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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[Lanny in AB]

"Twas, the week before Christmas, I was searching for Gold. A piece big enough, I could pick up and hold. The Rivers were flooded by late season rain, I searched, and I wandered with Gold on my brain. I went down a trail, I had been there before, dug down to bedrock, in a hole, by the shore. I looked on the hill and what should appear? Another gold Miner and a 12 pack of Beer.

We sat and we talked about things we had found, He spoke of a nugget weighed almost a pound. the hours just flew by, up on that hill. the wind had picked up and gave me a chill. as I gathered my gear to head on my way, he turned and he looked as if to say, " the days almost over its the end of the week, may you find your fortune in the treasure you seek, The richest of gold that youll always find is with family and friends at Christmas time". Merry Christmas everyone.

Merry Christmas to all and to those of my friends living in Arizona.... SEE YOU SOON

Jen

You certainly have a knack for rhyme, thanks.

All the best,

Lanny

 

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[Lanny in AB]

Busted pick tip leads to gold:

Just a short little story to assuage my feelings of not being able to hit the gold fields yet.

Last season, I was detecting the edge of a placer cut where there was a rise of bedrock exposed among a mass of jumbled clay and river rock. I could tell from the material beside the bedrock that the area to the left side of the cut was old disturbed ground that had been refilled with waste material and overburden from a long past placer operation, not the best place to look for finding gold, but I thought I'd hit that bedrock anyway. To tell the truth, in retrospect, any chance I get to detect uncovered bedrock that's rested undisturbed for decades, I'll take it!

Why? Because of today's tech advantage, that's the reason. It's been my experience that when those earlier prospectors and miners were playing around, they did so at a distinct disadvantage, as they didn't have an electronic edge, no technological "eyes" to see what we can see so easily today in the bedrock. For that reason, when bedrock is uncovered to the sun's rays once again, I just have to take a look to see if anything was missed.

Well, I clambered up the slope to the bedrock, the encasing clay sticking to my boots, and I started detecting. Right quick I had a screamer, but the sound was off, too harsh. After I'd dug a bit, I found out why. It was the tip from a broken tip of a miner's pick. I'm sure many of you have found these in the past as it was the cost of doing business back in the day. When miners were slugging it out with bedrock, the steel would lose some battles, and the remote nature of the goldfield undoubtedly caused some sharp language from the disappointed miner.

The day was nice, the air warm, the sky blue, orange and black speckled butterflies flitted about looking to drink from the seeps of cold water trickling from the hillside. The crisp mountain air was freshly scented with pine and cedar, all generating the heady smell of alpine freedom that I love so much in summertime.

I went back to detecting the bedrock and it was profoundly quiet, that is, until I dropped the nose of the Bug Pro's coil into a hollow in the mother rock. I got several quiet signals. Now, knowing that there'd been previous mining, the brain starts to open file folders ripe with past information: are these signals slivers of steel or bits of iron from past workings? A lot of times they are, and the information filed away in the brain always demands to have its share of attention. So, I respected the information stored in the files and quickly scoured the dip in the bedrock with my super-magnet that's attached to the end of the telescoping aluminum wand I always pack these days. Surprisingly, there were no magnetic friends on the end of the magnet. So I hit the spot again with the detector and still heard the soft signals.

After some pick work of my own in the hollow of the rock, and after a few more passes of the coil, I had in my hand a collection of various pickers, some that played the devil getting them freed from the bedrock as they were on edge in the fractured slate, and I also liberated one sassy nugget of just over a gram. Nothing spectacular, but fun nonetheless, and it was gold whose presence was betrayed by the tip of a long broken pick swung by an argonaut long dead. I'm grateful to him for leaving the busted tip to get me to slow down to find the gold he left behind.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Terry Soloman]

Another great story. Heal quick!

 

[Jeff95531]

Boy I sure have missed those great stories of yours...especially when I can't go. Thanks Lanny!

 

[Lanny in AB]

Another great story. Heal quick!

Thanks for your best wishes, and thanks for the comment on the story as I appreciate it.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Boy I sure have missed those great stories of yours...especially when I can't go. Thanks Lanny!

Why, thank you very much Jeff! It's always a treat to hear from you. I hope you're going to get a chance to chase some gold soon. I'm still sidelined, but getting hopeful that I'll get some summer gold as it's still out there waiting for me to get a coil over it.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Cariboo5]

Originally Posted by Cariboo5 Bummer...........Here's hoping for a speedy recovery for you...

Thanks, but I'm especially sad about probably not being able to head to the far north of B.C. to nugget shoot this summer.

"Drop a note and some pictures here every once in a while, if you get the time, to let me know how your season is going.

All the best,"

Lanny


Season is going very well. On the new claim at low water we managed to find some decent gold flakes. The bed rock that was exposed is now under water and will have to wait until late summer / fall to work that. Attached is a picture that shows why the river takes a sharp right angle as the bed rock extends half way across the river. Also a good guide as to the path the gold should take...

Hope you heal soon to start chasing that sassy yellow stuff again.....

 

[Lanny in AB]

Originally Posted by Cariboo5 Bummer...........Here's hoping for a speedy recovery for you...

Thanks, but I'm especially sad about probably not being able to head to the far north of B.C. to nugget shoot this summer.

"Drop a note and some pictures here every once in a while, if you get the time, to let me know how your season is going.

All the best,"

Lanny


Season is going very well. On the new claim at low water we managed to find some decent gold flakes. The bed rock that was exposed is now under water and will have to wait until late summer / fall to work that. Attached is a picture that shows why the river takes a sharp right angle as the bed rock extends half way across the river. Also a good guide as to the path the gold should take...

Hope you heal soon to start chasing that sassy yellow stuff again.....

Thanks for the update and the picture on your prospecting adventures.

It's nice to see what you're up to, and I agree, you'll need to wait a bit before you're able to capture some of that gold that drives so many of us to such remote and scenic locations.

As for that trail of white water that signals what's going on below the surface, those trees that are anchored in that jut of forest, or the bottom end of it, sure could be holding some flakes of gold; moreover, if there's coarse gold around, some sassy nuggets dropped by a high-water event, but I imagine you've already tested a bit of that dirt through some panning. Perhaps that's where some of those flakes came from.

All the best, and thanks for dropping by,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Well, I was green-lighted to finally get out to do some "light work". So, I headed to the mountains and got the things I needed done at camp early enough that I had a bit of time to get out detecting. Found a few small chunks, and one was in someone else's dig hole. In fairness, the dig hole was in the water in loose slate, and I think they simply gave up or didn't have the understanding of how to stop a target from sinking when trying to isolate it for target i.d. The piece was nice and coarse, with lots of character. It was nice to break the detecting drought and get some gold again. Nevertheless, it's going to be a while before I hit it hard this season, but at least things are progressing.

Thanks to all that dropped in to leave a message or two. I appreciate it.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Terry Soloman]

Glad you are back on the gold Lanny. Keep getting better!

 

[Lanny in AB]

Glad you are back on the gold Lanny. Keep getting better!

I got a peek at some nice coarse gold on the weekend, a lot of it, and I thought of you and your videos of gold. I also got to look at some sponge gold, something that's not a common experience for me although I've seen more of it in the last couple of years than I've probably ever seen. I've also had some nice opportunities to watch gold bars being cast, from small ones right up to nice big ones, which I've really enjoyed.

Thanks for the note Terry, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Hello to all.

Last weekend was a fun time. I got a chance to swing the detector, and it was nice to be back at it again.

The deer are in the velvet at this time of year in the mountains, and as we were riding along the trail, it was easy to see young trees where the bucks had been rubbing their antlers to get the velvet off, and in so doing, stripping the bark while at it. In addition, lots of colourful butterflies are active this time of year as the mountain daisies are in full-bloom, plus there are a wide variety of other mountain flowers at the higher elevations whose names I don't even pretend to know.

My first find came on a sheet of exposed bedrock. I'd found a signal right in the bedrock, completely encapsulated, but I couldn't get the signal to pin on the meter because it kept bouncing around, so next trip, I'll take a small sledge and a hammer with me to verify exactly what the signal is; however, as I was swinging the coil over the trapped bedrock signal, I hit another signal as the sweep came back. So, I took my pick and cleared off the clay and small pebbles tight on bedrock and uncovered a very narrow crevice. Hiding in it was a nice gram nugget. That was the start to the day.

After the first one, I started finding more. I'd found myself a small patch in fact, and within less than an hour, I'd recovered five nuggets, all small, but every single one of them were found hiding inside cracks in the bedrock. Of course, there were lots of slivers of steel from the old mining operation from the work required to uncover the bedrock, so once again, my super-magnet on the extendable wand sure saved a ton of time I'd normally waste chasing and verifying all of the multiple signals that are usually only trash.

I decided to head over to another area where there'd been some more recent digging, a spot where a bedrock drain had been cut to keep a higher placer excavation dry. Almost immediately something caught my eye in that drain. It was a small area where there was some very orange gravel in a low spot which was completley surrounded by the dominant black bedrock that overpowers the immediate area. Well, orange dirt sends all kinds of good signals to the brain: orange, dark red and purple staining all signal the presence of various heavies running with the garden variety gravel. In this case, all three of the aforementioned colours were present in that shallow depression. So, after an initial barren sweep of the detector, I took my pick and started scraping back a couple of inches of dirt. I scanned the area and immediately afterward and had a nice, soft signal. In addition, the meter on the Gold Bug Pro pinned on a mid-range number, which is an encouraging sign. I isolated the target and had a nice little nugget in my scoop!

I dug down some more, and the rocks were getting bigger, plus they were all jammed very tightly together, and the pocket was now becoming a rapidly narrowing, ancient crevice. All of the aforementioned items, the colours, the increase in rock size, the presence of finely silted clay, etc. gets the prospecting blood pumping. It was obvious that no one had ever been in the orange gravel crevice since the dim age of the dinosaurs.

Well, to shorten the story, I kept at it and liberated three more nuggets, the largest being a gram and a half. At weigh-in, the total from the two locations was 5.5 grams, not a huge take for me, but big enough to put a long overdue smile on my face: it's no fun being on the recovery sidelines, as some of you know, but now the summer sun in shining, and I'm able to get around a bit better every day, so the nuggets had better dig in and hide well, because I'm back in business!

All the best,

Lanny

 

[bcfromfl]

To hear that you're back out and at 'em is awesome! Thanks for sharing what sounded like a beautiful day in your stomping grounds, and a rewarding one at that!

Here's to more and more of those fine days!

 

[Cariboo5]

Lanny, great to hear you are swinging the detector again. Following up on your comment about "deer being in velvet". I have some really good game trails on some of the claims. I set up trail cams and so far am fortunate to get some awesome videos. One deer is special and we call him "Notch Ear" as he has a notch out of his left ear making him easy to ID. He looks like a young buck, guessing 3 1/2 year old and is developing a nice set of antlers. I have been lucky to get some good pictures of him and his antler growth. The attached picture shows him from April 15, May 22 and June 13. Amazing how fast antler growth is. I'm keeping my fingers crossed he stays in the area and I continue to be lucky enough to get pictures up to the point when he is fully developed in September.....and hopefully for the next 3 - 4 years.

 

[Jeff95531]

Great to hear you're back in the groove Lanny. Way to set the bar on your first outing.

 

[Lanny in AB]

To hear that you're back out and at 'em is awesome! Thanks for sharing what sounded like a beautiful day in your stomping grounds, and a rewarding one at that!

Here's to more and more of those fine days!

Thanks! It's great to be out in the wilds again, and it's great to be finding nuggets again to boot.

This is the prime time of year to be in the mountains as the tick risk is now much lower as well. But the huge bonus for me is the exceptional amount of daylight this time of year at this latitude, and when you finally get on the gold, it's great to have lots of time to recover it before the sun heads off to sleep.

Thanks for dropping in, and all the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Lanny, great to hear you are swinging the detector again. Following up on your comment about "deer being in velvet". I have some really good game trails on some of the claims. I set up trail cams and so far am fortunate to get some awesome videos. One deer is special and we call him "Notch Ear" as he has a notch out of his left ear making him easy to ID. He looks like a young buck, guessing 3 1/2 year old and is developing a nice set of antlers. I have been lucky to get some good pictures of him and his antler growth. The attached picture shows him from April 15, May 22 and June 13. Amazing how fast antler growth is. I'm keeping my fingers crossed he stays in the area and I continue to be lucky enough to get pictures up to the point when he is fully developed in September.....and hopefully for the next 3 - 4 years.

View attachment 1329065

Incredible pictures of the bucks! Nicely done. It's cool to hear the story of "Notch Ear" as well.

The bucks here where we live are still in the velvet too, but as we're about an hour from the mountains, and we're at a lower latitude, perhaps our bucks are a bit delayed as compared to their cousins in the mountains? But, I'm no expert at all.

It was nice to see the wild turkeys on the loose as well, plus the humming birds, finches, swallows, hawks, and a wide array of various colours and sizes of butterflies as well. In other words, the summer residents are all present and accounted for. I just hope I avoid any mother bears with cubs!

All the best, and thanks for dropping in,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

Great to hear you're back in the groove Lanny. Way to set the bar on your first outing.

Jeff,

Always good to hear from you, and thanks for dropping in. I hope to head to the mountains this weekend to do a little digging and detecting, so maybe I'll come back with some sassy nuggets as well.

All the best Jeff,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

One thing that was very interesting last trip out was where the gold was in the ancient pocket.

The first nugget was right up on the lip of the pocket, hard against the bedrock.

The second nugget was hard against the bedrock about two inches deeper.

The third nugget was also hard against the bedrock, with the last nugget being down in the material at the very bottom of the pocket in a crevice about nine-inches long.

So, here's what was interesting: the nuggets were held against the wall. The pocket dropped straight down, with various sizes of river stones in the crevice. Normally, the nuggets are sometimes trapped between tightly packed stones on the way down, or they're jammed in the bottom of the crevice and have sometimes buried themselves in the cracks at the bottom of the crevice.

What's got me interested is that the nuggets were positioned against the wall like there'd been some kind of up-faulting maybe? I don't know. It's like they defied gravity otherwise. If you think of a hole going straight down, the nuggets would have been arranged tight against the side of the hole!

One for the weird book for me.

All the best,

Lanny

 

[Lanny in AB]

I'll be heading for the mountains right quick, so this will be the last entry for a bit.

In reference to my post above, last season, I got into a spot where I'd done some work for some miners. I'd detected some bedrock for them and there was still good gold in the bedrock. So, they came back in with a big excavator and ripped off several more feet of bedrock. Then, they wanted me to go back and test the newly ripped bedrock to see how they'd done.

Well, I scrambled down into the excavation on their day off, took the detector and started swinging the coil. I was getting the usual signals from bits of steel, but nothing much else, that is, until I got over a spot that had some clay and river stones. Now, this little spot amazed me, as when I'd detected the overlying bedrock before, it was what I'd describe as an inclined, solid bedrock chute, with lots of little catch-areas that had trapped nice flake gold with some smaller nuggets down in cracks of those areas. But, since the last rip of the bedrock, the area was now a flat area that looked nothing like it had when I'd detected it before.

As I said, there was one spot where some clay was now present, and in that clay there was mixed a wide variety of river stones, some about golfball size, with the largest being about the size and shape of goose eggs. To me it was totally unexpected. I mean, how had this material got under that bedrock cap? Regardless, I got the coil swinging over the area and heard several soft sounds. So, I scraped off an inch or so of material and scanned again. This time the signals were stronger, but still that nice, soft sound. I decided to throw some material in the pan just to check what I was working with (this comes from past experience working with ancient material where I'd not tested it with a pan, only to find out later that the surrounding material was loaded with placer). I panned the material and there was a lot of flake gold running with the ancient channel run. I went back to detecting and removing more material, and the signals got louder, but I was now getting signals over a larger area, and the signals were all concentrated where that clay and river-run was deposited. I kept checking with the pan, and kept getting rewarded with nice flake gold. By now, I had a nice catch in the gold bottle!

I went back to detecting, and I hit a spot where there was a broad signal that extended over an area about the size of my full-sized gold pan (I wrote about this last season). I took my pick and carefully loosened all of the material, than panned it down: nuggets, flakes and pickers!!

I returned to the other spot where I'd first got my signals and kept removing material. I hit a nice two gram plus nugget on the side of the crevice where it was trapped tight in a little pocket that had stopped it from dropping any further. I swept the area again and got a couple more signals. I kept digging and the crevice opened up. By the time I was finished, the largest nugget was just over five grams (I seem to be stuck in that 5-6 gram range lately, but hoping to break out of that range this summer), but there were lots of smaller nuggets I collected as well.

All great fun, but a big learning experience as well.

All the best to everyone, and I'll drop a note or two when I get a chance,

Lanny