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]

That is just insane!

You're not kidding; it is insanely painful to watch.

Hey great to hear from you again!

Are you still out chasing the gold?

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

"Nugget Hump" continued:

With the target in the scoop, I poured a little water in and worked the lump with my fingers. Almost instantly, the lump gave off a golden flash! By quickly rubbing and washing the rest of the clay away, I soon had the solid gold nugget ready for a closer look. And what a look it was. The piece was not hammered and flat like so much of the gold I'd already found in the surrounding area. Instead, this nugget had lots of bumpy character, and in the sunshine it produced a nice buttery yellow glow.

Now, it doesn't seem to matter how many nuggets I find, for there's still a thrill when there's one that's different, and this one fit the bill to a T. Moreover, remember that my wife wasn't far off, reading her book in the truck. So not to appear too excited, I slowly wandered over her way. Well, the air was a bit cooler than when I'd left her, and she had the window closed. So, I tapped on the window. She rolled it down. I told her to hold out her hand, and since I don't drop worms or bugs into her hand when she does this, she held it out to me.

I dropped the nugget into her cupped palm, and immediately she started to lightly bounce her hand up and down, to sense the weight of it. She pulled her hand into the truck and looked at the nugget. Well, her eyes sure lit up, and she smiled one of those beautiful smiles of hers."Where'd you get that?" she asked. I pointed to the hump. She handed the little beauty back so I could put it in my plastic nugget bottle. She told me how nice she thought the nugget was and asked me if I thought there were any more. Of course, I had no clue, but I left pronto, eager to get back to sweep some more of the area.

I'll provide a bit of background on sweeping the area: the spot was littered with cobbles varying in size from golf balls to watermelons. So, I drug, and rolled the larger rocks off, then raked the area down. I do this so I can get every mm of depth advantage for the coil, and especially with the X-Terra, as it doesn't have the punch of my 5000. Furthermore, the closer I can get the coil to the ground, or indeed to "scrub" the ground with the coil will get me a tiny advantage to hear faint signals or tiny interruptions in the threshold that I'd miss by simply swinging the coil above the ground.

Is this process extra work? Absolutely. Do I enjoy it? On hot days I hate it, and on cooler days, it's still a zero on the fun scale, but I've found it's the best way to get the best shot at another nugget when you've found one in the area that might have company. What I'm talking about here is clearing the area carefully to see it there's a patch of nuggets hanging out with the first one, and this is a great method to help avoid missing gold when you've already found gold in a spot.

But, back to my story.

About six inches away from the nugget hole, I got another soft signal. I went through the same check-recheck-sort process described earlier, and soon had another nice nugget. This one was smaller, but very respectable. However, it was hammered flat, and the little sweetheart was a darker color of gold than the first find. So, I knew I was hitting other gold moved by the glaciers, the other color produced by the two gold-bearing runs. Things were getting very interesting.

I strolled over to the truck, tapped on the window, my wife stopped reading again, rolled down the window, and she went through the same routine as before, with her once again complimenting me on a nice find. However, I could tell I'd grabbed more of her attention this time as two nuggets in such a short time is a rare thing, a rare thing that could lead to something more interesting.

I put the nugget into the bottle, rattled the gold around in the bottle close to my ear to hear the nuggets growl as they spun around inside (this is a little ritual I always do for multiple finds), and off I went to hit the hump again.

If I'd have known what the output of that spot would eventually be, I'm sure I'd have run back, but I was still in the early stages of shooting for nuggets in that place, so I strolled back to the hump happy and satisfied that I'd captured two nuggets. Nonetheless, I was hopeful there'd be more too because the memories of others finding nuggets for years at "Nugget Hump" was running a full-color loop in the video images of my brain.

More to follow as I find the time.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[familyhunter]

Lanny we will go dredge the spot Eagle told you about if dredging ever opens back up here I know right where it is as he told me that he wished he could dredge again their

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks for the invitation to dredge; that would be fantastic. I hope there's a way that it works out sometime. I'd like that.

All the best to you,

Lanny

 

[Hoser John]

still laughing---and cleaning up spilt coffee-from canadian olympic trials snow swimming video ,now THAT is indeed as funny as it gets. Ya'all crazy up there in free Canada--but that's cool too-reguards as always Lanny-John

 

[Lanny in AB]

still laughing---and cleaning up spilt coffee-from canadian olympic trials snow swimming video ,now THAT is indeed as funny as it gets. Ya'all crazy up there in free Canada--but that's cool too-reguards as always Lanny-John

Thanks John.

It's always good to hear from you. I'm glad you enjoyed the snow swimming.

I hope that one day I'll be able to know just a small portion of what you've learned about mining. My hat's off to you.

All the best, and thanks for the visit,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Just a quick note to the Rookies:

Far too often I see rookies panning by the river, and the river is a great gold producer. However, at the end of the day, many beginners feel very lucky to have found one or two specks of gold, and too many find none at all.

I've helped many of them find a spot where they could get some decent flakes and color, but it's stumped me why so many beginners fail. After all, a lot of them have read books, articles, and watched videos on how to find places to pan. Of course, some Rookies have never done any research on how to find gold; they're just visiting or passing through a good gold area, and they get caught up in the excitement, buy a pan, and have at it with no instruction whatsoever.

So, this is to the Rookies: "I've thought about why so many of you fail off and on to find the gold. Obviously those of you that have a knack for remembering details, or for internalizing techniques have an advantage over the others, but too many of you just get frustrated by not seeming to find a decent spot where you can get some gold."

I'm sure the reality gold shows on TV don't help as they give out often strongly conflicting messages about the ease or about the difficulty of finding gold.

One thing I've done for the last few years though has seemed to stick with more Rookies than any other.

I have them look up and down the river. I ask them some questions about what they see. (I would encourage you to do the same every time you get to the bank of a stream you want to pan.)

Of course they tell me they see lots of rocks and water. So, I ask them to look at the size of the rocks. Some of them say they've read about panning downstream of boulders in a river, and that's a good tip, sometimes, if a hundred other gold seekers haven't already hit that big boulder. So, I ask them to look to see if they can find a string of larger rocks following one another, roughly in a line down stream (always pay attention to this). That usually stops them short for a bit. And, it gets them looking at least for a key indicator where the gold is likely to drop.

I imagine that every Cheechako that's ever picked up a book on prospecting or panning has read about inside bends, about looking below pinch-points where the stream is allowed to widen, and about checking behind bedrock outcrops, etc., etc.

I remember talking to an Oldtimer from California years ago, and he told me to watch for lines of bigger rocks following each other downstream. I know I've talked about this before, but this one bears repeating: when you see a line of boulders or larger rocks lined-out downstream, get around those rocks and do some testing! For the stream to let go of those boulders or large rocks, and to lose enough force to let them drop, why, any gold that was traveling the same path (and, it sure would be in a good gold stream!), would have to drop as well. This also applies to old channels that are high and dry. If you find a line of boulders or big rocks running down that old stream bed, get at it!

For clarification, and so as not to get confused, I'm not talking about just any big rocks in the stream bed that are deposited in the channel. You have to find a defined line of big rocks like someone stretched a tight string along a marked, often angled line, and along that imaginary marked line, the rocks have dropped out sequentially as the water lost its power to carry them. That's a great place to check for the gold.

You need to watch for places like this.

Mathematically, this will give anyone that's a rookie a solid shot at finding repeatable gold on their outing, not just a one-off lucky scoop that had a random flake in it. This is a gravitational density process of deposition that's predictable exactly because it's repeatable.

If, while you're sampling around that line of rocks, you start to find other heavies (pyrite, ironstone, garnets, square nails, fishing lead, galena, etc.), you'll know you're on the right track, and that will encourage you to do more sampling until you find the gold. And, if by some chance you get skunked, at least you were looking in the right place, and the odds were with you instead of against you.

All the best to every rookie out there; we've all been there, trying to find where the gold's dropped,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Lanny, that is a sample of great information.......................63bkpkr/Herb

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny, that is a sample of great information.......................63bkpkr/Herb

It's so great to hear from you again!

How are things?

Did you get a chance to chase any gold in Texas yet?

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Hi Lanny,
Nope no gold chasing yet in Texas. The spot I thought could be interesting disappeared.

The work continues to bounce along though the production line folks have just gone to 12 hour rotating days, it is too soon to tell how that will work. I am still on an 8 hour/day schedule, I am still very busy and prefer to be as the days pass quickly. Soon to be one year here so 20% of my anticipated time here is almost complete.

Most of my excitement here comes from riding my ~ 1000cc motorcycle in all weather conditions till it snows then I will miss work on that day. Generally though life is quiet and simple. I am enjoying checking in on what is happening on Tnet, seems to keep my spirits and desires up. Looking very forward to being back out in the mountains in a few years!

All my best...................Herb

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Glad to know you are doing well Herb.

 

[BurntBear]

Great advice Lanny! -Luke

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi Lanny,
Nope no gold chasing yet in Texas. The spot I thought could be interesting disappeared.

The work continues to bounce along though the production line folks have just gone to 12 hour rotating days, it is too soon to tell how that will work. I am still on an 8 hour/day schedule, I am still very busy and prefer to be as the days pass quickly. Soon to be one year here so 20% of my anticipated time here is almost complete.

Most of my excitement here comes from riding my ~ 1000cc motorcycle in all weather conditions till it snows then I will miss work on that day. Generally though life is quiet and simple. I am enjoying checking in on what is happening on Tnet, seems to keep my spirits and desires up. Looking very forward to being back out in the mountains in a few years!

All my best...................Herb

Herb,

I'm sorry that the spot in Texas didn't work out for you. And, I know it's difficult for you to be so far away from your mountains and streams, but I'm glad that the job is working so well for you.

Having that 1000 cc's of juice to boost your spirits is a fine way to spend your time, and with all the roads there are in Texas, you've got all kinds of choices for places to ride.

I see you're still posting on other threads, and I see, as always, you're still helping others out that are new to the gold chasing.

All the best, and keep dreaming those golden dreams,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great advice Lanny! -Luke

Luke,

Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for stopping in to say so.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

I just have to post this picture here on my thread.

The person that found this nugget just granted me permission to post its picture.

He really is a great guy, and he's been finding nuggets for years. I'm sure he could write a fantastic book on how to find nuggets with a detector.

At 28.52 ounces, his latest find should have its own Zip Code!!

Here's the story by the finder:

The rest of the story, where to start?
In 2007 I was in this general area for work, I brought my detector, a 2200, and in the evenings I found a couple of nuggets, 3 & 5 grams if I remember........ Since I returned home from that trip I have been trying to get my boss to move to the area.
In 2011 I convinced the boss to try a new location closer to the area. For the last 4 summers we have been chasing nuggets whenever the chance presented it's self. We camp in the area on weekends.
We have a network of contacts who have active mines, of these we have been able to enter into agreements to check their ground after they finish mining.
This particular claim is a new one that we reached a tentative agreement in August to check their workings at the end for the season. The owner called last Thursday and indicated that Saturday would be good for us. We packed up and were on the road early, 5am. 3 hours later, after driving through a blizzard, we had picked up a buddy and were on site. Not knowing the entry point we found our own way into the pit, turns out the entry point we chose was wrong; however, it worked to my advantage as this was the first signal I got. If I had entered the normal route I would have encountered hot rocks and may not have chased this one!
It was down about 18 inches, I had a Joey coil on the 4500 and it was screaming at me. I had to bust through shale bedrock to find a pocket of cobble that included this nugget. It was all alone, usually there are a few together. We did manage to take some other fines.
All the best, wishing you all one...........

[URL=http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Lannyinab/media/Monsternugget_zps9892cfd0.jpg.html] [/URL]

It's only something I can dream about. What a freakin' fantastic find!!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[russau]

This thread has got to be a record on its length and one of the most informing post ive ever read! Thankyou!

 

[hardwrkr808]

Hello Lanny,
I have a question for you:
When you sell your gold, what has been the best outlet, and have the "Revenue" boys from the government tried to rake you for a percentage?

 

[Hoser John]

YAHOO time for batter up but believe that righteous mass a oro puro would definately bust the bat for sure WOW. Looks like he really paid the price for it as detecting in the snow,ice and cold is for the young in heart,body and mind. Amazing find and your kinds words always appreciated Lanny. Peace and prosperity to you and yourn in free Canada-John

 

[Lanny in AB]

This thread has got to be a record on its length and one of the most informing post ive ever read! Thankyou!

Thanks so much for your kind words! As a writer of prospecting stories and tips, it's comments from people like you that keep me going as it takes a lot of work to write things up, so I'm glad that you like it.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hello Lanny,
I have a question for you:
When you sell your gold, what has been the best outlet, and have the "Revenue" boys from the government tried to rake you for a percentage?

I've sure taken a lot of the gold I've found and had it made into jewelry for direct and extended family members. As well, I've given a lot of gold away over the years to people I taught panning and prospecting lessons to. In fact, I used to teach classes to High School students that were interested; then we'd arrange it so that they could head out to the goldfields to do a little prospecting themselves. I'd always mix up some nice panning dirt for them to work at the end of the day, and you should have seen them smile.

At family reunions, I've set up panning tubs for the kids, and a lot of gold went that route as well because it's tons of fun to see the smiles on kids faces when they're panning fat pickers.

Up north where we used to work, you could use your gold as legal tender to buy supplies!

The rest sits in the bank curing. I mean, gold has to cure, right? The longer it cures, the better it gets.

All the best,

Lanny