You folks from the wetlands crack me up. You are always looking down for your gold. I realize that's because that's where you find it in the wetlands but gold isn't always better deeper down.
You see that spindly bunch of dried out twigs in the top of the picture? (That's a tree in it's prime in my neighborhood) Notice the lack of any real vegetation? Dry loose dirt no mud or clay? See how the rocks and soil in the bank haven't been sorted and rounded. In the desert the gold doesn't have water pushing things around to sort that gold down through the soil to bedrock. You would get zero gold with your dredge and stream sluice in the desert. Different tools and strategies are needed.
Floods in the desert just cut the washes deeper and create more benches like the one in the picture. In the desert it's mostly wind and gravity that move gold. Gold doesn't move very far or very fast in the desert.
Gold is where you find it and in the desert a wise prospector looks up to the bedrock benches above for good gold. An even wiser prospector might notice that he could use gravity to feed his DRYwasher below the bench he's working.
Or I got it all backwards and he is trying to send his trommel product uphill to his stream sluice?
I agree about the need for center support but this is just proof of concept from what I read. Who knows, maybe this will lead to the next whizzbang gimcracky doodad every desert miner needs.
Heavy Pans
