Gold Panning Guide For Kenai Peninsula, Alaska Updated For 2018

[Steve Herschbach]

This is the latest version of the 1997 Gold Panning: A Guide to Recreational Gold Panning on the Kenai Peninsula, Chugach National Forest, Alaska

The guide has been newly updated for 2018 and can be downloaded here for free

[Dig It]

I wish I would have kept it to just Recreational Gold Panning, but when you get bit by the Gold Fever your in Body, Mind, Soul and did I mention Wallet … LOL !!!

I was lucky, didn't lose any gear, but I did have my camp up higher off creek then most, those that didn't, did not fair so well.

I think I am understanding why some folks just go to detecting, but like I have mentioned before I have to try in order to learn, and try I do, all in.

Still have to winch over some boulders to help enforce stream bank, I am getting to old for this …. . But you guys did leave enough gold behind to keep in in the creek.

P.S. I am going to blame Bob for not selling me the Recreational Guide 1st !!!!!! LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Mac]

On 6/21/2018 at 6:10 AM, Dig It said:

Recreational Gold Panning, but when you get bit by the Gold Fever your in Body, Mind, Soul and did I mention Wallet … LOL !!!

That is spot on. For many years I battled the dilemma of fly fishing versus gold prospecting ... which to do ... impossible to do both well, so I'd set out with all the gear for both, hit a stream, see the trout, the dollies, the grayling, the salmon. Fly fishing won out every time. But then, x number of years ago it shifted to the 60/40 gold prospecting/ fly fishing, and each summer since shifted more and more to gold, gold, gold. Now it's all I do. But anyway, man can I identify with what you state ... have been a serious recreational miner most passionate about field trips looking for the geology that indicates gold, that research being how I got through many a long winter.

Busting rocks with rock hammer is pure joy. But so is sluicing. I can dig, concentrate, sit next to and feed a sluice all day. Love it. I can also detect all day. Love it too. Find myself wanting to do both. So I detect for x hours then go sluice for x hours. Sluicing now competes with detecting for time availability -- same dilemma that use to apply between fly fishing versus panning. And here I am this summer for the first time, and for reasons I really don't understand, I find myself very seriously debating getting into commercial mining in some way. Not for gold income at all either but the intense passion/ joy/ pleasure I find in these activities. And ya, exactly like you said "when get 'bit' by Gold Fever you are bit deeply, and go in with body, mind, soul ... in reverse order! And wallet, indeed. But oddly that part is enjoyable too;  more joy spending cash on gold prospecting/ mining related stuff than any other purchase ever made, although firearms may be a tie.

What is both benefit and curse at the same time, is my wife encourages all of this spending and mining activity because she is just as passionately addicted to it as I am. So am likely to stay a recreational prospector/ miner due to being pulled in so many directions/ commitments but I covet the idea of being a commercial operator. One of those "grass always more green on other side" type things, except in our case (all of us bit by gold) it's gold over there on the other side too, and naturally it pulls us over there, same as a water source pulls a divining rod. ... oh well, there are much worse addictions eh?