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Memorial Day Weekend Dredging In Virginia


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Had a great weekend out prospecting and dredging a club property in Virginia.  Got to meet some new people and have an overall great time camping and dredging.  

So i just started prospecting this creek and club property this year.  Ive panned and dredged it a few times, all was basically sampling activities.  From research of old workings and looking geologic and lidar maps i choose a specific area to focus on, and the last time out sampling with the dredge started to sniff on decent gold in a 1 hour sample hole with a 4 inch dredge.  The area consists of a spot about 100 yards wide in which the creek has always had to cross since sheer cliff walls bound the stretch on each opposite bank.  A gold bearing feeder also comes in within the stretch which is an added bonus.  The thought is, is that since the creek has always had to cross that 100 yard stretch then an old paystreak should cross it somewhere was well, from back in the days when this area had more conducive climate to being able to transport gold.  

From what ive heard and seen within the club most people avoid prospecting this creek, due to difficult access, deep overburden and generally not finding much gold once they get in there.  So i have not heard of decent gold coming from it.  But the old history reports say otherwise and state that it is one of the few creeks in this area that was never placer mined due to difficulties that the old timers in the 1800s couldnt overcome.  Sounds like my type of area, if im going to prospect a club property.  

 

Sample dredging the creek a few weeks before Memorial day weekend.  Notice the 15 foot tall silt bank behind the dredge, its all alluvial flood plain material.  

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Gold from the 1 hour sample hole with the 4 inch dredge.  Not fantastic but far above the back ground gold count for this creek.

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Camp all set up and the dogs are happy with it.  

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Getting the dredges set up.  I decided to bring the 5 inch since the ability to move more material out weighed the extra weight in my opinion.  

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Dredging away.  Luckily the overburden depth was only about 2 feet at most, so i was able to cover some ground with the 5 inch.  Got about 2 full good days of dredging in.  

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Found some Indian pottery while dredging.  Always awesome to find Indian artifacts.  

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And the best part, Success!  Good gold with some nice pickers.  2.4 grams on Saturday and 1 gram on Sunday.  I love when research, sampling and hard work culminates into some great cleanups in new areas.  

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Got a new spot to continue to work know, and i know there are more pickers and possibly nuggets nearby, just gotta get my dredge nozzle over them.  

Hope everyone else had a great memorial day weekend.  

Heavy pans!

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Well done can we get more pics of the Indian pottery it must be more there......

 

 

Thanks

 

 

RR

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Thanks Steve.  And yeah not too shabby for the east coast.  Cant wait to get back there and keep working that hole forward.  Should be a change in the geologic formation up creek from where i was dredging, which usually means a quartz vein.  A possible source or if not still a great gold catch.  

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