Panning in SC, sunday july 10th

[Astrobouncer]

Me and Phil got out Sunday for about 4 hours to do some sampling on one of the little creeks I have access to. We brought the small back pack sluices just in case but ended up mostly panning.

Here's some pics of the area, we cant figure out if these dirt mounds represent old workings, or if they are from the old wagon trail, or if its just from the stream over millions of years.





Heres the biggest part of the creek and where we found a decent placer deposit. Lots of iron heavies, zircon, monzanite and a little bit of fine gold in almost every pan. You can also see one of the bits of milky quartz vein rock I found (near my black pan), with some arsenopyrite and magnetite showing. That sucker is in my garage, to be broken up later or checked with a falcon md 20.





Here's us going upstream a little bit. Less iron heavies up here but the rocks concentrated some fine gold around them.





And sampling upstream of the rocks.










And here's most of my take that day. Sorry I just did a quick pan at the river, and when I got home the cons went in a container for later processing. Didnt find any gold bigger then around 30 mesh or so, but it was still great to get out.

 

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[Astrobouncer]

Also, here's another days panning pics.

Not sure exactly what day this was from, but I found these pics in my camera folder and it cant be more then a couple weeks old. I got out for a couple hours one day to do some panning and took pics of the best pans that day.










Here's the total take for the day.

 

[prospectordamon]

beautiful color! keep up the good work!

 

[stefen]

The mounds wouldn't happen to be Indian Burial Mounds?

 

[Gramps43]

Not unless they are in a pattern, also they don't seem to be big enough and round enough. Those look like pushed up mounds whether by water flow something or someone else. Astro nice color there, have you reached bed rock yet and do you intend to enlarge the pool?

Gramps

 

[Astrobouncer]

I dont know if they are burial mounds or not, I havent tampered with any of them. They are found next to an old wagon trail that parallels the creek. The landowner thinks they are possibly: old graves, old mining workings, or where the wagon trail was dug out to make it passable. My mining buddy thinks the creek deposited them, but if so they are a good 15-20 feet higher then where the water is now, so either the creek was once much larger, or they are very old. I will try to get out there and take some more pics/videos. There are also shallow pits dug on both sides of the creeks in several places, like them old timers were testing for bedrock or old channel.

The whole area this creek runs on is a saprolite false bedrock, anywhere from 1 foot to 2 feet down.I havent been back to that bigger area yet, but I want to try and dredge in there with a 2 inch eventually, so we will probably enlarge it if we do. Actual rock bedrock is rare there, though there are a couple spots where this bedrock, but the color seems to be much less then whats caught in the gooey saprolite elsewhere.

 

[Astrobouncer]

Takoda I do have permission and access to dig up as much as I want outside or inside the creek, on one side of the creek anyway where the landowner lives. I have taken dry samples from all around in the hills trying to track this stuff down and theres fine stuff pretty much everywhere. The entire area shows regional metamorphism with magnetite everywhere and also hematite. And there are also pegmatites cutting into the creek bed in several places. But the majority of the gold I find seems to be free milling that occurs near white and smoky quartz layers that cross cut the creek in several places. Some of these white/smoky deposits are low grade au bearing because I have crushed them up and found some specs under the loupe. These veins also run for several miles, because I can hike way downstream and find the same white/smoky pocked marker quartz deposits with heavier concentrations of fine gold around them. But past a couple miles downstream they seem to peter out and no longer cut the creek, and also the gold drops off to about nothing down there too.

It isnt really possible to follow the quartz (I have tried) because they are buried underneath tons of overburden, and only the creek cuts deep enough into the hills to expose them.

Here's some of the high grade quartz ore, with magnetite and arsenopyrite (and gold) this stuff is very rare and when I find it, I start finding bigger flakes around it:





This is the lower grade ore, there's tons of this stuff and usually a 12 inch piece only has a single 100 mesh spec in it or less.



Here's an example of some of the pegmatite that is there as well. There was no gold in this one:



Here's an example of some of the gold that was in one of those rocks, I bet this was from one of the higher grade pieces because of its size but I dont really remember:



Here's more low grade quartz, if I remember right these all had some gold in them as well. Just not enough to fool with yet.





Heres an example of how much of this quartz is there. I am sure not all of it is gold bearing though. You can see a couple high grade pieces there with arsenopyrite/magnetite on them. I take all those back to the house.

 

[stefen]

Work your way upstream and pan a sample every 100 yards or so...should increase fines until you get zip...go back to where you get the best sample and look for outcrops or side streams...