benginner question about river and creek gold

[steveh2112]

i understand that gold is heavy, that's the basis on which sluicing and panning works and the reason we hunt out places like the surface of bedrock, holes and cracks and places where the flow slows down.

what i don't understand is when you look at gold hunting locations, they are usually way down river. the entire California gold country is in the mid elevations between the high sierras where the water originates and the central valley. why is the gold hundreds of miles downstream from the water source? in your sluice box the gold settles out in the first 1/3rd of the box right?, so why not in a river. why not to keep searching up river until you get very close to where new deposits are eroding from the rocks (which i think are the source for all recently deposited river gold right)?

my guess is its something to do with concentration of thousands of small creeks into bigger creaks and rivers that makes prospecting practical, but i don't know, that's just a guess.

i guess my real question is, is it worth going upstream from existing gold claims and hoping to find stuff deposited before it gets too far downstream?

 

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[Underburden]

Most gold isn't born in a river, gravity carries it to the river from a lode source. There may not be a gold source at the headwaters. Think about the source of gold (lode) rather than where it finally comes to rest (placer).

 

[steveh2112]

Most gold isn't born in a river, gravity carries it to the river from a lode source. There may not be a gold source at the headwaters. Think about the source of gold (lode) rather than where it finally comes to rest (placer).

so you are saying the lode source could be anywhere along the rivers path and the water is simply carrying it downstream right? that makes sense.

so how to find that? maybe a bit downstream of a lode claim assume someone hasn't already got a placer claim on there)

 

[beekbuster]

it does not travel as far you you think. the flood gold does, but the larger peices say the size of a grain of rice or even half a grain of rice will find a crack to stay in pretty fast, and only a 500 year flood may move it, but even thats not guaranteed.

 

[steveh2112]

it does not travel as far you you think. the flood gold does, but the larger peices say the size of a grain of rice or even half a grain of rice will find a crack to stay in pretty fast, and only a 500 year flood may move it, but even thats not guaranteed.

that's why i'm asking, it seems the ideal thing is to find the lode sources and look just downstream from them. but how to identify that other than researching lode claims? is a lode source a small concentrated area or a wide open expanse? would it be a hilly, rocky area or could it also be a flatter forested area with lots of vegetation? i've seen many videos about where to look in a rivers for gold but nothing about finding lode sources.

 

[beekbuster]

yes. i recommend buying a few books to answer your questions. i am by no means seasoned, but i pay attention when i find gold, and it has been telling me it is quite sluggish. twice now i have hit a nice concentration of chunky peices. i went bask to finish cleaning the crack only to find i got it all the first trip.

 

[hunterbill]

Big floods can really move stuff around. The whole river bed becomes a slurry. Boulders banging down the channel will break up the bedrock causing the gold to escape. This is part of how the pay gets so far away from its source. For a sluice to catch most of the gold in the top 1/3, It must be dialed in well with a steady water flow and no boulders crashing through. If an entire load fell into the river all at once, then I would expect a good pile to stay close by for some time or until the next big flood. Generally, values bleed into the water system over many many years with plenty of time to get flushed far away.

 

[steveh2112]

hunterbill, thanks for pointing that out. am i right in thinking there hasn't been a big storm in the sierras so far this winter? (i'm half way around the world at the moment)

 

[Lanny in AB]

As you've been advised so far, there may not be any gold originating upslope or upstream near the source. When there is, there's coarse gold to be found close to the source, when there's not, the gold has to get into your slower moving river at some other point.

This is basic stuff, so I'm not telling you anything new, but the present day stream may cut through an ancient channel [or several] (think dinosaur days or earlier) that was gold bearing, and then there may be a couple of feeder streams that are carrying gold from the source to add their contents; these all feed into the stream and enrich it, and steep elevation may have nothing at all to do with the gold content.

Moreover, in the north, the glaciers were like gold movers on insane steroids; they tore down to bedrock, scooped up the gold and entire stream contents, then packed those enriched contents off somewhere else totally, and a modern day stream may be cutting through that enriched, relocated deposit as well.

So, yes you can get gold close to the source high up if it's originating there, but no you can't get it at higher elevations if the slope is barren.

Hope this helps, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[hunterbill]

Look for places where you see high bench deposits. This may be the source of gold. Not all the gold is coming directly out of a load but rather an older placer being intersected by to days river. Many of the loads have been totally weathered away a long time ago, with their pay having been re-concentrated several times.