Colorado Prospecting. South Platte, Clear Creek and Denver.

shofs

Full Member
Jun 5, 2013
244
597
Colorado
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Bazooka Sniper Sluice 30"
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All Treasure Hunting
This past year I've picked up the hobby of prospecting for gold in Colorado. It's really taken off so here's the start to my journal. I've posted most of this already in Kevins thread. But I want to organize a timeline for myself!

I originally joined treasure net back in 2013 for treasure hunting. Here are some of my old posts.
Treasure in June 2013
Thread from Oct. 2013 .

I have always been a fisherman and love being in outside in general. I grew up playing at the South Platte River as a kid and fishing in mountain streams from as far back as I can remember. I also grew up as a rock hound, geodes, petrified wood, fossils and the works. Recently I got the idea to try out some panning since I was at all these places that supposedly carry gold here in Colorado. So I threw a pan in my fishing pack and watched a ton of youtube videos on how to pan for gold and here we are now today!
treasurehuntershofs.jpg

So I am really familiar with the south end of the South Platte River right near Chatfield. I don't hear it talked about much compared to the parts nearer to Denver, but I'm happy to say I've found a number of really great spots to do some panning. Here's a pic of one of my spots
platteriverspot.jpg .

I've also ran sample pans along just about all the small streams of South Denver, which usually look like this.
secretcreek.jpg

I've never found that much but always found a little. Which seems to be the common case with Colorado gold. Here's my results plus a trip or two up Clear Creek (just past the first tunnel up from Golden.)
allgoldbeforebazooka.jpg

So from here I read up on treasurenet about where others were finding so much gold in Colorado. After reading Kevin's thread I decided to buy a bazooka sniper sluice box and its pretty great.
sniper.jpg
Here's my first trip to the Platte with the bazooka.
platterivergold.jpg

Soon after I was out prospecting some creeks and came across a marker left by Kevin (a straw stuck in the sand) revealing a hidden honey hole!! It did not disappoint. What a great spot!
strawinthemud.jpg
goldpan1.jpg

A few days later I met up with Kevin and he showed me the ropes just in time before he moved out of town. That was my first time out with another prospector and I learned a ton it was awesome!
ImageUploadedByTreasureNet.com1462509833.555448.jpg
Where the straw was. This area is underwater when the creek is at flood level.
kevinscreek.jpg

So here we are at the present, still enjoying the great outdoors but now with some added yellow:goldbar:. My last two cleanups from my last two trips to the creek :icon_thumleft:
goldpan2.jpg
goldpan3.jpg
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
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597
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Bazooka Sniper Sluice 30"
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I also wanted to mention I've done a lot of mapping the Denver area, especially the South Platte. I have some very promising spots I want to go check out now that I have the bazooka sluice and if anyone wants to come with (looking at you grizzly) let me know! As far as I can tell the spots haven't been touched by prospectors! Before Chatfield Reservoir was the built the South Platte took a different course downstream. Using maps as far back as 1937 I overlayed the river with its current flow and I found a large bend that overlaps over a past large bend. Anyone interested send me a PM and I'll show you the map :icon_thumleft:
 

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mytimetoshine

Bronze Member
Jun 23, 2013
1,574
3,370
El Dorado County
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GRIZZLY GOLD TRAP - ANGUS MACKIRK EXPLORER- BLUE BOWL - GOLD CUBE, MINELAB PRO 25 PINPOINTER-
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Sounds like the fever is strong with this one. Sorry, but there is no know cure....
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
244
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Colorado
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Sounds like the fever is strong with this one. Sorry, but there is no know cure....
If fishing and treasure hunting fornicated the result would be prospecting. Infection of the fever was inevitable!
 

austin

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Jul 9, 2012
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Any gold is better than no gold. Keep at it. Maybe there's another Cripple Creek out there. Good luck. :2barsgold:
 

Duckwalk

Hero Member
Mar 21, 2014
966
1,312
Lincolnton North Carolina
Detector(s) used
30" Bazooka Sniper, Drop Riffle sluice box.
Various Gold Pans
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Looking forward to seeing future posts here. Cant wait for you to find that elusive Colorado nugget!
 

GrizzlyGremlin

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Nov 17, 2012
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Yezzir!!! I would love to rip a gravel bar apart with you Shofs! I really want to do some exploring around the Newlin mining district. I've got a hunch that Plum creek might have some flakey stuff. After this weekends dredging cleanup of over 2 grams, I think I'll be leaving the Arapahoe bar and the Platte alone until winter hits!
 

KevinInColorado

Gold Member
Jan 9, 2012
7,037
11,369
Summit County, Colorado
Detector(s) used
Grizzly Goldtrap Explorer & Motherlode, Gold Cube with trommel or Banker on top, Angus Mackirk Expedition, Gold-n-Sand Xtream Hand pump
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Yezzir!!! I would love to rip a gravel bar apart with you Shofs! I really want to do some exploring around the Newlin mining district. I've got a hunch that Plum creek might have some flakey stuff. After this weekends dredging cleanup of over 2 grams, I think I'll be leaving the Arapahoe bar and the Platte alone until winter hits!

Good thinking GG. My caution is to make sure you know who owns the land and have permission to dig! Douglas County Open Space manages some of that land and they ban everything...can't pick up a rock, stick or flower without a fine!
 

mytimetoshine

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Jun 23, 2013
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El Dorado County
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All Treasure Hunting
Good thinking GG. My caution is to make sure you know who owns the land and have permission to dig! Douglas County Open Space manages some of that land and they ban everything...can't pick up a rock, stick or flower without a fine!

Can't pick up a rock, stick or Flower.....tisk, tisk, we'll isn't that proudly Amercian.
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
244
597
Colorado
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Yezzir!!! I would love to rip a gravel bar apart with you Shofs! I really want to do some exploring around the Newlin mining district. I've got a hunch that Plum creek might have some flakey stuff. After this weekends dredging cleanup of over 2 grams, I think I'll be leaving the Arapahoe bar and the Platte alone until winter hits!

Newlin mining district? Time for me to go into full research mode! 2 Grams is ridiculous :goldbar::3barsgold:
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
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Looking forward to seeing future posts here. Cant wait for you to find that elusive Colorado nugget!

A few years ago I actually found a colorado nugget!!
goldnug.jpg

Except, well it overlaps with my other treasure hunting hobby. This big nugget was found in a bag of misc. pins at large chain thrift store. Paid around $1.50. Whoever found it made it into a pin as you can see. But hey, not too bad on my scale :hello2:
goldpin.jpg
 

brianc053

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Jan 27, 2015
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Morris County, NJ
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I found something similar to your pin last year, Shofs, but it was a tie clip ($2.00 at a rummage sale):

ngOoZbd.jpg

- Brian
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
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Got out to the creek today to do a little digging. The edge of the bench in the creek ran out of diggable gravel. It looks like the bench is made of a few feet of clay with about 3-5 inches of gold bearing gravel on the top of it. The honey hole Kevin and I were digging in seems to be a drop off on the downstream edge of the bench. The top of the bench has some nice gold but I'm not getting any lead, glass or other man made heavies this stream produced while digging the drop point. I think it's worth digging still though. I'm interested to see what the cleanout turns up.

Here's the end of the bench showing the clay drop.
claybench.jpg

I was raking the soil down to the clay making it easy to bucket up and bring over to the bazooka. (Thanks for the idea Grizzly :occasion14: )
topofbench.jpg

Bucket feeding the sluice. (Thanks for the bucket kevin!)
feedingbazooka.jpg

About 8'x25' feet of gold bearing gravel to go!
viewofbench.jpg

Gold pics to come soon. Seems to be consistent gold on this bench but not as great as the drop off on the end. But gold is gold! :goldbar:
 

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KevinInColorado

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Jan 9, 2012
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Summit County, Colorado
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Prospecting
You may find some larger pieces on that bench which have been slow to migrate down to the stream...keep an eye out for them!
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
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All Treasure Hunting
You may find some larger pieces on that bench which have been slow to migrate down to the stream...keep an eye out for them!
I'm planning to do a complete comb over the whole thing it would be that would be awesome if I found a big flake! I just bought a -10 mini classifier to go with my -30 and -60 pair. So now the plan is to find a nug that can't slip through the -10 grate since I reached my -30 benchmark goal on this creek!
Big nug or not I'm happy from my cleanout today. Four 3 gallon buckets worth of bench soil.
gold4.jpg
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
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And here's todays catch 50x just because 8-)
upclosegold.jpg
 

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shofs

shofs

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Jun 5, 2013
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597
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Primary Interest:
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Got out to the creek again today but only for a brisk 45min. Since I was short on time I set the bazooka up and just shoveled away. The creek was running really slow and I had to manually clear my grizzlies after each shovelfull. I got set up and shoveled gravel from the creek-bed directly below the rock dam just to fill the bazooka's fluid bed, but I saw some nice flakes make their way down the top plate of the sluice so I just kept digging from right there. Ended up with some good gold! 45 min and one of my best clean outs yet! I might move the dam down 4 feet or so and dig it out.
may15gold+.jpg
See that bigger flake highlighted with the square around it near the bottom? Here it is close up (50x)
gold50xmay15.jpg
More zoom! Same piece of gold. The closer I get the more porous it seems to become.
300xgoldmay15.jpg
 

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shofs

shofs

Full Member
Jun 5, 2013
244
597
Colorado
Detector(s) used
Bazooka Sniper Sluice 30"
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All Treasure Hunting
Went out to the creek today. With my luck at the bottom of the dam yesterday I wanted to find which side of the creek was producing most of the gold. I built a wall of rocks to divert the tailing off one side of the creek, dug down to the clay, then switched my wall to divert the other way. The left side had about a foot of diggable gravel and white clay on the bottom while the right side was about twice as deep with brown clay underneath. The right side was nice and carried about twice the density of gold. I also started to find human made heaves like the other end of the knife I found on an earlier dig.
leftcreekside.jpg rightsidecreek.jpg
Heavy stuff I unearthed (super old shovel, glass, now complete murder knife)
knife handle.jpg
Good cleanout
may15gold.jpg
Saw a young tiger salamander AKA waterdog
waterdog.jpg
 

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KevinInColorado

Gold Member
Jan 9, 2012
7,037
11,369
Summit County, Colorado
Detector(s) used
Grizzly Goldtrap Explorer & Motherlode, Gold Cube with trommel or Banker on top, Angus Mackirk Expedition, Gold-n-Sand Xtream Hand pump
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
You saw a salamander at our honey hole?? Wow!

PS what does the gold weigh?
 

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