Higher Gold Deposits

[SchoolOfHardRocks]

Crevicing bedrock pockets has been my most successful form of prospecting both under the water and out. Most of the time I either snipe under the water in the summer months and hover around the water line during the colder winter months when the water is too cold/ fast to snipe underwater in.

I have friends and know that others work higher areas and do pretty well (usually below the high water line). What I've always wondered was: If over millions of years, the river has been eroding it's way down through the mountains to it's present level. Does that mean that placer gold can be anywhere from the top to the bottom of the canyon?

I know there are other factors that play into where gold can be on a mountain side like ancient river channels, veins, etc... but can there be placer deposits from the current river's historic levels deposited as well? Please help satisfy my curiosity

 

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[goldenmojo]

Splainin, shootin and shovelin.... Sounds like it gonna be a good day.

 

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[Jeff95531]

Dans already harrasing me! I'm going down Sunday he says he wants to go. I'll be going regardless of rain. More water than when you went down with Matt. Ever seen 15ft of gold hog before? Me either.......it's happening

Hmmm, sounds like stories are a comin. A rare thing for this time of year. Your fans await.
Let's be careful out there.

 

[GrizzlyGremlin]

I just found one of these "benched" deposits! Very small and sitting on bedrock. Literally 10'x 5', and loaded! This is from less than a yard of dirt. Once stuff thaws I'll be looking for many more of these!

 

[Laz7777]

lemme offer my $.02 worth, if it's even worth that....
look in places that don't seem to be able to have anything.
when I was in my 3rd. year of doing this, I was digging a spot that I figured I got it all, because I was going by what I thought I knew (bedrock shelves, large boulders, decomposing bedrock, etc..).
was about ready to move on, decided to take a pan of an area that had nothing to indicate anything, came up with a pan of 20-30 small colors...hmmm.
3 months later was still working the place. BTW, that small area I panned I pulled about 2 .dwt on that fateful day.
I figure that no one else bothered the places I was getting and gold had some time to accumulate.
moss has been a great source as well...found an area that was roughly half an acre of moss on bedrock, was loaded bay-bee!!
this moss patch happened to be across from Humbug Creek on the south Yuba. moss also disguises cracks and potholes in the bedrock, smoothes them out so you can't tell they're there.
that spot had something I'd never seen before...black amalgam.
was wondering why when I was panning my cons that these little black bumpy pebbles were having such a hard time leaving my pan...then the light bulb went off over my head....said to self: "you moron, that's gold", cause I'd been picking them out of the pan and tossing them for a couple days....took some back to camp and roasted them, and by magic, they turned golden!
found one piece that was 1.2 .dwt, and yes i dug out where I was panning my cons and run it through my box again and recovered some of what I threw away...

 

[PurpleGold]

The last episode of Gold Rush explained how some placer deposits can be higher. To briefly explain imagine millions of years ago there was a layer of placer deposits. Geology and plate tectonics over those millions of years has literally pushed mountains up. So there can be layers of million year old placer deposits higher up the hillside. Gold is old. Very old.

 

[goldenmojo]

Have twice this ladt year stuck my shovel into a section of the river that has material I call fluff. Lightweight garbage with no compaction to it, the shovel going as deep as the force that launched it. Thinking sample sample I ran a pan and on both places which were a mile apart there was a good amount . Both areas had slackish water no real reason to be holding color there. I am learning to never discount anything until it has been sampled.

 

[Jeff95531]

I love this stuff! I was just thinking about going higher up at some old spots that should have paid off BUT since the samples at creek side were poor, I discounted further exploration. It's a known gold area so why not? Usually stuff is camouflaged by greenery but now is the time to get out and see as much as possible. The kind of things we look for in CA doesn't usually stand out like a billboard in the desert. (as we've discussed right GI?)

I have two places in mind. Ground cover and overburden will have to be sampled/removed on the way down of course. One spot in particular has a flat bench jutting out of old bedrock and 6 feet below that and nearby is what looks like an old emptied out grave site.


Laz7777 Just curious...what size was the gold you found in the moss Best I've found is flour.

 

[goldenmojo]

Jeff sometimes it is on the offside corner up high. If you have boulders sitting on flatish areas or suspended on other rocks it can pay well way up high under those suspensions. Look for small cobble pockets sitting under the boulders. Just worked one a few weeks ago that had 97 colors in the first pan. Couldn't get my arm to contort well in the opening so I got what I could and left the rest for others to explore.

 

[Jeff95531]

I see what you're saying. TYVM

 

[Jeff95531]

And thanks again for the one on one pm tutoring goldenmojo.

 

[goldenIrishman]

I love this stuff! I was just thinking about going higher up at some old spots that should have paid off BUT since the samples at creek side were poor, I discounted further exploration. It's a known gold area so why not? Usually stuff is camouflaged by greenery but now is the time to get out and see as much as possible. The kind of things we look for in CA doesn't usually stand out like a billboard in the desert. (as we've discussed right GI?)

I have two places in mind. Ground cover and overburden will have to be sampled/removed on the way down of course. One spot in particular has a flat bench jutting out of old bedrock and 6 feet below that and nearby is what looks like an old emptied out grave site.


Laz7777 Just curious...what size was the gold you found in the moss Best I've found is flour.

You got that right bud! Desert prospecting is a whole different animal! We generally don't have the amounts of water that you guys in Cal get so the gold deposits don't act the same. As I learned when I moved here, "If you come out to the desert, take almost everything you've ever learned about locating deposits and throw it out the window!". Since I've moved here, I've had to learn a whole lot more and to think in ways that a "non-desert" prospector would consider NutZ. The subscription I got to the ICMJ Journal is really helping out since there are lots of articles on working the desert to be had in the back issues.

 

[SchoolOfHardRocks]

Generally, most prospectors do just as I do and hit the areas around the current river levels.

I've always wondered of the possibilities above the high water line in my pursuit of that chunky, large gold pocket. As folks chime in on this thread it has opened other realms of possibilities....really interesting stuff!!

 

[Laz7777]

Laz7777 Just curious...what size was the gold you found in the moss Best I've found is flour.

there was quite a layer of blonde sand under the moss, some places i'd call it over a foot thick to bedrock, and I got a mix of flour and flake, about the same combination as what I normally do, 2/3 flake, 1/3 flour....all sizes flake and some of the amalgam roasted off to chunks, which aren't natural, of course.
most of the spots I'd ever found with moss before were flour.
I think because Humbug Creek spilled tailings directly on this area is the cause of there being more than flour...this Humbug Creek was the backend of the tailings chute for Malakoff Diggins, shut down in 1884 for flooding out farmers downstream.

 

[Ragnor]

I have a tip for yah, which I hope doesn't get used against me =)

WunderMap® | Interactive Weather Map and Radar | Weather Underground

Try zooming in on your target area in that. It's the best topo map Ive found.

 

[SchoolOfHardRocks]

I have a tip for yah, which I hope doesn't get used against me =)

WunderMap[emoji768] | Interactive Weather Map and Radar | Weather Underground

Try zooming in on your target area in that. It's the best topo map Ive found.

Wow- great view of ravines that could otherwise be missed. Thanks for sharing!

 

[CApicker]

Great thread! I've been curious about the high spots for a while now and will try one or two on some of my trips out but haven't found anything big enough to spen a whole day up high. I might go try that right now with today's break in the rain.

 

[Jeff95531]

Great thread! I've been curious about the high spots for a while now and will try one or two on some of my trips out but haven't found anything big enough to spen a whole day up high. I might go try that right now with today's break in the rain.

I'm thinkin the same thing for Wednesday.

 

[MadMarshall]

Generally, most prospectors do just as I do and hit the areas around the current river levels.

I've always wondered of the possibilities above the high water line in my pursuit of that chunky, large gold pocket. As folks chime in on this thread it has opened other realms of possibilities....really interesting stuff!!

This is a great time of year to take your sampling higher.. My favorite time is after some really good rains. The rains provide puddles and runoff that make great panning stations. I have dug holes just so they would fill up with water so id have a place to pan. its not just about finding the gold but exploiting as well. So keep in mind when sampling on what you may need to exploit the gold you find profitably and efficeintly.. Time VS Gold ect ect..
Also take a moment to look at safety.. This time of year brings allot of hazards.. Be safe get some gold...

 

[goldenmojo]

Vic very true about safety and it goes right along with the processing aspect. It's a long way down to the waterline if you don't have a panning station up high and every trip across the slippery bedrock increases the chances of getting hurt, especially when you got the fever.......

 

[Jeff95531]

I did a very quick exploratory check on my aforementioned high bank spots today. The water actually had gotten up to and over both the areas...filing in the "grave site" with a substantial amount of extra overburden (rocks, trees, trunks, etc.) It was still raining steady this afternoon but had slacked off enuff and even tho the water had come down...you could easily see the flattened grass/trees/brush where the current had recently run. That is something that hasn't happened here in a couple of years here so even the grasses could have flood gold in it. Of the two spots...grave site had 5 feet of extra overburden but new low spots opened up farther upstream. A tree trunk had rotted and erosion around it made a large symmetrical deep dark cave in around it...just begging to be cleaned out. Three separate and very pronounced stair step shelf's found altogether. The first was six foot up (from current dry ground) followed by another six feet and the final shelf which is 5 foot higher still. And each shelf is about six feet or so wide and about 20 to 30 feet long.

The nearby water is rapids full on but branches from it could easily support pans and sluicing so yeah...the fever is back big time. The next weather window is this Wed. I'll report what I find when I can.