nuggeteer
Jr. Member
Hello all,
Eager to get out after finding my first nugget with this detector, late last week in the midst of triple digit heat I took to my bike again. A few miles north of that find, I located a stretch of tailings heaps along a shallow gulch; evidently the site of an old ground sluicing operation similar to many others I've detected in this area of Northern California. I stopped to flip through my stack of area maps to make an often difficult determination of land status, but the choppy yellow on the BLM spread assured me that I was indeed on public land. So, I stashed my bike and followed the workings about a quarter-mile uphill to where it looked like the miners had left off. The manzanita was sparse so I didn't have to crawl, the tan metavolcanic bedrock was shallow, and there was no evidence of anyone having detected this spot. Thus, I donned my headphones, ground balanced to 66.7 and began...
Midday cumulus clouds hung motionless over the nearby mountains, refusing me a much needed shade and I was left to continue soaking in my green polyester shirt which by now had sun bleached to a mottled brown. Nevertheless, a couple of hours later and a pocketful of lead richer, I got yet another lead signal. Figuring it was just more birdshot, I slumped to my knees with my little plastic shovel and started skimming off the surface, dumping it onto the coil. The detector "zipped," and I brushed away the dust to where only a lump of clay remained. Anxious to get back to detecting I quickly began rolling the dirty clod in my fingers, ready to plunk it into my pocket with the rest of the lead. However, the flakes of dry clay shed away and from this once lackluster lump it looked as if the sun smiled up at me... Gold!
I didn't find anymore pieces that day but I returned for several straight days and have snagged a total of 12 pieces. Each day I recognized fainter signals and found smaller and deeper gold.
The pieces are rough; several have quartz and iron host rock intact, unlike the smooth stuff I've panned. Finds ranged at depths of .5 to 3 inches and sat atop a thick orange clay, particularly along the edges of newly formed washes where debris could accumulate. The patch is small, encompassing about 400 square feet, and from all observations appears to be an island of elevated bedrock. Around it, the bedrock dips to at least a foot below the surface; too deep for my detector. I know this patch isn't dry yet and I'm tempted to dig down a bit, but adding a shovel to my bikeload on a 29 mile round trip is sketchy.
I started focusing more on the tones than the display and figured out some techniques with the GB Pro to find some tiny pieces. I'll have to revisit some of the places I detected before I knew how to use this machine. Of all the experimenting I've done with this detector, it seems like the only way I've learned how to find gold with it is by actually finding some. Anyone know what I mean?
Below: the patch, the clay with embedded quartz, the gold
Eager to get out after finding my first nugget with this detector, late last week in the midst of triple digit heat I took to my bike again. A few miles north of that find, I located a stretch of tailings heaps along a shallow gulch; evidently the site of an old ground sluicing operation similar to many others I've detected in this area of Northern California. I stopped to flip through my stack of area maps to make an often difficult determination of land status, but the choppy yellow on the BLM spread assured me that I was indeed on public land. So, I stashed my bike and followed the workings about a quarter-mile uphill to where it looked like the miners had left off. The manzanita was sparse so I didn't have to crawl, the tan metavolcanic bedrock was shallow, and there was no evidence of anyone having detected this spot. Thus, I donned my headphones, ground balanced to 66.7 and began...
Midday cumulus clouds hung motionless over the nearby mountains, refusing me a much needed shade and I was left to continue soaking in my green polyester shirt which by now had sun bleached to a mottled brown. Nevertheless, a couple of hours later and a pocketful of lead richer, I got yet another lead signal. Figuring it was just more birdshot, I slumped to my knees with my little plastic shovel and started skimming off the surface, dumping it onto the coil. The detector "zipped," and I brushed away the dust to where only a lump of clay remained. Anxious to get back to detecting I quickly began rolling the dirty clod in my fingers, ready to plunk it into my pocket with the rest of the lead. However, the flakes of dry clay shed away and from this once lackluster lump it looked as if the sun smiled up at me... Gold!
I didn't find anymore pieces that day but I returned for several straight days and have snagged a total of 12 pieces. Each day I recognized fainter signals and found smaller and deeper gold.
The pieces are rough; several have quartz and iron host rock intact, unlike the smooth stuff I've panned. Finds ranged at depths of .5 to 3 inches and sat atop a thick orange clay, particularly along the edges of newly formed washes where debris could accumulate. The patch is small, encompassing about 400 square feet, and from all observations appears to be an island of elevated bedrock. Around it, the bedrock dips to at least a foot below the surface; too deep for my detector. I know this patch isn't dry yet and I'm tempted to dig down a bit, but adding a shovel to my bikeload on a 29 mile round trip is sketchy.
I started focusing more on the tones than the display and figured out some techniques with the GB Pro to find some tiny pieces. I'll have to revisit some of the places I detected before I knew how to use this machine. Of all the experimenting I've done with this detector, it seems like the only way I've learned how to find gold with it is by actually finding some. Anyone know what I mean?
Below: the patch, the clay with embedded quartz, the gold
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