Digging Gold At The ICMJ Hands On Gold Day

[Reno Chris]

So the ICMJ Prospectors Summit consists of two days of show with a large number of equipment dealers at the El Dorado Fairgrounds and two days of prospecting at the Gleeson Diggings – an old hydraulic Gold pit in Placer County. The Gleeson mine is private property, but by special arrangement it is open to us for two days every other year, and there is a fee to attend to pay for portable bathrooms, for the mine operator to dig up dirt for us, etc.

Everyone has a great time, but on Monday I had fun helping a guy who was digging with his metal detector. I generally wander around seeing if anyone needs any help, but I do a little prospecting of my own as well. So I was wandering around and came upon Ray Mills who was helping a guy who had a Fisher Gold Bug Pro. They had dug out one small nugget out of the bedrock, but they thought they had another target as well. The problem was that the ground was very noisy and the GB Pro was having difficulty distinguishing between a target and the loud, mineralized bedrock. The mineral noise was overwhelming the target signal.  It seemed like perhaps they had lost the target to me, so I went to grab my SDC 2300, which I was pretty certain would at least do better on the mineralized ground – enough to recover that second gold nugget.
Sure enough the SDC cut through the mineral ground noise and clearly identified the target, which was about four inches away from where they were looking for it. I showed the guy how to recover it with a spoon and sure enough, it was a little nugget about 2 grains in size. I searched the spot and there was another target close by – I promised the guy at the spot I was not trying to take his gold, just to identify the nearby targets for him. There turned out to be several and as I would swing over them, because I wasn’t using headphones and had the speaker on so all could hear, Ray would say something like “there’s another one”. After the guy had dug a couple more small nuggets, one spot appeared to be a little louder and as he dug on it, it turned out to be a crevice filled with little flakes and nuggets. I’ve attached a photo I took of the crevice with some of the gold pointed out with arrows. I thought that was pretty impressive until Ray helped him extract a clod of cemented gravel from the bottom of the crevice that was just filled with little nuggets. I’ve attached a photo of that too, as it was very impressive – more so even that the previous nuggets. I told him – “You know that’s the type of thing that will give a guy a bad case of gold fever” – and he said – “I know!” with a big smile across his face. The biggest nugget he got in that spot was only about 8 grains, but I figure he got at least a quarter ounce of gold in total.

Another gent started in on a spot I had identified about 15 feet away in a little shattered quartz vein. The first guy was content to clean out his little nugget crevice and work the area around it. So the second guy got some nice gold out of the shattered quartz vein spot – sometimes shattered little quartz veins and blobs in the bedrock can make for a good gold catch, and this one was just that. I would guess he got a couple pennyweight out of it before a young boy, about 10 years of age who was on his first prospecting trip came along and took over. He wailed on that vein with his pick and dug around it and he got some nice gold too, also probably around a couple pennyweight. At the end of the day, after everyone had walked away from that spot, I took my SDC 2300 over and still managed to locate another 2 grain nugget.  It was a small area and I would guess there was at least a half ounce in total and a lot of happy folks.

Lots of other stories and everyone had a great time at both hands on days at the Gleeson mine. as I have time, I may post a few more accounts of the folks digging for gold at the ICMJ summit - there are a number of interesting tales.

[Roughwater]

Very good of you Chris to help them out.  Glad you managed to get some gold too.  Maybe you also showed them the power of a Minelab PI machine!
 

[fredmason]

that is too cool!

Chris, how many arrows are there? I see five...you know we don't all see red!!!

fred

[Reno Chris]

5 is correct. I thought blue / green was the common color blindness.  I have a friend with that who has a devil of a time when we hunt turquoise. 

[fredmason]

Thanks, Chris...if I really focus I can sometimes find red in pictures. No, red/green is most common, as far as I know. Of course there are degrees of alternative-color-vision. My brother is so color blind he does not see the beauty of my gold nuggets...If I could not see gold I doubt I would hunt it! Oddly, I love red shirts-probably my favorite color.

tmi

fred

 

[gambler]

very cool

[AU_Solitude]

I love the picture of the hard pack intact stuffed with lil' nugs. 

[beatup]

Great story and photos Chris

[Reno Chris]

So the best find of the first hands on day (Friday) was a Nevada guy with his new GPZ 7000. It was his first gold found with a metal detector. I only saw two 7000s there, and I took my SDC 2300 because the gold is shallow, small and the location tends to be trashy - but the 7000 got the best results that day. This guy was really excited about his finds. After he left the spot I scanned all around with my 2300 and got at least a dozen fainter targets, but all were dozer scrape iron and other trash.