2019

[Chris Ben]

Hi all, been pretty busy lately, and what started out as a really slow year ended up being pretty good prospecting wise. The first half of the year was very slow, only able to scratch a few nuggets out of some old patches. Not much luck looking for new areas. 

A few buddies and I decided to meet up in the middle of the summer in Gold Basin. Dave, Steve, and a couple of other Chris' . They were out there since Friday evening,  but because of work I couldn't get out till Saturday afternoon. Dave was meeting us on Sunday. 

I made the drive out from Vegas, and when I got there I tried reach the guys, but no luck. Cell service can be spotty out there, and the must have been out detecting. I figured I might as well get started on my own till I was able to reach them. I ended up in an area where I had found a nice gold quartz specimen years ago, and figured I might grid the area to see if I could come up with a few scraps. 

It was found 3/4 the way up a tiny drainage where nothing else was found (by me anyway) I detectected the drainage top to bottom with no luck,  so I decided to hit the hillside. About 7 or 8 feet from where I found that specie I jammed the coil under a creosote bush and got a strong signal over a large area. It wasn't a distinct signal like a nugget,  so I kind of thought I was some mineralization but decided to dig anyway. There was only about 5 or 6 inches of overburden, so I scraped that off, and now the signal was sounding much more like a target,  but still over a 2 sq ft area. I carry a rock hammer in my pack so I used that to tear up the bedrock. I got down about a foot total and now the signal was screaming.  One more attempt with the hammer, and now I have signals in the tailings. I pick up a piece of quartz and put it over the coil...bingo!! I found my first pocket. I actually found the source. 

I kept working on my hole, still pulling gold out, and still getting strong signals in the bedrock. I was finally able to reach the other guys and dropped them a pin so they could meet up with me. Everyone got some specimens out of my tailings.  

Over the next several weeks I brought home several buckets of ore. I kept at it till there was no more signal in the ground with my GPZ. 

The next step was to crush and pan...geeze that is tedious work when you dont have a proper rock crusher. It took several more weeks to process the ore.

thanks the pocket ended up being around 4oz!!! And a big to 1515Art and his contest I got to use my kiln to make my first gold bar. Took me a while to figure out how to use the electric kiln, it does take a few hours to reach proper temps, but works great!!

added to the nuggets I found, it was a 5z year!

I still have some ore to crush and a nice speci I may just keep. But definitely learned a lot. I'm going to be looking for more pockets. 

2020 has been a pretty good year so far as well.

Cheers, 

Chris 

[flakmagnet]

Great post. Thanks for taking the time to put it up. 

[IdahoPeg]

Wow, you did great! Congrats!

[mn90403]

When you don't hear or see someone for a while you know they're working on something!  haha

I wonder what 'they' found that day?  

Well done.

Mitchel

[Steve Herschbach]

That’s awesome, I’d love to find a little in place deposit like that. Thanks for posting!

[Chris Ben]

Thanks guys, I appreciate it. There was a lot of luck involved.  Here are a couple of other pictures. 

[jasong]

Nice work, you are definitely a gold magnet Chris, I got a feeling you'll be onto another pocket next year too! Heck, there is still time left this winter.

[Glenn in CO]

Congrats! on the gold pocket, you don't happen upon those to often. Nice total haul for the year.

I like your homemade rock crusher, looks like you used a little bit of everything to build it (square tubing, threaded rod, pipe and part of a horseshoe?)👍

[Steve Herschbach]

Do you think that was actual in place pocket vein material, or possibly just a large quartz specimen that decomposed/shattered/broke up in place? It's hard to tell from the photo if you are into decomposed bedrock or talus.

[Chris Ben]

55 minutes ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Do you think that was actual in place pocket vein material, or possibly just a large quartz specimen that decomposed/shattered/broke up in place? It's hard to tell from the photo if you are into decomposed bedrock or talus.

Definitely vein material, a lot of work with pick axes and rock hammers.  Overburden kept falling into the hole so it looks dirty. And the gold would pinch out, but wed dig deeper and find another signal. The GPZ definitely helped