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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[Oakview2]

Lanny

We live in the foothills, and some feral pigs got onto the baseball field last spring. The walked right through a narrow gate and tilled up the outfield. We had a couple of parents volunteer to come up and the middle of the night, and now no more pigs, but plenty of sausage....

 

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[NeoTokyo]

Thats a good story Lanny, I think that would make a great side column story in a magazine.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny

We live in the foothills, and some feral pigs got onto the baseball field last spring. The walked right through a narrow gate and tilled up the outfield. We had a couple of parents volunteer to come up and the middle of the night, and now no more pigs, but plenty of sausage....

"Middle of the Night Sausage"--that's a great business name!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Thats a good story Lanny, I think that would make a great side column story in a magazine.

Thanks for reading the story Neo, and thanks for the compliment too.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[leenie]

hi lanny merry christmas and happy new year. thank you for the great storys and pictures this year. pigs are misunderstood but they are very tastie. when they got to the pearly gates st piggy asked what happened? blacky said we went on a little vacation and found some nice trees to lay under and a nice garden to eat from. we seen a nice man standing there so we thought we would go over and say hi. we heard a loud bang next thing we know we end up here. rest in peace little piggys dave

 

[EagleDown]

Halito Brother Lanny,

Just thought I'd dip in to wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy, productive New Year!!

I've enjoyed your latest stories a bunch. Sorry for the lack of comments, but I'm still in the throes of packing and moving.
Sure will be glad when this is finished.

Love and respect,

Eagle

 

[Lanny in AB]

hi lanny merry christmas and happy new year. thank you for the great storys and pictures this year. pigs are misunderstood but they are very tastie. when they got to the pearly gates st piggy asked what happened? blacky said we went on a little vacation and found some nice trees to lay under and a nice garden to eat from. we seen a nice man standing there so we thought we would go over and say hi. we heard a loud bang next thing we know we end up here. rest in peace little piggys dave

Thanks a bunch Leenie!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Halito Brother Lanny,

Just thought I'd dip in to wish you a Merry Christmas and a very Happy, productive New Year!!

I've enjoyed your latest stories a bunch. Sorry for the lack of comments, but I'm still in the throes of packing and moving.
Sure will be glad when this is finished.

Love and respect,

Eagle

Thanks my friend. I understand the move thing--not a big favorite on my list either.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Little Cabin in the Dark Woods


Here’s one that I’m sure some of you may be able to relate to.

One summer, we were living out of a rather large and very roomy log cabin. It was the same structure where the non-flying squirrel encounter occurred. This particular cabin was quite picturesque—it was located on a pretty little gold-bearing creek that cut its way through many bedrock outcrops and rims—rims that protected the gold from the robbing action of the many glaciers that scoured that particular gold field eons ago. For, any nuggets and flakes not protected by a bedrock rim were gouged out and re-deposited who knows where. So, that’s what made the location of the aforementioned cabin such a great place for prospecting—all that prime, protected ground.

The Oldtimers had been very busy in the area. The remains of old workings were everywhere, as it was shallow diggin’s—no more than six feet to bedrock in many spots. Panners were getting one to two ounces a day, and those that whipsawed lumber and set up sluices got five to ten. Old hand-stacks littered cleaned bedrock on humps, and some of that cleaned bedrock still holds gold—gold that only a detector can see—gold trapped in bedrock crevices, invisible to the eyes of the Sourdoughs active in that area so long ago.

In front of the cabin there rests the large toothed bucket from a dragline—one that was used to clean the channel to bedrock after the easy gold was extracted. Later the large operations moved in with the hydraulic operations to work the lower-grade deposits farther up and down the canyon, but where the cabin was located, things were much the same as they were in the 1870’s, for the bedrock was close, and it had been cleaned by individual miners or small companies. The hand of history was evident up every little draw, and its fingerprints littered the sheets of exposed bedrock so prominent in the area.

Artifacts were everywhere. An expedition with a metal detector produced an assortment of evidence of the sustained occupation: square nails of all sizes, lead solder from tinned goods, can-slaw, keys from meat tins, broken springs, bits of copper wire, blasting caps, brass or iron boot tacks, brass eyelets or hooks from boot leather, nuts and bolts, copper sheeting, bullets and balls of multiple calibers—pistol and rifle, angled brackets of various sizes, pieces of chisels, pick ends, worn out shovel heads—the list of materials was diverse and more plentiful than listed here. Moreover, as I dug everything, I acquired quite a collection of evidence of the ghostly impact of those former Argonauts.

If I ever visit the area again, I’ll see it with new eyes, and I’ll detect small bedrock draws with extreme caution, for it was common to scrape the cracks with a screwdriver and pull out pickers! (The Oldtimers did not and could not get all of the gold for those of you that think you need to find virgin ground.) The detector coils then were only sensitive to gram+ gold—furthermore, these were coils on Pulse detectors, as VLF’s couldn’t run on the bedrock in that area. Moreover, huge sections of that area are Pulse-only friendly, and with the new electronics, timings, and super-sensitive coils, there’s a bounty waiting for the patient and observant.

But, on with my story.

One day, we left the cabin and headed up the mountain across the road. There was a well-cut trail that led to Nugget Gulch, and farther up, it led to a large-scale open-pit placer mine—one whose exposed bedrock gave up many coarse, sassy nuggets to the electronic wiles of the Minelab’s brain.

However, on this day, we were travelling slowly—on a bit of an exploration. There were many bedrock outcrops in the forest we’d noticed on previous trips, so we’d dismount the quad to swing our coils over those humps, hoping to find a lonely nugget or two. But, we found nothing, not even metallic evidence of the Sourdoughs, nor were there any hand-stacks visible—this area of the forest had never been worked.

Now, I have a great respect for the Argonauts of the 1800’s—they had a sensitive nose for gold, and the detectors of the twentieth century proved there was no bonanza there among the monstrous jagged fists and fingers of silent black slate.

Nonetheless, while there in the dark woods, I decided to wander around a bit more. My bear deterrent was with me—loaded with solid rounds of comforting lead, so I took my time poking around.

Eventually I noticed something I’d missed: if you’ve ever read a Louis Lamour novel where he’s talked about a dim trail, well, that’s what I found. So, I followed it. However, it wasn’t easy, and several times I had to backtrack to pick it up again. Eventually the trail led downslope, cut to the right and descended again, and there in what I can only describe as a well-concealed hollow among some large pine and spruce stood a cabin! I’m not sure how many times we’d been up and down the main trail quite close to this spot, but we never had any inkling there was a cabin in this part of the forest, for it’s location was completely invisible—very well chosen indeed.

Of course we investigated the find. Inside were well-stocked shelves of canned goods—the liquid ones all burst open by the hard winter frosts, the more solid contents had left the cans with bulged, rusting, oozing ends. There was a little stove, with kindling laid by, and a good supply of split wood. A metal-spring bunk with a thin mattress had been continually molested and defiled by packrats and mice. It was evident that whoever the former occupant was, he had never returned, but it was obvious from the cabin’s contents that he had intended to. That it was a prospector’s cabin there was not doubt—the assorted and varied contents gently whispered the silent tale.

As I reflect on it today, I realize I should have spent several more days in the area trying to work out where he was working, for anytime anyone takes that much care in hiding a cabin, there’s a very good possibility he was on to something good, and the area is famously stocked with coarse gold. His cabin was quite a distance from the creek, and even further from the river, but there was a small lake not far removed. If he was working rich ground, it would have been worth the trip to the water.

It’s strange how things just don’t seem to sink in when you’re in the heat of the hunt, for there’s always some place better to search just a bit further up the trail, and that’s what we did that day, we left the little cabin in the dark woods to detect some exposed bedrock that had been opened up by a D-9 cat, one that had broken through a roomed-out area of an old drift-mined section of channel. Did we get any gold? Yes, some nice, coarse, round character gold—pieces left in the bedrock that only the detectors could locate.

However, what haunts me still is what story the little cabin in the dark woods wanted to tell.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[nuggy]

Now you've done it Lanny, nothing but you going back to that cabin next summer, taking some photo's and having a good scout around is going to satisfy this big curiosity you made me experience. Great story again Lanny, hope you have a great 2013 and that you don't get too cold away up north there.
I of course have great weather at present, but my truck has a screwed up gearbox, so I can't get around too much. Oh well there's heaps of work to do at home.
Good luck Nuggy.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Now you've done it Lanny, nothing but you going back to that cabin next summer, taking some photo's and having a good scout around is going to satisfy this big curiosity you made me experience. Great story again Lanny, hope you have a great 2013 and that you don't get too cold away up north there.
I of course have great weather at present, but my truck has a screwed up gearbox, so I can't get around too much. Oh well there's heaps of work to do at home.
Good luck Nuggy.

Nuggy--I don't know when I'll get back to that spot again--it's a very long, difficult journey to get back in to that place; that's why there's still great gold there. The journey is what keeps almost everyone out, thus protecting the gold. But, I will get back one day, and I doubt anyone else has found that cabin or knows where to look.

As for getting cold--we hit -30 the other day and had a spell of -20 for around a week. That's just too cold, but at least it didn't drop to -40--that's stinking cold. Been there--done that!

A very pleasant 2013 to you Nuggy, and I hope somehow, some way you're able to get your truck repaired so that you can start posting some more great pics and stories about your nugget finding adventures, and I hope you'll get a chance to use that pump of yours too.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[63bkpkr]

Lanny,
I do not think anything would stink at -40 whether that is F or C. Very nice adventure you went on and as always great pictures.

The word on my shoulder is that it might be bone as well as tissue problem so my 2013 year for prospecting is getting dimmer. But I've a lovely place to go to to investigate IF I can do it!

Here's the verbal of the location: Of course it is heck and back far in to wild country, it involves a stream that once cut right through a vein of gold and that is what brought the miners up the canyon the creek is in. They found the vein, cut an 8' diameter tunnel, laid track, put in a mine car, extended the track outside the tunnel and likely over the creek to the stamp mill - yes a mill way out in nowhere country. But way back down the mountain the stream cut a channel right through solid rock or else an earthquake (we are in California) moved the rock and the creek just used the easiest passage way. Either way the rock still forms a natural barrier to water flow so that during spring floods or heavy fall/winter storms the water must really rage at this narrow section backed with high walls. All sorts of velocity drops are formed including at least one large eddy. It is the eddy that I'm interested in. It should be a great Adventure when I can get to it!

The creek passage through the solid rock narrows is also interesting as it is a natural sluice box with riffle cracks at a right angle to the flow of the water. Now I am not the first modern person to mess with this location as at one time there was a very modern 4" Keene suction dredge with air compressor working the solid rock narrows. I found the dredge down stream balled up in drift wood and boulders and it was a mess but I bet they found some good gold for all the trouble they went to in getting that dredge in that far over rough country.

Thanks again for your story about the hidden cabin..........63bkpkr

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny,
I do not think anything would stink at -40 whether that is F or C. Very nice adventure you went on and as always great pictures.

The word on my shoulder is that it might be bone as well as tissue problem so my 2013 year for prospecting is getting dimmer. But I've a lovely place to go to to investigate IF I can do it!

Thanks again for your story about the hidden cabin..........63bkpkr

Ha, ha! Nice one about things not stinking at -40--I had a good laugh.

The adventure in the woods was intriguing, and some day I hope to get back there to snoop around with some determination this time to see what I can find.

I didn't know you were having trouble with your shoulder--I hope you can get it repaired so you can take us on some more of your adventures. The one you've described sounds very interesting indeed! That sounds like a first-class place to snoop around. I loved the way you described it, by the way.

Thanks again for taking the time to drop in--you know you're welcome, and your comments and stories are welcome anytime.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

This guy has fun hosting his own prospecting videos--there are a few grains of gold in them. In this one I've posted, he gives some good research tips (most of you pros already know these--this is for everyone else).

All the best,

Lanny



I've never done much hard rock mining, but this next little video has a few basics with some nice gold recovery at the end.

 

[trsrseeker]

Happy New Year Lanny! Hope it will be a fun year with lots of gold recoveries for you. Thanks for the stories - yip I think I would plan a trip just to camp in that cabin and take a few weeks to find the spot he was working, then of course work it with all the modern technology you have available to you. . . and of course we would love to hear about it after the trip! As you pointed out the gold is still there because it is such a tough place to get to.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Happy New Year Lanny! Hope it will be a fun year with lots of gold recoveries for you. Thanks for the stories - yip I think I would plan a trip just to camp in that cabin and take a few weeks to find the spot he was working, then of course work it with all the modern technology you have available to you. . . and of course we would love to hear about it after the trip! As you pointed out the gold is still there because it is such a tough place to get to.

Happy New Year to you too.

Thanks for dropping in, and thanks for the encouragement. It is a great area for gold, due to its remoteness, and its inhospitable environment (blood-thirsty bugs, terrible roads, and lots of bears). Because of that you never see your average tourist types around--ever.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

I put this one on the gold prospecting thread, but I just had to post it here as well. For a snowbound soul like me, it's a solid, pure cure!



And, here's another one to fire the imagination.



Here's a drooler to finish it all off.



All the best,

Lanny

 

[Jim Hemmingway]

Fantastic stories you've related in your singular writing style Lanny. Loved every moment of it, beautiful photos and vivid descriptions. Been out in north central BC on over to Atlin sightseeing / camping several times, that country still beckons to me. A tremendous amount of effort goes into your literary work and this thread deserves all the recognition it gets... so back to the top it goes.

Jim.

 

[Lanny in AB]

Jim,

Thanks again for all of your great support and encouragement--it's deeply appreciated.

I'm going to get stomping around in Atlin one of these days. Were you lucky enough to chase some nuggets?

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

I had to post this video here as well, in case you don't visit the general gold prospecting forum--it's a fantastic view of big, gorgeous North American Placer gold!! The video takes you underground for placer, and then you get the clean-up--it's well worth watching. If I found something like that, I'd have a heart attack for sure!!!



All the best,

Lanny