Pay streak question...

[2020hindsite]

Before reading understand that this is a slap in the face of commonality.
Please keep an open mind, I make no assumptions only observations and questions.

I have been prospecting for some time now and have read quite a bit on the subject. I sample and dredge and sluice and everything I can when I can.
I have located pay streaks and have believe myself to be average at reading a creek.

For the past few months I have been working a creek that has me convinced that there is no traditional pay streaks. I know that sounds crazy and goes against every book/video/etc. That I have encountered but then again not much information has been published on glacier placer mining. The creek I am working is at a moraine and I have never seen an easier place to find gold. Almost every pan has a color or two and there is copious amounts of black and garnet sand. The bottom is a mix of clay in some spots and broken slabs of bedrock in others. Underneath of the clay is nothing but tiny sea creatures and marine sand from the Ordovician period. No gold is associated with this era as far as I know and from testing.
So the bottom is broken slabs of dolostone and Pennsylvania limestone.
I stated earlier that it is very easy to find gold here I have not located what I would consider pay streaks. It seems as though there is a decently uniform distribution of gold in the hard packed cobble that lays just on top of the bedrocks/clay.
While you find gold every time you dredge I have not found greater values in 1 area compared to another.
It would be helpful to note that the gold is what Doc calls "dead presidents" gold meaning it was deposited thousand of years ago and hasn't moved. There is surface flood gold but it's fly poop sized and not worth trying to mine.

I have sampled a ton and followed indicator minerals and tried to follow traditional teachings relentlessly without success. I wonder if it is possible to have a creek without pay channels and more of a uniform distribution? I have gone as far as trying to picture the area thousands of years ago and even tried to picture the creek running the other direction as before the glaciers came to this area the waters ran south to north! Ice walls 2 miles high I'm sure did strange things is it possible not to have pay streaks?
If the creek does have them then is there such thing as a creek that breaks the rules?
Maybe I am too green after all of my efforts?
Your thoughts and advise.
Thank you

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[KevinInColorado]

Well if it hasn't moved in thousands of years then you really have no idea how big the waterway was back then. Maybe it was really wide and the whole of your current stream IS the original heart of the waterway and so it's basically all pay streak. Possible?

 

[Teenagegoldminer]

my best guess would be that you are incredibly close to the source gold like here in Georgia because of lack of large waterways to deposit material large distances away if you get near the source almost any gravel is good, but your in Pennsylvania, there is no source gold, my best guess by common sense

(note i'm no expert just throwing ideas out there)

is that there is an ancient deposit of moraine that bears gold nearby acting as source gold and your very close to it

but again i'm no expert

 

[Bejay]

Glacial deposits are DIFFERENT than river stream deposits. Glacial deposits are UNSORTED, whereas river/stream deposits are SORTED. There in lies your difference and the reason for your query.

This may help. But you stated you are in a moraine

Not all of the glacial features are depositional features. Some of them are erosional features:
- outwash * sported
- horn * erosional
- esker * sorted
- cirque * erosional
- till * unsorted (This is found in moraines)
- erratic * a single rock
- terminal moraine * unsorted
- kame * sorted
- kettle lake * a depression in the ground
- tarn * a lake in a cirque valley
- finger lakes * erosional
- arete * erosional
- drumlin * unsorted
- rouches moutonees * solid bedrock shaped by ice movement (erosional feature)
- striations * grooves caused by glacial erosion

Bejay

 

[Goodyguy]

Hindsite,

It's common for creeks in glacial drift areas to have fairly even distribution due to the levelness of the terrain. In Ohio and Indiana the glaciers have leveled the landscape pretty flat and as such flooding generally covers a wide swath, so finding narrow concentrations is a fairly rare event depending upon the terrain. I have found paystreaks in some creeks here in Indiana and others seem to be like yours fairly evenly distributed.

GG~

 

[KevinInColorado]

Hindsite, It's common for creeks in glacial drift areas to have fairly even distribution due to the levelness of the terrain. In Ohio and Indiana the glaciers have leveled the landscape pretty flat and as such flooding generally covers a wide swath, so finding narrow concentrations is a fairly rare event depending upon the terrain. I have found paystreaks in some creeks here in Indiana and others seem to be like yours fairly evenly distributed. GG~

heres your best answer, GG provides the local expertise!

 

[2020hindsite]

Thank you everyone and thank you GG.
It makes sense that because it is Unsorted and also that the terrain is flat so pay channels are rare.
Both answers satisfy my curiosity to a degree.
I guess the only way to know for sure what was happening in this area is go back in time and take a look.
My issue now is that although the gold is good here there and there is no traditional pay streaks that I'm aware of some general areas are marginally better than others. So basically there is no way to determine an area with better values besides luck and testing?

 

[Bonaro]

I live at the southern tip of Puget Sound, an area that once had a glacier and in fact, the Sound itself was carved by a glacier. About 14000 years ago this glacier had pushed down from British Columbia and crossed the Washington Gold fields, picking up gold and carrying it south. The glacier halted and eventually receded and in doing so it stopped pushing gravel. About 20 miles south of me the gravel prairie stops and turns to clay The open valley area between the Cascade and Olympic ranges is filled with glacial gravel. We call it a prairie but it is actually a vast glacial moraine and in some places it is hundreds of feet deep. There is no known lode gold in this area yet there is gold in the gravels of the prairie. It is very very fine and completely mixed with a LOT of gravel. The only sorting or classification into concentrations are in the modern day stream and rivers that cross this prairie.

 

[Aufisher]

Luck and testing are your friends!

 

[DizzyDigger]

A creek running through ground that is littered with glacial
gold will tend to concentrate the gold on the inside bend
of sand bars. I generally begin sampling by looking for the
high water mark (if there is one) and then testing the first spot
where the water slows on that inside bend.

I'll do test pans at 1' and 3' from the waters edge, and then about
every three feet down the length of the bar until the rocks stop and
sand begins. That concentrated gold streak may not be more
than a foot wide, but if there's flood/glacial gold in that creek then
the moving water is going to concentrate some of it along
those rocky sand bars.

If it is all over the area as you mention, then it's time to get
the bigger shovels and trommel out and do some serious mining...

 

[KevinInColorado]

Luck and testing are your friends!

...but isn't that always true?!

 

[Bejay]

heres your best answer, GG provides the local expertise!

Within the context of glacial action we often see:
outwash * sorted
eskers * sorted
kames * sorted
These features change the game a little and often they can be found.

Give special consideration to the outwash concept....as glacial ice "melted back" if you will and this melt water flow does create sorting. If I were prospecting glacial terrain I would look for sorted glacial deposits. One must be able to differentiate between the two: sorted vs unsorted.
Pay streaks tend to be formed in a more "steady/constant/stable" flow period in rivers and streams.

My suggestion would be to learn how to determine the type of placer deposits you prospect....sorted vs unsorted. I believe this may help you a lot.

Bejay

 

[Bejay]

Thank you everyone and thank you GG.
It makes sense that because it is Unsorted and also that the terrain is flat so pay channels are rare.
Both answers satisfy my curiosity to a degree.
I guess the only way to know for sure what was happening in this area is go back in time and take a look.
My issue now is that although the gold is good here there and there is no traditional pay streaks that I'm aware of some general areas are marginally better than others. So basically there is no way to determine an area with better values besides luck and testing?

Within the context of glacial action we often see:
outwash * sorted
eskers * sorted
kames * sorted
These features change the game a little and often they can be found.

Give special consideration to the outwash concept....as glacial ice "melted back" if you will and this melt water flow does create sorting. If I were prospecting glacial terrain I would look for sorted glacial deposits. One must be able to differentiate between the two: sorted vs unsorted.
Pay streaks tend to be formed in a more "steady/constant/stable" flow period in rivers and streams.

My suggestion would be to learn how to determine the type of placer deposits you prospect....sorted vs unsorted. I believe this may help you a lot.

Bejay

 

[Bonaro]

Ok, we have accurately identified how common gold behaves in a water/gravity classification scenario....now we will talk about glacial gold for a bit

All gold is not created equal. For the most part, chunks of gold will follow certain laws of physics. However, glacial gold has been altered significantly by glacial action. In my particular location the gold is all very fine and no larger pieces are ever found. To complicate this the gold has been pounded very very flat by the glacial action. So flat that is defys the normal laws of physics. Pieces that seem far to large will easily float on the surface and other pieces will wash away with the lighter material in your pan.
The result (in my location) is that all of the gold behaves like flood gold. Even if the particle seems big enough to follow predictable paystreak stratification, it is not. You will find it anywhere

 

[Geochemdog]

Within the context of glacial action we often see:
outwash * sorted
eskers * sorted
kames * sorted
These features change the game a little and often they can be found.

Give special consideration to the outwash concept....as glacial ice "melted back" if you will and this melt water flow does create sorting. If I were prospecting glacial terrain I would look for sorted glacial deposits. One must be able to differentiate between the two: sorted vs unsorted.
Pay streaks tend to be formed in a more "steady/constant/stable" flow period in rivers and streams.

My suggestion would be to learn how to determine the type of placer deposits you prospect....sorted vs unsorted. I believe this may help you a lot.

Bejay

Well said Bejay. There may actually be a well sorted ancient riverbed created from these melt waters, a glacier that was roughly 2 miles high would take a very long to recede and melt, allowing ample time for glacial till to be sorted creating well formed pay steaks. Get a length of copper or steel tubing and hammer that sucker down, then use a dowel to pop out the plug of material, I call it the poor mans core sample. Helps find anomalies in soil/gravel without having to move large amounts of overburden.

 

[AimSmMissSm]

Ok, we have accurately identified how common gold behaves in a water/gravity classification scenario....now we will talk about glacial gold for a bit

All gold is not created equal. For the most part, chunks of gold will follow certain laws of physics. However, glacial gold has been altered significantly by glacial action. In my particular location the gold is all very fine and no larger pieces are ever found. To complicate this the gold has been pounded very very flat by the glacial action. So flat that is defys the normal laws of physics. Pieces that seem far to large will easily float on the surface and other pieces will wash away with the lighter material in your pan.
The result (in my location) is that all of the gold behaves like flood gold. Even if the particle seems big enough to follow predictable paystreak stratification, it is not. You will find it anywhere

I too live in the south puget sound area on Violet Praire and I have witnessed what you speak of. After it rains I will visit our local hot spot and what I call "surface panning" I will look for eddies that hold leaves and needles on the surface of the water and submerge my pan to scoop up that bio material and 75% of the time there is gold suspended on the water surface a quick finger touch and it drops like a rock pour off excess water and snuffer it up.

This happens when the water slowly rises and picks up the dry flood gold flakes on the surface tension of the water. They stay suspended until there is a drastic change in water speed, a steep drop to pull it down, or rain / rapids break the surface tention.

Just my 2¢ on glacial flood gold.
AimSmMissSm