic poetry! And I love those mountain pics!

I have a story I wrote a while ago about a loner like the Flat Nose Bob you're describing. He was in a rich spot and he drift-mined all year long and did nothing else.

He died one day, but the locals (only 20 or so of them in the tiny, remote community) didn't find him for days, and the only reason they did is because he didn't show up to get his mail.

However, not finding his body for a few days wasn't the biggest mystery. They couldn't ever find the cache of gold he'd mined. I wonder if it was the same with Flat Nose Bob?

Thanks for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Lanny. I love all of our stories of WTF was I thinking because we all have done it and more than once. Thank God there is that 10% left in our brains that screams out "MUST...LIVE....MUST GET OUT OF THIS" that brings us back to tell the stories...of what not to do.

Thanks Jeff, but sometimes I'd swear I'm down to only 5%! Maybe I could get a stem cell implant to restore me to 10%. Ha, ha.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

A very good read and pics. I lived every moment with you going from bears to horses. Thanks always for sharing Lanny.

You're most welcome Jeff.

There's a bunch of things I've collected along my way in addition to the gold: good friends, lots of pictures, and a story or two about the hunt for Mother Nature's golden metal.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

What a hoot. We do meet some a the strangest charactors in the middle of the forest. Nice tag along through Canadian forests and criks Lanny. Hope Herb arrives in Tejas ok and gets to see this great post as he sure loves the great out a doors life ....thanx much-John

Thanks John for your kind words and appreciation.

We do indeed meet some strange characters along the way while chasing the gold. Come to think of it, others have undoubtedly met me, or seen me on some of my exploits (like up on a cliff face) and considered me in the strange category as well.

I too hope to hear from Herb soon once he's relocated.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lost Drift-Mine Cache

A few summers back the miners of a large placer operation, one located deep in the darkly wooded hills of the far northern goldfields, shared a fascinating story with me. The area of the story is heavily wooded with pines, firs, balsams, birches, and aspens. It’s far enough north that blood-sucking bugs are your constant companions. It’s far enough north that in the mornings, even in summer, there can be ice on the fire bucket. The roads in are logging roads that are always dangerous and often frightening. The place abounds with wildlife: deer, moose, elk, wolverine, fisher or martin, cougar, grizzly and black bear, eagles, hawks, grouse, raven, humming birds, and a vast and changing variety of song birds. There are lakes aplenty, rushing torrents that sweep over bedrock, larger, lazy rivers, and slower moving streams choked with alders. Mountains loom in every direction. Huge deposits of boulder clay (solid, stubborn masses of clay and rock dumped by glaciers up to and sometimes over a hundred feet thick) overlay ancient streambeds that are rich in coarse placer.



These are the deposits that create the domain of the solitary drift miner and the setting for the story. This is the realm of the tough soul that finds a bedrock outcrop then tunnels in by hand drifting along (following the contours of) the bedrock, shoring up the mine constantly (with hand-cut timbers and lagging) to prevent cave-ins. It is brutal, backbreaking work, as the tunnel height is kept as low as possible for economy of labor. Boulders are often encountered, and if they’re too large, the drift-miner has to detour over, around, or under the blockage. If a deposit is encountered that is filthy rich, the miner “rooms out” a large area, backfilling tunnels as he goes along. It is lonely work consisting of long days, but as the work is contained underground, a constant temperature results allowing the work to continue all winter long, and the winters are indeed long in the northlands. In the spring when the freshets (spring runoff) start, the pile accumulated throughout the long winter’s labor is sluiced and the profits are placed in a poke, or a tobacco can, or in coffee cans if the take was rich.



The previous introduction provides the setting for the tale that follows.

Late one chilly northern evening, as we sat around a bright, warm campfire, the local placer miners we were working with told me how several years previous one of the more reclusive members of their tiny community hadn't reported in to the neighborhood log-built store for his weekly visit.

Moreover, the settlement is such a small community that every resident is in the habit of showing up on the same day (mail day) to collect his or her letters. The miners, loggers, and trappers take time to socialize somewhat and to catch up on the news. Furthermore, because the area is quite remote, anytime someone breaks a routine (like coming in for their mail), the locals head out to see what’s wrong.

Well, sure enough as the old boy was overdue, the searchers found the salty digger cold and dead in his cabin. On his table was a nice tub of rich concentrates he'd been panning, busily working them down from the night before. Coarse gold filled the bottom of the pan. Everything in the cabin was peaceful and in order. No foul play whatsoever, he’d just slipped off quietly in his sleep to the big nugget mine in the sky.

The mystery of this unfortunate gold-seeker is that as a dedicated drift-miner, he had been mining full-time for decades in a great spot. Yes, decades. His diggin's were located on good, coarse gold-producing ground and all the locals knew it as he paid for his supplies at the log store in gold (they still take gold as payment even today, and there’s a set of scales on the main counter of the store). However, as is the case with many of the permanent residents for that tiny community, many live alone, just as the dead miner did. The local recluses spend the years without the companionship of spouse or family. They seem to love the solitude.



On a side note, some of the more colorful, mysterious characters won't allow you to take their photograph (under any circumstances!), which hints that they are probably on the run. Which indeed as I was to discover, certain ones are. Some have even been hiding out since the Vietnam war, unaware that a pardon has been granted.

By the way, there’s no local bank to stash your prospecting gold in. Moreover, the nearest approved safe place is four to six hours away, depending on road conditions, for the route out is a temper-mental mistress indeed. Furthermore, heading to the city only suits those that WANT to get out; some never take the opportunity, as they prefer the solitude of isolation over any other preference.

But, I'm wandering again, so back to my story.

The deceased miner had found a nice ancient tertiary channel that plunged with stubborn determination under a steep cliff of heavy, stable, boulder-clay overburden. Many torturous summers and winters of unfathomable effort were spent tunneling along the bedrock, doggedly excavating back and forth to stay with the pay, all the while chasing the ever-fickle path of gold. The miner's eternal quest is an ever-challenging riddle that teases to be solved. The golden enigma beckons a solution, a mystery left eons ago by a smug, confident Mother Nature. However, every once in a while, someone does solve it, and this drift miner was one of the masters.

For those of you that have seen one-man drift-mine operations, you are familiar how the tunnel's low height forces the toiling prospector to work in a perpetual, stooped condition. That's why so many of the Old-timer's walk permanently hunched over--the human form was not designed for such work in such cramped spaces. The drift miner's work was backbreaking, formidable, and the rewards continually uncertain. Months of unimaginable toil might yield absolutely nothing, or they might yield a hidden bonanza!

On a different note, I've gazed into those still dripping, cold and musty tunnels, vainly trying to fathom how mind-numbing it would be to use only a pick and shovel to chip away at unyielding ancient river material, filled throughout with everything from obstinate cobbles and stubborn cemented material, to mammoth, defiant boulders. Furthermore, my weak attempt to decipher the constant, nagging fear of cave-ins can never do justice to the true horror of such events whatsoever.



As well, add to the aforementioned fears (and demands of heavy labor), the years of breathing the stale, bad air that permeates confining world of the tunnel. I really can't comprehend how people remain motivated to suffer such hardship. And, as I was too dumb to realize that people still mined using this old, manual method, I assumed it was abandoned decades ago. Nonetheless, other determined gold-seekers still chase the gold using this method, the same method used by the deceased protagonist.

As, you've probably guessed where this story’s headed I'll continue my tale.

The old Sourdough of that lonely mine used to pay for all of his grub and supplies at the local outfitter's with lustrous, heavy gold. Never once did he use cash. Nor did he use banks; he refused to make the trip out from the goldfield. Furthermore, he trusted no one, and he always kept the cards of his golden intake close to his vest.

In addition, he had no family that anyone had ever been aware of, so the eager locals declared a treasure hunt and decided to see if they could find his cache. They thoroughly searched every possible hiding place they could imagine of his then silent claim.

However, wherever he cached his numerous sacks or containers of heavy nuggets and coarse gold, his talent for hiding them was masterful, and its effect enduring. The locals were not able to locate a single gram of it.

As I pass through this long winter, the vision of those manifold years of constant mining, the clear knowledge of that lucrative bounty garnered from endless tunneling in rich placer ground haunts and entices me yet.


(Picture provided by Larry from B.C. Thanks Larry!)

For somewhere deep in that primeval forest, cached in the earth, there resides a wonderful treasure, one wrestled from Mother Nature, yet one now reclaimed by her, resting in her timeless care once again.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

This story begins a connected series of rambling stories about nugget shooting sixteen hours north and west from where I live here in Canada. It's a long, difficult journey to get in to the mountains that protect the goldfields up there, and the bugs are ferocious and atrocious, but it's well worth it if you like chunky nuggets the size of your fingernails and larger.

A while back, when I was first learning how to hunt nuggets with the Minelab SD, I was in an area, way up north, that had some of the hottest bedrock I’ve ever come across in my life—black graphite schist. I’d tried a bunch of detectors and none of them would handle that rock—the entire goldfield was infused with it—so it wasn’t like you could find very many places to hunt where you didn’t have to deal with the extreme hotness of the rock.



Now, a couple of memories surface in connection with this hunt, and one involves a huge sheet of this bedrock that was part of the road running up to a claim where I found a stunningly beautiful 6 gram nugget that ran at 92% fine! It had the most character of any nugget I’ve ever found (even now, all these years later), but that’s another story for another day, and I digress, as I usually do when I'm reflecting about chasing the gold.

This sheet of mother rock, as I’ve stated, was part of the road. I’ll back up for just a minute to give a few details about the drive in to this claim. We had to take an old, unmaintained logging road to get in, and as we’d never been there before, we were following verbal directions given to us by the miners that had the lease on the claim. So, we got about half way up this canyon and that road got super sketchy. There were lots of places where we scraped bottom, and this was in a high clearance Dodge diesel 4X4. In fact it got so bad, my partner wanted to turn around. If only he could have found a spot to do so, he'd have done so. The road was bordered on the high side by huge pines, fir, balsam, and birch—it was in an area with a lot of mature trees. The sunlight did its golden rays filtering through the treetops light show at regular intervals and ravens and humming birds made frequent appearances. However, the downside of the road was not like nature’s friendly encounters with the animals at all. Moreover, we had to be alert at every turn and blind rise of the road, as we were completely unfamiliar with the risk potential of the terrain and the condition of the roadbed.

Well, we finally got to where we could see an excavation in the distance, and all at once there was a long dip in the road, and it had what I can best describe as a small lake nestled in the midst of it. The water extended for about thirty feet. Upon reaching it, we took the outside edge of that hole, keeping one wheel riding the rim of the steep, outside slope. We got through, but the driver’s side dipped way down into the water and it was a close thing. Regardless, we arrived at the excavation I’ve mentioned, which was an old, open-pit placer operation where a previously large drift mine had been excavated and opened in the 1930's. As fate would have it, there was a caretaker there—even though this area was remote. He looked like he'd stepped out of the 1800's! He had the long beard, the stooped stance, the floppy hat, the suspenders, the baggy pants, the whole package.

Well that caretaker, his mouth dropped open at seeing us, and he asked us how we’d managed to get in. We told him about our dicey trip in, and then he questioned us about the watery stretch on the road. We told him how we’d negotiated it, and he went on to explain how lucky we’d been. The week before, they’d driven one of those huge British Army Surplus six-wheel drives (called a Bedford) into the middle of that hole, sunk it up to the box, and had to bring in a D-8 to pull it out! We just looked at him and shook our heads, glad that somehow we’d straddled the lip and stayed upright. After a few more exchanges of greetings, and updates on the news of the outside world that he longed for, we got additional directions on how to reach the claim. We headed uphill again, the grade was now quite extreme, and we came to the sheet of bedrock I’ve mentioned.

It formed the middle of the road for about twenty-five feet. I had my partner pull over so I could detect it with the Minelab. I got square nail after square nail, all of them medium sized and all the way down to those little ones they used for shingling cabin roofs. Let me tell you, that ground was hot—I could only run the machine by flipping the switch to access just one side of the electronics. That hot bed of rock was stepped up like a stairway carved from stone—it had natural traps all over it. I wasn’t very experienced in nugget hunting at the time, and I quickly came to the conclusion that this place had only trapped square nails; however, now that I reflect on it, I repeatedly wonder what I truly left behind. I only detected a fraction of that sheet as I was in too much of a hurry to get to the claim upstream! Hindsight is often a cruel master of missed opportunities. There's no way anyone with with a VLF had ever been able to detect that rock—it was far too extreme. As well, it was still littered with targets. I’m sure I left gold—that specific area was loaded with coarse gold, and those square nails were a sure sign it hadn’t been cleared.

Not too long afterwards, we came to an excavation that someone had dug right beside the road with a backhoe. They’d moved some big boulders and had hit bedrock at about the eight-foot level. The bottom of the hole was filled with water and all around its perimeter was piled the muck and clay from the bottom of the hole. I made a mental note to detect it on the way out.

After a bit more of a climb, we reached the claim. There were hand-stacked cobbles and boulders all over the bedrock that bordered the creek. I detected quite a bit of the fringing area and only came away with lead meat-tin keys, brass boot eyelets, coat fasteners, lead sealing’s 1800’s soldered tin cans, bits of rusted metal from a variety of sources, some wire brush bristles, and of course, the ubiquitous square nails that litter all sites of gold digs from days gone by. I finally got out of the creek proper and detected some test pits and found the gorgeous six-gram nugget I alluded to earlier, but as I expressed before, that’s another story for another day.

I found another test pit that was filled with water, and for some inexplicable reason—didn’t detect the throw out piles! (When I got back to camp, the miners with the lease on the claim informed me that they’d taken a fine sample of corn-kernel-sized gold from that hole!! Dumb me, dumb, dumb, dumb!) However dumb I was, on the way out, I stopped to detect the throw out material from the hole I’d spotted on the way in. The detecting started out with me getting a huge signal off a massive hot rock—one of those grey-lead wonders. It was the size of a watermelon, and was lodged under a boulder. Then the usual suspects revealed themselves, square nails, can-slaw, and pieces of copper and iron wire. But then I got a sweet signal right on the top of a throw out pile. It was a bright and sassy four-gram heart-shaped nugget. My Sister-in-law still has it. Her husband has promised to make it into a necklace pendant for her. (He's still promising by the way.)

I stubbed around there for another hour and a half, sticking to the rim of that excavation, and I pulled out two smaller nuggets, one just under three grams, and one just over two. They were round nuggets, very typical of the gold in that area. It’s just not hammered at all. In fact, when you’re panning in the streams you have to be very careful as the nuggets will roll right past the riffles of those green gold pans!!

On the way out, we stopped and said goodbye to the caretaker, and we were very careful to stay on the high side of that pond in the road. That afternoon, we detected another spot down by a lake and had a good hunt, but that’s a story for another day.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

On The Prospecting Blues, as caused by Cabin Fever



It's winter, and boy am I blue,
I feel that there's nuthin' to do.
My pan's in my pack,
The dredge is out back
And my fever's a hundred and two.


That fever, it's burnin' my brain.
I want to be out there again
A diggin' the dirt
With dust on my shirt
To ease up a bit of this pain.


My fever, it's surely the pits
It frazzles my prospectin' wits!
Gold tales from the mouth,
Of diggers down south,
It sets me to shakin' with fits.


It stinks to be here with no fun
The snow and the ice? Well, I'm done!
The Aussies and Yanks
Are pullin' their pranks
With pictures of gold in the sun.


Oh, wretched the miner that's cold
While others get warm gold to hold.
This winter's too long
It's nothin' but wrong!
I'd rather be chasin' the gold!!


The end of this woeful tirade
Will end when my fever does fade;
When the sun starts to shine
I'll no longer whine
While I'm digging for gold with my spade.




By William Shake's Peer (His former classmate, I believe.)[]


All the best,


Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

This story continues the tale of the trip where we narrowly missed dropping the truck in a deep hole (full of water) in the middle of the road.

To continue my previous gold tale, we worked our way out of the high mountains (avoiding the hole in the road) back down to the lower elevations in the valley where the gold field flattened itself out.

On the way off that mountain, we scraped bottom with the Dodge diesel a few more times, and as a bonus, we even got a quick glimpse of a fat Black Bear hightailing it over a hump of brush and trees right close to the river. Soon afterwards at the river, we threw that truck into four-wheel drive and did the river dance all the way across—the river dance where the wheels slip, bounce up, down, and then squirt the truck sideways over the large cobbles and bigger rocks that make up the river-run. It’s rather like being jiggled around in some giant jello-filled bowl or something. That’s the closest explanation I can come up with.

Anyway, we finally got across that fast moving stream and started the uphill climb to the other side of the valley. But, I’ve got to leave a little reminder right here in this story of an experience about a spot I visited just the other side of the river where there was a whack of exposed bedrock that was being reclaimed by the brush and forest, as on a previous trip, a mining buddy of mine pulled his truck over and told me to tag along. He walked up a little gulch, took out a screwdriver and went to popping coarse gold right out of a small crevice in that bedrock! (On a return trip, I will detect that bedrock very, very carefully.) But, I’m digressing again, and that little story, and what I did and didn’t do, can wait for another day.

So, having negotiated the river and the hill coming out of the river bottom, we slowly motored up a rough winding logging road to check out a couple of bedrock bench claims that paralleled a little trout-filled lake. The body of water was man-made at a pinch point where the old-timer’s had dammed the creek off so they could flume the water to various downstream claims for sluicing. Moreover, the dam had been left intact as it made a great little fishery as a side benefit. We discovered that in the Great Depression there were all kinds of squatters camped beside that little lake. You can still see the groupings of foundation pits, along with some old plank-cabins held together with round nails (that's an easy way to date structures to peg them in the 1900's vs. the 1800's).

Of course, all that remains of the log cabins from the 1800’s are the indentations in the ground, yet I was too dumb to detect around them while I was there. I had my gold-only brain fired up, and it wouldn’t be denied. I've always wondered what artifacts or coins I could have found. However, we got distracted where the lake met the dam, as it had a huge rock pile just downstream of it.

So, I’ll take a side route here for just a minute to tell you an intriguing little story. As I walked over to eyeball that rock pile, one of the miners working the adjoining claim stepped right out of the brush in front of me! (Their outhouse was located just inside the bush, in a little clearing.) He asked us what we were doing in the area, and we told him we were working our way up the trail beside the creek to the lake claims we were going to detect. After giving him the claim-owner’s name, he realized we were legit, and that made him right friendly. (There’s only a few dozen people that live in the entire area, and the locals find out real fast if you’re trying to scam them or not.) He asked us what kind of prospecting we were going to do, and when we said, “nugget shooting”, he gave a little chuckle. You see, he didn’t think much of metal detectors as he’d seen nugget shooter after nugget shooter get skunked. The ground was just too hot for the gold searcher's machines to handle. I didn’t want to tip my hand about the super-technology I was packing, so I let him keep talking.

Luckily he obliged and said he wanted to tell us a little story. He motioned toward the rock pile and told us it was from an old dragline operation—one from many decades ago. The former claim owners worked that dragline up the narrow canyon bottom building a huge stack of stream-run and broken bedrock at the head of the works. They’d netted a lot of coarse gold: it was a good run. They drug the actual stream bed itself. That technique sure wouldn't fly today!

He told us that a few years back a fellow had come along and begged permission to climb that rock pile to look for rock specimens. If you know anything about those dragline rock piles, you’ll know some of the rarest and heaviest rocks from the bottom of old stream channels can be found stacked there. (It’s rather like when I’m dredging as I see rocks that I’ve never seen on the surface before, and sometimes I’ll only ever see one example of a particular kind. I think it’s got something to do with their rarity based on specific gravity perhaps.) Anyway, he told this Rock Hound to have at ‘er. He only asked him to return and show and tell about whatever he found. The rock collector was free to keep anything he found—the only requirement was to return and show it. (I’ve run into that request numerous times myself while prospecting on someone else’s claim.)

So imagine the miner's surprise when around suppertime this fellow showed up with a nugget! The claim owner’s jaw hit the ground because that nugget was huge! Taking it from the finder to look at it, he could not believe what he was seeing, or hardly comprehend what he was hefting. The specimen was only a quarter to a third of an inch thick. But it was solid gold. Moreover, it covered the back of his hand from the base of the knuckles to his wrist joint!! As the nugget was flat, that’s why it made its way through the punch-plates and screens of the dragline’s trommels and sluices. With a very sober face, the claim holder related what a tough day it was to follow the “You can keep whatever you find” axiom, but he kept his word. After seeing that find, the miner said he’d scoured that entire rock pile with his two sons, but they never found a dang thing. It was just dumb Rock Hound luck for the guy that got that gorgeous nugget, I guess.

Well, I’ll have to tell you the rest of this story, the part about working the lake-shore bench placers, another day.

All the best,

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

A continuation of the lake placer tales:

So, after we’d jawed with the rock-pile owner for a bit more, we decided we’d better head up the trail to check out the lake placers. The gold runs up both sides of the lake, so we picked a side and headed on up. We weren’t in much of a hurry that day. My partner had a badly broken wrist, complete with a new cast, done just before we’d departed our home base. So we were moving kind of slow anyway, and it was one of those gorgeous, long northern summer days—the warm, calm ones you wish you could bottle to save and open on a cold, winter’s day. Moreover, this particular day would be light until after well after eleven or so, and then it would be twilighty for a nice stretch after that.

Nevertheless, as we walked along the lake, you could see the cutthroat rising, systematically hammering the various insects that had strayed a bit too close to the surface of that mountain fast food outlet. It was right pleasant, seeing all those ambush experts in a feeding frenzy. Now I knew why the locals had never taken the dam out. It was one great place to catch a mess of trout.

Every once in a while a breeze would playfully stir the surface of the water, but it calmed quickly, allowing the trout to continue feeding. The willows along the lake patiently waited for another gust of wind so they could whisper the news of our coming.

At last we reached the claims we had permission to hunt. There was evidence of a lot of shallow surface mining in many spots for the bedrock was exposed in great sheets. The bedrock itself was particularly hard, and the D-8 cat they’d used to clear the bedrock was only able to work down to any degree where the bedrock was rather rotten, and this only occurred in small patches. The rest of the mother rock was a solid, hardened nightmare. Moreover, the excavator could get no purchase in it either.

So, the miners had done the best they could—scraping off the bedrock and running the scraped up pay through the wash-plant to get the coarse gold the area's famous for. And, what do I mean by coarse gold? Well, if you’ll bear with me, I’ll tell you a little story.

About a month earlier, I’d been up on what I can best describe as a gold-scouting, fact-finding expedition. I’d gone up to check out the area and had made the journey with a relative of one of the miners. This little claim was the first place he and I visited, once we got in.

The placer miners were hard at it, but when they saw us, they shut down to have a well-deserved yak. That’s the way of the north, not a lot of visitors, especially in this remote area, and visitors bring news from the outside. Anyway, we talked and updated them for a bit, and then one of the miners started to clean up the header on the wash-plant's sluice. He lifted the screen off the box and started to scrape some material into a pan. All at once he stopped, reached into the header-box and tossed something straight at me.

I was caught off guard, and the only thing that saved me was dumb reflex.

I caught what he’d chucked at me, and let me tell you, it was heavy! I looked into my hand at this ugly black rock. But its weight sure gave it attitude. Now, there’s no way this could be gold, I thought? I mean I was standing on a huge pile of washed cobbles and the miner had hucked this thing straight at me, a complete stranger.

If it was gold, and I’d missed it, it would have dropped way down in that stack of cobbles, never to be seen again without dismantling that entire rock pile! Regardless, I stared at the rock and couldn’t help wonder what it was. It did have a genuine heft to it. So, I asked the gold miner about it, telling him it sure didn't look like anything very valuable.

He pulled me up short by telling me it was a gold nugget. I was stunned.

This thing had to be over an ounce for sure, but it didn’t look remotely like gold at all. He sauntered over to me, took out a pocket-knife and very, very gently started to scratch away at a corner of the chunk. Off came this gnarly black scale and right there he made a believer out of me! The glint of gold was undeniable! It weighed out at over an ounce and a quarter, and it was solid gold—no quartz at all.

To clean up the black gold they found on that claim, they’d just put it in a vinegar bath overnight, and the next day this pile of disgusting sludge was all that was left of the black, that is except for the beautiful gold nuggets.

My apologies, I’ve certainly gotten off track again. I haven’t even arrived at the nugget shooting part of my story yet.

To get back on track with my story, we fired up our detectors and asked the miners where we could start. They commenced to laughing--loudly! They told us to have at it, but we’d get nothing but grief. They'd seen too many people get skunked in that gold-field over the years just trying to get their detectors to, as they put it, “squeak” on some gold. It was never anything but a shutout.

You see, that bedrock was too hot. It ate detectors for lunch. (Their telling of the story was salted liberally with colorful language, of course. In fact there’s likely a little tapestry of profanity still floating over that lake!)

Due to their stories, I mentally debated the merits of pointing out the virtues of the Minelab to these fellows, but I stopped myself and started off hunting instead.

You remember of course that I’ve told you how there was decomposed bedrock in pockets. Well much of that fragmented stuff was wet too. I wasn't sure how that would affect things, but I went to work on a patch of it anyway and right away I got a nice mellow tone. Once quick scoop and I had it.

I quartered the sharp little chunks of bedrock out of the scoop and soon had a sassy, chubby little gram and a half nugget! That got the claim owner's eyes popping! They said, “Come here.” And with that command, they walked me over to another similar area and told me to try that. So, I tried it and got a signal right away. However, this time I never found a nugget—only false signal, after false signal. They soon tired of watching, and shaking their heads trundled off to get back to the mining. I knew from their body language that they figured that the first find was nothing but a fluke. To them, the rest of my time was only wasted digging, proving what they’d known all along. Detectors were useless in that horrid black graphite schist. (I know it sounds like I'm cussing, but it’s only a type of bedrock I'm referring to.)

Yikes. As usual, I ran myself right out of story telling time again, and I’ve still got to get around to informing you about the beautiful things connected with that awful bedrock. As well, I've yet to tell about the other goodies we found in their test piles.

However, those are stories for another day, when I’ve freed up a bit for time for the telling.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

Well, I’ve come up with a little more time for the telling, so I’ll see if I can get around to informing you about the beautiful things that happened on that awful bedrock, and I just hope I get to talk about what other goodies we found in their test piles. But, maybe not. For the sake of clarification, I must confess to a bit of a problem with writing down my gold hunting stories. I often get reminiscing about one outing, and it reminds me of the details of either a related outing, or a similar experience on a completely different outing, or some kind of linked connection to other outings! It’s a bit of a strange brain dance that keeps my mind moving, but doesn't always keep in on track, that’s for sure.

So, the intrepid miners left us to our devices . . . . My poor prospecting buddy was struggling with the frustration of his busted wrist. It was nothing but a cruel test for him. He was distressed that all this great gold producing ground was right there at his feet, and he couldn’t do a thing about it! Yes, he could swing the detector, but trying to dig, pick, sort, and capture with only one hand is a serious pain, to say the least.

In fact, we were compelled to work together, one swinging the coil over the ground, and the other picking, digging, sorting, and retrieving. There was no way he was going to miss out on all the fun. So teamwork was the only option. At least, that’s what mostly happened.

But, I have to back up here for a moment. You do remember that fractured, wet bedrock that I referred to earlier, not the skunk patch filled with false signals, but the one that produced the nugget? Well, since the placer miners were washing dirt again, I went back to where I’d found the gold. I’m kind of oriented that way, because I’ve found through the years that if a trap worked well enough to grab and hold one piece of gold, it would often work its magic on other pieces as well.

So, I went back to that spot and started detecting again. I located on a place where they’d scooped out some of that rotten bedrock with the excavator. The location was right where the excavator had left a rise of about two feet, right even with the level of that awful graphite schist. I started detecting up and down that little hump. Pretty soon, right near the top, I got a nice hit! I approached it perpendicularly, and the tone was that reassuring Minelab low-high-low tone. It wasn’t as strong a signal as the first signal was, but it was the perfect sound all right. And, since the signal was close to the top, it was an easy matter to get the target response in the scoop. As I mentioned earlier, the material was wet, so it just fell apart in the scoop; moreover, it was very easy to separate the sassy little beauty from the busted rock. A one gram wonder it was. A nice rich yellow with lots of bumpy character.

Perhaps I should digress for a moment and tell you what had happened to this area geologically. From what the geologists and the miners have been able to decode about this particular goldfield, the glaciers were pretty much masters of that northern kingdom for untold ages. There were frequent placer concentration sites where six and seven channels had been laid down over each other, all oriented in different directions of deposition. What that means is that over countless years, the area had been glaciated continuously. Consequently, as the glacial streams were constantly re-oriented and angled, they dropped their loads in brand new runs.

However, some of those super-streams were carrying magnificent gold content, while other runs were downright stingy, or outright barren. The ongoing detective work, from the Sourdoughs down, went into solving the mystery of which runs were carrying coarse gold. Where we were, Mother Nature had actually helped out some. A super glacier had bulldozed through this narrow choke point, scooping out most of the overlying channels as it worked its way down-slope. Then, with mysterious motives I'll never understand, it hauled the works off to dump it's load on some dim long forgotten slope, or in the belly of a secret swamp.

But, the beauty of this spot was that it was only about six feet from where the fir and pine trunks intersected the green and yellow carpet of moss, close to the bedrock proper. Moreover, this lowest run had been packing a considerable amount of coarse nuggetty gold. In fact, this honey-hole appeared to have been a side channel offshoot or gush of higher than average velocity, one that was rolling big boulders and large gold.



Anyway, I got one smaller piece, about match-head size, from the crumbling rock, and then the ground went silent. Well, what to do next, right? So we wandered back to the hot zone, and we just couldn’t get a thing out of that mess but a world of false signals. (I’d love to hit that spot again with one of the newest generation Minelabs, like my GPX 5000, just to see if I couldn’t exorcise some of those black devils from that hotter-than-the-hubs-of-Hell bedrock!) But, after finding only bits of blade on the surface, we wandered down-slope to where there was a four to six-foot wall of virgin rock and dirt. It was the spot where the bedrock dove under the forest floor. It marked the farthest advance of the miner’s efforts.

At this location, there was a slump of maybe a foot or two in front of the aforementioned wall, and then there was a sheet of that atomic graphite schist fronting it all. To my dismay, this spot was insanely hot as well. The detector would not run on both sides. Well, you know what that means, you lose depth when you cut to one channel. So, you have to sacrifice depth to run on the other side, but at least you can detect. (The new machines have this problem nicely in hand.)

Even then, the battery-powered ballyhoo from the 2100 sounded like a cat fight crossed with screeching train brakes gone wild! Regardless, I kept at it. My buddy wasn’t familiar enough with the machine, nor with how to filter (with the human brain) that racket. So, because he couldn't run the detector, he waited there like a bird-dog on point, ready for the game to flush. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have to be on point for long. You see, out of all that tortured electronic noise there came the unmistakable low-high-low sound that lights up the brain like the sudden yank of a ten-pound rainbow.

However, it's at this point where I have to break this tale off so that I can continue this story another day.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lake Placers Continued.

You’ll remember that in the last installment, my buddy wasn’t familiar enough with the nuances of the Minelab, nor with all of the electronic racket being thrown off by that super-heated bedrock to feel comfortable enough to run the detector, so he just went on point like a gold birddog waiting for a piece of gold to jump up and flush (fly into the air). Well, he wasn’t on point for long. For, out of all that electronic din there came the unmistakable “oohh—weee—oohh” sound that gets any nugget hunter worth his salt hyper-engaged in a big hurry, the sound of a positive response!

So, I approached the target at right angles from the last sound signature, and all at once I heard this series of terrible high pitched wails, followed by screeching sounds I’d never heard before while detecting. I thought the mineralization in the bedrock had finally won the battle until I noted it was only my partner’s sudden reaction that a squadron of black-flies had crawled down the front of his shirt and left a bright, red patch of oozing raw skin right in the middle of his chest! (If you know nothing of the evil denizens of the North—the Blackus-Flyus-Disgustingus-Annoyus—you know nothing at all of weeks of pain, scratching, and possible madness.) Well, after my partner's screeches, there was now a heavier tapestry of colorful words hanging over the lake fringing the placers, and after hosing my buddy down with what amounted to a bug dope shower, I got back to detecting.

Once again, I approached the target at a right angle to the last response, and through the racket came the unmistakable sound of a good response. So, my partner scraped as well as he could with one hand, and I used the flat side of my pick to clear the rest of the residue of stone and clay right down to shallow pockets in the bedrock.

My dim brain (yup, it's true!) remembered that the DD coil might be much quieter than the little 8-inch mono-loop, so I made the switch, and then got back to analyzing the bedrock, but before I got down on my knees to investigate, I swung the DD in a wider arc and heard several quiet signals—things were rapidly getting interesting, but lots of interference was still continuously there, even with the DD!! Putting the detector aside, I knelt down to scrutinize the rock. What faced me was a perplexing visual mystery. It was solid bedrock. I mean there were no crevices at all! I couldn’t fit a knife blade in anywhere.

So, immediately your brain begins to second-guess the target response, and you assume that it’s another patch of ground noise, or a series of false signals. Writer’s note—at this point, I’ll paste in parts of my actual journal entry (with annotations in brackets, [ ]), for that day. (Some of you may have read accounts of this part of the story on other forums years past. If so, go to my main thread and read another story). Included in the aforementioned journal entry are references to how we’d tried out different manufacturers’ specialized gold-hunting VLF's (Fisher Gold Bug, Whites Goldmaster, Garret Stinger, two Minelabs—16000/17000). VLF technology on this horrible bedrock was futile as none of them would even come close to maintaining a threshold. (As a side note, I contacted a trusted Treasurenet Forum friend from Arizona before heading up to chase the gold, asking his opinion about which machine could handle such extreme ground, and he flat out told me the 2100 would do the job, if anything in the world could. So I hauled one up with me to try it out).

“After learning to run the Minelab SD 2100 on the one patch of hot black bedrock [this is an account I have not set down in story format yet], and finding four nuggets imbedded in the bedrock (some kind of mineralized calcification in ancient crevices, I believe) I thought of another patch I had visited . . . with five different gold detecting metal detectors, only to be shut out due to the extreme mineralization. So, my partner and I headed off to see how well the 2100 would hunt. [To an area with this same kind of black bedrock. This is the reference to the account you’ve been reading.]

The first thing that was evident was that the machine would not hunt with both balance one and balance two operating. The ground was way too hot. So, I balanced the machine as closely as I could in balance one. (There was still some interference in balance one but it was easily identifiable after studying the inclusions and variances in the color scheme of the bedrock.) [After visually studying those varying shades of coloration, and intrusions of quartz-stringers lacing the surface of the rock, and then learning to synchronize the visual clues with the audio output, you could predict with quite a bit of certainty when the machine would respond to patches of mineralization.]

After scanning the area, I got several weak signals that peaked in the middle of the tone (characteristic of gold near the surface). So I dug down with a little pick and hit solid bedrock again. After scanning again, the signals had increased slightly. We already knew that hammer and chisel work had liberated nuggets in the other area, so we flew at it again. After going down about four inches into the solid matrix, a black chunk flew out of the hole and we saw the nugget gleaming where the rock had fractured. [It stuck out like a fat raisin in a thin cookie!] I scanned the hole again and got another signal. I dug back (uphill) another couple of inches and liberated a five-gram nugget! It looks like a fat little couch potato. Scanning the hole again produced no signal so I moved on. For the next four hours I chased weak signals and whispers [some only an imperceptible disruption in the threshold actually]. All of them were in the hard stuff and all of them had to be chiseled out. We wound up with thirteen nuggets freed from the country rock. (I used the eight-inch coil after I had used the 11inch double D. The eight-inch was noisier [much!!], but it did find three I missed with the eleven inch.) I spent about an hour scanning old piles [test piles]. Then it started to rain. The 2100 doesn't like rain, so I quickly got it into the truck and retired for the day, very tired, but very happy with my little poke of nuggets.



It's hard to believe someone finally came up with a technology that allows a detector to hunt in such awful ground, but my small success story is proof that they did invent such a machine. The best part was that the Minelab was relatively simple to use. I had one more successful outing on my summer prospecting trip with the 2100, but that's a story for another day. [I’ve still to write that one in story format!]”

By way of enlightenment, that bedrock was hard! I don’t really deal with many details in my journaling entry of how hard it was. I’ll see if I can describe it in greater detail for you:

We had a small sledge back in the truck, and an assortment of rock chisels; as well as, one of the most useful little mining tools ever invented, the Estwing pry-bar that has the pointed chisel end, and the flat L-shaped head on the top, with the sharpened chisel-edge on the L that can be used to scrape or used like a chisel to hammer into a crevice—absolutely beautiful little tool.

So, I hustled back up the trail to my drooling, still on point like a birddog, partner. As I’ve stated, the surface of that bedrock had dips and hollows as all bedrock will have, but there were no visible crevices. The most amazing part was that once I started to hammer out chunks of that mother rock, you could see that it was a two-part natural cement-like l vice. It was clear to see that the original bedrock was that graphite schist, but the other was a concreted combination of fine-grained crushed black slate (I assume this only, as it’s the most ubiquitous rock in the vicinity. However, I’m not positive . . .). The black filler had obviously been running in that glacial gush that had propelled the gold down to the level where we’d found it. However, there was something else in that run that acted as a concrete binder of some sort—some chemical catalyst that caused the bits of slate to bind solidly to the schist, and it was an perfect color match. Nature had done a masterful job of caching this gold.

So, I’d take the small sledge, one of the various chisels or the Estwing bar, and I’d carefully tap my way down. (Well, not always carefully. I was rather excited and somewhat overzealous in the beginning, but gravity and the natural laws of physics and object mass soon took care of that.) I'd work my way down well outside the edge of the signal’s midpoint. I usually had to go down two to four inches to get below the signal, and then I’d insert a longer bar, reef on it, chisel in on the either end, insert the longer bar, and reef on it until the piece popped out. Sometimes the piece (if it was shallow in depth, like the one described in the journal entry) would simply bust out and fly up in the air like a game bird! (No wonder my partner was on point. Now it made sense.) After that nugget flew out, we always made sure we had one of those big green gold-pans in front of the predicted angle of launch. We didn't want any gold bearing chunks to fly into adjacent cobble piles just so we could experience the unknown adventure of a heart attack.

After recovering the nuggets, I took the chunks of bedrock and I’d turn the small sledge on its side and very carefully tap on the bedrock-matrix cement until it started to fracture and crumble. (The interesting thing is the matrix and the bedrock were of the same hardness. You never knew where the piece was going to fracture.) Then, I’d break it into smaller pieces, pass the pieces under the coil to verify the target chunk, discard the silent ones, and repeat the process until I had the gold-bearing piece in my hand.

Then I’d carefully tap away with the aforementioned technique until I’d liberated the nugget. But, these were no ordinary nuggets. They all had wonderful character. Oh, but they were gorgeous!! A sassier troop of nuggets has never been routed from their hiding places. Moreover, it was laborious, time-intensive work, bit it ranked extremely high on the fun scale. A ten plus for sure. By evening, we had well over a dozen nice character nuggets and they were all the size of my various fingernails! It was incredible fun.

Did I smash any fingers with all of that hammering? Absolutely. Did it hurt? If your fingernail goes black and falls off later, does that rank somewhere on the pain scale that you can relate to? Regardless of the minor inconveniences of bloodthirsty bugs, tortured limbs from hours of kneeling, or the unnerving alien sounds emitted by my partner, the gold adventure was well worth the effort.

But, I forget myself again—I’ve yet to tell you about the test-piles farther up that placer claim. Well, that’s definitely a story for another day.

All the best, until then,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lake Placer Tales, Last Installment: Success and Regrets.

After chiseling over two dozen of those pesky, entrapped nuggets out of that scorching hot bedrock the day before, we moved on up the claim a bit. The increased elevation allowed us to see all the way to the end of the stream fed lake. The sky was a perfect, faultless blue, and in the far distance, the hills and mountains undulated peacefully to where they seamed perfectly in a majestic oneness with the unblemished horizon.

The halcyon water of the lake was bordered by twisted ranks of toughened Aspen and taller companies of leafy birch. Higher on the slopes that led away from the lake standing at guard were stalwart battalions of ramrod-straight pine and sturdy green fir.

In addition to the scenery, an added bonus was that being up-slope as we were, there was a breeze off the lake that kept most of the bugs at bay. The strange, unnatural screeching noises I’d heard the day before had almost ceased. My partner was finally getting a break from his winged persecutors.

We were now in an area where the bedrock rose in steps to where it ran under the forest floor. Along the edge of the formation, there was a bedrock drain dug all along the side closest to the trees. It contained some standing water, but it revealed areas that were dry as well. The bedrock was shot through with quartz stringers in a gray-black schist that had once been twisted and reformed by unimaginable forces. Furthermore, the rock was so tortured in the days of its formation that there were frequent “S” curves snaking down its entire length! There was such a high level of graphite included in it that the gray material floated on the surface of the water like oil, quite a rare and curious sight.

Well, I detected the entire stretch of that bedrock drain. It was only about thirty feet long, and I hunted up little bits of blade from the cat and excavator, pieces of rusted tin can, snags of ancient wire, and heads and tips of square nails from the days of the Argonauts. Detecting these metallic outcasts gave me the tip-off that the old-timer’s had worked up at this elevation, which presented quite a different detecting challenge from the lower, much cleaner area we had so recently freed those nuggets from.

I continued detecting up past the bedrock drain and found the remains of some old cabins, and I’ll tell you, I hit the mother lode of trash! Too bad no one was paying big money for it as I really could have cashed in.

If you can imagine almost anything that anyone could have thrown out, it was there—in excess. I finally gave up and returned to some mesomorphic test piles I’d passed on the way up. These stacks were about six to seven feet high, and they were formed of piled ancient rust-colored river-run from the bench channel. The miners weren’t going to process the piles just yet as they’d finished their current run (they told me I could detect the outside of the piles, but not to knock them flat), and that they were quickly taking apart their equipment so they could move it up a canyon, over a mountain, and down to a great river claim, one staked in a steep bedrock canyon on the other side.

In fact, they’d been getting excellent test results from a wash-plant they’d set up over there, and maybe some day I’ll get around to telling you the story of the sacks of gold they recovered from that deep-canyon operation. It was incredibly rich dirt! (Anytime you can look in the pay-seam and see the nuggets and flip them out with your fingers as you work your way along the seam, you know you’re into extremely rich dirt! It blew me away as I’ve only ever seen dirt like that once in my life. But, not only did I have the opportunity to flip coarse gold out of the seam, I got to pan the dirt and keep the gold too. As well, they let me detect for nuggets after they’d finished mining it all out. As you can imagine, it was phenomenal stuff.)

So, here I was, facing these three piles of dirt, spaced about ten feet apart, all the while issuing me a silent challenge. Well, I fired up the detector and started to scan their sides. Almost at once I got a screamer that about blew the headphones right off. I figured because it was so loud that it had to be steel or iron. But, I dug into the pile anyway (dig everything is my philosophy), and not long afterwards, I had recovered a length of curled and twisted strap-iron, very rusted, and very obviously junk.

Upon reflection, scanning those piles wasn’t a lot of fun. For instance, if you’ve scanned hills or piles before, you know it’s a much harder task than scrubbing the coil along the ground because you’re using an entirely different set of muscles to keep that detector running in a vertical fashion. Plus, it was getting hotter, and those headphones were running rivulets of sweat down my ears. In other words, I was getting a bit cranky, and when you get cranky, you should quit detecting for a bit. So, I did!



I pulled off the phones, wandered down-slope to a settling pond, sat on a cream-colored boulder, and had myself a refreshing break. I’ve found through the years that if you’re getting a bit like a bear fresh from hibernation, it’s best to throw your mind out of gear, shut the mental engine off, and let the radiator cool for a while. Eventually, your mind comes back to a clearer thinking mode, and you’re much more efficient when you head back to the hunt.

While I rested, the trout did their slap and whap water-dance as they rose for flies. In addition, I enjoyed the territorial aerial battles of those fearless, miniature helicopters of the Northern Boreal Forests, the brightly hued male hummingbirds. With that, and being quite rested, I was ready to get back to chasing the gold.

As my arm and shoulders had recovered, and my metal detecting melon was well cooled, I was able to make nice, slow sweeps of the sides of those piles, vertical and horizontal ones. As a reward, I received a very faint tone in the headphones. The sound was weak, but it had the proper signature. I scraped away several inches of gravel and stone. I scanned the hole with the coil, keeping it the same distance away from the target response as it was before. I then removed the river-run. Scanning again, the signal was much clearer now.

I poked the leading edge of the coil into the hole. Louder still. A nice rich signal. I scooped out more dirt and widened the hole. The signal was sharper and harsher now. I knew the object was close. I took my plastic scoop and dug where I anticipated the target would be. The scoop came away and the top of the hole flopped in. No target in the scoop. I had to widen and deepen the hole again. Regardless, scanning once more, I got a crisp retort. I scooped yet again, and this time whatever the target composition, it was nestled in the scoop. I started shaking the material to settle anything heavy, scooted the lighter pieces to the nose of the scoop, then dropped it in my hand. I then scanned the material in my fist, no response.

I tossed the waste bits away, and then I repeated the gravitational classifying process until the signal was in my hand. I started to sift the material onto the coil head until I heard a “whap!” and a scream. But, it wasn't my bug smacking partner this time. Nope. It was a beautiful 3.2 gram nugget, one with a nice, chunky character. That little beauty also held some of that black matrix referred to earlier, all tightly packed in a couple of little pockets on its surface; however, the rest of the nugget's color was that glorious gold that all nugget shooters dream of seeing.

It was long in shape, about equal in circumference along its entire length, and rounded. I stashed it in my plastic bottle and stored the container securely in the button-down pocket on my shirt. I kept hammering the piles electronically and teased out two more nuggets, one weighing in at 2.8 grams, and the other at 2.3 grams. All in all, over eight grams of nice, chunky, sassy Northern nugget gold had been cached within inches of the edges of those piles. Remember, I was only able to detect the outside of those stacks of ancient river-run. I makes you wonder what a field day I’d have had raking them down and hammering the works with the detector!

But, that’s not the only regret I have about that area. Remember the spot where I chiseled out the palm full of nuggets? I know it’s hard to believe now (as I think back on it), but there was a foot or two of slump that had fallen on the bedrock shelf, running out about three feet, and we didn't clean it off so we could detect the bedrock under it!! To this day, I have no idea what I was thinking, because I sure do think about it all the time now.

But there’s more regrets yet, for all of that matrix that we broke up and crushed to get the nuggets out, well we didn’t pan one bit of it out. We just chucked it away.

I have another story somewhere about a similar experience on another sheet of nugget-embedded bedrock where my partner finally convinced me to pan that crushed matrix out. It was full of gold. Chock full. I about puked when I saw the coarse pickers running with those nuggets, and that sure enough made me think back on what I’d tossed away. Sitting here at the computer today, it only makes sense, as I can think it all through clearly now.

I don’t recall what our overriding reasons were back then. Perhaps we were too tired to think about shifting more dirt, or too excited to get to the new, incredibly rich placer pit I’ve referred to earlier in this post. In any case, I really don’t know what we were thinking.

Yet, incredibly, there’s more regret entwined in this sorry part of this gold tale.

There was a second placer excavation above the one where we detected and retrieved all of those aforementioned nuggets.

The pit was flooded by about a foot and a half of water. The entire bottom of that excavation was iron-hard rock. It was made up of a formation the locals called pinnacles, where the bedrock rose in kind of cone-shaped patterns. Furthermore, there were lots of places the miners could not excavate between the more closely spaced pinnacles. All we had to do was pump the water out and detect those pinnacles, but once again, we declined to do it. We were a bit obsessed by the lure of that golden bonanza over the mountain, the one down by the river.

Nevertheless, the bad part of that pinnacle pit is that the miners with the rock pile where the big flat nugget was found, well they let one of their cousins high-bank in amongst a pinnacle formation in one of their pits that they'd mined out, and he took out ounces of coarse gold and nice nuggets!! I have a little story about that pit as well, but that’s a tale for another day, as is the story of the gold on the other side of the mountain.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

Bugs, Blood and Gold: Tales from the North.

(Warning—this is written as intentional prospecting humor.)

A perplexing, maddening phenomenon occurs ever year in the summertime: hundreds of prospectors line up to donate blood. On the surface, this appears to be rather noble. Well, this is not a standard blood donor lineup, but this lineup occurs deep in the Northern Boreal Forests, far from the prying eyes of the soft, cultured masses of pampered city folks.

This annual event seems to be a catharsis, a deeply needed cleansing or healing, one rooted in superstition and myth. The uninitiated may even call this event stupidity.

However, if you’ve never been deep in the northern forests, I pity your inadequacy to empathize with the True Northern Prospector, hereafter referred to as the “TNP”. Now, try to imagine a region of consummate beauty, one espousing all the elements of peace, tranquility, indeed the possibility of Nirvana. Imagine a location accented by massive pine, cedar, tamarack, fir, and balsam forests, further enhanced by a beautified forest floor of lush undergrowth. Moreover, a site where crystal streams run free and unhindered, where lakes teem with trout, grayling, and arctic char. Gazing into the distance, visualize the boundless rolling carpet of green that extends in perpetuity to the majestic, cloudless, cobalt blue horizon.



But wait, what’s that darkening, dizzy cloud that forms the minute you step from your battered 4x4? What pernicious evil is marring this idyllic vision? Why, it’s the bugs! The great, northern horde. (Gengis Kahn? A mere toothless pup by comparison.)

Ha, bugs you say. Any prospector worth his salt has faced down the lowly winged vampire, more generally known as the mosquito. And what seeker of gold has never had an encounter with a galloping horse fly, or a prancing deer fly? Bugs indeed! Yes, bugs indeed . . .

As your vista becomes increasingly clouded, your dim brain frantically alerts the body's defenses. The body’s arms begin a furious wind milling action, and the detector is launched carelessly through the air, as if the astronomical price paid was an insignificant, annoying trifle. As you turn to open the door to escape, you realize that your partner has locked the vehicle, and thoughtlessly wandered off down some dim forest trail. (Moreover, taking a canister of bug spray in his front coat pocket as he's announced that he will never use the stuff. Something about a real man could never fear such small, diminutive creatures. Of course, this speech was delivered just within hearing range of the TNP, some slanderously delivered off-handed comment about anyone that needed insect repellent was unworthy of the northern prospector’s stripe. That sort of thoughtless nonsense.)

As you gaze in to the vehicle, knowing your partner is long gone, and somewhat bug-eyed (no pun intended), you now press your sweaty face against the glass and take a panicked look at what you foolishly left on the seat—your first line of defense, your ultimate weapon. You spy the potent and essential DEET, AKA, Bug Dope.

Relentlessly, panic claws at every cell of your organism; moreover, the sheer volume of panic generated is now widening into a chasm of unspeakable terror. Sensing panic, and while icy fingers of doom crawl up the back of your neck, you nonetheless turn to face your agonizing fate, the aforementioned, horde of starving bugs.

Instantly, you are engulfed by a buzzing, hissing mass of wings cruelly equipped with perfectly adapted teeth. (By comparison, vampires are an easily avoided nuisance.) You valiantly conquer some of your winged tormentors by cleverly breathing in an entire squadron (or was that simply brought on by a reflexive gasp of terror?).

No matter, in the name of valor and survival, you’ve dealt the beggars a blow. (You wish!) The crazed bugs begin a sly ascent up your pant legs, creeping on the inside where their true nasty intent remains hidden. However, this assault remains unseen or unfelt, as the attack is led by the black demons of the northern world. It is nothing less than the dreaded Blackfly, casually referred to in Webster’s dictionary as “any of various small dark-colored insects; esp: any of a family of bloodsucking dipteran flies”. Dipteran?! What a gentle nickname for this scheming hell on the wing!

(Besides, I’ll have you know some of those blackflies even imitate camouflage tactics now, for they’re dressing in orange, yellow and red. Furthermore, they’re getting bigger. I saw a cloud the other day packing intravenous poles, tubing and bags for blood collection to the site of some poor wretch that was bathing in the river!! Are you accusing me of hyperbole? Extreme exaggeration you say? You’re right, of course. I think he’d only gone down to the river to get a drink, and when he saw the horde advancing, he probably dove headfirst into the river. The bathing metaphor was an unfortunate mistake on my part.)

Now, I’d hate to leave you wondering about the demise of the bug-eyed TNP caught without his Bug Dope. (Which reminds me—I’ve often pondered on the short name given to that powerful spray, but one day it came to me, the name refers to the idiot that leaves his can of spray locked in the truck! [Any resemblance to the protagonist in this tale, or to myself, is purely coincidental. All rights to self abuse are reserved.™]

Anyway, the blackflies’ aforementioned climb up the pant-legs will not be discovered at all, for the obstinate devils carry anesthetic in their toothy kit of devilry. The bites will not be discovered until night, while trying to sleep. But sleep will never come, as the bites itch longer than it took the dinosaurs to go extinct. Moreover, scratching the Blackfly bites is much like taking a sharp knife to your throat, because when you scratch the red lumps, you'll wish you had a sharp knife to take to your throat for being such a jack-wagon to scratch them in the first place, as the torture from the itch is unending!

Of a sudden, your ear begins to itch, but not on the outside. No. Deep down on the eardrum you sense the itch. The little beggars do not follow the rules of war (Marquess of Queensberry rules you say? Why, they would only respect him as a possible blood donor, they'd never pay attention to his rules of fair fighting!). For you see, the sadistic twits have the power to attack in unmentionable places, delicate places, ones impossible to relieve of that infernal, itching if one is to retain one's dignity.

On a related note, remember the horseflies I alluded to earlier, well the TNP has been known to assault them with a rope—not to swat or slash at them, but to lasso them, and some hardy sourdoughs have even bragged of saddling the smaller ones, and using them for bizarre northern rodeos where the mosquitoes are let out of the shoot, roped, hogtied, and then timed for the requisite eight seconds. Moreover, some people even exaggerate by saying you can shoot mosquitoes up north with a shotgun. This is total nonsense. A shotgun simply will not bring them down, but a lucky burst from a 20mm cannon has been known to blow off a wing, or a leg now and again.

But, seriously, the doomed TNP finally made it to his friend, who was leisurely swinging his detector over a patch of exposed graphite-schist (that terrible, red-hot bedrock!). However, the TNP, on hearing a low moan, followed by a screeching sound, and then another low moan, quite naturally thought his buddy had stumbled on some good luck by finding a chunk of gold.
Imagine the TNP’s surprise when he looked up to see the sound was merely coming from his partner's mouth, the mouth of a writhing, tortured form, his partner bursting forth from a swarming, living, blood-bank. The aforementioned cloud entirely alive with a unified purpose! Yet, once the intrepid prospector stopped running, the bloodthirsty insects were hotly upon him again, eager to supply their blood collection factory.

The TNP raced toward his partner, as if to offer assistance. (As a side note, that wall of bugs was incredibly thick. So substantial and thick in fact that the pursued TNP took out his Bowie knife, and cut a square hole right through those bugs so he could see his buddy.) However, the TNP, with a wild look in his eye, approached his buddy and appeared to lunge straight for the throat of his partner (through the hole he’d cut in the cloud) with that same aforementioned Bowie knife, but at the last second, he purposefully shredded his partner’s jacket with the knife instead, just to get the Bug Dope from his partner’s front pocket, and then the TNP hastily departed, cloud in tow.

Now, this whole tale may seem like a simple everyday matter to most of you. Indeed, almost of no consequence. But I assure you, it was quite a serious and stressful matter. And what about the TNP you ask? Why, it’s rumored he’s still holed up somewhere deep in an abandoned drift mine, where it’s dark and cold, a place far too cold for Bugs, but not too cold for Dopes.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jeff95531]

Yes Lanny. That was the story you mentioned and I have been waiting for. To back up your claims of the torturer-est flying and biting insects of the North, I offer this...

On a salmon expedition in AK, my buddy and I had to walk a feeder stream to reach the river. A light rain was welcome as the bugs were no where to be found. We each had chest waders on so accessible skin was at a minimum. We were fishless and an hour away from our vehicle and we dejectedly decided to return. Funny thing tho, just because it stopped raining didn't mean the water was done rising. So, in 100+ humidity and bouncing like a couple of bobbers on our tip toes as we work our way up the feeder stream. We can't see the bottom and sweating like there's no tomorrow. The mosquito's were in a tight knit fog around each of us and with each drop of perspiration, another kamikaze group swarmed in. WE WERE SUFFERING! We are running (in slow motion) looking in desperation for the red flag we tied at our entry to the stream. Hallucinations of "I SEE THE FLAG!" drives us harder and faster...sweating all the more profusely! I reach for the Deet and...IT'S GONE! Panic sets in as I look at my partner's face. He knows without asking and we look 50 yards downstream to see the can lazily floating on it's side. We BOTH run for it because who ever get's it first can use it first (Duh). Problem is, we both are floating like ballerina's. OK...so now you know Lanny is not making this up.

Another time...Black Flies

Another one of my younger and more adventurous buddies knew a pilot who regularly flew into St Mary's AK. He convinced me to go. St. Mary's is as close to Russia as I've ever been, and the promise of 3 out of 5 different species of salmon running, trophy pike and grayling, well count me in.

Now this is July in AK but way out there, it was supposed to be rainy and cool. So we packed accordingly, lots of black layers to soak up the sun. Well so happens it was a record heat wave when we get there. So 20 miles upriver from the nearest village, we are sweltering and getting a royal sunburn in 90+ degrees. I fish wearing only my chest waders and I'm sweating my a** off. But the day is glorious, catching large fish 3 out of every 4 casts...each taking 5 minutes or more to land on light tackle. Went to sleep tired and happy.
The next morning. I awake to my two camp mates talking and joking outside. I realize something is very wrong with my back. I move side to side in the sleeping bag, and it feels good...but ONLY as long as I move. The itch comes back as soon as I stop moving. I pull myself out of bed and my head is clouded. I DO NOT feel good. I ask my friend Doug to look at my back, I think I got sunburned. He took one look and said "oh no...that's not sun burn...are you ok man? It looks like something bit the sh** out of you!"
I got back in my bag, and scratched my back in my unzipped bag....all day and all night, sick to my stomach from what ever it was they injected into me. I will never ever forget it.

Sometimes nature hands your *** to you real quick up North.

 

[Lanny in AB]

So very, very true Jeff. Those bugs, their bites and their stings are never any fun. Without DEET I don't know if I'd have made it back with any blood left in me!

Thanks for posting your little story. I enjoyed reading it, and it sure did bring back a bunch of memories, but the itching memories I can do without.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

I'm currently working on another gold story and hope to have it done in the not too distant future.

In the meantime, I'll send out an open invitation (as I've always done) to anyone else that has a gold-chasing story, tale, or poem that they've written.

If you'd like to add it to this thread, please post away for others (and myself, of course) to enjoy.

I love reading about other people's gold adventures.

Thanks Jeff for your addition!

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

I still remember the first time I saw a drift mine. This is the story of that trip.

I found myself to heck and gone up north, deep in forests and mountains completely foreign to me. It was an area I’d researched carefully, but the lonely wildness of the place stunned me. It was like I’d emerged from some kind of wilderness time machine. Moreover, I expected an old Sourdough with his mule to step out of the bush at any second.



In my earlier research, I’d discovered a gold rush set after the mid 1800’s in this place, and the reason I’d made the trip was I was getting serious about metal detecting for gold nuggets. The goldfield I’d picked was famous for coarse gold running from .86 to .92 in fineness. Furthermore, the former gold strike’s location was so isolated I felt there was a great chance to find nuggets and coarse gold.

I was travelling light. I had a Keene river sluice and my metal detector. My buddy had his metal detector and a river sluice he’d fabricated. (He can make just about anything out of metal.)

Our method of transportation was the Green Dragon, a fire-breathing Dodge diesel. In the back we had our grub, our bedrolls, a wall tent with wood-burning stove, a Honda 400 quad, and our picks, shovels and bars. Behind the seat, our detectors rested atop the Winchester 30-30, safely tucked away in its scabbard. Between us were two cans of bug dope, ones heavily laced with DEET, an essential item in the deep north woods.



On the trip in, I’d seen a few lazy bears foraging for berries. Osprey stalked the various pristine streams that intersected the logging roads. On a related note, one of the bridges crossed a river lined by a chasm of bedrock that haunts me to this day; it had all the elements of a dredger’s dream come true, and I can only imagine how much gold lies trapped there.





(More later as I find the time.)

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

Some of the scenery I experience when I'm off chasing the gold:







All the best,

Lanny

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

 

[Lanny in AB]

Part II

The rest of the way in, we spotted a wide variety of wildlife along the rough trail. In addition, the road’s elevation changed constantly as a series of steep climbs crested in the foothills, and then rushed downhill to cross numerous wooden bridges and multiple streams, after which the elevation rose yet again. But with each series of climbs and falls, the overall elevation increased until we found ourselves much higher, in the mountains proper.

Snow still capped the highest peaks as summer is a very brief visitor at this latitude, and plants and animals must maximize the short warm season to prepare for the inevitable return of winter.

The last stretch of logging road paralleled a chain of lakes, their clear surfaces alive with countless ripples left by feeding trout.

The road forked, with one branch running almost straight north, the other heading west. We took the west fork and soon found ourselves at our destination.

Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of what I saw. To say we had travelled back in time would not do it justice. There were many old log cabins nestled among the aspens and pines. Little roads ran off the main road to connect with these structures, some of them on the upside, others on the downside of the mountain. Rarely did we see a yard that did not have some type of mining equipment standing in it: dozers, backhoes, excavators, power plants, trommels, wash plants, etc. The selection of powered equipment consisted of many that had been patched multiple times, and more than a few gold washing machines were unique, homemade creations.

We stopped at the local store as a courtesy to introduce ourselves. The log structure had a large propane tank next to it in the yard for filling cylinders and vehicles, and it had two gas pumps, one for regular fuel, and one for diesel. There was a small cabin with two beds for rent next to the store. Not far off was a tiny combination laundry and shower building located near a large storage building constructed entirely of sturdy logs. Furthermore, there was a satellite tower for communications attached to the store as well.

After we left the store, we realized there were no power-lines anywhere in the little community as everything ran on generated electricity, either from burning diesel, or from collecting solar through panels. As well, there were no water or gas lines, but there every cabin had a large pile of firewood stacked along the side for cooking and heating purposes.

We continued down the road until we found a large clearing with grass. We set up the wall tent, unpacked the rest of the contents from the Green Dragon, including the Honda, and then we built a nice, hot fire in the wood-burning stove. We cooked our supper, ate a hearty meal, then crawled into our sleeping bags and slept like the dead until the next morning.

(More later, as I find the time.)

All the best,

Lanny

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