Prospecting opportunities in dry areas (but not drywashing)

[PickAxeCA]

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts or stories about prospecting in areas with no water, where you have to transport it in, or better yet, hike it in.

The goal would be to do sampling (e.g. panning soil samples in a small wet tub aka loaming) or run a low production recirculating sluice or rocker box or similar (not drywashing, and not detecting).

Examples could be the following:
* Sampling dry drainages or washes (plus tributaries)
* Placer paleo channels hundreds, or thousands of feet above any river or creek
* Dry creek beds or gulches (that aren't dry enough for dry washing)
* Roadside prospecting in a bone dry area
* Sampling road cuts for hard rock / lode gold
* But not drywashing or dry panning ( not practical in most areas outside of the US Southwest)

Essentially, these areas may be virgin ground, or hardly worked at all due to lack of water.

I'm also aware that small amounts of water will have a limited processing capacity due to slime. (suspended solids)

Let's hear your thoughts about prospecting or mining in areas with no water, as there may still be decent opportunities in these areas.

-PickaxeCA

 

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[Reed Lukens]

I run a Gold Fox Extreme mini trommel with a small recirculating set up. You can read about it here, then there's a video posted later in the threads.

Reeds Travels

Reed's Travels Today we will be detecting at Carpinteria State Beach in Southern California just outside of Santa Barbara and we will be here until Friday morning in space 126. It's past time for me to have started my own thread on our travels, so here it is :)

www.treasurenet.com

 

[Fermion]

I am interested in this because I have been toying around on our mountain property in Washington state which has no water near. It doesn't really have gold, although I am getting a couple of specks per pan and it makes me want to use the ground for testing something as you describe, a recirculating setup. The ground is too moist for any kind of dry washing.

 

[PickAxeCA]

I am interested in this because I have been toying around on our mountain property in Washington state which has no water near. It doesn't really have gold, although I am getting a couple of specks per pan and it makes me want to use the ground for testing something as you describe, a recirculating setup. The ground is too moist for any kind of dry washing.

I'm up in BC, Canada. I found the gold in the photos below by hiking in 2 gallons of water in my backpack to a dry hillside with no water at all (no creeks, no lakes, no seepages, etc.). 2 gallons is enough water to fill a small dishtub for test panning.

My hard rock sampling method is to classify, pan, and then take home heavy mineral concentrates in a container with a lid as a sample. At home I will do the final panning and cleanup. This system works well for processing small samples in the field whether they are soil samples or crushed vein material.

If you want some ideas for how to do this, look for videos on 'loaming' in Australia (a fancy term for panning soil samples in the field).

Also, check out the Hard Rock Unviersity channel on YouTube, where he teaches how to pan microfine gold, and also to do speed prospecting of hard rock material.

P.S. A couple of the photos below are under 10X magnification. The field panning method caught gold so small I could barely see it even under the 10X loupe.

 

[PickAxeCA]

I run a Gold Fox Extreme mini trommel with a small recirculating set up. You can read about it here, then there's a video posted later in the threads.

Reeds Travels

Reed's Travels Today we will be detecting at Carpinteria State Beach in Southern California just outside of Santa Barbara and we will be here until Friday morning in space 126. It's past time for me to have started my own thread on our travels, so here it is :)

www.treasurenet.com

Reed- that Gold Fox trommel is a nice setup, and it looks like you have it dialed in terms of keeping the water clean for as long as possible.

Multiple catches spilling into others is certainly the way to go.