Short Rich Gully Followup

[Condor]

I went back out late yesterday to the super gully to give her a go with the drywasher.  It is a couple hrs from home so I spent the night out there.  I got there late and detected for about an hr before sunset.  I found 1 small piece in the pile of one of my previous dig holes.  This morning I decided to detect the whole works again with the Z maxed out settings with my high dollar earphones plugged in to boot.  I found 10 pieces total.  One 2 gram piece that I missed before and can only attribute to operator error on my previous outing.  It should have been loud and clear without the maxed settings.  The rest were all tiny pieces, so small that I detected them with the Z, but recovered them with the Gold Bug.  Basically, if I got a repeatable warble in the Z threshold at maxed out settings, I dug until it was out of the ground then grabbed the Gold Bug Pro with the little 5" round coil to recover them.  A good time saving measure if you're working a small area. 

Then I set up my puffer drywasher near the original dig holes. First thing I noticed was the dirt still had enough moisture that it clumped in the riffles.  I ended up running it through 3 times from the tailings and wanted to abandon the effort.  Nevertheless, I ran about 10 shovels full and decided to pan it out.  Absolutely amazing, probably 20 colors with a couple tiny pickers in the pan.   I punched 2 more sample holes in different areas just to check the results.  Same thing, plenty of colors and a few tiny pickers.  But, it seemed that the richest material was not at bedrock, maybe half way between or just above bedrock.

I gave up the drywash effort because I know I'm losing gold in the damp soil and will opt for something new and more efficient in the future.   Perhaps the Gold Cube set up to recycle water would do a much more efficient job. 

Photos to follow.

 

[Condor]

Photos I hope

 

 

 

[mn90403]

 

Good gully miss molly!  Nice gold.

Thank you for the posting.  I just read something that could explain gold not being on bedrock in very dry areas.

Sometimes when it rains it 'pours' like a thunderstorm and that storm doesn't wash all the way to bedrock.  The flood goes over the top of the desert and slows down in depressions. All of the gold above the bedrock is not moved and some of the gold that is moved by the flood just settles in a nearby depression.  Kinda like the 'potholes' in the area.

The slope now could be considerably different than when the gold moved there assuming you are not at the source.

[Condor]

The storm concept makes good sense.  This is actually a very shallow gully and not a desert wash.  All the bigger nuggets I found last week were at the same midpoint and not on the bedrock.  None of the tiny pieces I detected today were on bedrock.  All were 3 or 4 inches down just below float gravel as it were.

[californiagold]

Nice job on the gold condor! Looks good

[Lunk]

WTG!

[Hard Prospector]

Rock'n it Condor.... way to get some

[jasong]

Nice job! Might be worth bonding and running a little operation depending how extensive the deposit is?

In AZ, it's not uncommon to find nuggets halfway down or even shallower, for a number of different reasons, or even right on surface sometimes. The more you get into unexplored or underworked areas, the truer this tends to be.

[beatup]

Real nice gold Steve

[hawkeye]

Desert placers can be eluvial or eolian unlike alluvial placers concentrated by water.  By the rough looks of the gold it appears not to have traveled very far from the original lode source.  By the way, nice work Condor.