Extreme hiking for some mediocre gold

[BoulderTroll]

Every time I've been driving SR18 and go over the Raging River, I wonder if you've been out yet this year. Well, when not closed for construction...
Nice pieces out of those 10 pans! Bummer that other spot didn't do well for ya.

 

[quintcork]

Another couple hours on the raging and some more gold, but it's tough when you realize a spot is only as good as it gets. I did around 4 5gal buckets 3/4 full. One of those buckets probably didn't have much it it after thorough test panning. I wasted my time test panning different spots on that clay layer and turns out where I initially started was the best spot 🙄. Anyways here's the take and the material that looked promising but really didn't have much in it (I'm pretty sure the new gold didn't have the chance to sink all the way down to the thicker clay which was all worked out last year. And so the best gold was in the top foot or so).

0.05 grams total (Raging river might not be worth my efforts... the gold is too light!!)
During the cleanup I think I found some platinum?? if anyone has thoughts let me know. Non magnetic and during the cleanup it stayed in place in the pan better than the gold did lol. I highly doubt its amalgam considering it's the raging river and also it didn't spread to any of my gold so far 🤞.

 

[russau]

If you dropped your gold on carpet you can always rip it out and burn it, then pan the ashes.
Might be worth it for a big piece!

Burning current carpet will result in loseing your fine gold with the man made clumps that will form from the melted carpet ! The burning of mats refered to the burning of Burlape mats from the old rocker box's ! Dpn't listem to Tom Massie's stories !

 

[metalman2024]

Looks like you are doing well! Keep panning and you will find the spots. One creek I go too has great color in every pan, but on only one side of the creek. Other side has nothing. So keep testing.

that's incredible to be one side only, we learn something every day

 

[quintcork]

I was back at the raging river yesterday further downstream just testing random spots for an hour and I found this little honey hole which was giving me mercury gold. I'm guessing that last post was not platinum. I guess the raging is polluted with mercury 😕.

I also found some bedrock which i will test next week.

Im assuming all the cracks have been scraped clean from years of prospecting but if anyone has ang ideas on where to dig let me know! This part of the river widens and looks perfect but i could be mistaken. Once the time restrictions let me dig in the water ill try some of those gravels in the shallows which hopefully have some good gold.

Total take for just testing: