GPZ 7000, Gold Everywhere, Reno And So Much More..

[Robert Eaton Jr]

Hello everybody. Nice to meet you. Long long long time lurker first time poster. A long time ago I think I might have posted about going to Australia to look for gold with my bike, trailer and f-75... Although everybody says it was crazy, I would have gone, but it wasn't an option unfortunately. After being out of the country for 24 years or something, my family and I  moved to Reno from China. And Nevada is such an awesome place, why we might not have the large four or five oz  nuggets laying on the ground everywhere, baking in the sun like in Australia... I think we got tons of gold here and awesome history too 🙂 at least my family and I can't get enough of studying with the old timers did, and the beautiful desert, and other places near Reno. If I've ever heard something about Rena it's that one of the greatest things about it is the proximity to other cool places.

Anyhow, I don't want to say anything bad about our f-75, but it's always been a dream in fact beyond a dream, to own the legendary gpz7000...

Thanks to a knowledgeable modern-day old timer member of the site, we had the Good Fortune to finally make some of our dreams come true. I cannot thank the member enough of this forum, for providing us with the most awesome kit we could have ever dreamed about. Of course there's a couple little things we need to get more, mainly gold nuggets 🙂, and more hours of my day 🙂

Yesterday, was the first day that we could finally use our GPz after putting it together on our coffee table, and continuing to watch every single YouTube video...

I told myself I would go out just a little bit with it to see how it works... For those of you parents in Reno you might have noticed yesterday was the first snow day of the year with the ultimate irony. 

Despite the rain and sleet, I saw some blue sky and that's Good enough for me.

Aside from watching YouTube videos, decided to download a bunch of apps from the play store on my phone. Pretty much every app imaginable related to BLM land and USGS mineral maps.

I hate to see it, but I kind of ignore the BLM apps, and focus more on the digger app that I paid for unlocking all the resources...

Which really didn't provide any other functions so far other than two add more to my excitement..

We happen to live near rattlesnake mountain. Studting it carefully on Google Earth, it's reading about the history of huffaker Hill's, The plan was to check out rattlesnake mountain in even if there isn't gold I was going to find gold their.

You see after years of gpz salivation, when you finally get that gpz, theres going to be gold everywhere you look and everywhere you think of looking every second of every hour of every day. Even when there's not, it's still there you just didn't look hard enough yet 🙂

So without incense carpe diem moment, and two of our children in school for a 2-hour school day, and our oldest kid at home waiting for them to return...

My wife and I took off to go prospecting rattlesnake mountain. But we didn't know, if you follow the road pass rattlesnake mountain, you go underneath veterans highway.

The first thing you notice, is there's a stream that flows through the entire valley along veterans highway.

After years and years of watching Jeff Williams, two toes, and every imaginable YouTube video, we know that every single stream and creek is full of gold nuggets by the multiple ounces. We were going to stop on that stream at the end of the road of rattlesnake mountain, where the road disappears and you have to close the gate behind you or you will get a misdemeanor. However, there was wild land and a gate that you could enter without trespassing, and would look like old mine tailings on the distant mountain.

skipping over that stream that must truly be filled with gold nuggets which we might go back to this morning as soon as I get finished with this never ending the passage...

We entered into the Rocky road headed towards those distance mountains. Luckily I just raised our Volkswagen Jetta sport wagon turbo Diesel and inch and a half or so with tequon front springs and rear towing springs, and put a nice cnc skid plate on the bottom.. preparation for Alaska.. and returning to those sweet desert Roades which we spent so much time bottoming out on in the past....

Well we don't have 4x4 low or anything like that, but we do have a nice little diesel with great torque powered by that magical jet rocket GPZ in the rear.

We plowed through the boulders past all the beautiful ponies with their winter coats, to a neighborhood that we never been to before which was at the end of the dirt Boulder Street even closer to those mountains with the trailing's on the horizon.

We found the exited in this upscale type neighborhood, as we slowly prowled the streets looking for access to the fields at the base with the mountains full of gold.

We finally found an opening between two houses.. proceeded to drive over the curb as close to the fence as possible, and then piece by piece assembled the glorious gpz7000 for its first action.

Apparently this location is called hidden valley I believe.

Racing the sun, for those of you that don't know, it gets dark about 4:30 in Reno right now.. and the supposed oncoming winter storm, we started to treak across the meadow towards the glorious goldfield mountains.

Actually, I always wondered why those mountain ranges never got much love. Every single person in Reno and from the Bay area is all excited about the Sierra mountain range.. so much so, that I don't even know the name of the mountain range. The mountain range opposite to the Sierras seems to be the forgotten Black sheep mountain range...

So... As the wind and the sleet picked up, we headed towards red dirt. Which every single person that watches videos from Australia knows that red dirt is full of gold nuggets lying everywhere.

Firing up the GPZ for the first time on gold bearing ground, I was able with great skill and the power of the GPZ to find a glorious 22 shell casing. And then like magic, I was even able to find what I guess to be the 22 lead bullet that was once in that casing. What a fabulous trick that was. I was sure than ever that we were going to find lots of gold now.

So with my dedicated wife, armed only with a couple beers, and a shovel, not really dressed for the elements, we face the oncoming snowstorm and climb to the top of the ridge. At least the first tiny ridge. Just enough to see there was a little Park we could have parked closer to this ridge, that we could have had more time to find more gold..,

I had to explain to my wife we were only on this part of the mountain not looking for natural gold in ravines, because even she knows that every single ravine , valley, and dry Creek bed is full of gold nuggets...

But we were here for what looked to be tailings mining tailings. My app said nothing about the mines on this mountain. But they surely must be full of gold.

After reaching the top of the first ridge, at the very point overlooking the vast Meadows behind rattlesnake mountain, fired up the GPZ. I forgot to mention, not only gold, but the GPZ will also be finding lots of buried treasures.. pirates, aztecs, Indians, etc etc etc. The GPZ could find it all. And with a beautiful view like this I imagined that this is where the native Indians buried their golden treasures in sacrifice to the gods.

Firing up the GPZ, performing the ritual of holding it up to the air, that was when the first tragedy stock. The vital awesome wireless speaker that plugs into your headphones, had somehow mysteriously fell off my rocket pack like GPZ harness. With great sorrow and worry, we went back down the hill to find it. Thank God my wife is 10 years younger than me with eagle eyes sndt hops around like a mountain goat... She found it first. Back up the hill we went to uncover the hidden Indian treasure

To our great surprise, after digging a signal, we found miraculously a long lost 22 casing. Perhaps from this peak this is where the JFK assassin was practicing shooting.... Who knows. Well, we could not spare anymore time to get that Indian treasure as the sun was going down quickly, we only had three or four more hours. So we continued towards the pile of gold.

So we climbed up the little Hill, which wasn't so little actually to the first ridge.. on the way to the big pile of tailings.

I'm pretty perplexed, it seemed to be a huge amount of tailings, however there is no sign of them old timers. No train tracks no old equipment, I couldn't even find the entrance to a mine. Strange to find tailings with no mine..

The whole trip I was questioning my sanity to whether or not those were actually tailings or some natural formation where the Earth threw up its internal self magically and mysteriously.

It doesn't matter, miners or aliens, everybody knows from watching the Australian videos and Jeff Williams that every pile of mine tailings, is full of gold nuggets..

Realizing that we forgot our lighter, because we don't smoke, and we didn't know we were going to be on a side of the mountain somewhat freezing asses off trying to start a bonfire far away from all those that hate people that start bonfires..

With the lack of a lighter, I told my wife to go hide behind some trees and pretend she's a cavewoman. And she could even try making the fire with sticks. She made a great effort.

At the very tip top tower of tailings, mysteriously jettisoned, I received a signal. realizing this might be the largest gold nugget in Nevada's history, the huge excavation began. I found during this time I was wondering why they don't have much bigger plastic scoops because scoop after scoop after scoop, it was taking a lot of scoops to dig down into the strange pile of gold. Somewhat hollow holes, we're leading me to question whether or not there's some kind of secret passage and was the GPZ actually discovering a closed metal door or something?

Well, when you're on the tip of a peak, full of tailings, being careful as you dig as you don't back up off the side of the tiny mountain to your death on the first day of having your GPz, and your wife is in the shelter of the trees, and your dog running around full of bliss, then that's the proper time to open your beer.

Which I did, as I digged deeper and deeper, knowing from all the videos on YouTube that when you go deep it means huge nuggets.

To my great surprise, the target was actually a bleached aluminum can, mysteriously trapped under two feet of alien mining trailings....

So ... That means I wasn't looking good enough. Yet... I was wondering, was there a hole that was filled in? Is this a natural mountain? What the heck?

When in doubt, grab your shivering wife, and climb higher. Not forgetting to sing The Bear went over the mountain song as your head towards what looks to be the real big pile of tailings. The motherload perhaps...

As we passed lots of rocks which probably had gold but we didn't have time to get, I stripped away my excessive clothing to help my wife. Happy wife happy life. With my baklavia, she was ready to climb Everest...

Unfortunately, we face that enemy no man can conquer... Time..

Realizing, we had no time to make it to all the other pals of what appeared to be tailings on the mountain, and all the mountains from there to Virginia City...

So, what can we do,? Well, you know what I'm going to say, come on let's go 🙂

Remembering the great Jeff Williams, we slowly edged away down the ravine realizing that every ravine had gold we would collect the gold as we moved on the ravine like breadcrumbs and the German forest...

Underneath the first root and rocks in the dry ravine Creek bed.. everybody knows there's gold nuggets. Unable to pan, because you know all the dirt of all the roots and rocks and dry beds there's tons of flour gold...

Well we didn't have time for flower gold we were looking for record size nuggets....

Surely there was no humans there, so we were surprised to find a shotgun shell..... And that's when I started to understand. The GPZ was trying to teach me a lesson, it was trying to teach me it's secret language. The language of gold. What were these mysterious werebels. Intense deep low sound to high...

There must be a pattern to this madness and I think I'm starting to recognize it. Which is a very important step. Learning that secret language is what will allow me to truly enter the famed eldorado.....

Also, numerous questions arised. I know it might be wrong to turn my sensitivity all the way up to 30. Even less than that, 20 might be wrong. Was I too over eager? I disabled this sound smoothing. I want to hear all the sounds. I turned off the ground locate, that seemed like another filter. Perhaps I'll leave it on later. Is this normal or difficulty land? It's definitely not salty. And I've had harder things in life so it seems to me this was normal ground. Auto ground balance semi-auto ground balance I'm not really sure about yet so much to learn...

So we moved down the river of gold. It's suddenly dawned on us, sunlight is running out. My wife was very eager because she's all about pointing out every Creek and every ravine in every mountain and every field is we drive by screaming gold gold gold.. so I knew she was excited.. when we hit what I said would be the last Target.

In all actuality, with the never-ending go big or go home gold motivation, we probably should have already left. Beings we didn't have any lighters, or torches... Electric or fire..

But when you're on the gold... Time suddenly stops. Well it almost stopped...

I reached into my magic bag to see if I could find the next Target faster and I pulled out my awesome Fisher pinpointer which I think is more complicated than any pinpointer ever created. But it's pretty cool..

The problem is, I think when I turn it on, it must send out some kind of wave that disrupts all gpzs within a 3,000 mi radius..

So reluctantly, I turned off the GPZ. With great sadness.

Wow I forgot how much easier it is to use a pin pointer then scoop after scoop after scoop after scoop after scoop after scoop like cleaning the world's largest cat box ...

I'm going to have to go home, and do hours and hours of research as if I'm getting a special degree in figure out how to make my Fisher pinpointer work on a different channel than the GPZ .

If anybody's still reading this long saga and knows how to make a Fisher pen pointer not cause interference with the GPZ that's great. I'm guessing I'll have to redo the silence detection dance with the GPS with the pinpointer on in the future to make them work together. I don't know if the pinpointer changes its channel every time it's activated...

Anyways back to the adventure. The pinpointer allowed me to quickly find underneath the root behind The Rock in the perfect position for the largest nugget of Nevada, a fantastically weathered rusted shotgun shell....

Realizing, everything must be changed, switching from gold to survival mode, if we do not reach the bottom of the ravine before darkness settled, it was going to be a pain in the ass kind of night.

Gold, treasure.... So many different kinds of valuables. Endless cat scoops of joy, wind, sleet, and if fort Knox full of golden  nuggets..

And even the luck that we made it to the bottom of the ravine before darkness settled.

Loading the equipment into the car, we ran into a local and inquired about the history of those Hills. We were told that once they were open to four wheelers and there's some cars that are lost in The ravines...

Most of the area there were old Basque people who made their living selling vegetables and stuff to the settlers and 49ers.

We heard that those mines were golden copper, although we could not find the entrance to any. even after looking on Google Earth when I returned home I couldn't find the entrance to any of the mines. Strange.

Well you might be thinking if you speak German" alles fur nicht" or all for nothing.

If I said I just enjoyed the hike in the nature that would be selfish and sidetracked. The reality is the GPZ is going to be the future of our family and the security for my children. 

There were nuggets found on this trip. Learning the sound of the GPZ, getting some time behind the handle....

I will spend every day like all the others in here and behind that YouTube screen watching and preparing for the next trip. I know I have to go do some work... Some other work...

But in the back of my mind, I've got another fully charged battery and it sure would be nice to go back to that Creek that we passed. It's right next to my house...

The hardest thing is going to be to not go out for a couple days. Pay some bills. Get that rooftop tent, and Kevlar AT tires....

Then get back out there. You know I'm an Uber driver by profession after 18 years or so of teaching, which is pretty awesome. That means every single place I go I can stop outside my office with the detector....

Until the detector becomes the office.

We have some great plans with our rooftop tent if we could get it, to drive up and down in Mexico Arizona Nevada Montana, Alaska... Delivering Uber eats a little bit, and detecting a lot. We need to pick up a gold monster 1000, drywash, sluice and Jeff Williams secret decoder ring.

with all the old timer documentary videos on Amazon prime, youtube, in collection of old books found discarded in the Goodwill, I can tell you one thing. Gold fever is a hell of a drug.

if anybody ever has any information of good places around Reno post them if you got them 🙂 I look forward to joining the prospector club and learning from all those around. I don't understand how people care about things like NFL football when there's other things like gold and underneath your feet everywhere you walk...

It's way too hard to add pictures one by one to this forum so here's a link to our album. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/s5AwNp4pHAwF16iv5

[Desert Dawg]

Welcome to the forums, sounds like you are gung ho for nugget  hunting. I hope we can be of some use to you for opinions on certain types gear etc. Your TDI sounds like an interesting rig. Reminds me of a Subaru Outback I saw drive up to our gold camp in the Rye Patch area wearing some gnarly BFG TA/KO-2'S, great tires if you can figure out how to fit em. 3 ply sidewalls protect from sharp rock penetration. Unfortunately KO-2'S have to be D range to have the 3 ply sidewalls, C range only has 2 ply sidewalls. Be prepared for a lot of rock generated flats running 2 ply sidewalls in gold country. Seen it a lot out there.

[Ken Walls]

I have never seen an entire family so motivated in this hobby. Im sure you are going to find what you are looking for, as long as you keep the fires inside burning. 

I know you can and will do great things.

[Steve Herschbach]

Welcome to the forum... I think you set a record for longest first post. Great story, and best wishes to you and your family!

[LuckyLundy]

You keep that dream and the adventure of the hunt!  Your armed and dangerous to any Nugget now, you’ll find your Huckleberry Nugget soon.  If not touch base with me, I’ll give you a pointy finger!

Rick

[Hard Prospector]

Record post it would seem, had to make more tea before finished reading!  Its all in the adventure, and welcome aboard. 

Good luck and stay safe

[Valens Legacy]

Loved reading your small book, and glad to see you on the forum.

People are here to help you in your families quest to find the gold, and with practice and patience it will happen.

Don't feel bad about a long post as I for one love to read a good story, and your is quite nice.

Someday I hope to be able to get out there and do what you and your family is doing.

Keep hunting and in time it will all fall into place for you.

[Robert Eaton Jr]

10 hours ago, Mxt Sniper said:

Welcome to the forums, sounds like you are gung ho for nugget  hunting. I hope we can be of some use to you for opinions on certain types gear etc. Your TDI sounds like an interesting rig. Reminds me of a Subaru Outback I saw drive up to our gold camp in the Rye Patch area wearing some gnarly BFG TA/KO-2'S, great tires if you can figure out how to fit em. 3 ply sidewalls protect from sharp rock penetration. Unfortunately KO-2'S have to be D range to have the 3 ply sidewalls, C range only has 2 ply sidewalls. Be prepared for a lot of rock generated flats running 2 ply sidewalls in gold country. Seen it a lot out there.

Hey thanks for the welcome. A long time lurker. This is a great resource. right now I'm running these great Goodyear weather assurance tires that are the best snow tires I've ever had considering they're not dedicated snow tires https://www.goodyear.com/en-US/tires/assurance-weatherready .... They really blown me away in the snow so far.. I had a couple sidewall flats though last year with the all-seasons I was running. Definitely am looking forward to getting some of those Kevlar or other dependable tires for the future. The immediate thing on our list is trying to find a used falcon xl tent and the funds to buy one.. step by step.. Ferociously... Good luck out there and happy holidays to your family ...

[Robert Eaton Jr]

11 hours ago, Ken Walls said:

I have never seen an entire family so motivated in this hobby. Im sure you are going to find what you are looking for, as long as you keep the fires inside burning. 

I know you can and will do great things.

Hey can I hope that you're having a good holiday with your family. Like I said before, sorry it had to be like what it is and I wish you and yours the best. Meeting you is a great opportunity for us, we've got a lot to learn, and you really have our sincere gratitude for your honesty and providing us with the Golden Chipmunk as my kids call it. Look forward to getting to know you more in the future. 2021 is going to be a vital year for any prospector and their family. Carpe diem.

[Robert Eaton Jr]

11 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Welcome to the forum... I think you set a record for longest first post. Great story, and best wishes to you and your family!

Hey Steve... You, general Hercules, Jeff Williams, two toes, you're a legend in our home. It's really an honor to meet you in this forum, and thank you for the wonderful resource you put together. The experiences that you've shared, from your f-75 to your Zed... It's the kind of thing, like giving a drink to somebody who's thirsty, which only makes them more thirsty 🙂

Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. We're great fans, and look forward to learning so much more. I never anticipated I would actually be in Reno in the United States communicating with you in person in the form. you never know what's going to happen in life I guess. Happy holidays to you and your family. Thanks a million.