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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[meMiner]

Cariboo - great pictures. One comment on your last post, in case you were not aware - - BC treats a gravity suction dredge the same as a power suction dredge (same restrictions & permitting - and penalities).

 

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[Cariboo5]

Cariboo - great pictures. One comment on your last post, in case you were not aware - - BC treats a gravity suction dredge the same as a power suction dredge (same restrictions & permitting - and penalities).

Great point & Thanks for posting. I was not aware and assumed this applied to power dredges only. I will be inquiring with the Mineral Titles for details and permits. Thanks again placergold.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great point & Thanks for posting. I was not aware and assumed this applied to power dredges only. I will be inquiring with the Mineral Titles for details and permits. Thanks again placergold.

Yes, any kind of dredging is highly regulated in B.C., so it's good you're going to know before you go.

All the best, and good luck too,

Lanny

 

[Cariboo5]

Yes, any kind of dredging is highly regulated in B.C., so it's good you're going to know before you go.

All the best, and good luck too,

Lanny

Thanks to placergold for pointing this out. I have spoken with an inspector today and the answer is Yes a permit is required. The area of bed rock is only 25m x 25m and is available at low water only. It is not worth applying for a NOW so dredging is out. So true....it is good to know before you go......

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Cariboo5... sorry to learn about the suction dredging. Does your high-banker require permitting or is that good to go on your claim?

Jim.

 

[Cariboo5]

Cariboo5... sorry to learn about the suction dredging. Does your high-banker require permitting or is that good to go on your claim?

Jim.

Every thing else is good to go. High banker has to be at least 10 meters from waters edge and we have 1 1/2 inch pump which is the largest allowed for hand mining without the requirement of permits. All we need now is a good season.

 

[Jeff95531]

Thanks Jim, I'm sure looking forward to this spring & summer here. With the diversity and size of this claim we plan to employ different methods such as: sampling in a grid pattern from the bar up to the hillside, metal detecting, sniping and working the bedrock, setting up the high banker as a wash plant and hauling hand dug pay dirt to it and gravity suction dredging.

The area does have magnetite so there is a chance of a "hot" beep. Would be nice to come across the lodestone variety which would be a first for me. If lady luck gives us a hot rock I will let you know.

Thanks again Jim & have a good one......

The attached picture is the top of the claim which gives us more ground to cover.


View attachment 1268383

that's some good chit right there. Sounds like a solid plan.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Black Bedrock Gold

This past season, I had the opportunity to work what I can only describe as an old placer cut. It wasn’t anywhere near the size of a regular placer pit, and the cut itself was only about fifteen feet deep, but however they’d figured it, they’d hit bedrock at that depth, yet the other excavations in the area had to go much deeper, 30-45 feet, to find that black bedrock.

I’d walked and driven past that cut numerous times on my way to a couple of larger workings upriver. So, one day when the clouds were keeping the summer day cooler, I decided to drop into the cut and have a sniff around with the GPX 5000 and the Gold Bug Pro.

In reference to the two detectors, and as I’ve been asked about this before, I’ll explain why I pack two very different machines when I’m nugget shooting. I don’t think anyone would argue that the GPX 5000 is a fantastic gold machine, and I have a tiny coil for it that’s a true sniper on small stuff, so why get outfitted with two different detectors when one will do the job? Well, the Bug Pro is a VLF machine, so it’s ability to ID iron is a real asset (vs. a pulse machine like the Minelab GPX which has quite limited ability to deal with iron vs. a top-of-the-line VLF, and as well, the Minelab has no meter system to give visual feedback). As I do a lot of detecting where big equipment has shed all kinds of metallic slivers and chunks, the iron ID muscle of the Bug Pro is a huge plus. That ability to ID certainly comes in handy in spots like I was detecting that day, and in severe cases where there are heavy concentrations of bits of steel on the bedrock, I can sometimes find gold (if I know there’s a good chance that it’s shallow) by using the onboard discrimination circuitry of the Gold Bug. (The little Minelab X-Terra 705 is great for this as well, and has done the same job.) In reference to discrimination mode, I believe everyone knows that depth is lost by using it in gold-bearing locations, but sometimes if there’s overwhelming trash, a loss of depth is secondary, especially when working bedrock. I mean, I know I can punch much deeper in all metal mode, but all metal means exactly that, and when bucket and track have continually worked a spot to grab dirt from the surface of the bedrock, the resulting signals can drive anyone crazy, especially me when I’m tired and getting cranky (It’s not just the bears that get cranky in the mountains!). Yes, a magnet helps clear an area, but if there’s clay present, which there always is where I’m currently working, the steel signals that are trapped and covered by it become a recipe for detecting insanity.

The day was pleasant. The damp, earthy smell of clay permeated the cut. A small seep was trickling water over the bedrock as it wound its way to a pool at the lowest part of the excavation. With the water wetting the bedrock in summer, a small squadron of tiny brown and orange butterflies were taking advantage of the free drinks. Every once in a while, a massive bluish-green dragon fly buzzed me getting a closer look at my face for some reason, its opalescent eyes and wings testament to Nature’s artistic genius; its flight capabilities testament to the insect’s unhindered mobility of flight or direction, an ability that significantly outperforms any of man’s weak attempts. The sky that day was partly cloudy with very little breeze, and the green timbered twin valleys I could see above the lip of the cut veed gently and beautifully into the main valley evidence of yet another marvel of Nature’s design genius.

The sides of the cut were littered with boulders of varying sizes. The bedrock itself sloped upward both directions from the pool, with the northern portion hosting a comb-like rise of friable rock, standing plates oriented perpendicularly to the bedrock base, sheets that varied from about a half inch to an inch and a half in width. There were pockets of clay either resting intact on the bedrock throughout the pit or ones whose motion was frozen in time when they’d oozed down the sides of the cut like tan, smooth, miniature glaciers.

I took the Bug Pro from the carrying bag and assembled it. It’s an nugget-shooting outfit that goes together in a hurry. It’s only time consuming feature, which is minimal, are the twin screws that attach the control box to the shaft handle. I turned the machine on and checked to ensure the batteries were good, then I started for the southern end of the cut. After I’d used the ground grab to balance, I started scrubbing the bedrock with the stock elliptical coil (I always buy coil covers for this reason).

The bedrock was quite smoothed off at that end of the cut, but I noticed there were pockets of clay deeper than the ones located at the pit’s center, or indeed at the northern end. I slowed down and scanned carefully. Not long after, I got a nice signal where a pocket of clay was trapped between two large plates of bedrock whose sides protruded just enough to stop the machines from getting it. By way of explanation, when a large placer operation is running, they are always concerned about volume; as well, they usually have excavators and dozers preparing a new cut, so time to chase small pockets is a luxury they don’t have, especially this far north where it’s always a race to get the gold before Old Man Winter ruins the party.

But, I’d better get back to my story. I took out my pick and scraped off about an inch of clay from the pocket’s surface, scanned it again, and the signal was much louder, but still displayed no ID on the signal meter. I scraped off more clay, scanned again, and this time the meter jumped into the sweet spot and held steady. At this point I knew it was either gold or one of the few hot rocks clever enough to act like gold. I removed more of the clay, scanned again, but the signal was gone. It was in the pile resting on the bedrock. I scooped the pile and ran it over the coil—a nice yelp! It didn’t take long to sort the target out, and a sassy 2.2gram nugget was soon in my hand. I pulled out the little plastic bottle from my pocket and gave that nugget a new home.

Continuing on the same line I hit another pocket of clay, smaller than the first. This time the signal was very sharp, sweet, and it boosted the meter into the sweet zone right away, so I knew the target had to be close to the surface. I liked my chances. Out popped a round nugget that hit the scales at just under two grams. It joined its brother in the bottle, and as I swirled the bottle those twins produced a nice golden growl. I kept at that end of the cut for a while; I even moved some of the boulders to see if anything was hiding under them, but I got blanked. So, I headed back the opposite way and came upon a little pool of water off to the side of the cut. There was a lot of clay in the area, so I took my time. Soon, I’d captured pewee; he weighed in at .6 of a gram, but he had a buddy too that had been on a workout program of some kind for he hit the scales at just over a gram.

I slowly kept working the bedrock until I hit the edges of the main pool. At this point I’d like to elaborate on another nice feature of the Gold Bug Pro; as the coils are waterproof, I slid the coil into the water. Moreover, because I had my mining boots on, I followed the coil to detect the bottom of that water. I was rewarded with two small pieces that totaled just under a gram. No matter where I went after that, there were no more signals, that is, until I swapped my Gold Bug Pro for the Minelab.

I went back over the bedrock with the GPX trying to see if I’d missed anything, and the Minelab did not disappoint. It sniffed out some deeper pieces that were down between plates that the Bug Pro didn’t have the punch to find. By the time I was done detecting, I had just over 8.5grams in the bottle, and what a growl those pieces made when I swirled the nuggets in the bottle by my ear. (In case you’re wondering why I spin the nuggets in the bottle, that tradition started many years ago way up north with my prospecting buddy that’s in his 80’s now. It was a thing we used to do and laugh about while we listened to the rumble of those nuggets in the bottle [our immediate area only has flour gold, nothing that would rumble or growl in a bottle in any way]. I love to keep that tradition alive.)

So, I crawled out of the cut, headed to my quad and pulled a couple of pans out of the rack, grabbed a shovel, then climbed back down. That comb of bedrock had me intrigued. Even though it hadn’t sounded off with any nuggets, the orientation of those plates made me wonder at how they couldn’t work as a gold trap for finer gold. Well, after prying those sheets apart, then scraping them off and washing any clay and sand into the pans from them, I panned out a couple of grams of fine gold. It took quite a while, but with the pool of water handy, it saved time hauling it to the river. The gold stopped however where the plates died as they splintered off the hard, solid bedrock underneath, for there were no more spaces between sheets to trap any gold. I’ve run into this lots of times when working friable rock. It’s weathered and loose where it’s been exposed or hammered by stream action, but then it turns solid and un-fractured as you go deeper. Regardless, it had been a while since I’d crawled out of a hole with about a quarter of an ounce of gold, and it felt right good, yet the summer only got better from there.

More to follow as I find the time, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Terry Soloman]

Another great tale!

 

[meMiner]

Lanny. That is one of your best stories. A great tale of successful nugget shooting, stuffed with helpful info and wonderful descriptors.

I really like your dual detector strategy on a new spot. I have tried the same on both gold and silver. I use the Gold Bug in discrimination mode to determine if a particular area has any good targets. When/where I start to have success, I will then switch to all metal mode. Using the Bug saves my arms, as I can swing it all day without fatigue plus I can avoid digging some junk. I think it allows me to find the micro locations to concentrate on. For sure, I have passed over some goodies, but time/effort are also important. Gearing up with the GPX5000 is a pain in the butt as I still use the vest with the big battery on my back (I will probably get a Gold Screamer soon). The GPX finds so many targets (and deep targets), that when used alone, tends to wear me out before I get onto a high productivity micro location. Also, it is not just the detector, but the gear one needs. With the Bug, all I usually need on my person, is a pin pointer and a light pick. On the other hand, the GPX is better served with a heavy pick, an assortment of digging tools and a pry bar, which can all be dropped in a pile and chosen as needed. In a way, it is similar to other forms of prospecting which separate exploring/sampling from production. Starting with the GPX is getting into production mining right away, without first narrowing down where one might be most effective. This is counter to the general advise of "dig everything".

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny. That is one of your best stories. A great tale of successful nugget shooting, stuffed with helpful info and wonderful descriptors.

I really like your dual detector strategy on a new spot. I have tried the same on both gold and silver. I use the Gold Bug in discrimination mode to determine if a particular area has any good targets. When/where I start to have success, I will then switch to all metal mode. Using the Bug saves my arms, as I can swing it all day without fatigue plus I can avoid digging some junk. I think it allows me to find the micro locations to concentrate on. For sure, I have passed over some goodies, but time/effort are also important. Gearing up with the GPX5000 is a pain in the butt as I still use the vest with the big battery on my back (I will probably get a Gold Screamer soon). The GPX finds so many targets (and deep targets), that when used alone, tends to wear me out before I get onto a high productivity micro location. Also, it is not just the detector, but the gear one needs. With the Bug, all I usually need on my person, is a pin pointer and a light pick. On the other hand, the GPX is better served with a heavy pick, an assortment of digging tools and a pry bar, which can all be dropped in a pile and chosen as needed. In a way, it is similar to other forms of prospecting which separate exploring/sampling from production. Starting with the GPX is getting into production mining right away, without first narrowing down where one might be most effective. This is counter to the general advise of "dig everything".

Thanks for stopping in to say thanks for the story and the information. It's good to hear from you again.

I'm glad to know you've benefitted from the two detector strategy, and I'm right there with you when it comes to swinging a lighter detector whenever it's possible as it really is a lot more enjoyable way to get after the gold when the VLF technology will handle the conditions. As well, you really can cover a lot more ground in a day with far less energy expended because of a VLF's light weight status.

What you say about the GPX finding all/any/every target is what it does very well, but when there's even tiny trash to be found, it finds it too so anyone nugget shooting is constantly digging every target and with the weight of the unit, it's a recipe for getting cranky when the hot summer sun is beating down.

The nice thing about the machine's capabilities is that when the coil gets over a patch, the 5000 will certainly sniff out the good stuff that's trying to hide. So, it comes down to the plus and minus factor. Of course, the plus of the 5000 is its ability to handle crazy ground through its timings and its broad access to many different coils. The minus is its dead weight that gets old in a hurry when it's hot or when it's necessary to detect up a steep section of ground, extremely variable topography, etc.

Yes, there's all kinds of attachments to relieve its weight to redistribute it (thank heavens), and attaching the light batteries to the side helps as well, so when it's essential to use the GPX (as conditions demand), it does the job beautifully, but it's a hassle to get detached from it when it's time to dig a signal that demands a lot of pick work and repeated scanning. Having said that, I've found lots of gold with the heavy Minelabs (not just the 5000) that would still be in the ground without their exceptional pulse technology, but the weight and the attachment factor are definitely a hindrance, and the 7000 rings in at about two pounds heavier I'm told. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Minelab could package their pulse machines in a lighter configuration somehow? Maybe that's the next big thing down the road (and hopefully some excellent discrimination capability?!).

So, the weight ain't great on their two best nugget machines, but the technology is amazing. The lightness of the Gold Bug Pro keeps you swinging all day without ever getting tired, but it only works when the conditions allow it to, but when the conditions allow both machines to function, that's when they team up for a lethal one-two punch to clean the gold out when working a bedrock opportunity.

All the best, and thanks again for your perceptive comments,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Black Bedrock Gold

This past season, I had the opportunity to work what I can only describe as an old placer cut. It wasn’t anywhere near the size of a regular placer pit, and the cut itself was only about fifteen feet deep, but however they’d figured it, they’d hit bedrock at that depth, yet the other excavations in the area had to go much deeper, 30-45 feet, to find that black bedrock.

I’d walked and driven past that cut numerous times on my way to a couple of larger workings upriver. So, one day when the clouds were keeping the summer day cooler, I decided to drop into the cut and have a sniff around with the GPX 5000 and the Gold Bug Pro.

In reference to the two detectors, and as I’ve been asked about this before, I’ll explain why I pack two very different machines when I’m nugget shooting. I don’t think anyone would argue that the GPX 5000 is a fantastic gold machine, and I have a tiny coil for it that’s a true sniper on small stuff, so why get outfitted with two different detectors when one will do the job? Well, the Bug Pro is a VLF machine, so it’s ability to ID iron is a real asset (vs. a pulse machine like the Minelab GPX which has quite limited ability to deal with iron vs. a top-of-the-line VLF, and as well, the Minelab has no meter system to give visual feedback). As I do a lot of detecting where big equipment has shed all kinds of metallic slivers and chunks, the iron ID muscle of the Bug Pro is a huge plus. That ability to ID certainly comes in handy in spots like I was detecting that day, and in severe cases where there are heavy concentrations of bits of steel on the bedrock, I can sometimes find gold (if I know there’s a good chance that it’s shallow) by using the onboard discrimination circuitry of the Gold Bug. (The little Minelab X-Terra 705 is great for this as well, and has done the same job.) In reference to discrimination mode, I believe everyone knows that depth is lost by using it in gold-bearing locations, but sometimes if there’s overwhelming trash, a loss of depth is secondary, especially when working bedrock. I mean, I know I can punch much deeper in all metal mode, but all metal means exactly that, and when bucket and track have continually worked a spot to grab dirt from the surface of the bedrock, the resulting signals can drive anyone crazy, especially me when I’m tired and getting cranky (It’s not just the bears that get cranky in the mountains!). Yes, a magnet helps clear an area, but if there’s clay present, which there always is where I’m currently working, the steel signals that are trapped and covered by it become a recipe for detecting insanity.

The day was pleasant. The damp, earthy smell of clay permeated the cut. A small seep was trickling water over the bedrock as it wound its way to a pool at the lowest part of the excavation. With the water wetting the bedrock in summer, a small squadron of tiny brown and orange butterflies were taking advantage of the free drinks. Every once in a while, a massive bluish-green dragon fly buzzed me getting a closer look at my face for some reason, its opalescent eyes and wings testament to Nature’s artistic genius; its flight capabilities testament to the insect’s unhindered mobility of flight or direction, an ability that significantly outperforms any of man’s weak attempts. The sky that day was partly cloudy with very little breeze, and the green timbered twin valleys I could see above the lip of the cut veed gently and beautifully into the main valley evidence of yet another marvel of Nature’s design genius.

The sides of the cut were littered with boulders of varying sizes. The bedrock itself sloped upward both directions from the pool, with the northern portion hosting a comb-like rise of friable rock, standing plates oriented perpendicularly to the bedrock base, sheets that varied from about a half inch to an inch and a half in width. There were pockets of clay either resting intact on the bedrock throughout the pit or ones whose motion was frozen in time when they’d oozed down the sides of the cut like tan, smooth, miniature glaciers.

I took the Bug Pro from the carrying bag and assembled it. It’s an nugget-shooting outfit that goes together in a hurry. It’s only time consuming feature, which is minimal, are the twin screws that attach the control box to the shaft handle. I turned the machine on and checked to ensure the batteries were good, then I started for the southern end of the cut. After I’d used the ground grab to balance, I started scrubbing the bedrock with the stock elliptical coil (I always buy coil covers for this reason).

The bedrock was quite smoothed off at that end of the cut, but I noticed there were pockets of clay deeper than the ones located at the pit’s center, or indeed at the northern end. I slowed down and scanned carefully. Not long after, I got a nice signal where a pocket of clay was trapped between two large plates of bedrock whose sides protruded just enough to stop the machines from getting it. By way of explanation, when a large placer operation is running, they are always concerned about volume; as well, they usually have excavators and dozers preparing a new cut, so time to chase small pockets is a luxury they don’t have, especially this far north where it’s always a race to get the gold before Old Man Winter ruins the party.

But, I’d better get back to my story. I took out my pick and scraped off about an inch of clay from the pocket’s surface, scanned it again, and the signal was much louder, but still displayed no ID on the signal meter. I scraped off more clay, scanned again, and this time the meter jumped into the sweet spot and held steady. At this point I knew it was either gold or one of the few hot rocks clever enough to act like gold. I removed more of the clay, scanned again, but the signal was gone. It was in the pile resting on the bedrock. I scooped the pile and ran it over the coil—a nice yelp! It didn’t take long to sort the target out, and a sassy 2.2gram nugget was soon in my hand. I pulled out the little plastic bottle from my pocket and gave that nugget a new home.

Continuing on the same line I hit another pocket of clay, smaller than the first. This time the signal was very sharp, sweet, and it boosted the meter into the sweet zone right away, so I knew the target had to be close to the surface. I liked my chances. Out popped a round nugget that hit the scales at just under two grams. It joined its brother in the bottle, and as I swirled the bottle those twins produced a nice golden growl. I kept at that end of the cut for a while; I even moved some of the boulders to see if anything was hiding under them, but I got blanked. So, I headed back the opposite way and came upon a little pool of water off to the side of the cut. There was a lot of clay in the area, so I took my time. Soon, I’d captured pewee; he weighed in at .6 of a gram, but he had a buddy too that had been on a workout program of some kind for he hit the scales at just over a gram.

I slowly kept working the bedrock until I hit the edges of the main pool. At this point I’d like to elaborate on another nice feature of the Gold Bug Pro; as the coils are waterproof, I slid the coil into the water. Moreover, because I had my mining boots on, I followed the coil to detect the bottom of that water. I was rewarded with two small pieces that totaled just under a gram. No matter where I went after that, there were no more signals, that is, until I swapped my Gold Bug Pro for the Minelab.

I went back over the bedrock with the GPX trying to see if I’d missed anything, and the Minelab did not disappoint. It sniffed out some deeper pieces that were down between plates that the Bug Pro didn’t have the punch to find. By the time I was done detecting, I had just over 8.5grams in the bottle, and what a growl those pieces made when I swirled the nuggets in the bottle by my ear. (In case you’re wondering why I spin the nuggets in the bottle, that tradition started many years ago way up north with my prospecting buddy that’s in his 80’s now. It was a thing we used to do and laugh about while we listened to the rumble of those nuggets in the bottle [our immediate area only has flour gold, nothing that would rumble or growl in a bottle in any way]. I love to keep that tradition alive.)

So, I crawled out of the cut, headed to my quad and pulled a couple of pans out of the rack, grabbed a shovel, then climbed back down. That comb of bedrock had me intrigued. Even though it hadn’t sounded off with any nuggets, the orientation of those plates made me wonder at how they couldn’t work as a gold trap for finer gold. Well, after prying those sheets apart, then scraping them off and washing any clay and sand into the pans from them, I panned out a couple of grams of fine gold. It took quite a while, but with the pool of water handy, it saved time hauling it to the river. The gold stopped however where the plates died as they splintered off the hard, solid bedrock underneath, for there were no more spaces between sheets to trap any gold. I’ve run into this lots of times when working friable rock. It’s weathered and loose where it’s been exposed or hammered by stream action, but then it turns solid and un-fractured as you go deeper. Regardless, it had been a while since I’d crawled out of a hole with about a quarter of an ounce of gold, and it felt right good, yet the summer only got better from there.

More to follow as I find the time, and all the best,

Lanny

Hi Lanny… as Placergold says, this is one of your more captivating essays. The intriguing and highly descriptive manner is which you relate your experiences in the wilds of British Columbia is unsurpassed on these forums… we very much enjoy them, and appreciate the effort behind each new installment.

Your experience with this placer diggings site suggests that we just never know what might result if we don’t take some time to detect it… a good reminder for anyone pursuing gold, silver and other minerals not to overlook the obvious. You nailed things down nicely when describing your search strategy, and you emphasize a consistent theme about the need to be thorough when sampling a new location. Incidentally, another benefit of the GoldBug Pro is the very good target separation capability we benefit from when scanning target rich environs… particularly so with a small sniper coil.

It was good to see that you included a final segment about heading back with a goldpan and shovel to recover undetectable finer gold that might be present in those weathered plates… a timely reminder that gold is gold whether detectable or not. It certainly looks to have been an outstanding day in the field for you… congratulations as well on each of those sassy, growling gold nuggets.

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hi Lanny… as Placergold says, this is one of your more captivating essays. The intriguing and highly descriptive manner is which you relate your experiences in the wilds of British Columbia is unsurpassed on these forums… we very much enjoy them, and appreciate the effort behind each new installment.

Your experience with this placer diggings site suggests that we just never know what might result if we don’t take some time to detect it… a good reminder for anyone pursuing gold, silver and other minerals not to overlook the obvious. You nailed things down nicely when describing your search strategy, and you emphasize a consistent theme about the need to be thorough when sampling a new location. Incidentally, another benefit of the GoldBug Pro is the very good target separation capability we benefit from when scanning target rich environs… particularly so with a small sniper coil.

It was good to see that you included a final segment about heading back with a goldpan and shovel to recover undetectable finer gold that might be present in those weathered plates… a timely reminder that gold is gold whether detectable or not. It certainly looks to have been an outstanding day in the field for you… congratulations as well on each of those sassy, growling gold nuggets.

Jim.

"We very much enjoy them, and appreciate the effort behind each new installment." You'll never know how much that means to me Jim, to hear a comment like that. It really helps with the effort it takes to write the stories. Thanks!

As for the day, it was a nice productive one, but things only got better after that, which rarely happens. It was a real confidence booster on how to succeed with a newer machine running different technology from its tried and true stable mates.

The part about returning to check for finer gold is one I cover in an early story on my thread where I was still making huge mistakes but learning valuable lessons from them. It was a tale about an area where the bedrock was loaded with nuggets the size of fingernails and solidly thick; however, I was throwing out all of the matrix that surrounded those nuggets!! Today, I'd think anyone was crazy for doing such a stupid thing, but back then, I just didn't think to check the surrounding material until my Sourdough partner commented dryly that perhaps I should crush and pan some of that material out. Well, the rest is history and a lesson learned that I'll never forget as there were all kinds of pickers and fines riding with those nuggets!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Update: I've been gone again for a good chunk of time but hope to get another story done this next week as I should get a bit more time for the telling of another tale with yet more gold than the last.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[KevinInColorado]

Update: I've been gone again for a good chunk of time but hope to get another story done this next week as I should get a bit more time for the telling of another tale with yet more gold than the last.

All the best,

Lanny

Any thought to publishing a book with all your writings collected together?

 

[Lanny in AB]

Any thought to publishing a book with all your writings collected together?

Kevin,

The thought is always there, I guess. I've sure collected a lot of stories over the years, and I've written many of them and have them stored in electronic format, but as for writing a book, I've found that will have to happen when I've got the time to dedicate to it. So far, I haven't got that time available unless I find a nugget the size of an anvil that would spur me to an early retirement!

Regardless, I appreciate your comment.

As some have stated in the past about my stories and writings here, this thread continues to grow and is getting close to 300,000 views which is nothing compared to a viral Youtube video but it's somewhat like a book in length already. However, it might be fun to write a bonafide book someday too.

Thanks, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

The Island.

Well, this story doesn't have anything to do with a traditional island, at least not in the sense of one with a sandy beach fringed by palm trees surrounded by ocean. This story of the island is about a flooded section of bedrock that was once placered for gold, an area within a highly restricted claim that required hard-to-come-by permission to nugget shoot.

I'd passed by the spot on that claim before while hunting adjacent ground and thought about wading out to try my luck, but the flooded ground had deeper, dark pockets, boulders, and lots of uneven ground that made for dicy wading in the muddy waters of the earlier summer rains. But, a lack of rain later in the hotter months had cleared up the visibility allowing me to see and map the bottom much easier.

The island itself consisted of one small section of bedrock that stood a couple of feet higher than the surrounding bedrock I've mentioned all drowned in icy water issuing from springs somewhere deep in the mountain.

However, before I could start detecting, I had to get out to the island. This required some delicate wading with my mining boots, careful the whole time that I didn't set my foot wrong on a loose rock or step into one of those dark holes to fill my boots. Nevertheless, I made it with socks dry to the elevated bedrock, the highest point being on the south end. The bedrock was slate, red and tan mostly, not that the color particularly tells a person anything about its ability to hold or trap the gold, but what I really liked about it when I looked around was that there were lots of natural traps in the bedrock, with cracks surrounding, underlying, and spidering off from those traps.

I'd packed with me the usual sniping tools, two gold pans, a sucker bottle, my blue Estwing mining pick,my little Falcon MD-20 for sniffing gold from tiny traps, and the Gold Bug Pro to scan the larger, lower section that sat just above the water running all the way to the north end where the island pinched out. (If you're thinking this island was big enough for development, don't waste your imagination's energy. The whole chunk was only about twice the size of an average garden shed, but I always remind myself that when it comes to finding gold, the size of the ground to be searched isn't always an indicator of possibility. What the detectors tell me is much more valuable, as is what my eyes tell me about the ability of the mother rock to capture the gold.)

I pulled out the Falcon first and set to checking the multitude of little pockets that ran down the slope from the highest point trending toward the flatter, lowest section. Almost instantly I got a positive signal. Now, the Falcon is not a complicated detector. On most hot rocks it blanks as you approach a hot rock and "boings" as you move away. If it's metal (iron or otherwise), the machine emits a signal that gets louder as you approach a target then holds steady as you keep the head of the probe over the object. I couldn't see anything, but there was definitely a positive signal. So, I dug in my carrying bag and got out a pry bar that's great for working open cracks, prying up loose pieces of bedrock, and prying off parallel sections. As I've mentioned, there were lots of cracks around those pockets and a nice piece the size of a couple of silver dollars popped right out. I scanned again and this time got multiple signals.

I scooped out the clay and small particles with a sturdy spoon from the carry bag and plopped the contents into a pan. A quick pan later, three nice pickers appeared. I decided I'd do a rapid scan of that entire descending piece of pockety bedrock, and I got signals on and off all the way to where the bedrock started to flatten out. I had no idea if they were gold or bits of steel, but I went to work with the pick and bar and worked off any loose bedrock I could, then scooped and scraped all of the residual material into my pan. Booyah!! Stars in the heavens all over in that black universe of magnetite! Lots of small pickers were running with all kinds of flake gold, lots . . .

I kept at that scan, pop it out, and pry the cracks system until I could no longer get any positive response. By the way, this involved lots of rescanning after I'd pop out the loose chunks of bedrocks or after I'd pry off a section of bedrock that was weakened by a crack. And, on the rescans, I'd often find targets down too deep to ID on the first pass, but that's because the Falcon is not a depth machine by any stretch of the imagination. As to why I wasn't using the Bug Pro, I couldn't get the coil into the little pockets! But, I did scan the entire slope (much like a mini-downhill ski run made of bedrock) with the Gold Bug after I'd finished with the Falcon to ensure I'd left no targets behind, and I did find a couple of laggers that were down deeper yet, but the take with the bigger detector was thin. The Falcon was the one that shone for that specialized purpose!

With the gold collected in the bottle, I went to work on the flat. The Gold Bug Pro got immediate hits, but there was metal (the wrong kind) everywhere! So, I pulled out the wand magnet and went to work. Hedgehog time! And again, more hedgehog decoration on the end of the magnet. After that, I went back to detecting. I'd like to say that I didn't dig any trash, but the clay clinging to the bedrock is a master at holding tiny bits of steel away from the draw of the magnet.

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I stared scanning again and got a hit right away that popped up in the 40 range! It was a great little nugget of just over two grams. I worked the bedrock until it went silent and by the time I was done, I had a nice collection of gold in the bottle, flakes, pickers, and nuggets. The biggest was only five grams, but the total weight back at camp was almost 16.5 grams! What a day, and the gold ranged from pancake flat to real character pieces. Man, did that fire me up!!

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That experience led me to a very similar location a couple of days later that exceeded this story's take, and once again, I had to make my way through a water hazard to get there.

All the best until then,

Lanny

 

[Cariboo5]

" The Island.

" The island itself consisted of one small section of bedrock that stood a couple of feet higher than the surrounding bedrock I've mentioned all drowned in icy water issuing from springs somewhere deep in the mountain."

That is so close to home Lanny. I also have a little island that is a couple of feet above low water. In the following picture it is hard to see but on the left side the steep hill side has a lot of bedrock. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that there may be some exposed bedrock on the island to work. I will find out soon when all the snow is gone.

Great story and I just had to share my island.....

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

An instructive description of your systematic approach to locating signals and gold recovery Lanny, and 16.5 grams is a fantastic result for the day. Congratulations, and thankyou for sharing your adventure with us.

Do you have a photo of your magnet wand? Or in lieu of that could you briefly describe it for me please? I believe you've done so previously on this thread, but I can't remember how far back it might be located.

Jim.

PS: Been cleaning and photographing some small silver finds from last autumn, let's attach one to spice up this post.

​

 

[Lanny in AB]

An instructive description of your systematic approach to locating signals and gold recovery Lanny, and 16.5 grams is a fantastic result for the day. Congratulations, and thankyou for sharing your adventure with us.

Do you have a photo of your magnet wand? Or in lieu of that could you briefly describe it for me please? I believe you've done so previously on this thread, but I can't remember how far back it might be located.

Jim.

PS: Been cleaning and photographing some small silver finds from last autumn, let's attach one to spice up this post.

View attachment 1277962​

That's an incredibly beautiful find Jim!

Once I'm able to pull the pictures from my phone (tech problems I'm working to resolve when I have the time), I'll have some shots of last season's gold to post as well.

The wand extends to about three feet. Unlike the smaller extendable wands you commonly find (extend to about a foot), this one is made of thicker tubular aluminum that allows for a telescoping adjustment that can be tightened in place with a screw down ring, and the magnet head on the end of the wand is bigger than a quarter, whereas the smaller ones I mentioned earlier only have a tiny magnetic surface. I've used the smaller ones as well, but they require a lot more bending down each and every time.

Hope this helps, and all the best,

Lanny