7000 + Ironstone = 0

[Condor]

I thought we had a break in the weather down here in Southern CA so I took the 7k out to ironstone heaven.  There is so much ironstone that Kaiser Steel once mined it nearby.  I know of a small hillside placer that had produced a few dozen 1 gram and smaller nuggets.  I used the 2300 in there last year for some decent finds.  The problem is its a long, hot, dry walk.  I was going to hike in and overnight it, but at the last minute decided a roundtrip with lighter pack was a better plan.  I started out at first light with the 7k taken down and stowed in my pack with 4 liters of water.  The hike was longer than I remembered, took me just shy of 2 hrs to get to the placer zone.  I had already sweated through my shirt and drank one liter of water.  Not a good start.  I fired up the 7000 trying to concentrate on deeper gravels where the 2300 should have left some gold.  Man, that 7000 can find ironstone real deep.  I tried various settings to dumb it down, including General-Difficult with a lowered sensitivity.  No go, too many golf ball sized chunks of ironstone down 6 to 10 inches.  By noon I had enough of kicking and digging ironstone, even 1 nugget would have kept me going.  By then I was down to 1.5 liter of water and it was heating up.  I packed it up and plugged in my ipod with a decent audio book and hiked back out of there.  I got to my truck about 2:30 and it was 105 degrees with 20mph winds.  I hosed down with a 5 gallon jug of water, changed clothes and drove home.  It was not a total loss, because I can now cross off my list a place to work the 7k.  Looking forward to cooler temps and more time with the 7k.

[Reno Chris]

There are some hot rocks the 2300 and 5000 will ignore that the GPZ will see, just a matter of timings. I've heard tell that the ironstone out by the Kaiser Steel / Eagle mine is really wild.

[Sourdough Scott]

Wouldn't this be a prime location for the ferrite ring and running in fixed?

[Condor]

I tried balancing over a small ironstone, pretty difficult to balance it out. That stuff is just too hot.

[nvchris]

Tracking or fixed?

 

Ive had some success in hot basalts Iron stone mix in fixed.

It's a Nevada location so no mineralization or hot ground here

 

 

 

Another reason why I kept a GPX, it will jump through more hoops then the one trick ponies.

[Tortuga]

Wouldn't this be a prime location for the ferrite ring and running in fixed?

That's what I was going to say. I've noticed an improved ground balance since using the ferrite ring. Less ground noise and false signals.

[Steve Herschbach]

Sorry to hear no gold. The GPZ runs hot and that is all there is to it. In some places that works against it. The SDC on the other hand is running a version of the GPX Smooth class of timings and will ignore rocks the GPZ hits on. The GPX will handle almost anything. I sold my GPX but my Garrett ATX serves the same purpose for me. It will tune out basalt that even a GPX cannot handle.