2nd And 3rd Outings With The GMX

[havingstl]

I am going to write a little bit about my outings with the GMX.  It will be fun and maybe I will be able to harvest some advice from more experienced detector/prospectors.  I did go to a creek/swimming hole but had very little time with the detector. I have a very young family and it can be hard to concentrate when 1 of my 4 kids is getting hurt or stuck or ....  so I gave up on it pretty quickly that day.

I was able to get out to the Lynx Creek withdrawal area with a friend.  He's new as well and using a Time Ranger Pro.  I looked on Google Earth and picked out a wash that ran parallel with the main creek.  That way we would be able to detect in and out on our hike.  Unfortunately,  the borders of the withdrawal area are not marked well on the maps I found available but the private claim the wash was on is marked really well once you get out there.  We hiked along the fence for a while looking for area that might be interesting to detect.  The only spot I found was a large hole.  The material excavated was a different color than the surrounding soil so I dug a few iron targets from the pile.  It doesn't seem like anyone has thoroughly gone through all that material with a detector and there are many hot rocks and pieces of iron mixed in with the material.  Eventually, we hiked down to the main creek bed.  My partner moved quite a bit faster than me and found many tin cans along the way.  I tried to be as meticulous as I could whenever we found a wash to detect and found only one large can.  I think I will bring him on my future trips and send him in front of me to remove large trash items.  We detected up the mostly dry creek bed and dug trash target after trash target.  I heard it was trashy here but I had no idea it would be this bad.  The area had many hot rocks which would send my detector into overload if touched.  I ended up needing to set the detector down to level 3 sensitivity just to get around  without overloading constantly.  All in all it was a fun outing with some rugged hiking and a near heart attack when a deer jumped up about 5 feet in front of me.  I was using the 6inch concentric coil but would like to take the 4x6 double d out here and see if it is able to handle the hot rocks any better. 

Outing 3 was to the same area but I wanted to try the mineralization tracking feature of the detector.  Lynx creek is more known for gold panning so I thought I might have better success that way.  I swung it around and everything in the area is really mineralized.  I was able to find a couple spots with a bit of an increase on the meter and it was really did seem like there was quite a bit more black sand in the areas the detector was interested in.  I panned for a while in these areas but found no gold.  After a while I wanted to try detecting up the hillside in front of me.  It was pretty steep and, I thought, difficult enough to deter some prospectors.  When I got up there it was definitely steep and full of loose rocks.  I was only able to detect a small portion of the hillside but I found plenty bullets.  Many of the loose rocks were quite hot.  At this point I was getting better at listening to the detector and figuring out which sounds are hot rocks but it was still pretty challenging on this hillside  I was worried about pushing one of the rocks out of the way and killing one of my kids who might have wandered underneath me.  After a short time of this I could tell that my families patience had run out and we probably needed to head home, still gold-less 

Unfortunately, there is a new issue in this area.  The management of the forest forgot to renew the mineral withdrawal and now large areas are now private claims.  The area i had originally planned on going the 3rd outing was all claimed up with fresh signs everywhere.  I can only assume fences will follow.  In the end I don't know if Lynx Creek is a good area to detect.  If I come out here again I will bring my TDI and see if that makes the hot rocks anymore bearable.  I am digging all the targets anyway so I don't know if the discrimination afforded by the GMX is helping.  I will try and head out again soon.  Hopefully the temps here in AZ will go down soon and I can get into more of the GPAA claims in the area.