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.

 

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[Lanny in AB]

A deliciously golden tale! One would wonder why you've never been back?

That leftover gold is a long, long distance from where I'm currently chasing the gold, and where I'm at right now is producing good gold. However, I do plan a return visit one of these days, perhaps when where I'm at quits producing, but that far northern gold isn't going anywhere . . .

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[OwenT]

Lanny, would your playground happen to be the famous Atlin district? Or perhaps that is the Far northern goldfield you speak of? Other than that and the Cariboo area, and of course the Klondike, I'm not familiar with the gold districts of northern Canada. Maybe you could pm me if you didn't want to share here.

 

[63bkpkr]

Yes indeed, places to return to! I've more than a couple of those myself. Now yesterday I left my Bronco at a shop 12 miles from home to have a touch of work performed on her but before I left her at the shop I pulled my mountain bike out of the back end of the Bronco. I then rode the Bike the twelve miles, mostly uphill, back to the house. This morning there are a few parts of my body that are complaining at me. So what does this have to do with the cost of Tea in China? This exercise, now one month in progress, is so that I am strong enough to hit the trails this summer. I've at least 2.5 months to go before the trails Might be open so lots of time to build some good muscles. Also in nine days I will turn 75 years of age and I've quite a smile on my face about that.

Very interesting share, thank you Lanny. Herb

 

[Lanny in AB]

Yes indeed, places to return to! I've more than a couple of those myself. Now yesterday I left my Bronco at a shop 12 miles from home to have a touch of work performed on her but before I left her at the shop I pulled my mountain bike out of the back end of the Bronco. I then rode the Bike the twelve miles, mostly uphill, back to the house. This morning there are a few parts of my body that are complaining at me. So what does this have to do with the cost of Tea in China? This exercise, now one month in progress, is so that I am strong enough to hit the trails this summer. I've at least 2.5 months to go before the trails Might be open so lots of time to build some good muscles. Also in nine days I will turn 75 years of age and I've quite a smile on my face about that.

Very interesting share, thank you Lanny. Herb

Herb, good to hear from you again, and good to know you're training for your next adventure.

If you're like me, every year I learn a bit more about chasing the gold, so I'm sure that on your upcoming trip you'll find some nice gold, whether it's the noble metal or whether it's the memories that always last.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[meMiner]

Great story about the gold spot Lanny. I think I might have drooled a little bit, picturing the wall with the nuggets and the sluice's golden pavement. For sure it can happen once in a long while (to somebody else, always). It reminds me of the old story of Terry Toop and his similar discovery on Mary Creek in the Cariboo.
For sure, knowing where they ran their wash plant is an interesting place to metal detect. All kinds of reasons for a spill. The other spot worthy of investigation is around where they did their cleanups. Thanks for giving me even more gold fever awaiting for summer.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny, would your playground happen to be the famous Atlin district? Or perhaps that is the Far northern goldfield you speak of? Other than that and the Cariboo area, and of course the Klondike, I'm not familiar with the gold districts of northern Canada. Maybe you could pm me if you didn't want to share here.

Owen, do some research on the Omnieca gold field of British Columbia.

Gold discovered in 1861, the rush to Vital creek in 1869, big things happening 1870/71. Lots of great placer creeks and rivers, lots of glaciation which really moved things around, so the best areas with consistent gold were ones where the gold was protected by bedrock rims on either side as the glaciers couldn't scour completely to the bare bedrock bottom as they did in so many areas.

Fascinating area with lots of gold left still, but bugs, bugs, bugs and lots of bear too, plus truly hair-raising logging roads that if the trucks don't get you, the road will.

All the best, and have fun doing some research,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Places like that can drive a person insane especially a single person or a small group. Claustrophobic due to thick brush and forest, noises real or in ones mind, bugs always at you(back then no bug juice, no nets just you your blood and the bugs) or even now with modern gear, fear for ones life due to the bears and 'sounds' , yup a person's mind does a lot of strange thing to the owner of it. And of course the driving force "Gold".........63bkpkr

 

[Lanny in AB]

Can you smell the rice cooking?

I recall being far to the north in a historic gold field, and I had the opportunity to have a chat with a Sourdough (a seasoned miner from the area) about his claim. He took me to a spot one day and told me a most interesting tale.

However, before I relate his story, I’ll describe its location. It was far down in the bottom of a secluded valley. Steep, black-walled mountains rose on either side, and courageous growths of spruce and fur clung to the steep slopes, with birch, poplar and aspen peppering the evergreens lower down. Dark draws inhabited by deeper areas of gloom gave birth to swiftly flowing streams that emptied into the valley. From these gulches, the icy, ghostly breath of unseen currents of air rushed forth to randomly lift the hair, before chilling the neck and spine. Indeed, an eerie atmosphere pervaded that sullen spot of murky shadows where the long dead miners of some 150-years past had chased the gold to make their fortunes, or to lose their lives.

On a gentle slop above long rows and piles of cobble stacks, the remnants of a massive hand-workings, the miner’s cabin was situated. It was an ancient cabin, one in continual use since the original gold rush, the cabin perpetually maintained and rebuilt until it was later used by a member of the North West Mounted police as a retirement refuge. Later, it was acquired by Glen the miner. Heavy logs formed the base of the walls, with smaller logs progressing up the sides, and there were only two windows, one big enough to allow light to enter, and one small one which served as a lookout. The log ends were all beautifully axe cut to fit and lock together, and there was an addition on the back of the main cabin that housed a food storage and washing area. The doors were heavy and sturdily built as grizzly and black bears frequently visited the area. (I have a story somewhere about the attack on Glen’s cabin by an enraged grizzly, quite the hair-raising tale he told me of his experience that truly made my blood run cold.)

A path led down from the slope to a long draw that then led to a bedrock rise, with the draw, or gulch, continuing upward. On the other side of the bedrock rise a fast-flowing creek could be heard. The bedrock rise continued to climb as it joined the shoulder of the mountain. There was a trail that led up the non-creek side of that shoulder, and I headed off on foot to look the area over.

The first thing I noticed, as I looked down into the draw from the trail, were the sunken places. There were five large areas where the earth had slumped, with smaller areas running perpendicular to the gulch that were still at the original level. This of course spiked my curiosity.

When I returned from my hike, Glen the miner was at his cabin, and we had a chat.

He started in with a bit of history of the area. That the place had been extensively hand-mined I had already seen; that it was shallow to bedrock in many places was also obvious. What he filled me in on was that the early miners were after the easy, shallow gold, and they had done very well, with many ounces of coarse gold quickly gathered from the shallow diggings. But, as was the common case in the 1800’s, there was always the news of new gold rush farther to the north where the gold was equally shallow, easier to get to, so the miners that loved the quick gold soon left to chase other strikes. That left the deeper gold that required organized groups of people with the necessary capital to start up larger operations.

Then, he told me about the arrival of the Chinese miners in the area. They followed the gold rushes and came in after the other miners had had creamed the shallow gold and had either abandoned their claims or were looking to sell cheaply. The Chinese, he said, were not afraid of hard work, and moreover, many of them did not have a choice of whether they liked hard work or not due to being indentured laborers, a form of slavery so to speak, until they had paid off the Tong for their debt to the organization. Glen went on to explain how the Chinese used a lot of opium during their miserable existence, and he told me of bottle hunters that had come a few years before my arrival and of their efforts in trash dumps to recover the precious little bottles. He also told me of the tiny log huts the miners lived in, short-walled on purpose as they were easier to heat during the brutal winters. In addition, he told me of the superstitions the Chinese were bound to, mysterious ones that propelled their efforts.

Then, he took me on a walk.

The bedrock rise that I’ve already mentioned was where he took me, but he walked me over closer to the face where there was a bit of a fold, and that fold hid from view the entrance to a tunnel, but one that he had caved in with is heavy equipment as it led to a large area of unsafe underground workings, ones the Chinese had excavated by hand. I then told him about my upslope hike, and of seeing the collapsed areas, and he confirmed that all of that long draw was a continuation of the original Chinese workings. He elaborated that the Chinese had struck an ancient channel by cutting below it through the solid rock so they could hit the base of the channel where the coarse gold was trapped. A lot of trapped water had flowed when they punched through the last of the bedrock, but they had cut the tunnel on purpose so it would drain the ancient water down and away before they went to work.

The gold was coarse, and they took out a lot of good gold over several years, but then one day the horrific happened, the roof of the tunnel, off on one side excavation of the gulch, collapsed, killing several Chinese. They left the area . . . (This is not an isolated incident, and I have read about this in other gold rush accounts, bad Josh/Joss [bad luck] was something they didn’t mess with, and the area was forever cursed to them.)

When Glen first acquired the claim, he had gone into the tunnel mouth, and he’d taken samples from the floor of the tunnel. The buckets of dirt he’d recovered were full of pickers! To prove this, he gave a jar of the dirt for later panning, and it was indeed loaded with gold!!

So, his interesting tale had answered my questions about the sunken areas I’d seen on my walk, and I could see just how extensive the underground workings were that the Chinese had driven up that gulch from the size of the collapsed areas. Those determined miners had really got the job done, regardless of their motivations.

As we were leaving the tunnel mouth, Glen turned to me and said, “Can you smell the rice cooking?”

I said, “What?”

He said again, “Can you smell the rice cooking?”

I answered, “No, can you?”

He then told me that on certain days, when the wind was just right, he could smell the scent of rice cooking as it drifted down to the cabin from the gulch. He didn’t smile or joke in any way, and the gloomy setting of the area, with its accompanying tragedy, put nothing but a large punctuation mark on his story.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Places like that can drive a person insane especially a single person or a small group. Claustrophobic due to thick brush and forest, noises real or in ones mind, bugs always at you(back then no bug juice, no nets just you your blood and the bugs) or even now with modern gear, fear for ones life due to the bears and 'sounds' , yup a person's mind does a lot of strange thing to the owner of it. And of course the driving force "Gold".........63bkpkr

Yes, indeed!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Terry Soloman]

I can smell it!

 

[63bkpkr]

Some time ago I was off on one of my California gold rush country explorations just me and my two buddies, Woof & Intrepid. I was camped close to the river mostly to be away from the bugs though the location made for easy camp water and washing up. Most days I was gone from camp anywhere from 8 to 12 hours exploring side canyons, hidden pools, old workings and such, there was more than enough to keep a younger man busy just nosing around. After returning to the camp on one of those long exploration days I caught a nice bunch of Rainbow Trout and had a nice dinner. I was in my "easy chair" with the camp fire burning nicely, Woof & Intrepid sitting on top of the tent the camp was at peace and I deserved the relaxation after the exertions of the day.
''
The river was running nicely splashing into the boulders and ever flowing down river into many other gorges and canyons. The sun was getting close to the high rim of the canyon around me and all was well with the world. Slowly at first I began to pick out sounds. After a bit the sounds became soft spoken words. Eventually there were quite a few people talking though I was not quite able to make out what they were saying, but there were people talking. Suddenly across the river in the woods a man yelled out a name, I mean Yelled. Someone was lost and he must be looking for them! I yelled back quite loudly 'HELLO'!

Instantly all the talking ceased. The man across the river never answered my call. There was nothing left but the sweet sound of the river splashing over the rocks. I looked at the boys and nodded at them, they never even moved.

I'm telling this just like it happened............63bkpkr

Oh, the only aromas in the air were from the pine trees, no rice was cooking.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great little story of one of those enigmatic encounters that forever remain a mystery, all penned by you with a nice, descriptive style.

Nicely done, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Eyeball]

Where do I chase the gold?


Here's a few pictures, taken over the years, of one of the rugged areas where I chase the gold.






























And of course, the first picture, and the last picture, that's why I'm in those mountains; moreover, that's why I write the stories . . .


All the best,


Lanny

Greetings Lanny,
It's been a while but it is good to come here and catch up on your activities.
That second last picture is one that intrigues me.
I always wondered, if a scene like that is in a generally accepted gold and other mineral bearing region, What would be the chance that all of that dirt could potentially be hiding the heavy shiny stuff.
It has already scoured and scraped a lot of virgin ground and could be hiding some bodacious yellow!
Yup, I just came up for air from 5 consecutive trips to Nogales with buckets of dirt from various washes and hintful places in Arizona and New Mexico, but panning at home was not very productive other than a few flakes here and there, understandably.

I love the scenic pics Lanny, it brings memories of panning through a few spots on Vancouver island and the smells and fragrances automatically kick in looking at them, but without the deer flies.
Thank you for sharing them.
I'm finally taking a week off and will be swinging a coil or two in the mid Eastern Ontario area to test a few places in the hope of finding a good reason to go back with authority in the fall.

Your stories are like ice cream on a hot day my friend, they're always informative and you can feel the excitement and fun in them, never mind the info.
I wish you many signals and a full pan, eyeball.

 

[oneguy]

No place like the Rockies....!!!!!!! The gold is kinda nice also.....

 

[Lanny in AB]

Greetings Lanny,
It's been a while but it is good to come here and catch up on your activities.
That second last picture is one that intrigues me.
I always wondered, if a scene like that is in a generally accepted gold and other mineral bearing region, What would be the chance that all of that dirt could potentially be hiding the heavy shiny stuff.
It has already scoured and scraped a lot of virgin ground and could be hiding some bodacious yellow!
Yup, I just came up for air from 5 consecutive trips to Nogales with buckets of dirt from various washes and hintful places in Arizona and New Mexico, but panning at home was not very productive other than a few flakes here and there, understandably.

I love the scenic pics Lanny, it brings memories of panning through a few spots on Vancouver island and the smells and fragrances automatically kick in looking at them, but without the deer flies.
Thank you for sharing them.
I'm finally taking a week off and will be swinging a coil or two in the mid Eastern Ontario area to test a few places in the hope of finding a good reason to go back with authority in the fall.

Your stories are like ice cream on a hot day my friend, they're always informative and you can feel the excitement and fun in them, never mind the info.
I wish you many signals and a full pan, eyeball.

Kind of you to drop in and leave such nice comments, and thanks for brining a few ideas to life as well. If I get back to that remote, high altitude again, I may just have to do some sampling to see what's up there. The place doesn't open up (heavy snow-pack) until late July or August, depending on the year, and then it gets shut down again right quick in the fall.

Sorry your dirt from Nogales isn't producing much so far, maybe you'll get lucky when you hit the bottom of a bucket or two, fingers crossed.

Glad you appreciate the stories, and I enjoyed the ice cream simile, nice touch of style.

Thanks again, and all the best as you chase the gold,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

No place like the Rockies....!!!!!!! The gold is kinda nice also.....

True that! And, Montana gold is mighty sassy too; I've gathered some in the past, but it's been a while.

Nice thing about Montana, not a lot of people there and lots and lots of places to look . . . Plus, the scenery is drop-dead gorgeous, and lots of fascinating mining history from the 1800's, and then there's the legends of lost gold too.

Thanks for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Gold Monster Outing

Went to the gold camp in the Rocky Mountains last week. The weather was gorgeous, all kinds of songbirds back, plus the flowers of the mountain meadows are in full bloom, purple crocus and shooting stars, yellow buttercups, multi-coloured Johnny Jump-ups, etc., etc.

At the camp as I was checking over the living quarters (camper and two travel trailers), a humming bird buzzed straight past my right ear! That snappy racket from those wings going a million miles an hour is unmistakable. So, we set out the humming bird feeders hoping to catch a glimpse of the beautiful and dazzling red to orange coloured throat of the Roufus variety before they head farther north, and we’ll keep an eye out for the beautiful iridescent green of the more common ones that stick around all season.

My wife unpacked her shiny new Minelab Gold Monster, and for those of you familiar with the machine, there’s not much reading to do, but I watched a whack of user videos before we hit the mountains so I could give my little darlin’ some tips and guidelines as she set out to learn how to use it.

I picked a spot for her to try her luck on, an old fairly level place in a valley where some placer miners once had their wash-plant. The claim is now abandoned, last worked by some modern-day Chinese miners, but they left the area under a gloomy cloud, and I doubt they’ll ever be back.

I gave my June Bride some general instructions on how to run the Gold Monster (I’d never used one before, but the YouTube and other user-posted videos were a great help. Furthermore, I’d like to give a shout-out to Bill Southern for his wonderful educational efforts.). But, we figured the Monster out quite quickly, and that’s why I’m grateful to Steve Herschbach for recommending I get my sweetheart one due to its ease of use, and kudos to Steve and Jonathan Porter for their write-ups on the machine which helped me quickly get a handle on the basics; their input was invaluable.

By eye-balling the old site, I could tell pretty close to where the Chinese had pulled out their wash-plant, so I used that information to gauge where I’d have my wife start to detect as there are always some “spill” areas that offer a better shot at finding a nugget or two. Having said that, it was easy to see they had bladed and bucketed the area carefully after they were done to gather any spilled material; those miners were no greenhorns.

I blocked off in a rough rectangle an area I thought might pay, and right away, my wife was hitting targets, but they were almost all ferrous, so she kept experimenting toggling back and forth between discriminate and all iron, learning the different sounds, learning how to make it easier to ID targets (to get them to sound off louder), learning how to read the little bar graph when it gave its indication of non-ferrous more than ferrous, as well as getting used to the sounds of shallow vs. deeper targets, and learning how to use the magnet wand to save time while sorting trash signals. (To elaborate, she’s a great panner, but a green, green rookie when it comes to nugget shooting.)

The thing about detecting an old wash-plant set-up is that it gets very easy to quickly tell where the repairs (welds, patches, etc.) took place, and the numerous bits of welding rod sure make for some interesting sounds, and curious readings on the graph! Having said that, the Monster’s discriminator sure came in handy, and yes, depth was lost, but by using the small round coil, target separation was much better, and I was impressed at how my wife was able to move slowly from target to target, separating their locations, as she dug out signals.

While she was test-driving the Monster, I was going for a comfortable cruise with my Gold Bug Pro. That is one hot machine, at least mine is. (I’ve heard detecting folklore that some machines leave the factory “hotter” than others, and I have no idea it that’s true or not, but the one I have is a firecracker for sure, super sensitive, and a true gold hound for sniffing out gold from tiny flakes to meaty nuggets.)

I started to hit non-ferrous targets in one slice of her search area, so I marked a few so she could check them out. Well, those miners had liked their cigarettes, and there were plenty of crumpled bits of foil from the wrappers as well as some other kind of lead foil with a gold-coloured outer covering that made for some increased heartbeat, but only turned out to be a bust.

After having dug some of those duds, she called me over. “Hey, what do you think of this signal?”. She was getting a great reading on the Monster, and it sounded sweet too. She worked the ground for a bit chasing the target around with her scoop (when a target runs from the scoop, it’s usually something heavy, as most ferrous trash seems to hop quickly into the scoop). Dropping the dirt from the scoop onto the coil, she moved things around and there sat a pretty little picker, about a quarter of a gram! Man, was she pumped!!

So, she kept on working that rectangle while I ranged farther afield with the Bug Pro, and I too found all kinds of cigarette foil, and that maddening, thick lead foil with gold coloring--craziest stuff I’ve ever seen, and I have no idea what it originally contained. I recovered a small aluminum parts tag, several electrical connectors, bits of lead, and pieces of broken brass likely from a bushing of some kind.

My wife gave another shout, and over I went. Her meter was pinning consistently in the sweet zone, the signal sound nice and crisp. Capturing the target, she threw the dirt in a gold pan. Next, she then used the Garret Carrot to chase the signal around the pan. She moved some dirt then cried out, “Look at this. Is this gold?” At first, it was hard to tell what it was due to a covering of grey clay, but using a bit of water soon revealed a sassy nugget! If I’d thought she was excited about her first find, it was nothing compared to her reaction on that one!

I can only come to this conclusion: The Minelab Gold Monster is a sweet machine that sure produces sweet results, because it’s so easy to use, and it makes my sweetheart happy (couldn’t resist punning on sweet, forgive me).

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Terry Soloman]

Sweet & Sassy!

 

[Eyeball]

Golden Grams of Goodness: Part 3

Even though the bedrock was super hard in that location, it did have some fractures, but it was a rare exception to find any breaks in the stone that had much depth due to the hardness of the rock. However, what that bedrock did have was lots of little gutters with bends indented into it, decorated with twists and dips, and those made for some great little gold traps for sassy pickers, lonely nuggets, and juicy flakes, and there was lots of gold to go around, and I do mean lots!

When conditions would allow, we scrubbed the coils right tight on the bedrock listening for faint breaks in the threshold or for those aforementioned broader signals, and every time we’d get a hit, we’d shut off the detectors and go to work with the sniping tools. After cleaning the twists and turns of the little gutters, we’d detect them again and find gold that could now be heard because we’d removed so many ironstone chunks with the sniping tools and the super-magnets.

However, the non-magnetic dark hot rocks (one less oxygen molecule from the magnetic ones I believe?) still caused trouble, but there were less of them compared to the the truly troublesome ones we’d got out of the way. (The iron bands couldn’t be dealt with by detecting though, and I’m sure we left gold behind along their edges when we finally ran out of time.) By continuing to scan the bedrock, we hit some nuggets in the 2-3 gram range as well, and a few bigger ones to boot–right sassy, beefy brawlers. Regardless of the bigger pieces, lots of flat nuggets were wedged down in any crack they’d been able to work their way into while travelling over that iron-hard bedrock, and we really had to work to liberate them.

In addition, we took our time to carefully scan any clay or channel material that was stuck to the sides of those bedrock pinnacles I mentioned early in the story, and by careful scraping after we got a positive detector response along those sides (when we could), we captured a lot of additional pickers from their slopes. Having already learned from our previous finds in hot ground, we’d shut down the detectors after finding any detectable gold on around or near the base of the pinnacles as well, and it sure paid off with lots of nice gold we would have missed electronically. In retrospect, it was somewhat ironic that we had to revert to age-old gold gathering techniques used thousands of years ago because our modern electronic wizardry was overwhelmed and outclassed, but that just goes to show why it’s good to be well-rounded in gold getting techniques, with a healthy collection of excellent tools as well to use for specialized purposes; because, does anyone really know what they’ll be up against when Mother Nature’s been scheming and plotting to hide her gold?

On a different note, we used the waterproof coils to search the bottom of the pools and we found some gold that way too, but not much as where the pools were, the bedrock had been softer which allowed the excavator buckets to dig deep. A Cheechako (greenhorn) and a Sourdough (seasoned miner) joined us in the excavation for a while, and they too found gold, with the lucky Cheechako hitting a nice multi-gram nugget (the size of my thumbnail) with his detector, a chunk that had been drug, with some larger rocks, off to the side of the bedrock drain that was channeling water into the culvert of the drain. We were happy for him, and happy for the Sourdough (a veteran of many a gold chase) too who sniped like a man possessed with the pure golden fever, a sight to behold! Well, he walked away with a nice catch of pickers and small nuggets in his bottle as he’d set up a little high-banker so he could process more material. However, neither of them came close to our tally in weight, but they sure had fun, and we did too.

It was a great day, and I walked out with lots of growly golden rattlers in my gold bottle (that bottle had weight issues, good ones though) and my son did better than me as he went back the next day in the rain and rescued a third more gold than he’d gathered the previous day. As for me, I was content to just hunker down in my wet-weather gear and watch him have fun in the drizzle, and then I helped him haul his equipment out of the excavation up the boulder strewn slope back to the waiting 4X4 diesel. However, what should have been an easy exit from the site got highly sketchy in a hurry as the rain had caused a big slump right across the road by sliding muck down the north side of the excavation, with the mess beginning about seventy-five yards from where we were working. Moreover, it’s a good thing my diesel has lots of clearance or we’d still be glued there in the goo, but with the high clearance and the awesome torque of that diesel, it chewed us safely through. Now, if I’d have been in my gasoline-powered 4X4, which has lower clearance and not near the torque, it likely would have been a bad ending to a great gold trip.

All the best,

Lanny

I just realized that you composed and penned a Golden Grams Trilogy here Lanny hats off, Tolkien eat your heart out!
I always admire the effort that goes into these pieces, most readers may not realize the work it really takes.
As always, well done Lanny.
Regards, John.

 

[63bkpkr]

You are forgiven! Thank you for the adventure!!.............63bkpkr