Old thread, but, info is info. . . .
I've panned up and down Blewitt Pass and found little color. Must have been something there, somewhere, because, in the fifties, you could have stopped your car, walked fifteen feet and been in a mine.
The foregoing aside, about thirty years ago, I'd watch the boys and girls with their fancy rigs come in to Sleepy Hollow, near Cashmere, Washington, just feet north of the bridge and spend two weeks working the area. They they'd vanish.
My grandparents in law lived at the end of the bridge. I looked at the are and wondered. It had flooded a few years earlier. The east side of the river had a lot of area with boulders that would have made great baffles. I took my pan there and, about 6' above the river, would scoop up some sand and gravel. EVERY pan gave me color. A sluice might have done well. Interestingly, I was the only one who ever looked there, even though it was bend in the river.