Why Nome? Out of the WHOLE state of AK?

[kYLEMtnCRUZr]

What's with the hype of Nome? Are you telling me that out of the thousands of miles of coastline Alaska has to offer that Nome is the only place to find decent beach gold? I have wondered this for years now.

I want to go to AK but Nome almost seems touristy at this point.

Is it just that AK is so remote that not many other locations haven't been sampled?

 

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[goldenIrishman]

Ya know... That's a real good question. Also consider that there are a LOT of streams and rivers that dump into the sea along the coast of Alaska. Do you really think that they don't have any gold in them?


Granted Nome has a harbor and places to get supplies if you want to pay their prices. Much of the coast line of Alaska is 100% wilderness. No safe harbor to retreat to when the weather turns bad and what you have to work with is what you bring with you.

 

[russau]

yep GIM your right about accessability! if anyone has ever flow over Alaska they would see in a heartbeat all the unexplored streams there are. BUT youll need to get supplies/fuel into your location. ive flown over Alaska up to ANWR and ive seen many places id like to be dropped off at with a crew of dredgers and supplys for a month.a helocopter would be the only way and they are REALLY EXPENSIVE!

 

[BIGSCOTT]

nome beach gold was discovered when they were running a power, and telephone line that was supposed to cross the bering strait,also the sea freezes up there every year and the ice push replenishes the gold.

 

[smokeythecat]

Big problem is no roads. Try a satellite view of Nome.

 

[mxer47]

Do a web search for Nevada outback gems Nome AK. Great mining history, and geology about Nome including a high bench valued at 1000$ per cubic yard. This values when gold was 20$ per once.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Oh trust me I've checked it out. Not only the sat view but looking at the ocean charts for much of the Alaskan coast as well. It's amazing how shallow it is for about the first 80 miles in some areas. I still think that with the right ship design you could "test" some areas and find some that would put Nome to shame. Look how much untouched area there is along that coast and how much work has been done off of Nome. Get off of some of those unexplored areas and I'd bet ya there's pockets that would be the equal of the years take for the entire Nome fleet.

 

[loco oro]

i would love to be in ak ,but so exspensive, but it is no.1 one my bucket list,......someday.

 

[fowledup]

Most of western Alaska's rivers and bays are extremely tidal. A lot of the harbors and docks at the river mouths go dry at low tide. The "Sandy" beaches are a bottomless pit of the stickest mud you'll ever encounter. The only dredges they are using are for keeping the harbor entrance open. There probably is quite a bit of gold underneath that muddy silt but the cost and logistics of getting it make it unfeasible. I have a friend who has been mining a fair ways south of Nome and has done quite well.

 

[Hoser John]

Alluvial flood plane from ancient rivers deposition is the answer. Go where there's gold been found in concentrated paystreaks and Nome has perfect location for such deposition and wave action concentration, as not a sheer shelf dropoff but a decending fan---John

 

[Sawyer]

The old miners liked Nome because of the wide variety of Houses of Ill Repute and cheap whiskey prices!

 

[KevinInColorado]

The old miners liked Nome because of the wide variety of Houses of Ill Repute and cheap whiskey prices!

LoL, I think you might have cause and effect reversed here ;-)

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Oh where to start?

The beaches in Nome are not replenished from the ocean, the gold erodes out of the bank. This is why new gold only shows up after a good bank-eroding storm. The bank has eroded some 10 to 12 feet in the past 20 years. This is also why new beach gold shows up high up. Gold does not travel uphill.

Nome is not the only place to find beach gold in Alaska, nor was it the richest. Daniels creek, at an area called Bluff, was the richest, 60 miles east of Nome. This beach is reported to have had 31,000 ozt of gold recovered in the 1000' of beach between two rock bluffs. The ocean was also heavily mined via drag-line, very successfully. Stay away though, it's all claimed and owned.

The entire state of Alaska has been walked over by guys with gold pans. Everywhere that a shovel could reach has been sampled in the last 150 years.

Norton Sound and Bering straits has been extensively samples for gold, with very poor results until they got within 3 miles of the beach, and a few miles to the east and 12 miles to the west. With the best offshore areas out in the old Snake River channel and Jess Creek.

But wait! you say, Jess creek was man-made less than 100 years ago, how can there be gold offshore from it. Simple, the rivers played little role in getting the gold out to the ocean and distributing it along the beach and the tundra plain around Nome. The gold was placed there by glacial alluvial action in the second to last ice age.

 

[bedrock bubba]

I had read somewhere that retreating mountain glaciers were exposing rich, new moraine gold deposits.
And some miners were tunneling under the glaciers. Is this so?

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Yes, that is happening in the South East Alaska region. Steep valleys that have gold bearing rivers, and glacier at their headwaters have revealed virgin placer deposits when the glacier retreats. So long as the glacier transverses the load source.

("Glacial Retreat" is a misnomer, glaciers nearly always flow in one direction. Glaciers give the appearance of retreating when the flow rate of the glacier is slower than the melt rate at the leading edge. Even though the total mass of the glacier may be increasing for some glaciers, a glacier's leading edge can be retreating, giving the impression of shrinking.)

The place I am most curious about is Antarctica, a couple miles of ice covering untold resources. If the geology is anything like the rest of the planet, there is likely to be much gold and other ores. But I think asteroids will be more viable to mine before Antarctica, if a group of the right people apply $100B in the right way to such a project.

 

[goldenIrishman]

I've always been told that Antarctica is off limits to everyone by international agreement. Yeah... It would be interesting to do some prospecting there but you'd never be allowed to develop anything like a regular mine on the continent. The governments that agreed to put it off limits to "Intrusions by man" want to mess it up themselves. It's already been proven that they're doing a bang up job of that so far.

Even so, one can't help but wonder what is buried under those massive ice caps.

 

[bedrock bubba]

Yes, that is happening in the South East Alaska region. Steep valleys that have gold bearing rivers, and glacier at their headwaters have revealed virgin placer deposits when the glacier retreats. So long as the glacier transverses the load source.

("Glacial Retreat" is a misnomer, glaciers nearly always flow in one direction. Glaciers give the appearance of retreating when the flow rate of the glacier is slower than the melt rate at the leading edge. Even though the total mass of the glacier may be increasing for some glaciers, a glacier's leading edge can be retreating, giving the impression of shrinking.)

The place I am most curious about is Antarctica, a couple miles of ice covering untold resources. If the geology is anything like the rest of the planet, there is likely to be much gold and other ores. But I think asteroids will be more viable to mine before Antarctica, if a group of the right people apply $100B in the right way to such a project.

Very interesting! Tell us more.

In your mind, where do you think would be the richest untapped inland deposits of gold? And what would it take to get the gold out?

 

[63bkpkr]

I would say that AK_Au_Diver is giving out some interesting advice. I've been in Alaska several times with very limited prospecting attempts but I did find gold, very fine but gold.

Just like in the Lower states you go where the gold has been found before as there is always more. As has already been stated here Alaska is a wilderness. Any major or minor Alaskan city is surrounded by wilderness. Anchorage has a large Moose population as well as a significant Bear population Especially around Moose calving time. In Eagle River AK, just up from Anchorage, there are black bears as well as Grizzly bears walking through modern housing areas and so are the Moose. The roads are around the towns and go up to or out to a few other places. To my knowledge any road that crosses a creek causes the creek within the road right of way to be open to light prospecting and I've found gold in some of them.

Steve Herschbach, a successful prospector and miner in AK, is now in Reno Nevada. He spent many a year in AK dredging with ice in the rivers, detecting and all sorts of other activities there and yet for whatever reason he is now in Nevada. It is tough in the outback! The stores, doctors, equipment are many miles away and there are no roads to get to them, rivers, float planes, Cesnas with big tires and helicopters are the most frequent types of routes or means of travel.

I've done one raft float trip in AK and it was amazing! I think I would rather float down a river on a log than to try to walk through any of the forest's I saw on that trip. Even then a bush pilot brought us in to a remote landing spot and dropped us and our equipment off. When he flew over and saw our raft was further down in the water he landed on a pile of boulders, called a "beach", and took us and our moose out. It is an amazing place with terrifically bad mosquitoes and terrifically bad winters. A lot of big animals that would just as soon eat you or knock you to the ground and stomp all over you.

There are several places one can drive up to and prospect and you could find gold there, most is typically fine gold with the larger gold out there but usually way out there.............................63bkpkr

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

I'm not sure what advice I gave out? Information yes, but I didn't intend to give advice. My advice has always been that if you want to have fun and find a few specks on a great Alaskan adventure, then you can go just about anywhere that will allow you without much expense or overhead.

All I know about SE Alaska glacier gold is what I wrote, and that comes from news articles and science class. That type of mining is of no interest to me.

As a professional gold miner, I am only interested in the places that are sufficiently profitable for my skill level to be able to support my family year after year. The easy places have all been found.

Antarctica will be interesting someday, I hope the glaciers have not destroyed all the archaeological sites and fossil records. The treaty and two miles of ice protect most of her secrets, for now.

In my mind, the richest untapped inland deposits of gold would be very deep, places where they could not put a shovel 100 years ago. Also there are low-grade areas that technology has made more accessible/feasible. The big name mines in AK are all taping these resources, or hoping to soon. The past several years there have been geo survey helicopters flying all over the state, mapping underground anomalies.

As I understand it, all the gold (and other similar heavy elements) near the surface were either deposited via space bombardment shortly after the initial formation of the Earth, or mostly via volcanic processes. That theory might be out of date by now.

As for exploring other offshore areas farther from Nome, I estimate it would take about $6M to put together a serious prospecting survey that would also be capable of production mining. And I think my estimate is pretty good since the operation I work with is the only offshore dredge that has had 500+ ozt seasons for each of the past 10 years and is capable of mining the deepest depths of Norton Sound and the Bering Straits, despite being just a prototype.