If you could give us your full name, we could watch for a storyline. Not LOL. Doing research on mining deaths the last twenty or so years shows drowning to be first, walls of rock covering someone as a close second. In my prospecting over the last forty or so years I have never found anything worth messing with on those towering walls of gravel. If there was any pay left then they would not be there. I use to think oh my god I going to hit the bonanza, never has happened. In my part of the country if you look good enough you will see sign where the old timers or chinese drifted on the bedrock under these massive walls and took out what was there.
I ran an operation on the Big East Fork of Canyon Creek in Trinity County for a few years. We had a massive trommel operation and I was up against a two hundred and forty foot wall of gravel. Prettiest stuff to look at and dream about what might be there. We cleaned the toeslope out of the way along the base of the wall. We found entances where someone had gone in on the bedrock. There was almost three acres of bedrock that had been cleaned by hand. They left pillars of gravel about every twelve feet. These pillars were about three to four feet across and about ten feet tall. The pillars were the only thing holding the gravel overhead in place, all two hundred and forty feet. This was one big cavern. I was relieved when I got out of there.
Later that summer I ran some cuts across the face and broke it down a bit. Several weeks later I was in position to clear a small area out that had been over fourteen of the pillars. Very delicalely I could move that excavator around and clean up near the still standing pillars. Once we were satisfied that we had near virgin material we started to take it out and run it. After all the work leading up to this point I managed to run about eighty yards. Out of that eighty yards a bit over a hundred ounces was found with a few multi ouncers in the lot. I only found just over four ounces of fines, rice size and smaller. The rest was a beatiful jewelry grade nuggets. The other problem was because we were using the trommel a lot of our pretty gold was not so pretty no more. After all was done and we added up time and materials even with a hundred ounce clean-up day it just was not enough. More of the same is still there under two hundred and forty feet of gravel. The lower eight feet of gravel is all that payed. I ran several hundred yards of the different levels and layers to see hardly any gold. Everything was on the bedrock. That ground is now all covered up.
Even with equipment,what you are after is a very challenging effort that more than likely could end up with a dangerous outcome. I would stick to remnant channels that are just a few feet deep and clean them to bedrock. I have done this while detecting and have come out very well. Those old timers were pretty damn savvy, not much got past them. TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS
