Prospecting pictures, all over Europe

[HappySwede]

As Im getting rather nostalgic during the depth of the Scandinavian winter, I might aswell look back on the past years and also share a bit of my experiences.

First off - SWEDEN. The country that holds very little gold, but some can be found by being very, very persistent and traveling far. Some of the pictures are from a failed trip this march - Stockholm had been snow free for a long while and a heat wave struck the country aswell. Figuring my grounds would be good to go, I drove a few hours north and fell into this deep winter landscape. We had to ski in to the gold. Even getting a test pan was hard, but I attached a of what one shovel of dirt can produce - at best. Most trips however end up with no gold at all.

 

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[HappySwede]

Norway - the country of dreams. Probably the most beautiful one in the world. Not too gold bearing either, but a group of prospectors found a small strech of river that held nuggets.

 

[HappySwede]

Finland -

far north of the polar circle, I spent a few days camping in the middle of the woods mining. The landscape is rather weird - there's endless fields of fine sand 200 feet down to bedrock. Gold and nuggets are found everywhere in this sand, from the surface to well deep down. The sand is sorted into layers, yet gold and sharp rocks are found a Little bit of everywhere in it. It's Amazing that this anomaly of gold was found just in the middle of nowhere.

 

[HappySwede]

Scotland -

Great memories, nice and welcoming people. The British isles offer more than just mining. Crowded as it is however, the creeks have mostly been mined out. Panners were everywhere, but theres still some gold to be found for those digging deeper than the rest.

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[HappySwede]

France -

Indeed a beautiful country aswell. A handful of colors in my first test pan. Rather weird to have the pans full of corals and gold at the same time.

Me and the french didnt understand a single word of one and eachother, but they were very friendly and tried to be as helpful as possible. Came home with gold and great pictures.

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[RudyT]

Unbelievable scenery!! And gold to boot!! Thanks for the photos.

 

[HappySwede]

Poland and Czech Republic -

didn't plan to pan over here but since I had the equipment with me, I gave it a try. Found a nice Czech river a couple of hours north of Prague but didnt find gold at first. There was however vast amounts of quartz and lava stone, so I kept going deeper. Just as I found two pieces of gold in the pan, someone yelled for my attention. The land owner was closing the road where I parked and I couldnt continue. Turn out later that this area is presumed to hold gold and minerals - hard rock deposits - but it hasn't been properly drilled.

Poland too had a little bit of gold. The town of Zlotoryija is famous for mining and a few specs showed up in the pan nearby.

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[HappySwede]

Last but not least - the United States.

Gold was found in California, Idaho and Utah. Great scenery, great sun and a great trip aswell.

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[N-Lionberger]

Your description of Finland dirt makes me think it would be a good place to run a Vortxrex. Also not a bad looking half frozen test pan, I'd mine that spot.

 

[Hoser John]

Bummer, site says US links invalid-tried 3 times,all others open with post fine??. Hope you have a great Christmas. Fantastic gold fever post. John

 

[HappySwede]

Hmm, the links work for me but thumbnails are gone for the latter posts. Weird.

Anyways, forgot to mention - that tent of mine in Finland is actually standing on pure sand, and that same sand is full of gold, in all layers. Might had slept on nuggets without knowing it. Mined not very far from it.

 

[N-Lionberger]

how much water is there in that area of finland? would someone go after you for running a dryland dredge?

 

[HappySwede]

very little water, only a tiny nearby swamp that just about held enough water to run a few highbankers. No other water meant I spent 5 days covered in mud, never even washing my hands in this period as the little available clean water had to be used for drinking. Motorized mining would maybe be possible but it would take years to get the permit. I'm not too sure why the claim holders didn't want to scale it up, because it was obvious to all of us that it would be very profitable.

It was quite a walk in from the nearest road, so I had to be on ransons. With nothing else to do than just dig, I lost no less than 12 lbs of body weight in 5 days. On top of it, night temperatures dropped to freezing which I was totally unprepared for so I barely got through the nights. The sun never sets up there so I was surprised of the huge fluctations in temperature.

After three days of suffering, I complained about my situation a little bit to a 70 year old Finnish woman that passed by. She replied "Not long ago, I spent 237 days in a row camping and mining in the remote woods beyond Lemmenjoki, winter included so..."

 

[N-Lionberger]

By motorized you do you mean heavy equipment excvators etc...?

 

[HappySwede]

By motorized you do you mean heavy equipment excvators etc...?

Yes, even a suction dredge falls into this category. Sluicing can be motorized all you want, but the material has to be brought to the sluice by hand, so they mostly use shovels and wheelbarrows.

There are however plenty of excavator operations going on all over Finland, most notably in the remote Lemmenjoki area, many hours away from the nearest road.

https://www.google.se/search?q=lemm...uKLYAhUkIpoKHXtVA5IQ_AUICigB&biw=1829&bih=917

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Bummer, site says US links invalid-tried 3 times,all others open with post fine??. Hope you have a great Christmas. Fantastic gold fever post. John

Me too, John. I would really have liked to seen the other pics. Maybe Goran can repost them?
Jim

 

[HappySwede]

 

[HappySwede]

Looks like it worked this time. My favorite picture from the season however this French one

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Yup...beautiful shot!

 

[Seden]

Have you sluiced in Ukraine? Does the law allow private citizens to pan and sluice in Ukraine? Here are a couple of articles describing the gold in Ukraine.

http://er.nau.edu.ua/bitstream/NAU/16439/1/Figura_en.pdf and