Bedrock and Gold: The mysteries . . .

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
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

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Lake Placers #3

As part of this ongoing series of gold tales, I’ll explain the channel depositions of this area. From what the geologists and the miners out-lined, the glaciers were masters of that northern kingdom for eons. There were glacial stream concentrations of six or seven channels laid down from different directions of deposition. This reflects the continual glaciation and resultant upheavals of watersheds in the area. Moreover, as the glacial streams were constantly re-oriented at varying angles, they dropped their material in those new runs, some being heavy with gold, others barren

The ongoing detective work, from the Sourdoughs of the 1800’s on down to today, went into determining which runs carried coarse gold. Furthermore, a super glacier had clearly bulldozed through this narrow choke point, scooping out most of the overlying channels as it worked its way down-slope and burrowed toward the bedrock. Evidently Mother Nature had been quite a help at stripping overburden. Nevertheless, with mysterious motives I'll never understand, she then burrowed deeper, hauling the rest of the coarse gold deposit off to banishment in an unknown location, leaving only the telltale bedrock gouges of that robber glacier, clearly evident at the end of the gold run.

However, the beauty of the gold run left in place was that the face was only about six feet from the standing forest with its green and yellow carpet of moss, the depth of the channel shallow to bedrock. Clearly, this lowest run of the remaining overlapping channels had been packing a considerable amount of coarse, nuggetty gold, likely the result of much higher than average stream velocity which had propelled large boulders along with the big gold.

I detected and recovered one smaller piece, match-head sized, from the crumbling rock, and then the ground went silent. So, we wandered back to the fierce zone of insane bedrock but only encountered a hot mess of false signals, no gold (I’d love to hit that spot today with the newest generation of Minelabs to tease more black nuggets from the bedrock!). Regardless, after finding only bits of blade on the surface, we wandered down-slope to where there was a four to six-foot wall of virgin rock and dirt. It was the spot where the bedrock dove under the forest floor and moss I mentioned earlier, and it marked the farthest advance of the mining cut.

There was a slump of dirt, maybe a foot or two in front of the aforementioned wall, and then there was an exposed sheet of that red hot bedrock. The detector could only function at about half of its capacity, losing a lot of sensitivity as to depth. So, I hunted with far less power, but at least I was still in the game. (The new generation of Minelabs and coils deal with ridiculous bedrock much better.)

I kept detecting, but the screeches from the detector sounded like a cat fight crossed with the squeals of train brakes gone wild! Regardless, I kept at it. As my buddy didn’t know how to run the detector, let alone deal with the hot bedrock racket in the headphones, he waited there like a bird-dog on point, ready for any game to flush. However, he didn’t have to be on point for long, as emerging from that tortured electronic noise there came the unmistakable low-high-low sound of gold!

So, I tried to isolate the target signal from the background racket, and all at once I heard this series of terrible high-pitched wails, followed by screeching sounds I’d never heard while detecting. I thought the bedrock minerals had finally conquered the detector until I realized the noise was coming from my partner! A complete squadron of black-flies had crawled down the front of his shirt leaving a bright red patch of raw skin in the middle of his chest!! (If you know nothing of blackflies, you know nothing about the weeks of pain, the scratching, the possible madness from misery.) After hosing my buddy down with a bug dope shower, I got back to detecting.

I was rewarded with the unmistakable sound of a good response. My partner scraped the bedrock as well as he could with one hand, and I used the flat side of my pick to clear the rest of the small stones and clay to expose the shallow pockets in the bedrock.

My dim brain remembered that the DD coil might be much quieter than the little 8-inch mono-loop, so I made the switch, but before I got down on my knees to investigate, I swung the DD in a wider arc just to test its operation and heard several quiet signals—things were rapidly getting interesting. However, the continuous racket of feedback was still there, even with the DD! Putting the detector aside, I knelt down to have a look. However, what I saw was a visual mystery. I was looking at solid bedrock. I mean there were no crevices at all. I couldn’t fit a knife blade into any visible spaces.

I’ll post Lake Placers #4 later.

All the best,

Lanny
 

theseeker

Sr. Member
Mar 4, 2009
345
139
Detector(s) used
White's Surf PI Pro Dual Field/Minelab Sovereign Elite/Goldbug II/Goldbug Pro
Lanny, your adventures are always interesting, informative and inspiring! Can't wait for the next installment.
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
You saved that guy a lot of time and sweat, and probably money! Another superb tale! Book! Put the Book Out! I'm in line right now!

Terry, I've always appreciated your kind feedback, and the mine owner did well with the vacuum truck on that bedrock. He's happy with the result and determined to have us conduct similar tests in the future.

As for the book, I'll get there eventually. I'm currently in the process of revisiting many of my past stories to do some rewriting and revisions.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Lanny, your adventures are always interesting, informative and inspiring! Can't wait for the next installment.

Seeker, thanks so much for dropping in to leave your kind comments, truly appreciated!

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Always enjoyable to read your stories OR anyone's story of their trip !

Thanks for the compliment Russ, and I agree!

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Lake Placers #4

I knew there were signals in the bedrock, and they sounded sweet, so I headed off to gather tools. We had a small sledge back in the truck, an assortment of rock chisels, and the Estwing pry-bar, the one that has the pointed chisel end on the bottom, and the flat L-shaped head on the top. Moreover, the “L” can be used to scrape or be used as a chisel as well to hammer into a crevice—absolutely beautiful little tool.

Having rounded up the tools, I hustled back to the site. The most amazing part was that once I started to chisel out bedrock chunks, the original bedrock was indeed solid, but there was a natural cement of fine-grained, crushed black slate that had been running with the gold in the stream channel that created a perfectly camouflaged matrix, the matrix rock hard as well. In this way, Nature had hidden the original crevices perfectly.

Using hammer and chisel, I worked my way down well outside the edge of the signal’s midpoint. I usually had to go down two to four inches to get below the signal, but then I’d insert a longer chisel and reef on it until the piece of bedrock and matrix popped out. Sometimes the piece would flush up in the air just like a game bird! (It makes sense now why my partner was on point like a bird dog.) After the first nugget flew, we made sure to block the flight path with a large gold pan. We couldn’t risk losing any nuggets in adjacent cobble piles.

After recovering the nugget-rich matrix, I took the chunks and carefully tapped on them until they started to fracture and crumble. (As the matrix and the bedrock were of the same hardness, I never knew where the piece was going to fracture.) Having reduced everything to small pieces, I passed them under the coil to pinpoint the gold-bearing ones.

After tapping away to remove the remaining residue, the gleam of gold was unmistakeable. Moreover, all of the nuggets had wonderful character, nothing flat, featureless or hammered. It was incredible fun liberating a dozen of those long hidden multi-gram nuggets.

Did I smash any fingers while reducing the chunks? Absolutely. Did it hurt? If a fingernail goes black and falls off later, would that qualify? Regardless, the gold adventure was well worth the effort.

In another instalment, I’ll talk about detecting the test-piles farther up that same placer claim and what I found in them.

All the best,

Lanny
 

OwenT

Hero Member
Feb 11, 2015
572
858
Moses Lake WA & Provo UT
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
This reminds me of one of the stories from a ways back in the thread where I believe you or someone else found a signal in a solid polished bedrock slab and eventually left it but afterwards a fellow came back to camp who had gone to work with a chisel and hammer and was rewarded with a sassy nugget!
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
This reminds me of one of the stories from a ways back in the thread where I believe you or someone else found a signal in a solid polished bedrock slab and eventually left it but afterwards a fellow came back to camp who had gone to work with a chisel and hammer and was rewarded with a sassy nugget!

Owen, as I stated in an earlier post, I'm in the process of rewriting/revising some of my earlier posts from way back. I'm doing this as the length of the thread, plus all of the replies and comments, makes it intimidating for any new visitors that want to dive in. I'll keep adding new posts as well, but I'm trying to condense things somewhat for first-time readers.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
A New Learning Curve

My son and I loaded up our blue mule (Dodge 3/4 ton diesel) and headed for the mountains Friday evening.

That meant we'd be doing part of the drive in the dark, and setting up camp in the dark, but when we're out chasing the gold, that's no hardship at all.

Early the next morning, we did an equipment check: gold pans, a bucket full of sniping equipment, a couple of picks, as well as several detectors. On our way to check freshly uncovered bedrock, we wanted to make sure we had what we needed.

My son had his Minelab X-Terra 705, a machine he's got about 600 hours on detecting for coins and jewelry (and he's done very well!), a machine I gave him a few years ago, but he's never used it to look for nuggets, so this trip would be a new learning curve for him.

The 705 is a machine that Minelab put a lot of extra technology inside for the price-point at the time, and it had sniffed out nuggets in the past, so I knew it would do the job on shallow to gold bedrock that wasn't super hot.

To leave camp that Saturday morning, we ignited the throaty roar of the diesel and left camp slowly, as in August the super-dry roads in camp are blanketed with fine clay dust that mushrooms a cloud of dust that goes everywhere.

When we hit the main forest service track, we opened it up a bit more, but the washboard condition of the gravel roads wouldn't let us go too fast without shaking the truck to its core.

Next, we hit the paved highway and made excellent time.

It was a glorious, windless day. The sky was completely cloudless, the ceiling of air a perfect cobalt blue, the pines and firs a deep green that contrasted beautifully with the flawless blue sky.

After seventy minutes, we finally arrived at the mine, this after leaving the highway then slowly navigating a logging road, one heavily rutted from recent haulage. The road included what the locals call "punchouts", places where the roadbed has been pounded through by logging trucks that leave dangerous soft sections. If you hit those sections at speed, the front end of your truck dives down deep and fast and you experience the "punch"! Then you come flying out. If you enter too slowly, and not in 4-wheel drive, you get stuck, so it's an ongoing challenge.

At the mine site, the owner was chatting with the vacuum truck crew, the group cleaning the bedrock for the next couple of days. After his meeting, he told us where we could work away from the vacuum crew, but he also wanted us to check their progress to see if any gold was being left behind. We did from time to time, and we directed them to spots where they'd left some gold.

To work the bedrock effectively, I made sure my son had a magnetic wand to deal with the never-ending bits of steel from the excavation. Moreover, with the bedrock super-hard once again (like last week), the magnet would clear the surface signals so the softer sounds of gold could be heard.

We fired up our detectors. I chose the Gold Bug Pro as I love the digital meter on shallow bedrock as an aid to ID'ing the gold. Moreover, for any iffy signal, a quick swipe with the magnet usually solves the puzzle, or some quick pick and magnet work either tells the tale or requires more investigation. Furthermore, in several cases where the meter read lower than gold, the nuggets were sitting among pieces of magnetite (ironstone) that skewed the digital reading, but once the magnet had removed the ironstone, the gold signal was nice and clear.

While I was collecting a nice catch of nuggets, my son was having some frustration with his detector due to all of the bits of steel, but he kept at it and at last he found two nuggets with the 705! Well, the dam burst after that, and he showed some innovation as well. When he'd get a signal that was strange, he'd quickly switch to discrimination, and if he got any positive response, he knew it might be a nugget. He kept toggling back and forth over the next couple of days to verify signals, and it worked out very well for him.

The bedrock we worked was often broken in sharp slabs, so we had to be very careful while walking over and through those troughs of iron-hard bedrock as the footing was bad. To slip would be to get a nasty cut, and luckily, we avoided any injury until the second day my son did a nice circular slice around his finger when he reached too quickly into a crevice to check out a signal.

In the bedrock, there were slabs of clay stuck to the sides of the troughs either where the excavator had broken chunks of bedrock out or where we used bars to pry apart sections. That sticky clay held the gold! Sometimes, after locating a target, we could see the gold stuck to the clay and only had to pry it out.

I scanned a section of bedrock where there was a deeper hole. The excavator had hit a soft spot within that super-hard bedrock, and at the end a bedrock rise, there was a small pile of channel stones. I got a cracking response that turned out to be a six gram nugget! We kept at it until it started to get dark, and by the time we headed up to the mine boss's trailer, we'd caught just over an ounce of nuggety gold.

The next day, I let my son go solo, and I only hung around to give him tips if needed. However, he did well fine tuning his own system of ID'ing targets by toggling back and forth from prospecting mode to discrimination. He kept gathering a nice collection of targets in the little orange bucket he threw his signals into. (Rather than take the time to visually ID each target, he'd throw them in the bucket so he could pan them all out at the end of the day.) As well, when he'd get a broad signal under the coil (which often indicates a concentration of flake gold), he'd scoop that dirt into the bucket as well.

As darkness closed on that last day, he panned out the dirt in his bucket. He'd caught half an ounce of sassy gold! That included a three gram nugget he'd found through determination. He was detecting a flat chunk of bedrock that held lots of steel signals, but he kept swiping them off with the magnet. Then he got a good sound right on the edge of the flat bedrock where it dropped off into a pocket of water. He worked the signal with his pick until he popped it out, and that was how he found his nice nugget! Without removing the steel shavings that produce such a nasty racket in the headphones, he'd likely have missed the nugget.

So, we got a 1.5 ounce bounce for those two days, but golden memories of a hunt together that will last a lifetime.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Wanted to post some pictures to go with the last couple of stories from this summer:

1.jpg (Half an ounce of goodness found by my son with his X-Terra 705.)

4.jpeg A 3-gram nugget he found on a lonely little shelf.

7.jpeg The main haul we both made the first day, largest piece 6-grams.

10.jpeg A nice piece my son found all by himself, his first time using the 705 for nugget hunting (he has over 500 hours on it coin-shooting though).

12.jpeg It seems to be good luck to wave your hand over a pan of gold before you start detecting, certainly worked for us!

All the best,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
(Annual Christmas Poetry)

Santa’s Fate

One winter’s day, in ’82,
Well, things were lookin’ mighty blue,
Cause Santa’s sleigh was runnin’ late,
And this produced an awful state.

The kids was feelin’ mighty down.
‘Cause Santa might not get to town!
An avalanche had closed the way
To block their local Christmas sleigh.

Now Santa’s name was Honest John,
A muleskinner off and on,
He cussed and chewed, he liked his booze
And in a brawl, he was bad news.

So, not your average Santa, no.
But Christmas set John’s heart aglow
That he could freight the gifts and toys
To all those little girls and boys.

His mules he’d garb in greens and reds,
With antlers mounted on their heads,
Then off they’d scoot to meet the train
Down far below, out on the plain.

So once again they did the same,
But Fate had run a crooked game
And choked the pass with tons of snow.
So, Honest John was stuck below.

A telegram he quickly sent,
And this is how the message went:
“Just meet me at the closest spot
Where all that snow just ain’t quite got.”

The folks was stumped just how to go
Through all the piled up winter snow.
Why, snowshoes might just do the trick
To meet their hometown Old Saint Nick!

The Sheriff rounded up a crew
Of miners, ranchers, gamblers too
With packs and bags they quickly went.
This telegram to John they sent:

“We’ll get to you just at that spot
Where all that snow just ain’t quite got.”
This news was something mighty big!
So John, he danced a merry jig

To know the good he done each year
To fill that town with Christmas cheer
Would once again get carried out,
On Christmas Eve, without a doubt.

Well, Honest John, he met that crew
And filled their bags and packs up too.
He turned his mules out far below
Then snowshoed off across the snow.

*******************************

On Christmas morn, the kids they found,
With wondrous feelings quite profound,
Their toys and goodies 'round the tree
Just like the way things used to be.

But Honest John was fast asleep.
His promises that he did keep
Had left him tuckered, plumb worn thin.
Yet on his face, a peaceful grin.


All the best, and a Merry Christmas to all,

Lanny
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
I found a prospecting entry today from the summer of 1997 that I’d like to post:

“Most of the prospecting I get to do is in the summer (up here in Canada) because that's when things thaw enough to get out and root around. Well, one summer in the Omineca region of British Columbia, I was working with some miners who were stripping a large placer cut in an area that had historically produced coarse gold in quantity.

They got down to bedrock and as they worked the excavation of the pit, the gold got better and better as they worked from the front (south) to the back (north) of the pit.

When things got real interesting (that is when nice nuggets and coarse gold were turning up in the sluice) they hit a massive series of what the local miners called drift mines (they described drift mining as tunneling from a lower elevation in relation to the pay-layer to allow for drainage from seepage). Once the old-timers hit the pay-layer, they worked back and forth following the good pay. It could be done underground all winter long and the stockpiled material was then processed in the Spring.

In fact, the entire back end of the pit had been roomed out (roomed is the term they used when the tunnels were so close together they went back and forth in a series of parallel tunnels literally taking all of the material from a pay layer, thus leaving a large underground pillared and lagged [wood that forms the roof of the room].

At any rate, the placer pit was now abandoned and scheduled to be refilled. They said I could poke around, but to stay out of the old drifts as they were dangerous. Well, that didn't take any convincing on my part. I have done a bunch of caving and rappelling but the tunnel works were there for well over a hundred years and the wet lumber had changed somehow and broke in chunks with the consistency of celery, nothing like wood at all.

As I poked around, there was seepage everywhere, and the lagging on the ceiling of the tunnels was all cracked and caving. In addition, the pit was rapidly filling with water from the front to the back where I wanted to prospect, so I didn't have much time.
The modern miners had displaced a bunch of the large upright pillars (large hand-hewn logs) with their machinery when they hit the drifts. I panned some of the material from the false bedrock and true bedrock they had scraped. There was a little gold, mostly small flakes. I reasoned that when the old-timers were putting in their pillars and posts they must have covered up some pay, even if it was a small amount.

As well, I knew from all the work they had done (extremely difficult manual labor) that the pay had to have been excellent; the modern pit had proven that as well.

So, I found a nice fat displaced pillar, levered it out of the socket with a large bar and carefully collected the material from around it and in the socket forming the bottom of the hole. I panned it out and man you should have seen the pickers!

I scratched around the base of another pillar but I couldn't move it out of its place and yet I still found some more coarse gold.

However, time was running out. The seepage was real bad and the upper bank material started to slough off from above, and let me tell you, when that starts to happen, it’s time to get out fast! All the gold in the world isn't worth a lick if you’re dead.

Standing above the bank I watched as the wet material oozed down into the pit which then collapsed the bank, with a slurping sound, down into the cut.

There would be no more getting the gold there anymore, it was kind of sad, but I had found out something truly valuable: anytime I come across old drift workings that are exposed by modern mining, if the conditions are safe, I'll happily gather the material from around those old pillars and pan it.”

I found out more about the type of gold some of that false bedrock (I mentioned earlier) was holding on another day, but that’s a story for a later time.

May you all find something golden to smile about, and all the best,

Lanny
 

Terry Soloman

Gold Member
May 28, 2010
19,419
30,082
White Plains, New York
🥇 Banner finds
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Detector(s) used
Nokta Makro Legend// Pulsedive// Minelab GPZ 7000// Vanquish 540// Minelab Pro Find 35// Dune Kraken Sandscoop// Grave Digger Tools Tombstone shovel & Sidekick digger// Bunk's Hermit Pick
Primary Interest:
Metal Detecting
Another great story! We want the Book!:occasion14:
 

russau

Gold Member
May 29, 2005
7,268
6,725
St. Louis, missouri
My favorite Christmas story (Lanny ?) was of a old prospector that his wife had passed away and he kept going out to help with the deep sorrow he had of losing his wife and he went out to a area he knew about that had a cabin. When he went to this area he stopped off at a General store that was close to where he was going to look. He thought it was a good idea and the proper thing to do to talk to the store owner to be friendly and the store owner gave him a certain area to look. And as time went by he took the gold into the store owner and traded it for his supplies. As time went on , so did the weather and his deep sorrow for the loss of his wife. He did pretty well digging nuggets and turning them into the supplies he needed and noticed that the store owner didn't have many nugget's showing in his display case when he went back to buy more supplies ,but he thought the store owner was doing pretty well selling those nugget's. Well as time went on and again the weather got worse and now he started thinking he better stock up on fire wood . As he went to sleep that night he thought ,this may be his last night on earth. He made his nightly thought's of his wife as he dozed off to sleep. It was a cold and snowy night as his fire was flickering and getting lower. His sorrow for his loss was at it's height as he finally fell to sleep . In the morning he woke up with the cabin warn and the fire was raging in the fireplace and a pot of coffee was on the stove. As he woke up he started thinking ,"was this what Heaven is like??", "I couldn't have lived though that !" Fire wood by the fireplace, coffee cooking? What is going on?? He thought the store owner probly knew of the coming storm and came up to check on him. YEP ! SURE , that was it !! After he had his coffee he trekked down the mountain to his truck ,he drove to the store to thank the store owner for his kindness BUT the store owner said that it wasn't him BUT was glad he made it through the storm ! He also knew there wasn't any nugget's in his case again . The store owner said, " that one person kept coming up and buying all he had! Well he drove home to his empty home for the Winter and his daughter and new husband came over to see him and they tried to convince him to sell his home and move in with them. But he needed his time to remember his late wife ! That's as much as I can remember of the story (F.O.G. and what comes with it!) The story end's up with the new son - in - law was buying the nugget's - and investing them for the ole guy's future and it was him that built the fire and brought him the groceries that night. This story bring's tears to my eye's when ever I think of it!!!! So I want to thank Lanny if it was you that posted this story for all of us to read and think of! MERRY CHRISTMAS to one and all !:coffee2:
 

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Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Merry Christmas Lanny. All though long distance, it been pleasure to know you. Come to
Redwood Country some time and visit.

Mike

Mike, thanks for the invitation, what a wonderful offer. If the world ever gets back to normal, I'd love to visit with you in person some day.

All the best,

Lanny
 

NaturalJWL

Hero Member
Jul 19, 2007
577
46
NC
Merry Christmas Lanny !!! I always enjoy reading your adventures...Those pictures sure are nice as well...It's been a couple years since I checked out t=net...Really, Really, Happy to see you are still posting your adventures...May they continue for many years to come...Please put me on your book list...Missed out on Eagle's sure don't want to miss yours...Keep swinging...
 

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OP
Lanny in AB

Lanny in AB

Gold Member
Apr 2, 2003
5,654
6,349
Alberta
Detector(s) used
Various Minelabs(5000, 2100, X-Terra 705, Equinox 800, Gold Monster), Falcon MD20, Tesoro Sand Shark, Gold Bug Pro, Makro Gold Racer.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Merry Christmas Lanny !!! I always enjoy reading your adventures...Those pictures sure are nice as well...It's been a couple years since I checked out t=net...Really, Really, Happy to see you are still posting your adventures...May they continue for many years to come...Please put me on your book list...Missed out on Eagle's sure don't want to miss yours...Keep swinging...

Great to hear from you again! Are you still out having adventures?

Thanks for your kind words and for the encouragement.

All the best,

Lanny
 

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