Ancient River Bed with Interesting Clay

[Gammit]

Hi Guys,
I found an ancient river bed in western NC where a logging road had been cut across the side of a mountain. The slate bedrock and clay sediment layers are tilted sharply upslope indicating extreme upheaval in the past. The bedrock is near the top of the bank on the left side of the pic then slants steeply and intersects the road level at the blue bucket. To the right side of the pic there is a large gravel deposit with many types of rock: quartz, sandstone, banded metamorphic (I think). The river appeared to be pretty deep because the bank is about 12 feet high and bedrock was slanting down steeply where it hit the road level about 15 feet to the left of the river rubble.



The clay on top of the bedrock is banded with layers of red, blue-gray, and tan clay with large random black chunks throughout. While chipping away the clay, raspberry red streaks would appear on the clay face. We panned a clay sample and looked at some of the black deposit and quartz rubble with a loupe and found micro gold.



I'd like your thoughts on the colors, the best place to look for gold, and if you've seen similar.

Thanks

 

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[russau]

aim for the mineralized (red) areas.

 

[Goldwasher]

were old channels worked in your area

 

[Red_Beard]

This is the exact formation I've found on my property in Dillwyn Va. I just started playing with a homemade high banker yesterday and I've seen some exciting stuff. I've been finding a ton of garnet crystals, magnetite, kyanite, a decent amount of black sand and I have about 100 colors from test pans from last year and and my sluice.
Maybe this will help you too, the clay is going to be a real pain if you try to work it by hand in your pan, and is impossible to work with in a sluice. I would recommend a 80 dollar cement mixer from harbor freight, dawn dish soap and a ton of patience to get it broken down enough to work with.
And just my findings, the black clay is usually degraded roots or organic material, I haven't found it to be anything spectacular: no color, very little black sand and none of the other minerals I mentioned before.
Hope this helps a little, clay is a real ******* to work with so I hope this eases the process.

 

[Gammit]

were old channels worked in your area

I don't think so. This is straight up the side of a small mountain and the only reason we found it was a logger road cut into the hill revealed some rubble.

 

[Gammit]

aim for the mineralized (red) areas.

Here's a pic of the bright red in the clay. Some appear to be stains in the clay, but I found some red rocks that look like the source of the color (broken red rock at top center right on the first pic). Any idea what this is?

 

[Gammit]

were old channels worked in your area

Thanks for the tip. Haven't seen any pickers yet, but can see a good bit of very fine gold in some of the rocks at 60x - 100x magnification. I was thinking about sending some off for an assay to see what's there.