Wheres it coming from?`

[Golden_Crab]

Where's it coming from?`

So I venture out to the Uwharrie NF here in NC when I can and I've encountered a stream with an adjacent large angular quartz spread leading up hill to a magnese stained Quartz... outcrop? Now this area the stream is cutting through a saprolite zone so this large piece of quartz has no business being on the top soil. Old mines did operate nearby, and this was adjacent to what was presumably the old mine / logging road. The problem I'm having here is on the otherside of the creek on the opposite mountain sat an old mine that exploited some quartz stringers containing good gold, however I have a pretty good idea of where that quartz starts to make its way into the creek and there was no gold at that point. So I focused my efforts on the assumption I was looking at an old quartz tailing pile of some excavated quartz vein further up hill, and that the gold was the slop they lost in the old stamp mill operations. It was a consistent size that got larger as I went closer and deeper near the quartz bank. This particular part of the creek was sitting on a clay layer and the gold was nowhere to be found on the normal gold line. Further up the creek seemed less fruitful. If we went down too far, gold wasn't as good. It was in a pretty consistent depth. By this point it seems pretty obvious where it's entering the creek... but... the area has a history for the big gold being in the old, now deeply buried, stream channels and there was one jussst up the creek from this hotspot that was perfectly aligned to deposit it's gold during high water right where we found it. The gold looked like it broke off a larger nugget and didn't travel far at all, and was quickly buried safely from deformation. The large magnese stained quartz didn't look like the same quartz I found from the opposite sides mountain mine, so I question its gold content...

I'm stuck between the source being the Magnese stained quartz, the old channel, or it happens to be the clay there has held the gold pretty well and the source is much further upstream and eroded out long ago. I ran out of time to test my last thoughts...

What are yours?

 

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[OwenT]

Sounds like an interesting area. I'd be looking for hard rock sources and for that big gold in the old stream channel. Hopefully you can identify where the gold is coming from based on the texture. You said that you think you've identified where the gold is coming into the creek. If it really is coming in there then it will probably be near the surface only. I'd get out of the creek there and start testing the dirt on the surface on either side to see which way it's coming then try to follow the trace uphill. Fine gold will be "floating" down the hill from the source. If you find a piece of quartz on the way up crush and pan it. I've heard that manganese can hide gold so I might just go up there and look at that first. I found this on another forum: "Manganese is usually black but it can also be a light pinkish red. In Quartz, it can be a light pink color. Crush and pan it will show nothing. But roast it in with a torch and the gold will form into beads, if the sample contains gold." Note - I have no experience with this, all I'm saying is based off of things I've read, but that's what I'd do.