I'm no geologist, so I don't quite know how to describe the formation I found--it looked like an intruded dike in a much older sedimenatry formation, either that or it butted up against the sedimentary formation(couldn't see the downstream end of it--the sedimentary formation was clearly visible upstream). Anyway, the rounded rocks the volcanic formation contained were from watermelon size to football size, were dark grey with black angular spots shot all through them. None of the rocks were very hard and they were easily pried apart and broken down. The material that surrounded the large stones was rusty colored and soft, when we pulled the large rocks out, they left sockets like rocks removed from tightly packed old channel material does, indeed it looked like ancient channel deposit, but there were no small stream rounded stones and sand or clay in it--so I knew it wasn't of stream origin--the material did contain garnet, hematite, magnetite and gold. (If any forum prospecting detectives would agree to offer advice as to what this stuff was, I'd love to hear from you.) I got my prospecting fix in the first pan! Gold I could roll around under my fingers--not flakes--angular pieces. My PDS(prospecting deprivation syndrome)just evaporated away. We later found an abandoned hardrock mine and could see the vein running along the ceiling back into the dark inky gloom. I went to get my pan out of the back of the truck and there were ice crystal patterns all over the pan!! They were beautiful(like snowflakes, no two alike), but I was depressed. Do you know how cold the water is going to be, and how frigid it is to handle a gold pan that has ice crystals forming in it?! While panning, my hands went bright red before they went white, but we found more gold and that warmed my primitive brain gold gathering center, and I felt much better. We hiked into the surrounding hills and found old throw out prospect piles from the 1800's and three quarters of the way up a small mountain, an open cut mine--we could plainly see the