It has been a few weeks since I have been able to hit the creek in pursuit of the elusive Missouri glacial gold. We are elbow-deep in what is known as Fall here in Missouri, but the actual outdoor weather more resembles Winter. On this particular Saturday, it was a balmy 28 degrees outside when the two-year-old’s singing woke up everyone in the house. After finding some warm britches, stoking the fire, and chasing a naked baby around the house, I settled in to making breakfast for the family. We had just picked up our hog from the butcher last weekend, and we had an abundance of lard to use. I took this as an opportunity to teach my wife and girls how to make lard biscuits, or as we Southerners call, “biscuits.”
My wife grew up believing that biscuits come from a can. Like somewhere in the magical kingdom of Pillsbury there is this wizard dough boy that stuffs perfectly shaped biscuits-to-be in the long tubes and FedExes them to your neighborhood supermarket. You buy said tubes, take them home, and POP! Aside – The pop from a biscuit can will always make you jump. It’s like a slightly-less creepy jack-in-the-box. – End Aside. In an effort to show my family where the best biscuits really come from, we all gathered around in the kitchen and I showed them the simple steps on how to make the most delicious biscuits ever. We made a total of 18 and guess how many were left over... Yep, none. We have problems. Tasty problems.
Pleasantly fortified with flaky, lardy goodness, we donned our rubber boots and cold weather gear and motored off to the creek. I figured the kids would last a maximum of two hours in the cold, so my strategy was to classify material with the ½ inch and then pan like mad with the Banjo Pan. I had marked a sand and gravel bar with a depth to bedrock of around a foot on my GPS from my last visit because it had yielded a few flakes of gold from my sample panning. This was my target for the day in that it was close to the road, had some gold, and had enough dry area for the kids to build a fire.
The temperature had soared to 36 degrees by the time we arrived. I packed light with the gear this time, and we arrived at the gravel bar in a matter of minutes. I plopped my buckets and pans down by some large boulders and determined that would be my digging spot. The girls immediately got to work finding firewood while I channeled my Eagle Scout skills and lit a small fire. Once the girls brought in the bigger sticks, the fire grew to a nice, warm mini-inferno. The kids got settled around the fire and/or hunted a few fossils while I commenced to shoveling material through the classifier. By the time I had a bucket nearly full, the girls had cut marshmallow sticks and were already sticky.
I took out the Banjo Pan and primed the vortex matting to get it in super gold grabbing mode. I plunged my trusty scoop into the classified material and went to town. Shake shake shake shake pour went the Banjo Pan and I locked into a rhythm like I was doing a Cuban dance on a cruise ship after tequila shots. In no time flat I had run through that entire bucket of material. I used a second bucket of water to rinse the vortex matting into after each panful just like Mike P. demonstrates in one of his videos. It took me less time to run the material than it did to classify into the bucket. On top of that, I was working so fast that I had broken into a sweat! In the 36-degree weather no less! Not too surprising, I suppose – I do tend to sweat like a furry fat man. I took off my hat and the steam billowed off of my bald, beautiful head like it was on fire.
My shovel plunged back into the hole and I began classifying more material. I filled the bucket to about ¾ full, and then decided I needed a break to cool down. I took off my trapper gloves, unzipped my sweater, and plopped down on a boulder beside my daughter near the fire. The girls decided that I needed marshmallows too, and I wasn’t about to argue with that. We brought the good ones too, the super mega jumbo marshmallows that resemble chubby albino hamsters in size and shape. I toasted one and scarfed it down, and then ate two more straight from the bag. I felt my spirits lift and my motivation return. I guess every prospector needs to stop and take a marshmallow break every now and then.
After washing the sticky off of my hands in the frigid creek water, I put my trapper gloves back on and commenced to running through more material. Once again, the Banjo Pan made short work of the bucket-o-material. I began scraping my shovel along the bedrock to gather up more material for classifying when my wife told me it was time to go. My 6-year old (now 7) was having a friend sleep over for her birthday and we had to pick her up at six. I had a half of a bucket of material, so I quickly ran it through, grabbed my gear and concentrates, and loaded up the family. I had managed to stay relatively dry and warm during my two hours of panning in near-freezing temperatures, and I avoided pouring creek water down my boot (a very real hazard of using the Banjo Pan).
Once home, I contemplated the day’s trip over some bourbon by the wood stove while the girls got to work giggling, dancing, and tearing up the house. I had run about two-and-a-half buckets of classified material through the Banjo pan, and had roughly one-sixth of a bucket of concentrates to pan. I let the tailings pile up in the creek, and left them there. I learned from last time that nothing was getting past that vortex matting. Trust your abilities, trust your equipment. I decided to put off the finishing until the next morning as the crackling fire and delicious bourbon prevented me from leaving my recliner.
Next morning I woke up and stumbled through the maze of children in sleeping bags on the living room floor to make my way to my concentrates bucket and finishing pan. I got out the Jet Dry and noticed someone had been using it! Apparently my wife decided that MY Jet Dry should be used in the dishwasher. I told her that it was for gold panning only, and tried to put her in time-out. That didn’t go over so well. At least there were enough drops to do my finishing. I got to work reducing the material to heavies and sucking up the tiny flakes of Missouri glacial gold. By the time I was done, I had a decent haul considering I only ran 2.5 buckets of material through the Banjo Pan! I made a mental note to revisit the spot and run some more of that gravel bar and see how much more Missouri gold is hiding out there.
Some observations – I took home more concentrates than usual because I did not pan them down further at the creek like I did the last time. Had I done so, I would have had only a pint or so of material to finish out at home. I noticed a lot of light sands in there because I didn’t use quite enough water on my second flush through the Banjo Pan. The ability of the Banjo Pan to nab super fine glacial gold in the vortex matting is simply incredible. I am so glad I pulled the trigger and bought it! I am also thankful for trapper gloves, which keep my hands warm and dry in the cold. Finally, I am thankful for marshmallows for being fluffy, comforting, and delicious. Heavy pans, y’all.
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