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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[Jim Hemmingway]

Thankyou AjR... glad to see your observations about the SDC 2300 regarding its small gold performance and threshold stability over variable conditions.

Apparently the SDC 2300 has a tendency to overload on fingernail size and larger pieces of metal... flat iron or tin for example, and perhaps similar size gold can also generate an overload signal as suggested by Chris Ralph over on the Detector-Prospector forum. Have you noticed this type of response from any benchtesting, or in your backyard testplot, or perhaps when you've been out in the field?

Jim.

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Hello gentlemen, just catching up on the thread. Been popping in and reading what i can but not keeping up. Grandma passed 2 weeks ago, been gettn prepared for a very busy season studying streams before they dry up altogether and or wildfire chase me and the critters out of the mountains. I did just recently find a used Yamaha Zuma 125 i'm lookn at and likely buying tomorrow. Guna be a fun little scoot but will not allow me to bring my dogs - already maken jokes about gettn a terrier that could ride with me but not any time soon(maybe when Zoe passes) - likely not legal here in Cal anyway. Enough BS now for detector talk.

I havent been out in the last few weeks and am excited to get my new scoot and hit a virgin area. My last time out was just over two weeks ago and i hiked into an area i had been afew times but hadnt found anything. The SDC and i met the skunk that day but i hed a great hike and did find an old Mica Axle Grease can at 1.5 ft that still had some mica grease in it and enough label for me to ID it.

Yes the SDC is great on small gold - Amazingly So. And i feel the threshold is very stable. It has a slight warble to its pitch but i dont feel that it interferes with the slight dips and waivers that we listen for to indicate a tiny or deep pitch. It hits amazingly hard on the tiniest pieces. The Hot Rock Warble it only something i've noticed the last few times out. The differences i'm hearing could honestly be cold rocks and hot rocks- i just dont have enough experience to say for sure yet. Very old white waxy looking lead pieces produce a very strong warble (also noticed by other SDC users) that is very distinct and different than the warble the hot rocks produce. Fresh lead doesn't warble it screams-too bad. I'll continue to dig the lead warbles but i already feel confident its waxy lead when i hear it. and of course theirs the mineral patches and hot rocks that sound like targets that must be investigated but these are few and probably something detectors will always be hindered by.

Maxlfty - As lanny said check out the dump piles and check out the native reef rock that the gold was coming from. Hike up and side hill to were you can get a good view of the slope that was worked and search for other ledges, dips or changes in the hillslope. Circle back around and detect these areas if you notice any. Many of these free gold or pocket gold areas are very rich in the pocket and devoid of gold any wheres else. If there is any head water streams below work them and look for signs that the old timers were trying to fallow the gold up slope - Usually evenly spaced digs spotted along the hill slope or sometimes a straight drift at intervals. Many times the brush makes these hard to see and even harder to detect but they can be productive and are indicators to the path the gold may have fallowed.

Good luck and be safe!
AjR

Great write-up AjR. Thanks for all of the very informative facts.

I now know considerably more about the SDC, and with Jim's comments, I'm developing a pretty good picture of its capabilities.

Feel free to post more comments as you have the time.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thankyou AjR... glad to see your observations about the SDC 2300 regarding its small gold performance and threshold stability over variable conditions.

Apparently the SDC 2300 has a tendency to overload on fingernail size and larger pieces of metal... flat iron or tin for example, and perhaps similar size gold can also generate an overload signal as suggested by Chris Ralph over on the Detector-Prospector forum. Have you noticed this type of response from any benchtesting, or in your backyard testplot, or perhaps when you've been out in the field?

Jim.

Thanks for your additional comments on the SDC Jim.

Readers should quickly be able to figure out that you're a wizard when it comes to the technical aspects of metal detectors, while I'm still in the learning process and compared to you probably always will be. You get deep into the specific capabilities and details, and I just love to chase the gold while I appreciate the time and effort that someone else has dedicated to develop such nice machines for me to use.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Thankyou Lanny… you are most kind. I think that to some extent we’re all involved in a learning process as to how to get the most out of our prospecting-capable metal detectors over variable conditions, and more specifically how they respond to metalliferous rocks and non-conductive ferromagnetic minerals. I’m sure the process will extend for the duration of my lifespan, but it’s been a lot of fun and keeps life interesting. Of course, our aim is to supplement our experience in the field, for which there is no substitute. In any case, I take the lighthearted view of myself as a braying donkey whose clumsy prospecting efforts are occasionally rewarded with a carrot.

With that in mind, I’ve got an extra new copy of Ray Mill’s book entitled Detecting for Gold that is ready to ship to you, if you would kindly PM me a shipping address. I’ve delayed saying anything until I could thoroughly read the book to see if it would be something that you might find interesting. In places some information will be old news for you, but I hope you’ll put it on your nightable and enjoy it when the mood strikes. I don’t want a nickel for it… buy me a beer sometime and we’ll call it good.

This book can be recommended to anyone regardless of experience because there is something in it for everyone. The author describes in everyday plain language how to identify and sample a wide range of potentially productive sites in various geological settings, and how to recover gold with and sometimes without a metal detector. But the book is primarily about metal detecting for gold by an extraordinarily successful gold hunter in a well-considered sequence, backstopped with flawless integrity. The only agenda is to present useful, interesting information such that readers will enjoy the contents, and benefit from his widely extensive experience.

Jim.

 

[Cariboo5]

Cariboo,

Low mountains, yes, some nice nuggets for me.

I know a guy from Montana that found a nice deposit of nuggety gold near the top of a mountain. It was all done through detector work.

The gold didn't choose where it was deposited. But Mother Nature sure did.

Rich Hill in Arizona, I visited that spot. They named the top of that mountain "The Potato Patch" for the size of the gold lying around up there.

It does happen . . .

All the best,

Lanny

Thanks Lanny, this is a old rounded low mountain with many gullies and draws. I haven't been up there as of yet but my claim neighbor tells me the rocks are all old, very old and where my claim joins his he says that the surface gold flakes are fine but expect to get 600 - 800 in the pan..I sure hope he is right. Will follow up later this year when I have spent some time there....

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thankyou Lanny… you are most kind. I think that to some extent we’re all involved in a learning process as to how to get the most out of our prospecting-capable metal detectors over variable conditions, and more specifically how they respond to metalliferous rocks and non-conductive ferromagnetic minerals. I’m sure the process will extend for the duration of my lifespan, but it’s been a lot of fun and keeps life interesting. Of course, our aim is to supplement our experience in the field, for which there is no substitute. In any case, I take the lighthearted view of myself as a braying donkey whose clumsy prospecting efforts are occasionally rewarded with a carrot.

With that in mind, I’ve got an extra new copy of Ray Mill’s book entitled Detecting for Gold that is ready to ship to you, if you would kindly PM me a shipping address. I’ve delayed saying anything until I could thoroughly read the book to see if it would be something that you might find interesting. In places some information will be old news for you, but I hope you’ll put it on your nightable and enjoy it when the mood strikes. I don’t want a nickel for it… buy me a beer sometime and we’ll call it good.

This book can be recommended to anyone regardless of experience because there is something in it for everyone. The author describes in everyday plain language how to identify and sample a wide range of potentially productive sites in various geological settings, and how to recover gold with and sometimes without a metal detector. But the book is primarily about metal detecting for gold by an extraordinarily successful gold hunter in a well-considered sequence, backstopped with flawless integrity. The only agenda is to present useful, interesting information such that readers will enjoy the contents, and benefit from his widely extensive experience.

Jim.

Wow! What a kind, unselfish thing for you to do Jim, but you've always been a great guy, so your generous act fits with your sterling personality.

Moreover, it sounds like Ray should hire you as a copy writer to promote his book! Well done.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thanks Lanny, this is a old rounded low mountain with many gullies and draws. I haven't been up there as of yet but my claim neighbor tells me the rocks are all old, very old and where my claim joins his he says that the surface gold flakes are fine but expect to get 600 - 800 in the pan..I sure hope he is right. Will follow up later this year when I have spent some time there....

It sounds like you'll have a great summer, and the high count numbers of fines that you describe remind me of the beach gold in Nome Alaska: lots of colors, but very fine gold.

Take some pictures if you don't mind, and feel free to post them here.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Knowing Where to Look

I remember one of the first trips I ever made up north to chase the gold. I was quite green and needed a lot of learning.

Well, I was lucky enough to be visiting a father and son pair that had chased the gold for many years. The father a lot longer than his son, but the son was a good listener and observer, and what he'd absorbed from this dad had made him a successful, large scale placer miner.

One day on our way back from prospecting some new claims, we'd just crossed a large river in four-wheel-drive (For those of you that have never crossed rivers in a truck, if you don't use a 4X4 vs. a regular truck, when you hit a difficult spot and the wheels start to spin, the truck simply digs itself down into the gravels, and you're done. The nose points to the sky, the truck box becomes a swimming pool, and when you open the doors to get out, the cab gets a nice flow-through cleaning!), and the brakes and belts were wet, so we'd pulled over to the side of the road to let things dry before we headed off through the mountains.

As the northern summer days are very long when the mining season is on, the miners go hard every minute (plus running 24/7 when they have enough crew), so there's rarely a chance for a break of any kind. However, this short break to dry things provided an opportunity for some learning on my part.

The son pointed to a series of little draws that led down to the river and he said, "Do you see that?" Of course, I could see the side of the mountain that fringed the river, and I saw the gulches, but I had no idea what else he was talking about. So like the dummy I was, I said, "See what?"

Well, he hooked his thumb in the air in the direction of the draws, gave a follow me nod of his head, and told me to grab a gold pan.

In the northern Boreal forests, the high rainfall and the long warmth of the summer days creates the perfect growing climate for undergrowth. I mean it's like regeneration of ground cover on steroids. But as we entered one little draw, he pointed to the sides of the draw and asked, "Now do you see it?" Well, as I looked up the sides of the gulch, I now saw what I'd missed from farther away. Rising and falling along the gulch's sides were hand stacks, but they were carpeted in so much growth I'd completely missed their telltale patterns from the river bank below.

He asked me for the pan, took out a knife and got down on a knee. He moved off some undergrowth and right there where he scraped was bedrock, exposed long ago by the early Sourdoughs of the 1800's gold rush that swept like a forest fire through the area as the gold seekers hopped from one shallow diggings bonanza to another, as they worked their way ever further north. He scratched and dug in the cracks and crevices, removing every bit of gritty material and clay still left therein. He kept at it this way as he went from spot to spot up the gulch. When he was finished, there wasn't a lot of material in his pan, and I wondered what he was possibly going to find in such a small pile of dirt. (Remember, I was a green rookie, one with book-learning but not a lot of practical experience. Of course, you seasoned snipers know the value of little piles of dirt gathered from just the right places in the bedrock.)

We picked our way back down to the river, careful of the deadfall and rocks, and he dipped the pan in the crystal waters of the river.

A humming bird buzzed the air as it zipped past my head. The scent of the pines and cedar hung pungent and wonderful in the air. Lazy white clouds drifted through the cobalt blue sky that crowned the higher peaks upriver. The piercing cry of a soaring hawk reached my ears. So different from my day to day life back home . . .

After a few shakes, swirls, taps, and some expert fanning motions, there in the bottom of the pan were meaty pickers! It's just lucky my eyeballs didn't drop in the pan as well, for that's how far they'd popped out of my head! (With the detectors I own today, I'd have had a time of wonder hitting those gulches, but the technology I had with me at the time couldn't handle the extreme bedrock Mother Nature had bedded that gold in, not even close.)

He told me to get my bottle, and I listened as each chunk of gold clunked as it whacked against the plastic bottom. I spun the bottle close to my ear and listened to the golden growl, a magic moment.

For the rest of the trip, I looked with a new set of eyes and marveled at the insane amount of manual labor those early Argonauts expended as they freed the gold from the shallow diggings (gold resting in deposits very shallow to bedrock). There were camouflaged hand stacks in every little draw and gulch along the rivers and streams, and many more on upper benches to boot. Thousands of motivated men moved a lot of dirt when they knew the gold was that easy to get to. Moreover, the gold had been unmolested for eons, concentrating and re-concentrating as water and gravity worked their magic in those gulches. (What I'd give to have been there at that time, to see what they saw: pounds of coarse gold in the sluices, ounces in the pans, nuggets deep in the bedrock, for the gold of that region is coarse and chunky and the finding of it does a miners heart good.) So, after learning to see the signs of their workings, I earned a new respect for how hard they worked to get the gold to make those wages of long ago.

Prior to that trip, I'd only seen hand-stacks in very dry areas, ones that were clearly obvious, and even a dummy like me couldn't have missed those.

Of course, I think about going back one day with the new technology at my disposal to gather some of that sassy gold, for I know just where to look, but only because someone took the time to teach me, and only because his father had taken the care to show him.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Featherdfishead]

Very good story Lanny - Thanks for sharing.

Jim i'll do a write up soon on the SDC and target sizes. I'm super busy as of late and still haven't been out detecting- almost a month- the longest ive been without detecting in over two yrs.

I did get my new Yamah Zuma 125 so have some new wheels to get me to some new spots i'll be hitting soon. Plan to get out on Sunday to a new place that the old timers found gold matrixed with fully formed quartz crystals - a rarity in my area. The place has been popular for years as a crystal digging spot by the locals and I've always figured the old timers mined it for gold and not for crystal and just recently found some old records to prove this. Its a small area so i will likely have time to hit another new area also. My plan of attack this coming year is to get even farther out than normal and find a virgin patch with my SDC.

Until next time
AjR

 

[Hoser John]

SDC+ ZUMA+FFH= GOLD I tell ya oro puro-tons a au 2 u 2-John---stay safe

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Very good story Lanny - Thanks for sharing.

Jim i'll do a write up soon on the SDC and target sizes. I'm super busy as of late and still haven't been out detecting- almost a month- the longest ive been without detecting in over two yrs.

I did get my new Yamah Zuma 125 so have some new wheels to get me to some new spots i'll be hitting soon. Plan to get out on Sunday to a new place that the old timers found gold matrixed with fully formed quartz crystals - a rarity in my area. The place has been popular for years as a crystal digging spot by the locals and I've always figured the old timers mined it for gold and not for crystal and just recently found some old records to prove this. Its a small area so i will likely have time to hit another new area also. My plan of attack this coming year is to get even farther out than normal and find a virgin patch with my SDC.

Until next time
AjR

Thanks AjR, we'll look forward to your comments later. Really just interested in whether the unit overloads on larger pieces of whatever size you may have experienced. The thread on this subject over on Steve's forum got me wondering, but frankly I'd feel better about getting your views when you are able to do so.

Congratulations on the dirt bike, I'd love to have something similar for bush travel over here. Mention it to my wife constantly, as a prelude to buying something suitable. I see a lot of guys using bikes or ATV's. I'd bet you'd have a lot of fun even if no silver or gold is found!!! In any event, you'll be able to access more remote areas and that opens the door to more potential.

Jim.

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Lanny that was a fine read, and you emphasized the importance of helping newcomers to get started in this hobby. Tip of my hat to you!!!

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny that was a fine read, and you emphasized the importance of helping newcomers to get started in this hobby. Tip of my hat to you!!!

Jim.

As always Jim, it's a pleasure to have such a well informed metal detecting expert drop in.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hitting The Ancient Channel

In the last story, I'd travelled to that remote gold field because I'd researched the area carefully to see what kind of gold the Oldtimers had found in the 1800's. The importance of research should not be a surprise to any serious gold hunter, and if you're chasing nuggets with a specialized purpose, such as metal detecting for gold, then the research will make the difference between a very disappointing and long drive into a difficult area, versus a very satisfying expedition that produces happy results.

One of the particular problems with the aforementioned area was they kept terrible records for the region. And, that was quite common in the 1800's where paper was precious as every item had to be packed in by animals at great expense. So, the result was that even the government records were scarce for the area, and personal accounts were almost nonexistent.

Luckily, I was able to find a copy of a book, written as a first-person account, that's no longer in print. Moreover, the book was self published, which as any researcher knows, makes finding a surviving copy that much harder. However, as I'd obtained a copy, I found out that the area had very coarse (chunky, rounded, large pieces) gold.

Now, this information is very helpful if your focus is to chase nuggets with a detector. Furthermore, I found out that there'd been extensive hand workings in shallow diggings (six feet or less to bedrock). When I shoot for nuggets, this kind of information gets the blood pumping, as when the Sourdoughs were working shallow deposits, they left behind lots of hand stacks of rocks, and there's often large portions of exposed bedrock left behind as well.

If you think about it, back in the 1800's they only had simple tools and simple methods. They dug, scratched, and scraped to get the gold out of the bedrock. They broke up the bedrock when they could, and left it when they couldn't. However, what they could not do was "see" into the bedrock that they could not break, but metal detectors excel at such work in today's modern outings. And, the gold field I'm referring to is special in that it has large sections of bedrock that fall into the "iron hard" category, as well as being insanely hot with mineralization. Both of these features meant that gold had likely been left behind.

Of course my research didn't tell me about the nature of the mineralization of the bedrock, but being in the field did. The research about there being coarse gold in abundance led me there; the boots on the ground is why I found out about the state of the mineralization: thus, the need to research proved out, as well as physically getting into an area.

But, back to the book for a moment. In the book, the author told of how there was a mining company he worked for that was driving tunnels through boulder clay and channel to try to hit a buried bedrock rim that cradled a very ancient channel. The Oldtimers knew the channel was there as they'd hit part of it lower down in elevation where they could access it as the overburden was light, but the glaciers had done their work and heavily buried the remainder higher up. The part the Sourdoughs had worked was incredibly rich with large, chunky gold and this drove the later miners in the 1930's.

I'd read about the author's account of how he and the small mining company had labored for many, many months driving various tunnels to try to strike the wall of the bedrock rim. The first couple of attempts failed, but at last they punched through the rim. Nonetheless, the channel was full of water left over from the age of the dinosaurs! To make a long story short, they couldn't stay ahead of the water and lost the opportunity to retrieve the full portion of the gold, but the gold samples they got out before the pumps were overwhelmed were glorious!

When I visited the area, I was able to look down one of the original vertical shafts from where they branched off horizontally to try to hit that ancient bedrock rim. (A bedrock rim is an area that used to be where an original stream channel ran, with the rim protecting the contents from letting the glaciers scour down to rob the contents of the channel bottom clean of all its gold.) What an experience that was to see those old workings!

Moreover, I brought back some sassy nuggets from the area as the modern day miners had removed all of the overburden with huge equipment, then drained the Tertiary channel with lots of powerful pumps, leaving bare ancient channel bedrock for me to detect, and yes, the gold was still trapped there after all of those countless eons.

Research led me to the area, and boots on the ground filled in the missing details.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[meMiner]

I think you really hit the nail on the head regarding identifying superior sites for metal detecting: shallow diggings, coarse gold and issues getting it all (especially if the issues can now be overcome with recent technology/methods).

Sometimes, one requires multiple sources of info in order to put the story together and sometimes one needs to read between the lines. For example, in one spot I had trouble finding out the placer history, but then stumbled across a chapter in a book about how difficult it was to mine that creek. The discussion was about the effort, weather, loneliness, injuries and sickness, but it turns out that there were lots of hints as to where they were actually successful or where they were defeated. I was able to associate that with maps, government reports, work reports, etc. and build my own story, which later was able to validate with "boots on the ground". I find the most difficult thing with old reports, is determining where on a particular creek they are talking about, unless they also mention a physical feature such as "one mile below the canyon", "above such and such tributary" or "3 miles above the mouth". Most often they just name the creek (and the names sometimes change) and of course very few creeks have the same geography and potential from top to bottom. I guess nobody ever said research was easy...

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

A really enjoyable read Lanny, research isn’t easy to do. There are so many other interesting distractions what with property chores, family obligations, and today’s high tech world. I have to force myself not to be a slacker with it. I suppose that might change if there was detectable placer gold reasonably accessible here.

But the nearest placer gold area that should offer at least some potential is a two day drive to the Quebec / Maine border country. And even there everything is either claimed or privately owned. It’s rather discouraging after years of successful silver detecting much closer to home. We visited the area two years ago and found a few pieces large enough to ping when dropped into a pan… and yah me and wife really enjoyed seeing that yellow metal, it is different. It was recovered from a portion of creek accessible to the park campers. In any case, the area has urbanized, and it is next to impossible to identify sites pictured in my research information from the 1800s.

Researching that area is made more difficult insofar as there must be more information available in French but I can’t find it. It’s been 45 years since I studied French in Grade 13. I think next time around that we need you to meet us there, because I have no doubt that you would know how to proceed. Congratulations on your success in the field, obviously it results from your determination to learn as much as possible about a new prospect. Thankyou for a nice bit of rationale about your research methods, an excellent write-up that we thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

I think you really hit the nail on the head regarding identifying superior sites for metal detecting: shallow diggings, coarse gold and issues getting it all (especially if the issues can now be overcome with recent technology/methods).

Sometimes, one requires multiple sources of info in order to put the story together and sometimes one needs to read between the lines. For example, in one spot I had trouble finding out the placer history, but then stumbled across a chapter in a book about how difficult it was to mine that creek. The discussion was about the effort, weather, loneliness, injuries and sickness, but it turns out that there were lots of hints as to where they were actually successful or where they were defeated. I was able to associate that with maps, government reports, work reports, etc. and build my own story, which later was able to validate with "boots on the ground". I find the most difficult thing with old reports, is determining where on a particular creek they are talking about, unless they also mention a physical feature such as "one mile below the canyon", "above such and such tributary" or "3 miles above the mouth". Most often they just name the creek (and the names sometimes change) and of course very few creeks have the same geography and potential from top to bottom. I guess nobody ever said research was easy...

I agree with your summation. I can tell you've learned a lot about the process of researching as well.

It is important to pay attention to details in those old reports and the new reports (if available) too. Little tips that pop up, and that are remembered for use in the field, often do make all of the difference between success and frustration. What the Oldtimers learned to look for way back then often applies today, and what the modern miners notice due to advances in technology (levels of mineralization, types of hot rocks, coils needed, etc.) only compliments what the Sourdoughs knew.

All the best, and thanks for dropping in,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

A really enjoyable read Lanny, research isn’t easy to do. There are so many other interesting distractions what with property chores, family obligations, and today’s high tech world. I have to force myself not to be a slacker with it. I suppose that might change if there was detectable placer gold reasonably accessible here.

But the nearest placer gold area that should offer at least some potential is a two day drive to the Quebec / Maine border country. And even there everything is either claimed or privately owned. It’s rather discouraging after years of successful silver detecting much closer to home. We visited the area two years ago and found a few pieces large enough to ping when dropped into a pan… and yah me and wife really enjoyed seeing that yellow metal, it is different. It was recovered from a portion of creek accessible to the park campers. In any case, the area has urbanized, and it is next to impossible to identify sites pictured in my research information from the 1800s.

Researching that area is made more difficult insofar as there must be more information available in French but I can’t find it. It’s been 45 years since I studied French in Grade 13. I think next time around that we need you to meet us there, because I have no doubt that you would know how to proceed. Congratulations on your success in the field, obviously it results from your determination to learn as much as possible about a new prospect. Thankyou for a nice bit of rationale about your research methods, an excellent write-up that we thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Jim.

Jim,

As always, it's great to have you drop in. The placer region you refer to sounds interesting, and I certainly understand your frustration with the urban sprawl that's bottling things up. That would be very frustrating.

Congratulations on getting some pieces big enough to sound off when they hit the pan. Gold is amazingly heavy, and every time I let a Greenhorn heft a nugget, I always get the same response. "I had no idea it [gold] was that heavy!"

I'm certain that when you do get access to good placer ground that you'll do very well as all of your skill and expertise honed in hunting silver will only benefit you while you chase the gold. (A two day drive, however, is not a lot of fun. I sometimes complain about having to drive 3-4 hours, but after reading your tale of getting to the gold, I'll not whine anymore!)

I haven't seen the reference to grade 13 in a long time. We never had that institution out here in the West, but I ran into it during my visit to the East. Moreover, with only that much French, you'd be a bit stretched to understand the technical language, but the translation softwares of today may offer you some hope if and when you find the literature you're seeking.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Lanny... I was thinking that as you read along in that book, that it might present you with some topics for discussion here on this thread. I have nothing particular to suggest, but thought it was an idea maybe worth consideration as time goes by. Thankyou for your PM today, wanted to let you know I've read and appreciate your remarks.

Jim.

 

[timemachine]

Really great information, thanks!