Jump to content

Steve's 2014 Alaska Gold Adventure


Recommended Posts

Hey Steve have you tried the Sharp timing on your 5K yet? It might just provide the grunt you need to punch in deep on a BIG one, especially with a large 18" + Monoloop attached.

Your a stubborn bloke Steve, once you commit to something you don't budge will you?

JP

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Sometimes stubbornness is just another side of persistence, and being persistent and sticking with your prospecting efforts is what makes for a good prospector.

 

is that ground mild enough for sharp? I am a big fan of sharp, but the ground needs to be pretty mild to use it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You should have Chris pack in a small soldering kit for that 2200 while he's headed your way, or get it fixed when you head over to scoop him up.

 

Sounds like a fun time up there ... at least the rain makes it easier to dig!  =P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finally, nice weather. At least forecast to be so until Chris arrives.

A VLF is great when time is limited or I am tired or if I just feel like cherry picking. Many nuggets have been found here with VLF detectors, especially the Gold Bug 2 but also MXT and Gold Bug Pro to name a couple. I advised Chris a VLF might be his best bet for his more limited time frame and he is bringing his Teknetics T2.

However, if I hunt a tailing pile with a VLF I don't feel like it is really hunted. So I still have to go back with a PI and hunt it. If I have a lot of time I just cut to the chase and hunt it with a PI.

The ground here is oddly mild yet not. There is a type of iron mineralization in the rock that does not appear as a hot rock but which makes gold nuggets sitting on or near one of these rocks read as a ferrous target. Pretty scary stuff if you see it in person. Not a problem if you hunt in all metal, but then again you may as well be using a PI.

I AM stubborn but in this case it is just doing what we want to do. Every morning my brother and I discuss our options, and every day we opt to go look for a big one. We both like getting over a certain volume of "good" targets and outright hunting is the best way to do that. Bottom line is we are having fun doing what we are doing and so keep on doing it. Tailing piles are just that way, quite different than patch hunting. While I am not happy with a long dry spell it really does not surprise me either. Usually I a luckier than this but just the way it goes. I know the gold is here.

There are two hot rocks here JP. One is classic pure magnetite cobble - sticks with a thump onto your magnet. The other is an odd rock Chris can help identify. Looks kind of like basalt but not. Screams high tone at close range but luckily few enough to only be an annoyance. Weird part is Normal timing makes them scream and Sharp less so, therefore Sharp is the best timing here strictly from a mild ground with strange hot rock perspective. Do you have any idea why a hot rock would be milder in Sharp than in Normal?

The other mode in common use here is Sensitive Extra with small coils.

Hope your last couple weeks was profitable Jonathan!

In praise of small coils. Some other prospectors in the area are using Sadie coils almost exclusively hunting previously hunted areas. One hard working fellow in particular got on piles quite a few people have hunted and scored some very nice gold nuggets. I know I was over the spot with my 18" mono, and the fact is when hunting tailing piles with larger coils I can get sloppy, especially if I am tired. The ground is steep and rough, and it is easy to swing too fast or not overlap enough. But in particular you have to swing the big coils over the rubble. The small coils force you to slow down, be more careful, and most important, get in close in tight quarters to pull gold larger coils miss. Anyway, impressive results and a reminder that slow careful hunting with small coils can be very beneficial with a GPX.

image.jpg

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Steve, interesting on your discoveries with the hot rocks, my guess would be they present to the timings differently, so in Normal it hits a sweet spot and Sharp less so, just like that half ounce nugget we got in Meekatharra that time would not respond well in Normal compared to Enhance.

Have you tried Ground balancing part way on them to cut back on their signal response but not throw the localized ground balance out too far? This might help cut back on some of them. I have a creek up in NQ that drives me nuts due to all the basalt floaters, they sound just likes deeply buried nuggets and would have to be masking gold underneath them, the local ground is actually pretty homogenous so you can easily detect in fixed GB in normal timings, but the basalts ruin the fun.

Steve I just came back from a 3 1/2 week trip away prospecting and did reasonably well, got a couple of virgin patches one of which I have left biting (1 1/2 ounces of small nuggets scattered over a large area has come off it so far). I had two 3 ounce days during the trip which was really exciting especially when the reason I found those patches was due to working out the local geology and targeting areas that were likely to hold gold, there's nothing more satisfying that having a hunch/plan work out. :-)

JP

Pic of some of the gold I found one morning off one of the patches, the big bit weighed in at 2 ounces. The material attached is a coarse type of silicious sandstone.

image.jpg

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Great work JP!

The hot rocks here (probably a compact basalt) only react at a couple inches in Sharp and are few enough so as to not present a real problem.

Well, the skunk may not be dead but it is wounded. We had a few days of great weather but today it rained so hard we called the game and quit mid-day. Internet access has been almost non-existent the last few days. We tried going up to Sue's (Downtown Chicken) but she has cut off internet access so the Goldpanner and Chicken Gold Camp are the only WiFi game in town now, and if have found bad as WiFi is at Chicken Gold Camp it is even worse at the Goldpanner.

We finally got some ok nuggets but not any big ones yet. I scored nuggets weighing 3.1 grams, 2.9 grams, 2.8 grams, and 2.6 grams with my GPX and some small stuff with the Gold Bug 2. Tom got a nice 2.1 gram nugget plus some smaller nuggets with the SDC 2300 totaling 5.7 grams.

We only have tomorrow to hunt before heading to Fairbanks the next day to get Chris. I will have decent internet for a bit and will get more photos uploaded then. Looks like overall warmer weather for Chris than we had 10 days ago but rain showers are forecast also. Rain showers are fine as long as they are not the torrential downpour we got hit with today!

image.jpg

Four nuggets Steve found with GPX 5000

image.jpg

Eleven nuggets Tom found with SDC 2300

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't wanna be a happiness killer but the most important nuget I've found in my entire life was a couple of gold teeth inside the skull of a German Soldier in the Huertgen Forest ... you guys make me sick ... hehehehe

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't wanna be a happiness killer but the most important nuget I've found in my entire life was a couple of gold teeth inside the skull of a German Soldier in the Huertgen Forest ... you guys make me sick ... hehehehe

 

Well, miners are famous for saying that "gold is where you find it." Your post proves this beyond any shadow of doubt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stopped in and had a nice chat with Steve and Tom over the 4th weekend in Chicken.  They were hitting it hard, long days on the tailing piles up on Jack Wade creek.  Steve had quite a bag of dug trash, lot's of junk metal. 

 

Took the Chicken Dredge tour with Mike Busby, very interesting to see a complete nearly operational bucket dredge, inside and out.  He gives a very informative tour, after saving it from the being scrapped and purchasing it for a $1 they spent $200K moving it in one piece the one mile to his claims, it weighs 500 tons, or 1,000,000 pounds.  It's interesting to see the workers tools where they last left them.  It's now on the National Historical Registry.  Put it on your bucket list if in Chicken.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

News Flash! So we go to Fairbanks to get Chris Ralph, and today was first day detecting for him. He wanders around few hours with the Minelab SDC 2300 and bangs a 3/4 ounce solid gold slug! Just what my brother and I have been trying to do for three weeks and Chris does it in a few hours. Go figure, but that is how hunting tailing piles go. Chris did indeed bring an extra bag packed with good luck with him. Pictures later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...