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]

Nugget Hump, conclusion:

I went back to the hump to see what else Mother Nature had left in that location.

The daylight was fading, so I had to work quickly. A couple of large ravens were wheeling around above me, uttering their strange croaking cries. There was no wind, and gladly, no bugs! The setting sun had lit the opposite bank on fire with the golden glow of its rays. The sound of the river's run was a comforting song.

Life was good.

After scanning a bit more, I took out two smaller nuggets deposited among some larger cobbles, thus making four for the day. I'd found myself a genuine patch, and I was happily excited, but the sun had long since fled, and my wife could no longer read her book in the twilight, so I packed it in and headed back to camp.

The downside was that we had to leave early the next morning to drive back home. No more nugget shooting time.

I didn't get back until the next week. Moreover, in the interim, my buddy had tried his luck on the spot and found a nice flat nugget with his Minelab. He was quite happy as it had been a while since he'd found a nugget with his detector. He's retired, and he's had some health issues, so he can't detect for very long, but he was happy with his find. Moreover, he let me know that someone else had seen where I'd been working, and well, that's often the way it is. So, when I got back to the diggings the following weekend, I happened to meet the nugget shooter that had "shot" Nugget Hump in my absence. He'd found three nice nuggets, but his largest was still smaller than my biggest, so I still felt pretty good.

However, he had something else to show me. He'd been walking along an old haul road on his way back to camp, and he'd decided he might as well swing his detector on the way back. Of course he found the usual selection of nuts, bolts, nails, chunks of welding rod, etc., things that you'll find along any old mining road. As well, he'd found quite a few bits of lead to boot, and any nugget shooter knows how frustrating that can be. But, just off the side of the road he got a nice mellow tone. He said he almost didn't dig as he'd convinced himself it was most-likely that annoying lead again, for he was tired after a long day of detecting. However, something in the back of his brain told him to dig the target anyway, so he did.

What a great piece of luck that he did! It was a beautiful gold and quartz specimen piece, nice and round, like a medium sized gum-ball!! It sure was pretty, and he was justifiably excited to show it to me. I congratulated him on his beautiful find.

He assured me he thought that Nugget Hump was hunted out, but I told him I'd give it another try anyway.

I went back and spent several hours covering the area carefully, but no luck. I tried some other spots close by as well, but the gold had seemed to desert me. I went back to camp that night very tired and somewhat disappointed.

The next day, I took my quad and a little trailer and hauled out some buckets of dirt to see if I'd missed any gold. The results were very disappointing, and it was a lot of hard work for nothing, but at least I knew I'd run a decent test. Not testing the surrounding dirt has caused me to miss gold in the past, so I do it now to reassure myself I'm not leaving any gold behind, especially when I find nuggets in a virgin spot.

It rained the next day, and then my time was up. I had to break camp and head home.

It was two weeks before I made the return trip. The weather had changed to beautiful once again. The green of the pines and spruce was an emerald gown of majesty. The sun was warm; the pines were filling the air with their incredible scent, the smell that defines mountain air for me.

All was well.

I hopped on the quad and headed back to the hump to see if things had changed in my absence. Well, they sure had. A group of unknowns had really gone to work hard on that place. They'd hauled out lots of dirt, and they'd left cobbles everywhere! Nevertheless, I was hopeful that perhaps with all of the ground they'd disturbed that perhaps they'd uncovered some areas left undetected. And, as luck would have it, they had! You see, they were only screening the dirt to haul it off to the river to work it down, and obviously they done all of that work without using detectors to check up after, as you'll soon see.

After cleaning up all of the cobbles, and after carefully raking the area again, I got back to work scanning for gold. It wasn't long until I had a couple of soft sounds to investigate. They both produced little nuggets. One was chunky with a bright yellow tone, and the other was flat and dull. Once again, I was hitting that local double run of glacial gold common to the diggings in that area.

I kept at it, and soon I'd liberated two more small, flat nuggets. That little Minelab X-Terra was sure shooting hot at the hump! I was now up to eight nuggets freed from the patch. My little gold bottle was making a serious growl now when I spun its contents next to my ear!

The next day, I worked the rest of the hump. It was sunny and hot, but I knew the gold was there, so I kept swinging the coil. I drank a ton of water, and stripped down to work with my shirt sleeves rolled up. The sweat was building up on the cups of my headphones, but I dared not detect without being able to hear the slightest variation in the threshold.

I slowed down and listened very carefully. I heard the faintest of whispers, got my pick, scraped some dirt, and the tone grew louder. I was in an area about half the size of a bathtub, and the rocks were looking very old as there were bigger chunks of magnetite popping up, and the dirt had that telltale rusted orange look of old channel material. I moved off more over-burden and kept at it. Signal after signal whispered to me as I slowly scrubbed the coil across the virgin dirt. By the time I was finished, Nugget Hump had rewarded me with sixteen nuggets! What a great little patch. I hadn't been in one that productive in years.

When I got back home, I rattled the bottle for my wife, and she instantly knew by the sound that there was a new crowd of sassy gold keeping company with the four originals already in the bottle!

What a fun patch Nugget Hump produced.

All the best,

Lanny

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

 

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[KevinInColorado]

Great to have new "Lanny stories" to read...thanks!

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great to have new "Lanny stories" to read...thanks!

Kevin,

Thanks! It's good to be back for a bit.

Hope all is well with you in Colorado. I've been reading a book lately called "Men to match my mountains", and I'm at the part where the gold rush is starting in Colorado--fascinating story! You live in a great gold state with lots of gold fun to be had.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jeff95531]

Ah yes...sometimes it's you...sometimes it's the equipment. From keeping up with you over the years, it certainly wasn't you technique...just needed a different tool! And a nice collection collected to say "SO THERE"! Well done thinking outside the box.

One question tho...could you expand on copper-colored gold? I goggled it for images but all I found out is that it is the name of a popular woman's hair color.

BTW, your wife and mine do the exact same thing during our (my) outings. It reminds me of the very first flake I found. I took it to Karen and while I went to get the vial, she had it sitting on the tip of her finger while she marveled at seeing something for the first time. She looked very ill when I returned. I asked where the flake was and she said "OMG, I'm so sorry...a wind gust blew it off my finger".

Still pretty funny when I think about it.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Ah yes...sometimes it's you...sometimes it's the equipment. From keeping up with you over the years, it certainly wasn't you technique...just needed a different tool! And a nice collection collected to say "SO THERE"! Well done thinking outside the box.

One question tho...could you expand on copper-colored gold? I goggled it for images but all I found out is that it is the name of a popular woman's hair color.

BTW, your wife and mine do the exact same thing during our (my) outings. It reminds me of the very first flake I found. I took it to Karen and while I went to get the vial, she had it sitting on the tip of her finger while she marveled at seeing something for the first time. She looked very ill when I returned. I asked where the flake was and she said "OMG, I'm so sorry...a wind gust blew it off my finger".

Still pretty funny when I think about it.

The coppery tone on gold would be a slight reddish hue rather than the buttery yellow of gold without a copper tint.

Having the flake blow off her finger is a bit of irony for sure, as well as funny, and it reminds me of a story about a friend of mine that was showing a few small nuggets he'd found with his detector to his friend (he had them in the palm of his hand) when a horsefly bit him and through reflex, he swung at the bite and tossed the gold into a brush patch directly behind himself!

I'm lucky my wife likes to go with me when I chase the gold, and she's turned out to be a first-class sniper and panner to boot.

Thanks for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

A Lonesome Nugget Tale

Way, way back in the summer of '99, I was swinging the SD2100 up in Northern British Columbia. We four-wheeled up an incredibly bad road to get to the site. The road was so bad in fact that one of the other mining operations working in the same valley had dropped a big four-wheeled military surplus unit (British Bedford) in one of the bigger holes, one filled with muddy rain-water. The unit sunk up past the axles, stuck fast, and would not move. After fetching a Cat, they finally got it out. So, this was the same road we had to negotiate, with the same hole, and we moved very carefully until we finally made it up to where a small creek ran down out of the high mountains, where the road turned into a rough trail. It was very muddy with slick clay; the truck started to slip off the road, and we had to stop.

I got rigged up, made a lot of noise to let the Grizzlies in the thick pines know that we were in the area, and then I set off up the trail to do some detecting. Off the side of the trail, there was a long stretch of exposed bedrock that the Old-timers had cleaned off in the 1800's, but all I was finding were buckets of square nails, bits of old tin cans, and tiny pieces of wire, iron and copper. I spotted the remains of an old cabin further up the trail, an original from the 1800's. I scouted around it and tried some detecting, but there was so much trash under the moss that I gave up after a short while. (Upon reflection, that was probably not the brightest choice.) I marched over to the creek and was confronted with piles of rocks all over the place where the Old-timers had hand-mined the creek bed, but once again, all I found were pieces of tin, plus lead bits from the solder of old tins, and the ubiquitous and ever-present square nails.

I worked my way back down the trail to where the truck was parked. The scent of the pines was a magic potion of green refreshment.

My buddy was slugging it out in the brush swinging his 2100, and he was really slugging it out with the bugs, and the bugs were winning!! Anyway, he came blitzing it back to the truck to spray up with the bug dope again, and off he went in a different direction, trailing that radioactive fog generated by Deet. Sometimes he really is a man of few words.

Left in the silence, I found myself standing by the truck. I'd already detected all the exposed bedrock I could find in the area, but I'd noticed on the way up the trail that someone had dug a test hole and piled a big mound of muck by the road.

Since I had nothing else to do, and since my buddy was busy donating life and soul to the Northern Bug Blood Bank, I wandered down to the test hole. There were little brown and orange butterflies all over the banks where it was wet. The creek gurgled noisily through the cobbles. The northern song birds were serenading in the deep woods. It was a gorgeous day.

I detected all around the bottom of the hole and only found some bits of corroded tin, and two square nails. On the sides of the hole I found more nails, but these were round nails, so obviously this was an area that was reworked in the 30's; in fact, there were more miners active in this particular goldfield in the 30's than there were in the 1800's during the peak of the original gold strike.

At the far end of the test hole, there was a large boulder. I went over, swung the detector, and the whole thing was a massive hot rock! I'm no geologist, so I have no idea what kind of rock it was, but the 2100 constantly sounded off on it no matter how I configured or set it. However, just to the side of it was a little dike of dirt, one pushed up from the test hole. I climbed up on top, waved off the butterflies, and started to detect it. The ground was very slippery, and the next thing I knew, it had caved off from under my feet, and down I rocketed right into the muck and water in the bottom of the test hole!

After this little adventure, I was ready to head back to the truck. I was muddy, wet, and tired. It had been a long unrewarding day in spite of the beautiful weather, but that far north, it's still very light at eleven at night, so my stubborn streak kicked in, and I decided I'd claw my way back up to detect the rest of the top of that wall of dirt. And that's the thing, there was no river run in it, just a bunch of black clay and goo. I walked along more carefully this time, came to the break in the dirt I'd made when I slipped off, and gingerly slid the coil across the gap. Almost instantly I got a nice sweet signal. This one was nice and smooth, no harsh growl like you get with a round nail. I worked my way across the breach and set up shop. I passed the coil over the signal again, approaching from a different direction. It was still a nice smooth sound, and very clear. The target sounded like it was shallow. I dug down with my plastic scoop and scanned again. The hole was silent, but the scoop had a nice rich sound when I scanned it. I started to cut and split off the dirt in the scoop. I finally got to the last of the dirt, and the signal was still in the scoop. I dumped the dirt in my hand and passed it under the coil. The signal was definitely in my hand. I started to move the lumps of soil on the coil and then, thwack! The object hit the coil. All I could see was that black dirt. I moved the bits around and one of them squealed when I moved it. I picked it up and rubbed off the dirt, and sure enough, there was that unmistakable, unforgettable golden glow. After cleaning it off, I had a nice round northern nugget. It was a nice sassy five grammer.

I detected around the rest of the dirt, but no more luck. When my buddy came out of the bush and saw my nugget, he gave the detecting a go as well, but no luck whatsoever. So, who knows why that lonesome nugget picked that spot, but it sure did.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

 

[Army of 1]

Another entertaining tale , thanks Lanny ..cheers Mick

 

[Lanny in AB]

Another entertaining tale , thanks Lanny ..cheers Mick

Mick,

Many thanks to you for dropping in to say so!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

The Rooster, The Corn, and The Slug?

This is an unlikely sounding title for a gold tale, I completely agree. But, it really is a gold story, even with its puzzling name.

This tale began twenty-four hours before any gold chasing happened. In fact, the first eight hours were nothing but the usual boring tasks required of any gold trip: organizing the grub, bedding, tools, fuel, equipment, firearms, and other bits and pieces necessary to sustain and protect life for several weeks while living in the deep northern woods, a unforgiving destination where self-sufficiency is an absolute requirement.

After the organization of our supplies, we loaded the mechanized equipment on the trailer: a small wash plant, a variety of pumps, and a small home-made backhoe. In other years, the much lighter freight consisted a gold jig, or various sizes of smaller sluice boxes with their required pumps and hoses.

As with any prospecting expedition, we'd packed the signature accommodation of generations of prospectors, a white canvas wall tent. As well, we packed the essential wood-burning stove with its proper lengths of stove pipe. Even in summer those northern nights will put ice on the fire bucket in the tent.

In the back of the 3/4 ton diesel, we stowed the pack boxes of food, the duffel bags of bedding and clothes, and the chainsaw and axe. All items were snugly arranged around the four-wheeler in the truck bed.

On a connected note, when it comes to prospecting in the north, I've fallen in love with the sound of the Cummin's engine that powers the truck; its throaty song is both comforting and reassuring. Undoubtedly, this bond is a result of its uncompromising endurance and reliability over great distances. So, its very sound is a symbol to me of summer gold hunts. Gold hunts in regions so vast they steadfastly defy man's development, easily hiding them in its profound immensity.

There are places where you can top a mountain on a dimming trail to gaze off into the distance and see nothing but deep-green soldiered ranks of pine, fir, and cedar. This undulating forest of marching trees crests rugged peak after endless ridge, until the distance melts and blurs them all into one surreal horizon.

This vista contains no sign, no hint even, of human disturbance or occupation. No power-lines, no cat-trails, no cut-lines, no excavation scars; no, nothing but the vast splendor of untamed nature. This sight always leaves me feeling insignificant in its presence, yet awed by its savage beauty and majesty.

As is often the case, I'm wandering while admiring Mother Nature. So, back to my gold tale.

After a sixteen-hour drive all night and well into the next day, we arrived at the gold fields of North Central British Columbia. The black flies, the no-seeums, and the mosquitoes were having a bloodsucking banner year. In a gesture of self-preservation, before I stepped out of the 4X4, I made certain my can of survival sauce (bug dope), was in-hand, ready to hose myself down as soon as I stepped from the vehicle.

That necessity accomplished, including the top of my pant legs where they tucked into my socks, shirt cuffs and collar, hair on the back and top of my head, ear canals and hat brim (I'm not kidding!), I grabbed the Minelab and fired it up. It gave a nice reassuring hum, letting me know it had survived the brutal last leg of the trip. (This last leg takes five hours, all while traveling over unforgiving logging roads. These washboarded, hole infested roads are minefields of obstacles. A sample of the obstacles are moose, elk, deer, black bear, grizzly bear, wolverine, bits and pieces of lost freight, and of course, logging trucks.)

My detector was outfitted with the standard eleven-inch DD coil, and I had on a nice set of headphones which did nothing but annoy the swarms of bugs, by denying them a taste of my tender ears! Moreover, I learned earlier to keep my mouth shut as well to avoid a meal of flying protein.

Making my way over to an old site, I walked over to the exposed bedrock.

We were working an abandoned excavation containing a small shelf that dropped down from a larger formation above. This was a minor site, one worked where the bedrock faulted. It was a spot where black-graphite-schist met a harder iron-red formation. The wall behind it was a combination of pockets of slump, all serrated with sheets of broken slate from the canyon-wall above.

The pines stood sentinel along the top of the wall, oblivious to our efforts. The songbirds in the bordering forest filled the air with their timeless melodies. Mountain flowers tossed their heads gently in the slight meadow breeze, scenting the air with their perfume briefly as an irredescent humming bird zipped past my head.

What a glorious place to look for gold.

I was eager to detect the place where the two bedrock types met. There was folding and faulting that had undoubtedly created gold traps. This site, abandoned only a day earlier, was what the locals called an old Tertiary channel, composed of virgin bedrock that hadn't seen the light of day in untold eons. However, as it was a small site, my hopes were slim. I slid down some bordering slump and planted my feet on the bedrock. The lower portion was covered with water. The seepage from an unseen spring was already drowning the site.

I skidded the coil over the bedrock, and after only two sweeps I had a signal. Now, I've learned over the years, that detecting old workings is condition that can promote madness, the madness brought on by dealing with undesirable signals. These signals are generated mostly by bits of blade and track; the head, tip or entire body of a square nail; can-slaw, bits of wire, or other trash that's made its way into the pit. The aforementioned nails and assorted trash are the ghostly remnants of long lost sluices, flumes, or cabins.

So, with some trepidation, I scanned the spot again and still got a solid response. I scraped the bedrock off, passed the coil over the place again and got a sweet signal. A visual examination showed nothing. Dragging the super-magnet over the bedrock was fruitless too. Detecting the spot again produced a nice, low on the sides, peaked in the middle nugget-like sound. My pulse increased.

I got out my small sledge and chisel and carefully chipped around the signal area. I broke out a piece of cemented bedrock, baseball-sized. I passed it under the coil: the signal was in the chunk of rock. Carefully, I began tapping on the rock, hoping to get it to crumble. A golf ball-sized piece broke free. I checked it. A nice, steady signal. I gingerly broke it down, hammering carefully, and out popped a nice nugget that looked like a rooster's head, complete with a comb and beak! The sculpture was a nice five-gram piece of Mother Nature's finest craft. Caching it in my plastic sniffer bottle, I scanned the area again, but this time expanding my search. Approximately a meter away, I got another nice signal. This one seemed longer in its length. Could it be an old square nail? I scraped the host rock and could see no such thing. The next scan produced a slightly stronger signal, though not as strong as the rooster nugget. This tone was softer, but still a characteristic mellow sound. I chipped along the bedrock and opened a spot that hid a crevice. The compacted material was not cemented, but it was the exact color of the black bedrock. I took out a bent sniping tool and drug it the length of the crevice to where that crevice hit the next drop in the bedrock. Out popped four quadruplets, four identical kernels of corn. They each weighed in at almost a half a gram, making two grams of corn for the rooster perhaps?

The remaining bedrock was a very small area. I scanned it with the DD and got no response. I pulled out the 18-inch mono and slid it around the entire area. It was considerably noisier than the DD, and I could only get the SD-2100 to run on balance one. I skidded the area again and faintly heard something, but I had no idea what I was hearing. I'd never heard such a whispered response before. The sound was just a slight break, a bump in the threshold. Now, that big 18-inch was severely pounding that graphite schist with electronic pulses, and I started to wonder about ghosting, the false signals generated by super-hot bedrock.

Intrigued, I took out the chisel and carved off about an inch of rock. I scanned again and this time there was a faint signal, not a whisper or a bump, but a signal. I worked off more rock and scanned again. This time there was a louder signal. I broke out a piece of bedrock, gently crushed it, and out slid a smooth golden slug. Four grams of hammered gold. No character, no definition, just a fat, little slug.

So, what was this experience all about? Near as I can figure it, it had something to do with a rooster, four kernels of corn and a slug.

 

[theseeker]

Lanny, thank you for sharing your nugget hunting adventures with us! I always enjoy your tales of the BC wilderness and the experiences you have had up there hunting the gold! I learn something from every story you tell. Very grateful to you for that! Wishing you find lots of nuggets this year!!


Pete

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny, thank you for sharing your nugget hunting adventures with us! I always enjoy your tales of the BC wilderness and the experiences you have had up there hunting the gold! I learn something from every story you tell. Very grateful to you for that! Wishing you find lots of nuggets this year!!
Pete

Many, many thanks for your kind words and appreciation.

They mean a lot as it takes a lot of time to organize the details and write the stories.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Improved Technology is Better.

T'was the summer of '05. The day was cloudy. The gold had been elusive.

The chance to use a new 3500 was appealing.

My buddy had just purchased a new Minelab 3500. As most of you know, I'm still a die-hard 2100 man. I love that machine. It's found a lot of gold nuggets for me, and it still does. But, after all, I would never have tried a 2100 either, as the old VLF's had found a lot of gold too. So, why switch or try? However, I did try the 2100, and it blew the boots right off of my VLF detecting experiences. And, that's because the ground I hunt it very often openly hostile and red hot electronically; it's far too hot for VLF's.

Thus, the Minelab pulse machines began my love affair with the mellower SD's, and the results have been splendid, solid, and satisfying. (I also had some satisfying nugget hunts with different brand name pulse machine, a Tesoro, but those are other stories for other days.)

To begin, we make summer-camp up in the Boreal Forests of British Columbia, Canada's most western province. Its mountains dive steeply into the Pacific Ocean, and a chain of outer islands continue the province's extension, until all land eventually submits to the ocean's depths. B.C. is a magnificent province (we have provinces instead of states here in Canada), with all kinds of mountains, rivers, lakes and breath-taking endless forests. All kinds of genuine wilderness remains, and while chasing the gold, I've seen lots of wildnerness in the United States and in Alberta too. By the way, British Columbia's Eastern neighbor is Alberta, and the two provinces share the Rocky Mountains, but the one that meets the ocean has the lion's share of the gold. Nevertheless, Alberta has one of the world's largest oil reserves, so things even out.

But, enough of that, it's time to get back to my story. So, there I was, with a nice, new 3500, and my friend kept begging me to try it out. After all, he'd been a true-blue 2100 user, but then he switched to the 3000, and being duly impressed, rolled happily on to fully embrace the 3500. Moreover, I confess to turning on his machine a time or two just to listen to that unique threshold, and it had a pleasantly different, intriguing threshold from my war worn 2100.

So, I scoured my mind for a place to try the gadget out. Through reflection, I remembered a place that had always intrigued me, one that I'd hammered with the 2100, but was only ever rewarded with bits of metal from Cat tracks and blades, plus old bullet leads from the 1800's, square nails from the same period, and other assorted bits of magnetic and nonmetallic metallic odds and ends. It was not what could be termed an easy spot to hunt, as it bore many past dig marks from other skilled hunters, and the bedrock base there was the foundation of an old hydraulic operation. Some parts were recently worked to the mother rock, leaving crevices filled with rock-hard gumbo clay and stone. A place like this was not the friendliest place to hunt indeed.

But, the present day placer miners were moving things about a bit, digging test holes here and there, uncovering interesting formations, ones where the gumbo clay was still tight on the bedrock right in the crevices. Finding this is a good sign, and it often produces promising sites for detecting. So, I fired up the 3500. The first thing I noticed was how quiet it was vs. the 2100 and how soothing the sound of that new threshold was. In those hydraulic workings, I'd always had my 2100 chirp like a bird gone mad, and I'd spend considerable time trying to quiet down the annoying electronic interference, with mixed results in adverse sound reduction, yet never what I would classify as "quiet" results. But that 3500 just acted like the pit was a minor annoyance, one to be quieted quickly, and it had an attitude like, "Let's get on with this! So, I did.

I worked the exposed bedrock and found lots of bits of steel, and more bullet lead from the 1800's, along with modern buckshot, old squares, etc. You get the picture. I went and worked the crevices exposed by the test holes and found more of the same, and even found a door hinge tight on the bedrock under 15 feet of boulder clay! How it got there? Well, that's an unsolved mystery. But, it could have been driven in by the argonauts of old and then buried by the hydraulic operation. Well, I detected lower in the strata and got into some very interesting bedrock formations, but no gold. (That happens frequently.) I even hammered the ground where my buddy had found a nice nugget in a rising crevice, just above the bedrock in the clay, but no luck.

Hours had passed. You know how sweaty you get in the summer, and the sun was out now, beating a tattoo on my head and shoulders. I was getting somewhat jaded, nice threshold or not! I looked at some broken bedrock where they'd raked down an up-welling reef with the teeth of the excavator bucket. I hit it and was rewarded with the usual suspects, and hordes of that old metal to boot. I reached up above the scrape-down to well above the bedrock where the over-wash from the hydraulic operation merged with the bedrock, and I got a signal. It sounded like the pointed tip of another square nail (for those of you that don't know, those little tips of square nails sound awful sweet, often like nuggets do), and because it was up high, and because I was really stretching to get my arm to the target, I almost didn't dig it. (There's a lesson in here somewhere . . . )

Now I'm a prospector that realizes that thinking of not digging on a target is the height of gold-nugget detecting blasphemy, but it happens! You get zoned-in to the thinking that you've been digging trash all day, so the target logically has to be more trash. Why bother, right? Deadly thinking for sure, but prevalent nonetheless. Well, I resisted the urge to quit and dug the target. It moved down the hill, and what a nightmare digging it, what with me hanging onto the hillside with my toenails and all. But, the target moved, so I reached up with my super-magnet and pushed that dirt around, fully expecting to see the tip of a square nail smiling back at me from the face of the magnet.

No smile, and no nail.

This is always when things get interesting, but I didn't allow myself to get too pumped, as I'd previously dug a lot of lead that day as well. So, somewhat juiced, but somewhat sobered, I reached up with my plastic scoop and tried a clever capture maneuver. Nontheless, I missed, then skidded down the broken bedrock, barking one of my already tender shins. There must still be a tapestry of curses woven out there somewhere in that vast, wild blue bowl of northern sky . . .

Regardless, I climbed again, and this time snagged the clutch of rock and dirt that cradled the signal. I worked my way down to a level spot and started the sift, cast out, resift, detect, cast out resift, detect loop technique, and eventually was left with a couple of tablespoons of material in the scoop. Happily, the scoop held the signal. I gently started sifting material onto the head of the coil and, WHAP, the fat-splat growling sound that no detectorist can ever forget sang its beefy song in my ears.

Now, we all know that lead makes the same sound, but something in the dim recesses of my brain told me this was not lead. (Ever had that sensation?) I poked my finger onto the coil and moved the bits and pieces around until something growled in response to my movements.

I picked the target up. The weight was sure right. But, it was clay-covered, a mystery. I used nature's ever ready emergency liquid supply, a shot of saliva, to remove the stubborn clay, and there it was, a sassy nugget. Long it was, the shape of a shoe sole in fact, quite flattened, but weighing in at almost two grams. Not the biggest nugget I've found, no way. But one that brought a contented smile as I realized what a fine machine the 3500 was, for this ground had been hit many times, by many others, myself included.

All the best, and the other nugget find will have to wait for another day,

Lanny


A rookie checking out a suction eddy on some bedrock--he's cleaned all of the big rocks off.

 

[BurntBear]

Excellent post Lanny! Always puts a smile on my face. -Luke

 

[Lanny in AB]

Excellent post Lanny! Always puts a smile on my face. -Luke

Luke,

Many thanks for dropping in to have a read. I'm glad you're enjoying the stories about some of my adventures and misadventures.

New brain research out suggests that we learn far more when we make mistakes vs. trying something we're already familiar or comfortable with. Well, I guess that's why I've learned so much over the years while I've been out chasing the gold! The problems have come along by the trainload.

I've sure had some epic failures while trying to find out where Mother Nature hid her golden cache, but I've also learned a lot about where not to look, and what not to do, so I guess my brain is learning a bit.

Thanks again, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Jeff95531]

Luke,

Many thanks for dropping in to have a read. I'm glad you're enjoying the stories about some of my adventures and misadventures.

New brain research out suggests that we learn far more when we make mistakes vs. trying something we're already familiar or comfortable with. Well, I guess that's why I've learned so much over the years while I've been out chasing the gold! The problems have come along by the trainload.

I've sure had some epic failures while trying to find out where Mother Nature hid her golden cache, but I've also learned a lot about where not to look, and what not to do, so I guess my brain is learning a bit.

Thanks again, and all the best,

Lanny

Very well stated Lanny. Me too. She sure can humble you when she has a mind to.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Very well stated Lanny. Me too. She sure can humble you when she has a mind to.

I see you've been to the same school of learning!

The lessons learned certainly simplify the next outing, but there always seems to be more riddles to solve, more lessons to learn . . .

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

What Lies in The Clay . . .

Well, here's the follow-up story to the last nugget find, but one that presented a far different challenge.

After I'd worked myself into a gritty sweat finding the two gram nugget, I decided that the day wasn't quite the waste I'd started to believe, so I made a decision to head down onto the level ground and detect the abandoned placer pit.

(As it was a beautiful day, with a cobalt blue sky that commonly sets off the mountain chain I hunt in, and as it was a sunny, warm afternoon, the finding of the first nugget made me hopeful that the new machine might have another find in it yet.)

For those of you that have detected abandoned placer pits, you know well of the challenges. An abandoned placer mine is a mine indeed of fine pieces of blade and metal shavings (for example, bits of the blade of the cat, and the tracks of the cat and the excavator), hundreds and hundreds of them, and everyone of those pesky bits are willing to sound off in the headphones.

For those of you that don't know what a placer pit is, it's a large excavation made where placer gold is common. However, finding the residence of gold is something people have been trying to discover for millennia, and today's operations are no different. Anyway, a placer pit is started, in my neck of the woods, by digging through anywhere from ten to eighty feet of boulder clay. For the uniformed, your generic, run of the mill boulder clay is an ancient jumble of mess discarded when the glaciers got tired of packing that load around during the last ice age.

The huge sheets of moving ice simply hadn't the time or energy, or perhaps the will to carry all of that gumbo of rock-infested trash around anymore. So, they dumped it. Often, it was dumped haphazardly and part of that haphazard deposit involved covering up wonderful gold bearing stream channels, active and ancient! You must remember that some of those glaciers were miles high and many miles long and wide, and so when they dumped, well, there was a huge event. (Makes some of today's environmental dumping seem like tiny and insignificant by comparison.)

At any rate, the mighty glaciers dumped multiple annoying tons of clay, boulders, broken bedrock, etc., on pristine gold locations. So, today, you've got to get through the stern stuff to get to the old channels. Nevertheless, sometimes you punch all the way down through only to find that a prior glacier, had already scraped all the way to underlying bedrock to steal everything: gold, stream material, all! But, on those rare occasions when you find intact river-run, the fun sure begins; or it doesn't, depending on what that ancient run was carrying.

(As a side note, boulder clay made great stuff for tunneling. In drift mining, it supported itself as walls and roof very well. However, it was awful stuff to work through for those early placer miners armed only with pick and shovel while they chased the yellow metal using time-proven drifting methods. The
Sourdoughs tried to follow an exposed shelf of bedrock, or they estimated where the bedrock would be, and then they drifted horizontally along the bedrock to get the richest catch of gold. I could tell you quite the stories of some of those drift mines I've seen exposed by modern mining methods, but that's a tale for another day.)

Nonetheless, this particular pit, whose ground was definitely gold-bearing in the corner I was detecting, was productive. So much so that it had been hammered very hard, leaving all of the aforementioned bits of metal that buzzed in the headphones while detecting the bedrock. The reality is that it generated a detecting nightmare! However, it helps to remain positive, and hearing lots of targets signals the place wasn't worked out. So I kept at it while making the super-magnet look like a hedgehog on steroids, with iron hair shooting out in a dozen different directions.

Regardless, I finally worked over to a place that held a pile of clay. For those that have worked with clay, the stuff seems to have a lasting value as it keeps turning up, no matter how much of it you get rid of. In fact, in old placer pits, or hydraulic pits, the clay creeps and oozes its way back down into the pit, eventually reclaiming the ground. Clay is relentless and tenacious to a fault.

Still, I decided to swing the coil over the clay, but it proved deathly quiet. Actually, my ears enjoyed the break! So I decided to stick with it, and went around and around the area which was about the size of two yards of material. All at once I got a screamer, a genuine screamer! So my brain said, "Square nail, dummy!!" And you know what? It was a square nail, in great condition for a hundred and thirty-year-old survivor. But, that's all the signal was.

The clay got quiet again and then a hit. It was rather harsh sounding, and it proved to be the head of an old square, nothing more. I kept working the lumpy clay and then I got a faint break in the threshold. Not really a target, just a disturbance. I almost left it alone, as the electromagnetic influences around the pit are notorious for generating false signals. But, I decided to carve off several inches of clay and swing again. This time there was a sweet little signal, very soft, yet distinct.

For those of you that hunt gold with the SD's, or with the 3500's, know that those soft, sweet sounds are almost always generated by the upper-class metals: copper, brass, silver, lead, gold, not the false chirps of iron and steel. Moreover, the signal was distinct, soft and sweet. So, I ruled out another false signal from the baser, unworthy metals.

I scraped off several more inches and the signal was getting louder, but not harsher, still nice and sweet. This is a definite blood-pumper, when the signal stays soft and sweet as you get closer. I dug around the signal carefully and popped out a chunk of clay. I checked the hole, and there was still a signal. I detected the chunk, and there was a signal in it. I was thinking, "What the . . .!?" So, I placed the chunk aside and kept digging. Finally, the sound got louder, yet harsher, and I uncovered a rusty, bent, gum-boot ugly square nail. The rotten thing.

However, I still had the clump of clay to detect, so I picked it back up to scan the signal in it, to prove that it wasn't just a trick of the nail farther down on the bedrock. Well, the clump still had a signal, nice and soft. So, I started breaking off pieces and passed them under the coil until I got a chunk that had a signal. I took the clay and started to break it up in my scoop. Then I sifted it bits onto the coil, and, "Whap!", that happy sound cuffed my ears for the second time that day.

"Well, it's either gold or lead", I thought, as no previous passes with the magnet had grabbed anything. So, I pushed the stuff around on the coil until one object growled back. What a great little sound it made. I cleaned the clay off, with my previously mentioned secret technique, and there, smiling back at me was a sassy little 1.5 gram piece of gold, almost square in shape, and sporting quite the attitude. (It most likely had something to do with the fact that I'd disturbed its ancient slumber, who knows.) At any rate, I had the beefy little chunk, and I rattled it around in the bottle with its two gram partner, just to hear that lovely golden growl, a noise I'll never tire of.

As far as the noise from all those other targets detected that day, well, you can flat-out have every one of them! I'll gladly keep the golden rumblers.

All the best, and good hunting,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

What beeps isn't always . . .
Up at 5:00 in the morning. I rounded up two detectors for the trip, the Minelab X-Terra 705, a dual purpose detector that's a solid shooter for coins and is also a deadly little nugget getter; as well, I packed the Falcon MD20, a highly specialized 300 khz probe-like unit that loves to find tiny gold, but will also find bigger pieces of gold, as long as they're close to the surface.As the weather is still cranky this time of year, I grabbed my winter issue army, two-bag, down-filled sleeping gear. (There's nothing worse than being chilled to the bone in the mountains when you're trying to sleep.) I loaded up the usual gear: grub, picks, various shovels, backpack with sniping gear, gold bottles, pans, five-gallon plastic bucket, hiking boots, wading boots, and the necessary changes of clothing to use for layering in the mountains. You see, up here in the spring, we can get all four seasons in one day!

I hit the road in Little Blue, my smaller gasoline powered 4X4, and was soon climbing through the foothills on my way into the first mountain pass. On my way through, I noticed that none of the leaves were out yet, but the golden willows were sending the sap up to the top limbs, so the leaves will soon follow. All of the peaks are still covered in snow, but the areas of lower elevation between the peaks were starting to show some green in the meadows.

After winding my way through three separate passes, I hit the down slope that signaled I was within an hour of the claims.

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It was raining. Not a good sign.

When I hit camp, I unpacked in a light rain, set up all of my gear, then checked in with the locals to see what immediate conditions were like and to check to see if there was anything out of the ordinary (cranky bears, cougars on the prowl, etc.). After a good chunk of time chatting, and finding that things were pretty calm, I threw the gear I'd need into Little Blue and started my slow climb up the canyon. (The rain was an intermittent mist by now, and the sun was peeking over my shoulder as I headed west.)

The road up the canyon dates from the mid 1800's, and it literally hugs the cliff tops that crest the canyon walls. It's not for the faint of heart, and there are no series of guard rails to protect the careless. Moreover, there are very few places to negotiate passage around another vehicle, and sometimes it takes some fancy wall-crawling with two tires or some serious backing up to allow another vehicle to pass.

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I finally topped the first long rise, took a side road, and descended down a rough track that took me close to the river, but kept me above it and parallel to it on an ancient bench. On that bench was an excavation that I had permission to detect.

There was also a spot where pay dirt had been piled, but in checking that spot, all I did was turn my super-magnet (on the end of my pick) into a metal-spiked porcupine!

No nuggets.I left that ground and headed to a section where I knew some bedrock had been uncovered. Some other prospectors had found gold in a pay layer above the bedrock, but they said they weren't getting gold out of the bedrock itself. Now, I've seen this before on other hunts, and it's not uncommon in areas of glaciation, yet I always check bedrock that's exposed after untold millennia of burial under a deep, earthy blanket of rock and clay.

I hit some friable bedrock with the 705 and after only three swings (I know, it doesn't sound possible), I had a nice, mellow tone. But, I have to back up a bit. I'd decided to do a little experiment: I'd switched over to the discrimination side because I was sick to death of all metal mode and the buhzillion pieces of track and blade I'd dug earlier. So, after the third swing, I had a nice repeatable signal that read conductive. (I'd swung across I don't know how many "blanking" signals of trash on my path to that third swing.) I switched back to all metal, and the target was nice and crisp. After not much work, I had the nugget in my hand. It was flat and round, kind of like when you hammer out a lead BB. But, it was gold, and it was first catch of the day.

Knowing that gold likes to travel the same lazy path, I kept at that spot and soon had another, yet smaller nugget. I stayed in all metal mode and forced myself to dig every target, and I added yet more slivers of steel and iron to the super-magnet's weird hairdo.

I noticed a spot where the bedrock rose up to meet the boulder clay, and someone had done a lot of work in that area. There were several piles of old high-banker tailings. The bedrock was running out from under the clay in little rough troughs. I swung the Minelab over the troughs and got multiple signals. Well, as it was obvious the original miners had scraped it hard with a toothed bucket, passing the magnet across the bedrock netted a whole new crop of splinters of steel. I swept the area again, and there were still lots of signals, but I couldn't get any more magnetics on the end of the pick.

Moreover, the spaces among the bedrock in those little troughs were pretty small, so I broke out the Falcon to get the probe down into the little nooks and crannies. It was just the right size. I had a small sniping spoon in my backpack and when I'd get a positive signal (there were lots of hot-rocks throwing off negative signals), I'd scoop out the clay, sticky sand, and small stones and put them in a gold pan. I sniffed out a bunch of signals in this manner, then took the pan to the water that was resting in a low spot in the bedrock.

My eyes about popped out when I fanned back the material in the crease. Nuggets!

Well, it didn't take me long to get more material in another pan, and once again, more nuggets. Now these aren't big nuggets, but small ones; nevertheless, lots of them, and it was getting dark. So, I got my flashlights out and worked with the Falcon until that proved too difficult, then I broke out the Minelab yet again and captured four more small nuggets. I called it a day (or, a night, really).

The take for several hours was ten nuggets and eleven pickers, plus a nice catch of flake gold in the bottle.

Obviously the people that high-banked that exposed bedrock didn't have a detector, or didn't know how to use it, or if the had a detector, they dug a pile of magnetic slivers and thought all of the remaining signals were trash as well.

I'll never know for sure, but what I learned is that when you get a lengthy series of beeps, it isn't always trash; it might just be sassy little nuggets instead.

All the best,

Lanny

http://

 

[Lanny in AB]

Just for you Jeff, here's the "wake-up" call to reactivate this thread.

I'll have to post a few more things here I guess.

All the best, and thanks for the notification,

Lanny

 

[Jeff95531]

No pressure Lanny. Anything from the last 8 months will do.

Wow! Over 10K views! Guess it has been busy!