Bedrock and Gold: The mysteries . . .

[Lanny in AB]

Do you love to chase the gold? Please join me--lots of gold hunting tips, stories of finds (successful and not), and prospecting poetry.

Nugget in the bedrock tip:

I had a visit with a mining buddy this past weekend, and he told me of an epic battle to get a nugget out of the bedrock, and of what he learned from the experience. I thought some of you might like to learn from his mistake.

While out detecting one day, he came across a large sheet of bare bedrock. The bedrock was exposed because the area had been blasted off with a water cannon (a monitor), by the old-timers! It was not fractured bedrock, in fact it was totally smooth.

He was not optimistic at all of the prospects of a nugget. But, for some reason (we've all been there) he decided to swing his detector over that bedrock. After a long time, just as he was about to give up on his crazy hunch, he got a signal, right out of that smooth bedrock.

There was no crevice, no sign of a crevice, nada! So, he had to go all the way back to camp to get a small sledge and a chisel. The signal in the rock intrigued him, but he still wasn't overly optimistic. For those of you that have chased signals in a similar situation, sometimes there's a patch of hot mineralization in the bedrock that sounds off, but this spot, according to him, was sharp and clear right in the middle of the signal, not just a general increase of the threshold like you get when you pass over a hot spot in the bedrock.

Anyway, he made it back to the spot and started to chisel his way into the bedrock. If any of you have tried this, it's an awful job, and you usually wind up with cut knuckles--at the least! Regardless, he kept fighting his way down, busting out chunks of bedrock. He kept checking the hole, and the signal remained very strong.

This only puzzled him all the more as he could clearly see that it was solid bedrock with no sign of any crevice. He finally quit at the end of the day, at a depth of about a foot, but still, nothing in the hole.

An experienced nugget shooting friend dropped by the next morning to see him, and asked him how the hunt was going. My buddy related his tale of the mysterious hole in the bedrock, and told the friend to go over and check it out, and see if he could solve the riddle.

Later in the day, the other nugget hunter returned. In his hand was a fine, fat, sassy nugget. It weighed in at about an ounce and a quarter! After my friend returned his eyeballs to their sockets and zapped his heart to start it again, he asked where the nugget had come from.

Imagine his surprise when he heard it came from the mystery hole!! He asked how deep the other guy had gone into the bedrock to get it. "Well, no deeper" was his reply.

So, here's the rest of the story as to what happened. When the successful nugget hunter got to the bedrock, he scanned the surface got the same strong signal as my buddy. He widened out the hole and scanned again. Still a solid tone. He widened the hole some more so he could get his coil in, and here's the key and the lesson in this story, he got a strong signal off the side of the hole, about six inches down, but set back another inch into the side of the bedrock!!

My unlucky friend, the true discoverer of the gorgeous nugget's resting place had gone deep past the signal while digging his hole!!

Now, of course, a good pinpointer would easily solve this problem. The problem was, my buddy didn't have one, so why would he widen the hole, right? Well, the other guy was the one with more experience, and that's why he did. It was a lot more work, but what a payoff!

So, my buddy's butt is still black and blue from where he kicked himself for the next week or so for having lost such an incredible prize.

Some nugget hunting lessons are harder than others to learn. . . .

All the best,

Lanny


P.S. When in gold country--check the bedrock, regardless of whether it looks likely or not! Mother Nature likes to play games sometimes.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

How to Research for Treasure Hunting and Metal Detecting From Lead Generation to Vetting - Grab it through Amazon!

[ravensburg]

Great thread! Excellent information and stories! I especially enjoy the photos that show the ground you are working and finding the gold. This has been most helpful in my search for that "sassy gold"!

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Cry Of The Eagle: History And Legends Of The Cherokee Indians And Their Buried Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[Lanny in AB]

Great thread! Excellent information and stories! I especially enjoy the photos that show the ground you are working and finding the gold. This has been most helpful in my search for that "sassy gold"!

A big welcome to you on T-Net, and thanks for dropping in to say hello.

Thanks for your kind words, and all the best luck to you as you chase the gold,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

If you get the chance to detect a dry stream-bed, and you have no idea where to start to look for the likeliest gold traps, you'll need to brush up on the movement of gold in a stream-bed and know the most likely spots where it gets trapped, especially if you're lucky enough to be working where the overburden to bedrock is shallow.

If you're starting out, and you have no idea where gold that got into a stream came from, or how it can be deposited and redeposited, there's a great link on another site from an older book on the dynamic processes of gold deposition.

A lot of the basics of how gold travels down a mountainside, how gold eventually gets in the river, how gold gets orphaned in bench deposits, how gold hangs up on inside bends, how gold seeks out certain types of bedrock crevices but slips easily over other types, how gold behaves when nature thrusts objects into the stream flow to create suction eddies, how gold loves to drop when a stream widens, how boulders act like gold grabbers, etc. are covered in the excerpt in the link.

Even though the excerpt has some editing errors, the descriptions of how gold behaves and where it hangs up are concisely covered, and there are easy to understand diagrams to illustrate what's being talked about.

So, if you're new, and you want to understand how gold got into the stream, how it gets left high and dry, and how gold behaves once it's in the stream channel, it's a fantastic link that will teach you the basics you'll need to know.

It's a longer read, so settle in when you've got the time . . .

How To Read A Stream Or River

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

That's great Lanny, thankyou for the link... anything you recommend is certainly something I intend to read.

Jim.

 

[Featherdfishead]

I always enjoy your well written adventures Lanny - keep it up!

 

[theseeker]

Lanny, thanks for the link to "How To Read A Stream Or River". I would recommend that as required reading for anyone chasing the gold! As always, very appreciative of the knowledge and adventures you share with us!

 

[Lanny in AB]

That's great Lanny, thankyou for the link... anything you recommend is certainly something I intend to read.

Jim.

Jim,

You're most welcome, and I actually have the book that came from somewhere. I bought it used years ago, and it has lots of good information in it. A little rough as far as the editing goes, but the content of the words is golden for sure.

By the way, when it comes to detecting, I'd read any books you'd recommend for sure as you're a bit of a grand master at swinging the coil.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

I always enjoy your well written adventures Lanny - keep it up!

Why, thanks so much for saying so. I appreciate the kind feedback.

I read your last little story and really enjoyed the details you put in it.

I may actually get out this weekend to swing the coil over some promising ground, that is if the weather cooperates. Right now, it's a bit cranky and temperamental; it doesn't want to let winter go without a fight.

All the best,

Lanny

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny, thanks for the link to "How To Read A Stream Or River". I would recommend that as required reading for anyone chasing the gold! As always, very appreciative of the knowledge and adventures you share with us!

Many thanks to you for dropping in to have a read through some of the material on the thread. It now has a life of its own, and I enjoy sharing my successes and my failures as they're all part of the true prospecting story. It ain't always nuggets!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

At last!

Got out to the gold fields, and, I hit a hot spot.

Had a lot of fun panning, and detecting, worked right on bedrock.

Story and pictures to follow as I find the time.

It sure was fun to be back in the hills gettin' some sassy gold!!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[meMiner]

Nice that you were able to get out so early in the year. I look forward to your hot spot story. The snow around me in Ontario is clearing, but the ground is still frozen. I am anxious to start detecting again soon.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Nice that were able to get out so early in the year. I look forward to your hot spot story. The snow around me in Ontario is clearing, but the ground is still frozen. I am anxious to start detecting again soon.

This year has been a pleasant surprise so far, with some warm bonus weather which has allowed for some earlier prospecting and gold chasing than usual.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

What beeps isn't always . . .

Up at 5:00 in the morning. I rounded up two detectors for the trip, the Minelab X-Terra 705, a dual purpose detector that's a solid shooter for coins and is also a deadly little nugget getter; as well, I packed the Falcon MD20, a highly specialized 300 khz probe-like unit that loves to find tiny gold, but will also find bigger pieces of gold, as long as they're close to the surface.

As the weather is still cranky this time of year, I grabbed my winter issue army, two-bag, down-filled sleeping gear. (There's nothing worse than being chilled to the bone in the mountains when you're trying to sleep.) I loaded up the usual gear: grub, picks, various shovels, backpack with sniping gear, gold bottles, pans, five-gallon plastic bucket, hiking boots, wading boots, and the necessary changes of clothing to use for layering in the mountains. You see, up here in the spring, we can get all four seasons in one day!

I hit the road in Little Blue, my smaller gasoline powered 4X4, and was soon climbing through the foothills on my way into the first mountain pass. On my way through, I noticed that none of the leaves were out yet, but the golden willows were sending the sap up to the top limbs, so the leaves will soon follow. All of the peaks are still covered in snow, but the areas of lower elevation between the peaks were starting to show some green in the meadows.

After winding my way through three separate passes, I hit the down slope that signaled I was within an hour of the claims.

http://

It was raining. Not a good sign.

When I hit camp, I unpacked in a light rain, set up all of my gear, then checked in with the locals to see what immediate conditions were like and to check to see if there was anything out of the ordinary (cranky bears, cougars on the prowl, etc.). After a good chunk of time chatting, and finding that things were pretty calm, I threw the gear I'd need into Little Blue and started my slow climb up the canyon. (The rain was an intermittent mist by now, and the sun was peeking over my shoulder as I headed west.)

The road up the canyon dates from the mid 1800's, and it literally hugs the cliff tops that crest the canyon walls. It's not for the faint of heart, and there are no series of guard rails to protect the careless. Moreover, there are very few places to negotiate passage around another vehicle, and sometimes it takes some fancy wall-crawling with two tires or some serious backing up to allow another vehicle to pass.

http://

I finally topped the first long rise, took a side road, and descended down a rough track that took me close to the river, but kept me above it and parallel to it on an ancient bench. On that bench was an excavation that I had permission to detect.

There was also a spot where pay dirt had been piled, but in checking that spot, all I did was turn my super-magnet (on the end of my pick) into a metal-spiked porcupine!

No nuggets.

I left that ground and headed to a section where I knew some bedrock had been uncovered. Some other prospectors had found gold in a pay layer above the bedrock, but they said they weren't getting gold out of the bedrock itself. Now, I've seen this before on other hunts, and it's not uncommon in areas of glaciation, yet I always check bedrock that's exposed after untold millennia of burial under a deep, earthy blanket of rock and clay.

I hit some friable bedrock with the 705 and after only three swings (I know, it doesn't sound possible), I had a nice, mellow tone. But, I have to back up a bit. I'd decided to do a little experiment: I'd switched over to the discrimination side because I was sick to death of all metal mode and the buhzillion pieces of track and blade I'd dug earlier. So, after the third swing, I had a nice repeatable signal that read conductive. (I'd swung across I don't know how many "blanking" signals of trash on my path to that third swing.) I switched back to all metal, and the target was nice and crisp. After not much work, I had the nugget in my hand. It was flat and round, kind of like when you hammer out a lead BB. But, it was gold, and it was first catch of the day.

Knowing that gold likes to travel the same lazy path, I kept at that spot and soon had another, yet smaller nugget. I stayed in all metal mode and forced myself to dig every target, and I added yet more slivers of steel and iron to the super-magnet's weird hairdo.

I noticed a spot where the bedrock rose up to meet the boulder clay, and someone had done a lot of work in that area. There were several piles of old high-banker tailings. The bedrock was running out from under the clay in little rough troughs. I swung the Minelab over the troughs and got multiple signals. Well, as it was obvious the original miners had scraped it hard with a toothed bucket, passing the magnet across the bedrock netted a whole new crop of splinters of steel. I swept the area again, and there were still lots of signals, but I couldn't get any more magnetics on the end of the pick.

Moreover, the spaces among the bedrock in those little troughs were pretty small, so I broke out the Falcon to get the probe down into the little nooks and crannies. It was just the right size. I had a small sniping spoon in my backpack and when I'd get a positive signal (there were lots of hot-rocks throwing off negative signals), I'd scoop out the clay, sticky sand, and small stones and put them in a gold pan. I sniffed out a bunch of signals in this manner, then took the pan to the water that was resting in a low spot in the bedrock.

My eyes about popped out when I fanned back the material in the crease. Nuggets!

Well, it didn't take me long to get more material in another pan, and once again, more nuggets. Now these aren't big nuggets, but small ones; nevertheless, lots of them, and it was getting dark. So, I got my flashlights out and worked with the Falcon until that proved too difficult, then I broke out the Minelab yet again and captured four more small nuggets. I called it a day (or, a night, really).

The take for several hours was ten nuggets and eleven pickers, plus a nice catch of flake gold in the bottle.

Obviously the people that high-banked that exposed bedrock didn't have a detector, or didn't know how to use it, or if they had a detector, they dug a pile of magnetic slivers and thought all of the remaining signals were trash as well.

I'll never know for sure, but what I learned is that when you get a lengthy series of beeps, it isn't always trash; it might just be sassy little nuggets instead.

All the best,

Lanny

http://

 

[Featherdfishead]

Beautiful Gold Lanny and a great tale of your day. I enjoy your writing style and look forward to a season of shareing our adventures here on TNet - way to go!
I live just below the Oregon border in California and we've been able to access and mine areas that are usually snowed over, this is the second year in a row with virtually no snow pack. Good winter mining but we'll likely have huge wildfires again that shutdown access to most of the forest roads so not a good trade off really. Many times i have detected diggings from recent mining and found at least a few pieces they missed. Awhile ago i passed over a guys hole that had previously detected it out and had told me it was creamed- found just over a penny weight consisting of 5 pieces.
Good Luck and thanks for sharing
AjR

 

[calisdad]

What a great start to your season. Thanks for the story and the eye candy.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Beautiful Gold Lanny and a great tale of your day. I enjoy your writing style and look forward to a season of shareing our adventures here on TNet - way to go!
I live just below the Oregon border in California and we've been able to access and mine areas that are usually snowed over, this is the second year in a row with virtually no snow pack. Good winter mining but we'll likely have huge wildfires again that shutdown access to most of the forest roads so not a good trade off really. Many times i have detected diggings from recent mining and found at least a few pieces they missed. Awhile ago i passed over a guys hole that had previously detected it out and had told me it was creamed- found just over a penny weight consisting of 5 pieces.
Good Luck and thanks for sharing
AjR

Thanks for dropping in to leave your kind words, and I'm glad you enjoy the stories.

That's a great little story of your determination to check where others had been, and it was nice you found some gold they left behind.

All the best, and a big hello to northern California!

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

What a great start to your season. Thanks for the story and the eye candy.

Thanks for saying so. Those little nuggets were fun to find even though I've found lots of nuggets many times larger, the fact that they were all in such a small area is what made finding them so much fun.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[dashriprock]

Congrats on getting out and finding the yellow stuff Lanny! I bet it was alot of fun just to be out and finding gold is the icing on the cake. The area looks very much like where I'm at here just south of Glacier Park in Montana. Snow capped mtns, little rain and the way that all the leaves are getting ready to pop out. Good luck to you on your future trips.

 

[Jeff95531]

Kinda like finding a coin spill only with nuggets! WTG Lanny!

 

[Tree!]

Niiiice!