I looked forward to the introduction of the Fisher F75 with great anticipation since the lead engineer behind it was Dave Johnson. Dave has had a hand in many of the best VLF gold detectors ever designed, quite a few of which I have used with great success.

I admit to being put off when I got my first F75. The stupid thing seemed to false constantly when I used it in Anchorage. On top of that there were numerous reports of problems with product quality issues from users on the Internet. It was not meeting my expectations and I sold my first unit in fairly short order to my friend George.

Then George reported how much he liked his F75, the very one I had sold him. Then buddy John got one of the new F75 Limited Edition camouflage models and reported how great it was. Then detector pal Gary told me how much he liked his F75 LE. Obviously I was missing something. So I got an F75 Special Edition, an all black limited edition model with gold trim, which comes with two coils and which has a special Boost Mode for extra depth where it can be used. This unit is rather confusingly being referred to also as the Limited Edition on the Internet. The reality is the only difference between the camo Limited Edition and the all black Special Edition is the paint job.

My first trip in with my new F75 SE was to Moore Creek, Alaska. Moore Creek normally favors pulse induction detectors, but I was pleased to find the F75 handled the tough hot rock environment as well as any VLF detector I have used there, if not better. I got some time to do a little nugget detecting myself, and so looked for an opportunity to use the F75. The airstrip at Moore Creek is made of old tailings, and so has the potential for nuggets. But it also is loaded with trash, so people tend to avoid it. Another person in camp was using a VLF, so I suggested he give the airstrip a go in discrimination mode to sort through the trash and maybe find a nugget. He declined, so I figured what the heck, I'll do it myself.

Usually nugget hunting is done in all metal mode. But I do use discrimination modes a lot, when in trashy areas, or to help with severe hot rocks. I set the F75 up in JE mode and cranked the sensitivity as high as conditions would allow. I used notch 1, discrimination 6, single tone. The unit ran hot and a bit chirpy. I soon discerned that hot rocks were hitting about 16, and concentrated on hits over 16. I dug lots of .22 shell casings, which I was amused to find hit at 22. Plus bullets and aluminum trash. I was right in the middle of the runway when I got a strong signal, and was surprised when a 1/2 ounce nugget popped out of the ground! It also hit right at 22. The next day I hunted with the F75 again, and pulled up two more gold nuggets, each a couple pennyweight each. Needless to say I was very happy with the F75 at this point.

My time at Moore Creek was over and I flew directly over to Ganes Creek, Alaska. Ganes Creek is only 30 miles from Moore Creek, but conditions are far different. It is low mineral ground loaded with ferrous junk, and large gold nuggets. Good ferrous discriminating VLF units are favored there, and so once again I gave the F75 a spin. This time I experimented with the all metal mode. I found I could run with the settings maxed in all metal and yet the unit ran smoother than in disc mode. Better yet the machine is getting maximum audio depth, while the meter continues to operate in discrimination mode.

Fisher F75 Special Edition metal detector

This is a rare trait in a detector, offering the best of the all metal and discrimination modes at one time. You hunt by ear, and in cases where the target is shallow enough, you will get a target id. But what got my interest were the targets I heard, but for which there was no target id. These are very deep targets, deeper than units operating in a pure discrimination mode will hear. I waited until an opportunity arose where the other people in the group pounded a particular tailing pile that had just been bulldozed. This tailing pile always produces gold, so people were all over it, giving it their best shot. Finally, nothing was coming out of the ground, so they all wandered off.

I set the F75 up in all metal, and really put my effort into covering every inch to the best of my ability, listening for the faintest whispers. Up came various non-ferrous targets the others has passed over, all beyond discrimination depth. What I did was get a signal, but no target id, then dig off some soil until the target id kicked in. This usually revealed a ferrous target, and I would quit. Or a non-ferrous target, in which case I dug it up. They proved to be various aluminum targets, which anyone looking for gold has to dig

 I persevered, and finally got a nice, sweet audio, within no id. I dug down, and still no id. And dug some more, and it kicked in as non-ferrous. And then, at over a foot, another 1/2 nugget appeared, but a much nicer piece than the once I had found at Moore Creek. This one was solid gold and a very attractive nugget. I was pleased to no end. It really makes me feel good when I can go in behind a bunch of good detectorists and still pull up an excellent find. It is impossible not to like a detector that lets me make such a find.

  
Half ounce Moore Creek gold nugget and half ounce Ganes Creek nugget - both F75 finds

A month later and I found myself in northern California, on my first nugget hunting trip outside Alaska. We were hunting an old hydraulic pit, and I was leaning on the Gold Bug 2 since the gold was very small. But I did give the F75 a spin, to see how small a nugget I could find with it. Unfortunately I did not have my small coil along, so I can't offer an absolute answer to that question. The smaller coils are hotter than the stock coil on small gold. Since all I had was the stock coil, I gave it a try. A little experimentation showed me that the all metal mode hit small gold well, but the audio response is very soft. I found the same test nugget would bang out hard in JE mode cranked up to sensitivity 99, single tone, discrimination at 6. So I went with that.

I hit an area right next to camp and due to the low mineralization the unit ran smooth even though the settings were maxed out. Not something you will see often. I dug shell casing fragments for some time and bits of lead, but that made me happy. If an area is cleaned out, there should not be non-ferrous targets of any sort left in the ground. Then I got a small nugget, my first gold ever from outside Alaska. I have found many pounds of larger gold, but this little nugget was my favorite of the summer just for being from California. It only weighed a few grains. A bit more hunting in the same area turned up its cousin, also only a few grains in weight.

I have to note that a few grains is small indeed. If the F75 is that hot with the stock coil, it should do better yet with a small coil. So there you have it. Large nuggets and small, gold from mineralized ground and in the middle of trashy ground. For versatility the F75 is hard to beat, and it is definitely a very capable prospecting detector. I managed to pay for the detector in just a few days nugget hunting.

I went back to Ganes Creek in 2011, and got gold nuggets every day. The full story is here. The F75 paid for itself and then some!

Over three ounces of F75 gold from Ganes Creek

There are a few things about the F75 that I like very much. First and perhaps most important, the weight and balance is superb. I can swing the F75 all day with no risk of arm fatigue. Add to that exceptional battery life. This detector just keeps on going. It comes with a meter cover and control box cover that are perfect for rainy conditions. The small coil is great on small gold. It is a very hot 13 kHz detector. Now, I do not want to go overboard here. The F75 is not as hot on tiny stuff as detectors like the Fisher Gold Bug 2 or White's GMT. It does quite well though for a mid-frequency detector.

I learned a lot at Ganes Creek. I ran in all metal mode. What makes the F75 rather unique is that the meter is always in discriminate mode even when the unit is operating in all metal. All metal gets you max depth and sensitivity. So I would hunt and listen with all settings jacked to the max. Boost all metal sensitivity set to 99. Any audio response is a reason to stop, slow down and examine the signal. If the meter is blank, dig on down until the meter kicks in. If you get solid 15 or lower meter readings repeatedly take a pass and move on. If the target does anything else on the meter (bouncing from high to low) dig that puppy. Most gold reads about 22 but the larger the nugget the higher it can read.

I wish I could get my first week at Ganes back this spring as it was not until week two that I really zeroed in on how the machine works. I consistently was getting small nuggets that most of the other people were leaving behind.

So hunt all metal, hunt by ear, study each target with the meter, and dig anything not 100% bad. This ability to hunt in all metal to get 100% performance allows targets to be found that would be missed in a discriminate mode. The signals that give an audio but no meter reading would not be found if the detector is run in discriminate mode.

If there is a lot of trash or hot rocks running in all metal and examining every target can be overwhelming. At Moore Creek there are so many hot rocks I was better off running in disc and setting the discrimination to knock out the hot rocks.

No machine does it all, but the F75 Special Edition is a detector that I will be using a lot in 2012 because for what it does well it does exceptionally well. What it still does not do well is run quietly in urban areas. The machine is rock solid out in the middle of nowhere but is a chatterbox in town. Still, I like how it feels on my arm and I am convinced I have an edge on the next guy. I can't ask for more than that. And it shows how a detector that I once disliked can end up being one of my favorites.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2011 Herschbach Enterprises

I visited Ganes Creek, Alaska in 2011 for two weeks of gold nugget detecting. I have been there many times before and have other stories about Ganes Creek on Steve's Mining Journal. So this is intended more as an update with latest tidbits than a full-blown story. For that, see the Steve's Mining Journal contents page. I took two detectors, a Fisher F75 Special Edition and Minelab GPX 5000. I used the F75 SE most of the time since detecting at Ganes Creek is very much like a competitive hunt. I wanted something light and fast for the bulldozer pushes. The Minelab I brought along for off push hunting in the evening or between weeks.

First off, the theory that the richest material mined on the bottom ends up on the tops of the tailing piles is proving out. Most of the larger bucketline cobble piles and dragline piles have been bulldozed, and the biggest and easiest to find large nuggets were in the top layers. Bulldozing deeper into the same piles is producing gold but on the whole the nuggets are smaller. Like 1 pennyweight and 2 pennyweight in size. Larger nuggets do turn up but time and again piles that once produced many large nuggets are now seeing slimmer pickings appear.

I found the most nuggets in both of the weeks I was at Ganes, but they were smaller than what I have found in the past. I got about two nuggets a day average, and my first week only added up to .86 oz. Nice stuff, but no big ones. Only by heading out on my own and hunting an old dozed pile got me a 2.6 oz nugget on the day between weeks. I got a 1.25 oz nugget soon after during the second week on a push on a pile that still was near the top. Piles that used to produce big nuggets do not seem to be producing the big ones any more. Makes sense when you think about it.

My buddy Bernie got a 5.04 oz chunk out of the cobbles. Now Bernie my friend, if you are reading this I am not trying to put your find down. The fact is though it was a 5 oz rock with maybe a half oz of gold sprinkled in it. Many people would have passed over it for a hot rock, so Bernie did well in getting it. But it puffed up numbers in week two beyond what it really was. I'm just trying to be realistic here in my report.

Week One had 9.38 oz for 13 people. Week Two had 19.65 oz for thirteen people but that included my off-push 2.61 oz find and Bernie's 5.04 oz find. Knock them out and you have about 12 oz for thirteen people. Almost an ounce per person is not bad, but unfortunately it does not spread out evenly like that. These photos show how the finds went for weeks one and two. as you can see a few people found only a few or no nuggets. The nuggets in parentheses in the second picture were found in between weeks by those staying over from the first week.

Ganes Creek Nugget Results Weeks One & Two 2011

Some details on my 2.61 oz nugget find. The nice thing about booking consecutive weeks at Ganes is you get an extra day for free. People leave Saturday morning and new group arrives Sunday morning. You are on your own to hunt where you will on Saturday.

The six of us staying over wandered up the creek. I had my eye on a dragline pile near where we had hunted the previous day, so stopped there while the rest went on up the creek. The pile was a big one that had been dozed a time or two with basically just the top knocked off. It looked like easy digging so I wanted to attack it with my GPX 5000. I had been using my Fisher F75 all week and wanted to give the Minelab a go for the day.

I dug steel for an hour on top, then started to side hill the pile. The second target was just over the edge, about two feet below the lip. Dig, dig, dig, and out pops a large nugget! It looked like about 3 ounces. The good thing about Ganes is you can have many poor days and make it all up in one nugget. All the sudden I had most nuggets, biggest nugget, and most weight in the group. I hunted the rest of the hill but just dug junk. When I met up with the rest of the boys they also had found gold in an old push but nothing like mine. Still, it perked up the group with the feeling that our cold streak was broken.

2.61 oz gold nugget fresh out of the ground, found with Minelab GPX 5000

The nugget weighed in at 2.61 ounces, at today's prices possibly a $4000 find. It is solid gold with a bit of quartz, rather flat, would make a great pendant for a football player.

I think overall I got the best results for the total of the two weeks, and at 5.65 oz the only thing I can say is the increase in gold prices has let me able to say I broke even plus a few bucks for two weeks. I think I am the only one who can say that. Ganes is now a place where if you have not ever found a gold nugget you can go and have a good chance of saying you found your first gold nuggets. But they will be smaller than what we would have expected in the past, and the chances of coming out ahead dollar wise is now slim.

Steve's Ganes Creek Finds 2011, Largest Nugget 2.61 ounces
All nuggets except largest found with Fisher F75 SE

If you do not worry about getting back your investment and simply want to detect gold, Ganes is still one of the best things going. My worry is they (Doug & Company) do not recognize that and so the whole thing may shut down soon. The crew is not inclined to continue unless people are getting very good results but they may think people need more results than they do. I went to the UK last October hoping to find one gold coin and got none. I found gold almost every day at Ganes. Getting gold at Ganes Creek is easy compared to anywhere else. That is not to say it is easy. Just easier than elsewhere.

I tried to jump start a situation where mining claims in Alaska would be easily available to the public in the way of pay-to-mine operations. It worked for a time but unfortunately only a few places became available. The process is just too difficult for most miners. We had a glory day with Ganes Creek and Moore Creek whereby significant finds became common. I sold Moore Creek and in one season it went offline. Ganes is near the end. I just hope they give it a go again next summer. I remember when nobody ever found a big nugget with a metal detector in Alaska and sad to say I think the best days are behind us. Not for me or others with an "in" but for the general public looking for a place to detect and have a shot at large gold.

Old bucket line dredge on lower Ganes Creek property

If Ganes is open in 2012, and it may take some lobbying, just sign up and do it. An era is passing and do not wait and wish you had done it. Great people, the best in the world as far as I am concerned, and getting to rub elbows with the crew at a real operating family oriented placer mine in Alaska is something only a few now reading will ever enjoy.

Many thanks to the crew at Ganes Creek for giving me some of the best weeks of my life!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2011 Herschbach Enterprises

My friends George and Gary worked on me for a couple years to convince me to make a trip to the UK to hunt Celtic gold coins at http://www.colchestertreasurehunting.co.uk/ The guy next to the Welcome to Colchester sign is Gary, one of the pioneers and current record holder for gold coins found with this outfit. I finally committed in 2009 for a trip in October 2010. 

There is a pay to hunt operation in Colchester where deals are made with farmers to allow detectorists access to the fields to hunt for relics and coins. There are various rooming schemes and we went with the "full ride" version which is like an all inclusive vacation will all the trimmings. There are more fields to hunt then you will have time. It runs about $1500 a week plus airfare which from Anchorage was about another $1500. We booked a two week stay.

The group consisted of me, George, Gary, Todd, and Todd's brother. The flight from Anchorage to Heathrow was uneventful if a bit long. The overseas flights are quite comfortable though, with coach being more like First Class on a domestic flight. All the things you would normally pay extra for, like meals and in-flight entertainment, are included in the ticket price. Just like the good old days.

George Hunting the Stubble

We made the flights to Heathrow and were picked up at the airport. Settling in consisted of tossing our gear in our rooms and then heading right out for our first hunt. It was raining and the field we hunted had been plowed recently. It was thick mud, more like clay than dirt, sticking to the bottom of boots and search coils. It mattered little at the time in the excitement of finally being there with detectors on. All I found was a few buttons and other items but at least I was detecting.

The reason for going when we did was to get good weather but it did not work out that way. It rained for over a week. The farmers do not plow in the rain as all it does is make a muddy mess. We hunted fields harvested but not plowed (stubble) or fields that were plowed earlier. The plowed fields were sticky mud that made our feet weigh pounds as the mud built up on our boots. The stubble has no mud but you are swinging through 6" - 8" of cut off grain stalks. We ended up fighting conditions for the greater part of the trip.

St Mary's Church Little Bromley built in 11th century

Each day we got up early, got fed, and headed out. We picked a hunt site, and were driven there. We hunted until lunch, and the driver brought us a warm meal in the field. Get a bite, and then hunt until dark. Ten hour hunting days, with Chris taking care of all the details. The main goal is to maximize detecting time, and we did just that. People ask what kind of sightseeing I did while I was there and the answer is only what I saw while detecting or driving to a detecting location. The operator has permission to hunt fields all around Colchester but most are no more than a 15 -20 minute drive. Many were near old churches, like the one in the picture above. The churches were very much the center of life in those days and so being near one is a good bet on there having been activity in the area for thousands of years.

There are very few rules. Rule number one - fill your holes! This is a must to keep in good graces with the farmers. Keep all your trash to keep it from getting plowed under to be dug again in the future. I always hunt with a trash pouch. Rule number two - stick to the chosen fields. The deal with the farmers means the one whose field you are on gets paid by the operator for you being there. The next field over, even if you hunted it the day before, if it belongs to a different farmer then do not go there. The group decides where to hunt, and once the decision is made, stick with it. You can hunt the same fields morning and afternoon, or switch after lunch. Rule number three - declare all your finds. Some people try and skirt the rules by not declaring their find, so they can keep it immediately, and so they do not have to share a cut with the farmer, if any. This is the worst offense of all, and will get you banned for life from the operation. The rules are the rules and there is no patience for offenders.

Lunch in the field - the rains just let up!

You need a good VLF that can reject iron, and dig the rest. The rest is copper, lead, bronze, silver, and for the lucky few gold. Aluminum is not something found often. Everything is old. My first coin was a 1700 copper, the oldest coin I'd ever found. No big deal I am told - new stuff! And so it went. Good finds are 12th - 16th century silver coins or around 3rd century Roman copper coins. The most desired are the BC Celtic gold coins.

I used a Fisher F75 Special Edition and a White’s MXT Pro with Bigfoot coil. I saw lots of MXTs and quite a few Minelab E-TRACs in addition to many other good VLF units. I had an E-TRAC along also but never did fire it up. For what it is worth whenever I invest the time and money in something like this I never go without at least two detectors and two headphone sets. I ran the F75 most of the trip mainly because the very long hours of metal detecting favored the F75s light weight and balance.

Steve and Gary's White's MXTs with Bigfoot coils

I came hoping to find a gold coin but try as I might it did not happen. The next best thing is a silver “hammered” coin, a coin made literally by taking a piece of silver and pounding it with a hammer between a set of dies. Hammered silver or “hammies”. People got excited when one was found but they are not all that rare. Lots are found but the real finds are the ones in excellent condition, and they are rare. Most of the ones I found were damaged in some way. It was common practice in the old days to make change by cutting a coin into halves or quarters so finding half a coin is more the norm than not.

When the weather let up things improved considerably. The fields dried out, the farmers started plowing, and gold coins started to be found. Not so much for our group however. We heard about others finding gold, but despite being in a group of experienced, hard working detectorists, the gold eluded us. It was not until near the end of the two weeks that George managed to find the much sought after Celtic gold. I also was nearby when Chicago Ron found his own Celtic gold, although far from his first.

Big smile from Chicago Ron with Celtic gold just found!

The size of the fields ranges from large to truly immense. In many cases I would just wander randomly around the huge areas. Sometimes Gary would point to where previous finds were made. Sometimes the fields, if looked at carefully, revealed clues. Gray areas in the midst of all the light brown soil indicated some kind of past building site, like a home or pub. A faint raised area might indicate an old road. Broken pottery, glass shards, and pipe stems are a sure sign of past habitation. Often, however, it is just a needle in the haystack hunt. People who cover lots of ground with their coils at the proper height and who efficiently recover targets have the edge. I really found it to be little different than nugget detecting, except you do not have to dig super deep holes. Almost everything is a spade dig or two down since most of the finds are small in size.

The fields are huge!

I did find an official “treasure” which means an item that is not a coin but is made of precious metal. It is a tiny bell, most likely one tied to a hawk but it could be a bell on any harness. Treasure is any find that is not a coin made of precious metals. A silver coin is not treasure, but my silver bell is. Coins, if found in a group are considered a horde, also treasure. You get to keep what you find, after everything is examined by the authorities and cataloged. This takes months so you have to wait some time before you get to show off your finds. Treasure may be claimed by the government, and if so it is bid on by museums. The high bidder gets the treasure, and the proceeds are split between the finder and the property owner. I like the system since it allows regular people to legally detect for items and gives the museums a steady supply of finds to choose from. In the United States most of what we were doing is against federal law with potentially severe consequences. The sad reality is people break the law and do it anyway, but it all happens under the radar. The British system makes far more sense.

Steve and Fisher F75 hunting in jolly old England

The bottom line is I hunted for two weeks and made many great finds, the oldest finds I have ever made by over a thousand years. Amazing stuff and a great time. Here are the photos and descriptions:

My official treasure find:

Silver medieval hawking bell - reported as treasure to the museum

The one day I hunted with the White's MXT Pro and Jimmy Sierra Bigfoot I got what I consider to be my best find, because it has a story. One of the best things about hunting with Chris is he has access to true experts. A day after this find this is the report we got back:

DIANAE CONS AVG antoninianus of Gallienus (253-268 AD.) found by Steve

This one is a DIANAE CONS AVG antoninianus of Gallienus (253-268 AD.) This is part of the so-called "Gallienus Zoo" series of animal reverses. This one appears to be either the gazelle http://www.stoa.org/gallery/album452/08_CR_GAZOO or possibly the left-facing stag elk variety http://www.stoa.org/gallery/album452/11_CR_GAZOO These two are just a couple of the many animals found paired with this reverse legend. The series invokes the aid of several gods - Apollo, Diana (this one) Jupiter, Liber (Bacchus) Neptune, Sol, etc, all with "CONS AVG" (protector of the emperor) and various animals on their reverses. This series dates to 267-8 AD. and was produced at the mint in Rome.

This is an interesting find as Britannia wasn't part of the Italian Roman Empire at the time this was struck. Britannia was part of the break-away Gallic Roman Empire at that time, so this piece evidently was in circulation for a few years until after the re-uniting of the Empire under Aurelian (c. 272-275) to have traveled to Britain. Among Aurelian's reforms was a revamping of the silvered Æ coinage which had become barely better than bronze with a tiny percentage of silver under Gallienus and Claudius Gothicus, his successor.

Books will call Gallienus' antoniniani "billon" - and so they were at the beginning of his relatively long reign which, in the beginning, was shared with his father, the unfortunate Valerian I. After his father's capture by the Sasanid Persians c. 260, the antoninianus went through a swift series of debasements under Gallienus to become a coin containing so little silver it needed to be silvered to keep up the pretense of being a double-denarius. Although officially silvered, Gallienus' later antoniniani are seldom encountered with any of their silvering remaining, and things may have finally become so bad that even the pretense of silvering may have been dropped at the end of his reign. An occasional subject for contemporary copies as well, this one seems to be official.

I'll refer you to this page in my website. http://www.stoa.org/gallery/album452 The organization I work for - Ancient Coins for Education, Inc, or ACE - recently received the donation of a fairly well-developed private collection of Gallienus' zoo coins. Since the donor asked that we do our best to keep the group together, it is currently an adjunct exhibit to our travelling museum. This is what the collection contained when it was donated. We have since added a couple of types the original collector was missing.

Mark

Truly a great adventure. I did not get my gold coin but I beat my oldest coin finds by OVER A THOUSAND YEARS! Pretty amazing and best of all two weeks with friends. Thanks to the operation owner and his wife for sharing their home with us for two weeks, and all the great meals. Hopefully I can do it again someday.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2010 Herschbach Enterprises

Note October 2018 - See my return to Colchester to try once more for Celtic gold!

I took the first Minelab GPX 5000 in Alaska up to our new claim on Jack Wade Creek in the historic 40 Mile mining district and did a little detecting. I did not have much time on the trip but still managed to bang out 6 pennyweight (9.4 grams) of gold. The largest nugget is 3.17 pennyweight (4.9 grams).

The ground is not very hot on our claims, so I ran in Sharp timings with Gain at 10. The Minelab GPX 5000 had an absolutely rock solid threshold. A far cry from the Minelab "warble" on the SD units. There is not really a whole lot I can say about the unit except to mention the confidence it inspires knowing you have the most powerful nugget detector made in your hands. Once that coil goes over the ground I'm confident I have left nothing behind except the smallest of sub-grain pieces. Gold so small you really can't call them nuggets.

I say the ground is not that hot but VLF users would argue with that. It is far hotter than around Anchorage and many VLF units running in all metal constantly sound off on hot rocks here. But by Minelab PI standards it is a piece of cake so the 5000 was able to take in stride without any trouble. I only found one rock that gave a signal in Sharp.

If you are in Alaska and have a Minelab GPX 4500 then you are doing pretty good already. The 4500 added a couple timings that have proved very useful in Alaska that earlier models lacked. Sharp for low mineral ground and enhance for high mineral locations like Moore Creek. The 5000 improves the Enhance timing and adds several others. The Fine Gold setting is for getting those last bits out of high mineral locations, hitting small gold Enhance will miss, but it has less benefit in low mineral ground. Our mineralization is so mild south of Anchorage I am anxious to try the new Coin/Relic timings. That was intended for areas with extremely low mineralization and so the thought was it would be more applicable to coin and relic hunting. It is possible that it has applications in those rare low mineral gold nugget locations, but that remains to be seen.

First gold found in Alaska with Minelab GPX 5000

I am amazed at how far Minelab has come with PI nugget detecting technology. There is nothing about the GPX 5000 that I can hope will be improved except the discrimination of man-made ferrous junk. Everything else is about all I can expect or hope for knowing what I do of detector technology. Now perhaps Minelab will put some effort into lighter, more compact physical designs to complement the superb electronics at work in the GPX 5000.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2009 Herschbach Enterprises

I've had people ask me about removing the quartz on Moore Creek gold specimens. Much of the gold found at Moore Creek has a lot of quartz attached. Some of it is very attractive as it, but much of it is just rocks with gold in it. I've thought that it would be unlikely that the enclosed gold would be continuous enough to end up with large gold nuggets but that instead you might end up with a pile of smaller gold. I have not bothered to ever put it to the test to find out.

Ken (he of the 32.2 oz nugget) had about a pound of Moore Creek specimens that he went ahead and had soaked in hydrofluoric acid. Before you think of doing this yourself this is some very dangerous stuff indeed. Ken paid to have it done by a professional. Much to my surprise nearly all the specimens proved to be solid gold inside. The quartz in most cases was hiding fairly solid gold cores. The gold was real rough after having the quartz removed, so Ken ran it awhile in a rock tumbler to smooth it up a bit. It came out looking great in my opinion.

Moore Creek gold specimens found by Steve Herschbach

He did end up with a some small stuff but not as much as I would have thought. Some formulations of Whink brand rust remover are a very weak solution of hydrofluoric acid, and I have been told that if you just let specimens soak in this long enough, refreshing the solution periodically, that similar results can be obtained. Whink is sold over the counter in grocery stores so can't be all that dangerous to handle, but still use appropriate caution if you attempt this. Acid is still acid, no matter how weak. More information on cleaning gold nuggets and specimens.

Moore Creek gold specimens treated with acid to remove quartz

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2009 Herschbach Enterprises

I have not been down to Crow Creek Mine for a long time and was curious about what was going on down there. I mainly went to just look around but took my Fisher Gold Bug 2 along to give it a spin. I got a new one recently and wanted to break it in. Since I was chasing tiny gold I put the little 6” elliptical coil on for the trip.

The fall colors were out but it was a bit gray and rainy. My first surprise on getting to Girdwood was to find that Crow Creek Road is now paved to where the state maintenance ends, getting rid of a lot of what used to be a section loaded with potholes. Second surprise is that just before getting to Crow Creek there is a huge new parking wayside for the trailhead that goes down to Glacier Creek and the tram that crosses over to the Alyeska side of the valley.

Third surprise was that Kate and Nate have really spruced the place up. The old camp at Crow Creek looks better than ever with more relics on display and everything looking much tidier. I visited with Nate for quite some time catching up on news. Then I headed up the creek to find a patch of dirt to work with the Gold Bug 2. By the way, metal detecting at Crow Creek is $20.00 per day, keep all the gold you find - if any!

I chose a spot where the creek was undermining the bank and so it was on the steep side. What caught my eye was a layer of loose looking cobbles resting on a layer of finer grained material. I surmised the cobbly material was loose tailings and that the material underneath was virgin ground. At Crow Creek I’ve often found gold where the two meet. So I got in and knocked down a bunch of the cobbles to uncover the layer below. Easy enough to do as the whole bank wanted to come down, so the main challenge was not getting hit by cobbles or falling in the creek.

Crow Creek Mine at Girdwood, Alaska

The ground here is very low mineral and so the Gold Bug 2 can be cranked up to levels that would not work in many locations. Set for all metal audio boost on, low mineral mode, sensitivity to max, and ground balance about 6 for this spot. I then proceeded to use the coil with no scuff cover like a little rake, scraping down the slope to knock off no more than an inch of material at a time. In just a few minutes I got a sharp little “zip” and quickly used my plastic scoop to isolate a very small nugget weighing maybe a grain. Good deal, the spot has gold! So I continued to slowly and methodically scrape away at the bank, using my pick now and then to dislodge a rock. The rain may have helped as the material was pretty soft and easy to work with the coil alone. Usually I’d have to use the pick to scrape and then check with the detector.

About every five minutes I’d get a tiny signal and recover a small nugget. I also got about an equal number of rocks that gave signals but they were much easier to find and eliminate since they were much larger than the nuggets. Most detectors would not have sounded off on them but with the Gold Bug 2 running so hot any mineralization at all in the rocks will be detected. Since these were positive hot rocks they most likely had arsenopyrite in them, which is pretty common at Crow Creek. There was no trash at all in the material, just nuggets and hot rocks.

Close-up of gold bearing material and bottom of 6" Gold Bug 2 coil

Good use of a plastic scoop is critical as these tiny nuggets can be very hard to find. I use the "divide and conquer" method. Scoop up the material that has the nugget in it. Give the scoop a good shake to get the nugget into the bottom of the scoop. If you have a couple inches of dirt in the scoop and the nugget is on top, you may not be able to detect it when you run the scoop over the coil. I prefer to do this with the bottom of the coil turned upright (just like in the picture) so I can get the scoop right over that hot spot in the middle of the coil. If I confirm the nugget is in the scoop, I dump half in my hand and check again. If it is still in the scoop, I place the material in my hand on the ground where I can check it again later. If the scoop no longer beeps, the nugget is in my hand, in which case I discard the material in the scoop. I just split and check until I'm down to a bit of material, which in the case of these little mud covered nuggets sometimes is just a few little pieces of dirt which have to be check one at a time to find which one has gold in it. Once you get good at this it goes real fast, but care must be taken to not get a nugget in the scoop only to discard it. That is why you put all the dirt in a place where you can check it again when you are done. Sometimes you can get more than one nugget in the scoop at once. Another option is to simply put all targets in a pan and pan it all later. But since I'm following the gold I want to know just where each nugget came from so I prefer to locate them as I find them.

I had got a late start and did not want to get home too late so I called it quits after an hour and a half. Once I got back to town I found I had 16 nuggets, the largest being 5.4 grains and the three smallest so small they will not register on my digital powder scale that goes down to 1/10th grain. A total of 17.4 grains in 16 nuggets so this is some small stuff indeed. There are 480 grains in a Troy ounce of gold. Some might question why you would want to go after such small gold. Well, at over $1000.00 per ounce a one grain nugget is now worth over $2.00! So my rather leisurely effort netted me $35.00 worth of gold in a fairly short time. If you follow the little stuff long enough larger pieces do come along. If I’d put in some serious effort for an entire day I think I’d have done very well so I may have to go back soon and do just that.

Sixteen little gold nuggets 17.4 grains total

The trick is in having a place with mineralization low enough that you can crank up a VLF unit to the max. Higher frequency detectors will do best for the real tiny stuff. Manual ground balance is also preferred as automatic ground balance tends to tune out the tiniest pieces of gold. There really are only two detectors I think are up to this task. If you want the best, use either a 71 kHz Fisher Gold Bug 2 or 50 kHz White's GMT (or earlier 50 kHz Goldmasters) and outfit them with the 4" x 6" accessory coils. Other detectors will hit small gold but nothing as good as either of these detectors. It is also important to get that coil right down in the dirt. Normally I’d recommend a scuff cover for this type of stuff as you can actually wear through the bottom of an expensive coil doing this. But in this case I really wanted to go to the max and so was not even willing to give up the tiny bit of depth lost by using a scuff cover. Which is going too far really as if done properly depth is not really an issue using this method. The idea is to slowly work your way closer and closer to gold that is out of reach until it can be detected. Since the small stuff can only be detected at an inch or less, you have to take the ground off an inch or less at a time, or you’ll scrape gold away.

Crow Creek has been detected to death. But there is plenty of gold left to be found only inches down out of reach of detectors. Yeah, it is small stuff, but there is a lot of them and I like finding every one. They do add up, and best of all they keep you interested in what you are doing until a larger nugget comes along.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2009 Herschbach Enterprises

In 2007 I was sent a prototype of the White's PulseScan TDI to test, and I was so impressed that I decided to put the new model into service at my "pay-to-mine" operation at Moore Creek, Alaska as soon as it was available. Moore Creek has mixed hot rocks that severely impede the performance of regular metal detectors. I lobbied for and got four of the very first units off the production line in the spring of 2008 and those detectors were provided to visitors at Moore Creek that had no detector of their own or who needed a backup.

These people by nature often have little or no detecting experience. I was happy to find some stock settings for the TDI that worked well at Moore Creek. I could basically set the detector for somebody and as long as they did not touch the controls it worked well. Just turn the detector on and go.

Still, experience counts for much and novices have a tough time finding gold nuggets, just due to lack of basic detecting skills. We had found in the past that regardless of the detector used we were happy if novices could just find any gold at all metal detecting during their visit. So I was very pleased that many new detectorists at Moore Creek found their very first nuggets metal detecting with the White's TDI. The unit is not only very capable but also quite easy to operate and so really the only task left to the novices was to get over a nugget.

Mike and Karl were pretty typical of many of our visitors. Never really done any metal detecting for gold and no detectors of their own. I sent them out with the TDI and they each found by far the largest gold they had ever found in their lives. The small stuff at Moore Creek is larger than many people will ever find and so I had the opportunity to create some real life experiences for a lot of people. It really is a good feeling seeing people make their first finds and knowing you made it happen.

Mike's gold specimen weighed in at 0.28 ounce and Karl got two, 0.12 and 0.25 ounce respectively.

Mike B. & Karl E. of Anchorage, Alaska with Moore Creek TDI finds

Close up of Mike and Karl's gold specimens

I was doing some bulldozing at the mine to stir up some nuggets for our visitors. I got to one little knob of gravel and after I flattened it out I thought "that looks like a good spot". I had not done any detecting in a couple weeks and figured it was about time. So when I got the dozer back to camp I got a TDI out and headed to the location. A guy had just come into camp as I was leaving and so I told him to head up the same way.

I got to the spot and started detecting. First down one row and up the other. After about ten minutes I got a nice signal, and dug up a great 0.31 ounce specimen. It is a little section of a quartz vein with a nearly solid gold core of gold running through the middle.

0.31 ounce Gold Specimen found with White's TDI

I turned off the detector and headed back to camp. The other guy was now just arriving and asked me what was wrong. I told him nothing was wrong, but that I'd got my nugget and so was done. You should have seen the look on his face! Poor guy had been looking for gold for days and I walk right out and find a nugget in ten minutes.

We had an 82 year old gentleman in camp that week who was not having much luck detecting so I gave the specimen to him to take home to Florida.

So what were the settings, etc. we used with the White's TDI at Moore Creek? The Pulse Delay was always at 10, the most sensitive setting for gold, and we were always able to run the maximum Gain of 12. The Ground Balance was tight as we have both a positive and negative hot rock at Moore Creek. A bit one way and the positive rocks signaled and a bit the other way and the negative rocks signaled. Negative hot rocks are by far the more prevalent. In general a setting of about 9 eliminated nearly all the hot rocks. But no matter how much I tweaked there were faint hits on some hot rocks. This is not surprising as the Minelab PI detectors also hit the hot rocks at Moore Creek. The ground is a weird mix of fairly neutral soil made up of the underlying decomposed shale bedrock with basalt and monzonite hot rocks eroded from the nearby hills.

However, I determined a couple things with the TDI that really helped with the new people. First, virtually all gold at Moore Creek gives a high tone, even multi-ounce pieces. I believe this is because of the generally high silver content combined with the specimen nature of the gold. Surprisingly, when silver is added to gold it lowers the conductivity instead of increasing it, and so low purity gold is more likely to give low conductor high tone responses on the TDI. You can figure with 99% certainty that a low tone is an iron target or hot rock at Moore Creek. I ended up with the novices ground balancing to kill the high tone hot rock responses and did not worry about low tone hot rocks. Then I set the very unique to the TDI Target Conductivity switch to eliminate low tones and only sound off on low conductivity high tone targets. This made the TDI a real no-brainer to run. Dead quiet, no false signals at all. Then get any high tone at all, and it was always a bullet or shell casing (rare at Moore Creek), some small ferrous trash that reads low conductive, or gold. The ferrous trash that reads low conductive tends to be shallow easy to dig stuff. Being set up this way almost totally eliminates the PI tendency to have a person digging deep, tiring pits only to find a big piece of steel junk.

The only problem I had was people fiddling with or accidently knocking a control out of adjustment. The setting was so perfect I actually considered just gluing the controls in place to prevent people from messing with them! Another problem happens when you loan people stuff to use - it not only gets used it gets abused. Luckily the TDI is able to take a licking and keep on ticking, just like the old ads. This TDI got strapped on the back of an ATV and then the driver forgot about it as he roared through the mud holes and brush. Having too much fun I guess! Not only did the unit get covered in mud he managed to bend the middle rod section. A little careful work with a water hose and a little bending and the detector worked just fine. I eventually ordered a new rod section to replace the bent one.

White's TDI Covered with mud!

I ran the 7.5" coil a bit and found a 1 pennyweight nugget with it. I was surprised at how stable the smaller coil was, as I expected it would be more prone to hitting hot rocks, but instead it seemed to be more immune to the hot rocks than the larger coil. At Moore Creek though the stock 12" coil is the better way to go not so much for extra depth but for ground coverage, which really is the name of the game at the mine. The person that covers the most ground digging the most targets has the best shot at finding the gold at Moore Creek. But for many nugget hunting tasks I think I would very much like using the smaller coil.

Here is Moore Creek visitor Pete W from Paducah, Kentucky. Pete hunted hard with the TDI but was having little luck. I was out with him at one point and was sitting nearby when he got a signal. He started to dig with his scoop but the target was deep, and so I came over with my pick to help. I scooped a pretty deep hole, but when he checked the target was still in the ground. The TDI got this one at respectable depth. So I dug some more and out popped a really good looking nugget! A very nice piece weighing 0.27 ounce that put a huge smile on Pete's face.

Pete W. and TDI gold

Close up of Pete's nugget found with TDI

And here is a great photo of Moore Creek visitor Jens S from Hupstedt, Germany with nuggets he found with the TDI. The larger nugget is 0.62 ounce and the smaller 0.37 ounce. Jens found the smaller nugget first within ten minutes of turning the TDI on for the first time. Jens really liked dredging and highbanking more than metal detecting and so spent most of his time at Moore Creek doing just that. From what I saw though he was a natural with a metal detector and so who knows how he would have done if he had concentrated on that more. He went home with a lot of gold anyway and a very happy visitor to our country, with an experience most will never have.

Jens with 0.37 oz and 0.62 oz gold specimens found with White's TDI

You would be surprised how little detecting I did while at Moore Creek. Running a pay-to-mine operation is a full time job and then some. Still, I did have my chances to get out now and then and having the new TDI around certainly gave me reason.

A couple of our visitors, Keith M and Bob D and I decided to hit some tailing piles downstream and across Moore Creek, making them hard to get to and so less hunted by others. We loaded our detectors and waders up on ATVs and headed down to the general location. After crossing the stream we hiked down to the lowest tailing pile which I've been eying from afar the last couple years. It has a lot of brush on it, and I figured a nugget might be lurking unfound in that brush.

The tailing piles are very steep, and so I hip mounted the White's TDI to keep the weight off my arm while side-hilling. The only issue I found in the brush was a tendency for controls to get knocked off their settings and so I was alert for changes in the detector's response. I found a good ground balance setting that minimized the response from both the positive and negative hot rocks. This ended up being about 8 on this tailing pile. I ran at the gold sensitive 10uS setting and was able to run the gain up to max. I set for a quiet, faint threshold. I do run the Target Conductivity switch on All myself as I prefer to hear the hot rocks and sort them out myself. I do not mind digging a few rocks if need be but usually they have a consistent sound I can learn. In this instance though the TDI was running real nice. There seemed to be less of the bad hot rocks on this side of the valley.

Bob, Keith, and I spaced ourselves around the tailing pile and proceeded to hunt. I started low on one end, hunted around that end, and then worked up the hill into the brush. They were both running Minelabs. Minelabs can be set to run pretty close to each other, but we discovered that the TDI does not play well with Minelab detectors. The TDI does not pick up the Minelabs at all, but the Minelabs go nuts with a TDI anywhere near, and they cannot tune the TDI out at all. So I took pains to stay as far away from both Keith and Bob as possible. I ended up in a little spruce tree thicket on one end of the pile.

Soon I got a nice, clear, high tone signal. A bit of digging revealed a nice 1.93 ounce gold quartz specimen down in the roots! It was a typical Moore Creek "oreo cookie" nugget with a solid gold core sandwiched between two thin layers of quartz. But very solid in the middle - this chunk had a very nice heft. Not only did it make my day (week? month?) but actually paid for that TDI in a single find. It certainly gave me a real warm fuzzy about the TDI being able to make a find like that with it.

We hunted most of the rest of the day and although we found many targets my nugget proved to be the only find of the day. That happens so often it does make me wonder at times. I have seen myself and others bang into a great find like that early on, and then find nothing the rest of the day so often that when it happens now I joke about it. The feeling is if you get a great one like that right off the bat you may as well quit for the day. But of course nobody ever does.

1.93 oz gold nugget found by Steve Herschbach with White's TDI

Here is the rest of the story on the nugget. I have a rule at Moore Creek that any gold our crew finds while we have paying customers in camp goes to the customers. So at the end of the week we had a drawing. Everyone got 5 tickets, and for every ounce of gold a person had found we took away one of their tickets. We wanted to handicap the hot detectorists. Although we had 15 visitors in camp, it was Bob who was with Keith and I when the nugget that got found that won it. Which was nice as he is one of our regular visitors and had not had much luck detecting. There was some pretty serious karma at work that week! Just a reminder, gold was running around $700 per ounce in 2008, so I gave away a $1400 nugget. I did this a lot at Moore Creek and in fact no visitor ever went home without gold. I always found enough hunting on the side to be able and make sure people who got skunked got a going away present. I think I found and gave away about a pound of gold, which must set some kind of record.

I was figuring there is no way anyone is going to beat my 1.93 ounce nugget for awhile. After all, not many nuggets get found over an ounce, and this one is almost two ounces. Well, I figured wrong. After all our clients left for the summer I invited a couple friends up to the mine to hang out while we shut the mine down for the winter. Husband and wife detecting team Bernie and Chris came to Moore Creek for the first time. Both are expert with VLF detectors having found pounds of gold between them with the White's MXT. Pulse induction detecting was new to them however and at Moore Creek I convinced them to set the trusty MXT aside in favor of PI detectors. Well, no worries about these two running new detectors. Bernie and Chris scored some real nice gold. In fact, Chis got the best find of the week with the TDI, and really gorgeous 2.07 ounce gold in quartz specimen. It is actually one of the more attractive pieces I saw found at Moore Creek. Instead of the usual solid layer of gold wafered between quartz this specimens has gold laced evenly and very attractively throughout the quartz. Chris not only beat me for overall weight by a bit but for sure in the specimen good looks department.

2.07 ounce gold specimen found by Chris P with White's TDI at Moore Creek, Alaska

This story is a compilation of various posts made on the internet at the time and finally added to my journal. I wanted to add a lot of missing detail, and in the process it sure brought back a lot of great memories. The Moore Creek gig will go down as the best time of my life. Not only was a lot of gold found, but many great new friends and fabulous adventures were made there. The mine now belongs to other people and the pay-to-mine operation has long since ended, but the memories will be cherished as long as I live.

The White's PulseScan TDI is a detector I still own. It has some interesting features no other detector has and in some ways is an underappreciated machine. I like the easy hip mount capability and the unique Target Conductivity switch in particular. The main problem I see is people using it in locations where a VLF is a better choice, and then complaining the TDI is no better than a VLF. Stuff like that makes me shake my head. If a location is suitable for a VLF by all means use a VLF. Pulse induction detectors like the White's TDI are for locations where the ground or the hot rocks are such that a VLF operator wants to quit in frustration. Ground Balancing PI (GBPI) detectors are meant solely to handle extreme ground or hot rock conditions, and it those conditions do not exist, then the entire reason for using the PI detector also does not exist. In low mineral ground the only real advantage GBPI detectors have is in their ability to run very large coils, and that can aid in finding deep large targets. But if no deep large targets exist to be found a VLF is often the better choice in low mineral ground, especially given the superior ability of a VLF to sort out trash targets. As always it is about using the proper tool for the job, and a location like Moore Creek is a perfect spot for a detector like the White's TDI. You can find more details on the TDI on this website at the White's PulseScan TDI page.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2008 Herschbach Enterprises

Every once in awhile our company is awarded a trip by one vendor or another for setting a sales record or some other goal. So it was that Honda Power Equipment sent my partner Dudley and I on a short trip to Cabo San Lucas for a dealer meeting. Yeah, I know... rough duty! And yes, we did not work as much as enjoy ourselves while there. But I was plenty busy and so did not spend as much time detecting as I would on a vacation trip. Still, the trip offered me a chance to give the new Minelab X-Terra 50 a spin. Since part of my job is selling detectors I actually have to bear the heavy responsibility of using new detectors when they come out so I can speak knowledgeably about them.

The X-Terra 50 really is perfect for this kind of trip. One where detecting is mostly a "maybe" thing and so I just want a machine I can bring along that will not take much room. Not to pick on other brands, and in fact I am a White's fan if anything, but my MXT and DFX seem designed to not fit nicely in a suitcase. They stick out every which way and take up a lot of space. So part of the reason I liked the X-Terra the instant I got my hands on one was it looked like the perfect travel unit. It easily packs in a normal size carry-on bag. I do not like to check baggage when on trips like this and so space is at a premium for me. The X-Terra 50 made it easy for me to get everything I needed for this trip into two carry-on bags. Nice!

We stayed at the Sheraton in Cabo. Normally I would hit the water with my Surf PI Pro on a trip like this, but this location has a huge surf and undertow such that people do not swim in the water, at least none but a few very brave souls. If I got in the water I'd be more concerned with not drowning than detecting and so that normally lucrative type of detecting was not to be had here. I do 100 times better in the water than on the dry beach, but that is what I had here and so you go ahead and make do with what you have. Since dry beach was the deal the X-Terra replaced my Surf PI for this trip.

Minelab X-Terra 50 packs easily into a standard airline carry on bag

The beach is made up of decomposed granite and has a few layers of black sand in it. It balanced out at "3" pretty well. In all-metal and at full sensitivity the machine constantly puttered out low tone sounds and readings of -9 on the readout. Being a single frequency unit with no salt setting this constant low background readings of -9 are attributable to a combination of the mineralized ground and the salt. Lowering sensitivity to eliminate the signals had too much effect for me. The sounds did not go away until the max setting of 20 was reduced to about 10. Running at full 20 and then setting -9 to reject made the machine totally silent with no loss of sensitivity and so setting -9 to reject looks to be in effect the "salt setting" on the X-Terra 50 for this location.

The X-Terra 50 like many detectors aimed at the general market is locked into discrimination modes. This means that even if you set the detector to pick up everything, the signal is still being filtered. The process is "detect, identify, report". If you set it to report all items, the identify process is still going on. Top notch detectors used mainly for gold nugget detecting always offer an unfiltered "All Metal" mode that is distinctly different then the so-called all metal mode on units like the X-Terra 50. In a true all metal mode the process is "detect, report". The filtering is completely removed and this results in more sensitivity to small items and better depth of detection. The penalty is you truly dig it all but for high value targets it is often worth it.

It is important to note that the X-Terra 50 has three levels of ferrous rejection, -3, -6, and -9. The X-Terra 30 has only one, -4. This means I can set the X-Terra 50 to reject salt readings at this particular beach and still get small non-ferrous targets that tend to read as -3 or -6. The X-Terra 30 lumps them all together into -4 and so on this basis alone I think the X-Terra 50 handles salt beaches better when looking for tiny items. More on this later. Being able to ground balance was also critical to being able to run at high sensitivity. Going just up or down one notch on the ground balance generated far more noise, as I found when I tried to run either slightly negative or slightly positive on the ground balance.

The beach at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

One thing you must keep in mind here... I run my machines on the ragged edge of sensitivity and so they run noisy and erratic. I am ok with this and it is not a reflection on the detector. In fact I do not like machines that do not allow for what would be termed "too much" sensitivity or gain. Sometimes the manufacturers are looking out for us and so do not allow a machine to be cranked up too high, as it often is not a good idea. Works for me though, and the X-Terra was able to run at full-out setting of 20 here and run quite well. The machine was actually very quiet, almost weirdly so if I set -9 to reject. But the high sensitivity level was reflected in erratic target id with lots of "bounce".

I ran most of the time either wide open with even -9 set to accept and so listening to a constant low level puttering that at low volume levels was not all that unpleasant, or with -9 set to reject. I pretty much just wanted to dig everything to see what readings I got and how small the targets might be that I could hit. I know from experience that almost any detector will call tiny non-ferrous items ferrous... one of the lies discriminating systems foist on us and that cost us lots of little gold targets when we set for ferrous rejection. About the only machine I halfway trust on this issue is my Gold Bug 2, and I even managed to find a small gold nugget once that the Gold Bug 2 insisted was iron, so even it can be fooled.

The more iron mineralization in the ground, the more likely machines are to lie about small non-ferrous items, and unfortunately the X-Terra 50 is no different. Maybe the 18.75 kHz coil will help but tiny non-ferrous items commonly read -3 or -6, although they will usually "bounce" to a higher reading and tone also. They also will bounce to -9. So when I ran the X-Terra 50 with -6 and -3 rejected, small non-ferrous items (usually foil) might be detected or might not on a single sweep. If you are lucky, you get a low mid tone, but if you are unlucky the item may go negative and so get missed. But accepting non-ferrous all items beep, and then a few sweeps over the items will either reveal it to remain consistently negative and low tone and so is iron, or it will bounce and chirp higher tone and number now and then. Those that do tend to be tiny non-ferrous items.

This beach was not a big treasure chest. The people were pretty low key, just sitting in the sun, so not lots of activity to generate jewelry losses. And on top of that I'm certain I'm not the first guy to detect this beach. Finds were pretty sparse, but find stuff I did. And digging it all, it was naturally mostly junk.

Bottle caps all read ferrous but often spiked to a high 45 beep. I do not think I'd dig many bottle caps with the X-Terra if I did not want to. They all were very distinctive readings. Other than the bottle caps, most items read where I would expect, but all my readings were very bouncy. Solid locks were very rare. So coins would bounce around at higher numbers, tabs would bounce around in the middle tones, and foils would bounce around in mid and lo tones and plus and negative numbers. In other words, do not look for solid id locks on a mineralized beach soaked in salt water with the sensitivity cranked up. Surprised? I was not.

Junk items recovered while detecting

The bottom line here is simple. The X-Terra 50 actually worked very well for me on this beach. No, I did not bury targets and measure depths. I was just detecting. But I did not feel I was using a machine giving me shallow performance. I dug coins at easy 6-8 inch depths, and pop can halves at over a foot. Performance for a single frequency machine seemed just fine to me.

What seemed exceptional, truly, was the small item sensitivity. I hit lots of tiny foil strips and a few small pieces of broken silver jewelry that really impressed me. One target, a thin jump ring with a gap in it should not have been detectable with a 7.5 kHz machine with a 9" coil. I'm still surprised I hit that thing! The depths on these tiny targets were around an inch or less, and up to a couple inches for slightly larger but still very small pieces of foil, but the sensitivity of the X-Terra 50 to small items is impressive.

If I could have one wish, it would be that the all-metal mode on the X-Terra 50 was a threshold based single tone. You can take any of the two disc modes and by setting all segments to accept get exactly the same thing as the all-metal mode. Beeps on everything, in four tones. I feel the all-metal mode should have been a threshold based single tone setting to make for a better small item mode. I tried running in pinpoint, but it detunes too rapidly to be used as a search mode. Having an all-metal mode that offers some kind of functionality beyond a disc mode with all segments set to accept would have helped for this type of detecting. The machine obviously does work, and does hit the tiny targets anyway, but they are bouncy between lo and mid-lo tone and so a single tone at least would work a bit better for me. In practice it was fine, however. Just get a tiny bloopy-beep, and make sure you have a plastic nugget scoop to isolate and recover it! I quit using my sifter and switched to the scoop right away as these tiny targets just fell though the holes in my sifter. It was more like nugget detecting than coin detecting.

I can only speculate what smaller coils might do, and what higher frequency coils might do. Put a small 18.75 kHz coil on this unit and it may rival some of the best gold nugget detectors on the market for small gold sensitivity. I have no doubt from what I saw under these adverse conditions that I can go find gold nuggets with an X-Terra 50, as is out of the box with 7.5 kHz 9" coil. This detector is hot on small items. 

In summary, I found the X-Terra 50 to be a fine beach unit. It sure will not outperform my White's Surf PI Pro for depth so do not bother telling me how your multi frequency machine will probably get better performance on a salt beach than the X-Terra. Because my PI unit will probably beat your dual or multi frequency unit also when it comes to depth. I'm not telling everyone to go and run out and get an X-Terra for beach detecting. What I am saying here is that if you own one you sure will not be disappointed in it if you get it on a saltwater beach now and then. As single frequency machines go I thought it did great. And at a better location with more activity I have no doubt I can hit smaller gold targets with the X-Terra 50 than people are going to get with most beach units, or at least up in the drier sand.

It has been said before and some have tried to take it as a negative but it is not - the X-Terra is a fun metal detector to use. But I'm the kind of guy that thinks digging small foil is fun so one must question my opinions on what is fun!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I have seen some posts about the X-Terra lower rod being too long. It never seemed that way to me, but this time I paid particular attention. I am 5'11" and I stand up fairly straight. I ran the X-Terra the third notch up this whole trip, which leaves two longer settings and three shorter settings. If anything the length is perfect for me with adjustment either way. So while I can understand how the more vertically challenged may feel, it looks like Minelab had me in mind when they designed the lower rod. One of those areas where you cannot please everyone, apparently.

Coins and jewelry bits found with Minelab X-Terra 50 on beach at Cabo

I've been running lots of trash, common coins, and rings under my XT50. Here is a general chart. Important - these are air tests. In the ground readings will often shift lower.

Tone - VDI - Items 

Very Hi 45 Steel Halves, Dollars 
Very Hi 42 Quarters, Large Silver Rings 
High .... 39 Silver Rings 
High .... 36 Penny/Dime, Small Silver Rings 
High .... 33 Indian Head Penny 
High .... 30 Zinc Penny, Indian Head Penny 
High .... 27 Screw Cap, Indian Head Penny, Large Aluminum 
Medium 24 Heavy Square Tabs, $5 Gold, Very Large Men's Rings 
Medium 21 Large Pull Tabs, Large Men's Rings 
Medium 18 Pull Tabs Men's Rings 
Medium 15 Small Pull Tabs, Erasers, Small Men's Rings 
Medium 12 Light Square Tabs, Nickels, Erasers, Beavertails, Large Women's Rings 
Medium 09 Beavertails, Heavy Foil, Erasers, Medium Women's Rings 
Medium 06 Medium Foil, Small Women's Rings 
Medium 03 Light Foil, Small Jewelry 
Low ..... -3 Wire, Pins, Very Small Jewelry (Post Earrings, Thin Chains)
Low ..... -6 Nails 
Low ..... -9 Hot Rock, Large Iron

Notes - 45 is more often a junk indication than the very rare dollar or half. Men's rings fall mostly into 21 followed by 24. Women's rings are heavy in 6 and 9 followed by 12. 18 is the heavy pull tab range and sparse on rings (too high for most women's rings, too low for most men's). 15 also has fewer rings but also less junk. All these observations are only true for my area and mix of targets and so must be taken with a large grain of salt, are are only intended as an aid to those just starting out. You can get junk in any segment, and good finds in any segment!

Here is a simplified version, a combination of most likely targets and "wishful thinking". 21 is more likely to be a large pull tab, but it is the hottest number for men's rings, at least out of my collection. 18 might be a ring, but fewer fall there than in lower or higher numbers, and it is very heavy in common pull tabs.

45 Steel 
42 Quarter 
39 Silver 
36 Penny/Dime 
33 IH Penny 
30 Zinc Penny 
27 Screw Cap 
24 Large Men's Ring 
21 Men's Ring 
18 Large Tab 
15 Small Tab 
12 Nickel 
09 Women's Ring 
06 Small Women's Ring 
03 Foil 
-3 Wire 
-6 Nails 
-9 Hot Rock

Update 2011: Not very long after the X-Terra 50 came out with the X-Terra 70. This irritated a lot of people who thought the X-Terra 50 was going to be the top-end unit. The X-Terra 70 offered the true all metal mode that the X-Terra 50 lacked, making it a superior detector for gold nugget detecting in particular. The X-Terra 70 was later replaced by the Minelab X-Terra 705, a detector I currently own. It is a very good light weight detector for all around use.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2006 Herschbach Enterprises

Alaskans love Hawaii. At least, my wife and I sure do. Winters in Alaska can be long, and my wife gets to missing sunny weather. I miss metal detecting for half the year! So a mid-winter break in the beautiful islands of Hawaii is a much welcome respite from the cold weather.

I’ve been to Hawaii before and done well there with my metal detectors. I usually focus on detecting in the water, and my machine of choice after using many brands and models is the White’s Surf PI Pro. Hawaii has some of the worst conditions you can throw at a metal detector, with extremely mineralized volcanic rocks and salt water combining to make water detecting there tough indeed. Most any machine works well on the white sands, but when you get into sand mixed with volcanic rock every detector I’ve ever tried wants to generate false signals. The Surf PI is not immune to this false signaling on volcanic rocks, but it has so far offered me the best combination of power and ease of operation (and price!) of all the detectors I have tried for saltwater detecting in Hawaii. And so it was the machine I planned on using the most on this trip.

Then White’s introduced the new Matrix M6 model, and I received one just before my departure to Hawaii. I like having two detectors for trips like this since a detector failure of any sort can be disappointing without a backup. It just so happened I wanted to try looking for small jewelry items like chains and earrings in the drier beach sands and it seemed the Matrix M6 would fit the bill nicely. I already have an extensive background with the closest relative of the M6 – the White’s MXT. The MXT has very good sensitivity to small gold items, and I own lots of accessory coils for the MXT. I was certain the 14 kHz M6 would share in the small gold capabilities of the MXT, and so it seemed a perfect opportunity to try out the new model. I packed the machine up, along with the 6” Shooter DD and 10” elliptical DD Eclipse coils made by White’s.

I have commented before on the features of the M6 and so will stick to how it worked in the field for this report. I decided to use the M6 initially with the 10” elliptical DD coil, which I felt would provide good depth and smooth operation on a saltwater beach. My hunting grounds were the drier sands above the active wave zone. The sand is wet below the surface, but not literally running with saltwater. I am a big believer in pulse induction machines like the Surf PI Pro for wet salt sands and so did not bother doing any detecting in the water with the Matrix M6. Playing in the surf is a lot safer with a totally waterproof detector anyway.

Steve with White's Surf PI Pro ready to jump in the water

The first thing I did was experiment with the sensitivity settings and ground tracking. I was pleased to find that the M6 ran just fine in the normal track or fixed modes at high sensitivity levels, and that I did not have to resort to using the “Beach” mode unless I went down onto the wet sand below the surf line. The Beach setting is designed to allow a single frequency machine like the M6 to operate in wet salt sand without false signaling, but it usually comes at a cost of sensitivity on small gold targets. The Beach setting did allow the M6 to run quiet as can be in the wet salt sand, but when I got up above the surf line it was not needed. I was able to run as high as a sensitivity of “10” with the DD coil and the M6 ran quiet as can be. Only when I set the sensitivity up into the cross-hatched “redline” area above a setting of 10 did I start getting a bit of low level falsing from the sand. Even then the machine worked just fine, and it was a decision between running “maxed out” and a bit noisy or at a still very high sensitivity level but with quiet operation. I did spend hours doing both and ultimately came to the decision that the whole point of the M6 was to have a nice, quiet operating detector. One of the selling points of the M6 is quiet operation and so I think turning that sensitivity control up to where the machine just starts to generate a bit of noise and then backing off is in line with its intended design goals and operation.

I have always been a fan of leaving my detectors at a fixed ground balance setting, as opposed to running them in track mode all the time. Automatic ground balancing is a great thing, and those that want to be on the safe side should just leave a detector in automatic at all times. But I think I get better response with less fading on small or very deep targets with a fixed ground balance setting, and less shifting of VDI numbers on found targets. So I like to let the tracking run a minute or two and then switch to the “Fixed” or “Off” position. This is what I did on the M6, and so ended up at a sensitivity of 10 and in the “Lock Off” position on the Auto Trac control.

For beach detecting setting the discrimination control was easy. I set it to the far left so that all targets would respond. I generally dig it all on beaches, only passing on iron targets at some beaches if there is enough junk to warrant it. But with a new detector digging it all is a good idea anyway to learn the machine and its responses. Besides, I really wanted to see how the new seven tone audio worked on the M6, and so going by tones only seemed like a good idea.

This left the final setting. The trigger switch on the Matrix M6 causes the detector to operate as a standard single tone detector in the default center position, or in a seven tone audio mode in the forward locked position. You can run in either mode and toggle to the other to check found targets both ways. Squeezing the trigger activates the pinpoint/depth reading mode. For dig it all beach hunting I might as well have just set the M6 for a single tone, but I wanted to learn the tones and see how the machine responded in the multi-tone mode and so set the trigger switch forward.

So to sum up, sensitivity at 10, discriminate at far left (off), and trigger forward for seven tone audio. Set the tracking on for about a minute of operation over clean ground and then switch to off. In reality it only takes a few seconds for the tracking to find the proper ground balance level. If you are unsure of ground balancing and what it does, leave the tracking on. It does not get much easier than this!

I could make this long story even longer and go on at length about my detecting. The fact is I spent most of my detecting time with the Surf PI Pro, as I have learned the best finds will usually be made in the water. But I did use the Matrix M6 a lot and I dug hundreds of targets over many hours of detecting. I like to dig everything initially to learn about how a detector reacts to different targets, so I dug the good along with the bad. I was focusing on small signals, and so dug countless little bits of foil and other small pieces of aluminum. I dug pull tabs and bottle caps. I dug a bunch of junk, and I dug up over a hundred coins. And I finally dug a diamond earring and a diamond ring!

The only problem is the diamond earring turned out not to be real. The 14K white gold diamond ring was the real thing and a nice find indeed. Even the earring was a great find however, a testament to the ability of the White’s Matrix M6 to find small items on a beach or elsewhere.

White's M6 and Surf PI Pro along with beach detecting finds

And so here are my observations gleaned from all this detecting and digging. First, the M6 is an excellent beach detector. It worked well and at high sensitivity levels with no need to resort to the beach setting unless the sand was actually dripping wet. I was hitting coins at 8” or more with ease. I was unable to do direct comparisons but I will not be surprised if the M6 turns out to be one of the better single frequency beach detectors. It will no doubt be bettered by some multi-frequency or pulse induction detectors, but it did an excellent job in my opinion. The sensitivity to small items is superb, as my digging of small aluminum proved, along with the backings off a couple of earring posts, which are very small items. The signal on my little fake diamond earring post was strong and loud at a couple inches. Do expect to give up some of this sensitivity if using the beach mode in wet salt sand, however.

Compared to my trusty MXT it is my feeling that the Matrix M6 gets the same depth you get from the MXT in target id modes. I also think the MXT gets extra depth and sensitivity in the threshold based all-metal modes, like the Prospecting Mode, or the mixed mode Relic Mode if you are listening for the less obvious all-metal signals. But the fact is that most people do not dig everything using threshold based all-metal modes. I think many hunters will like the silent operation of the Matrix M6 and the performance it offers for most types of coin and jewelry detecting. I also think extreme performance people like nugget hunters or relic hunters will be advised to spend the extra $100 for the MXT and its extra versatility.

Target VDI numbers on the Matrix M6 were very jumpy at high sensitivity levels on the beach sands. This is where I found a real advantage to the seven tone system. Each tone takes in a wide range of VDI numbers, and so listening to the audio was much better than watching the meter when it came to target identification. There would be either a single tone, or maybe some mixing of adjacent tones for borderline targets. In simplest terms high tones means coins except nickels, medium tones mean nickels, aluminum, and hopefully gold, and low tones iron or hot rocks. There are two low tones, three medium tones, and two high tones as follows:

-95 = 57 Hz (Very Low) Hot Rock
-94 to -6 = 128 Hz (Low) Iron Junk
-5 to 7 = 145 Hz (Med Low) Gold Earrings, Chains - Foil
8 to 26 = 182 Hz (Medium) Women's Gold Rings/Nickel - Small Pull Tabs
27 to 49 = 259 Hz (Med Hi) Men's Gold Rings - Large Pull Tabs
50 to 70 = 411 Hz (High) Zinc Penny/Indian Head Penny - Screw Caps
71 to 95 = 900 Hz (Very High) Copper Penny/Dime/Quarter/Dollar

White's M6 meter and where tone breaks occur (added red lines)

In practice it tends to boil down to high, medium, and low, but the extra tones add extra ability to discern what you are likely digging without referring to the meter. The tones work better than the meter, or at least they did under these tough detecting conditions.

I used both the 10” elliptical DD Eclipse and 6” elliptical DD Eclipse “Shooter” coil. The 6” coil hit tiny items a bit better than the 10” DD coil, but overall the 10” coil seemed the better coil for me. It covered ground better and still had more than enough sensitivity to small items. The fake diamond earring post was found with the 10” coil. The 6” Shooter was able to run all the way up into the cross-hatched max sensitivity area and still run dead quiet, however. If you want the best sensitivity possible to small items and clean running in bad ground, use the Shooter coil.

The M6 may be one of the more powerful yet easy to operate detectors ever designed. I think a person might be well advised to simply go with the “listen-to-it-all” concept behind multi-tone detecting when using the White’s Matrix M6. The idea is to hear all targets, and hunt strictly by ear. Targets are never “masked” or ignored due to discrimination settings, and a decision to dig is made based on how the target sounds. A meter is almost extraneous to this kind of hunting, and in fact a good way to learn how to hunt this way is to tape over the meter and force yourself to hunt by the sounds alone.

If you go with this theory of detecting, then tuning the M6 becomes the simplest task you can imagine on a detector. The discriminate control stays at the far left. Only in extreme iron conditions might you turn it up, and many would advise even then it be left off. If the machine seems noisy from too many signals lower the volume level on your headphones so that the sounds become a threshold of sort. Then just listen to the sounds and dig items until you begin to have a feel for what sounds “good” and what does not. Moving slow and a small coil will help in trashy locations. The M6 is very forgiving on sweep speeds.

Earring and diamond ring on pinky finger found with Matrix M6, rest of finds in water with Surf PI Pro

For those who do not like the tones, there is the single tone mode. Using this mode is extremely simple. Just set the discrimination control to the level you wish, and dig whatever beeps. If you want more ability to discern targets in the single tone mode you will have to rely on the meter. One thing I did note is that small targets gave a more solid hit in single tone mode than multi-tone mode, and so it a person was trying to use the M6 for nugget detecting or any other “push it to the edge” detecting of small items I think the single tone mode may offer a slight advantage. But this may be more a perception thing than reality as the same items signal in both modes. They just sound a tad better in single tone mode to my ear.

I use lots of different detecting strategies depending on what I am looking for, the amount of time available, and yes, my mood at the time. I do think that for the best performance “listen to it all” tone detecting offers the best ability to discern good targets from bad with the least chance of targets being masked by discrimination settings. A gutsy move would be for someone to make a machine like the M6 without a discrimination control or meter. My suggestion is that the Matrix M6 be used as if this were the case. Key switch forward (seven tone), discrimination to zero, and forget the meter. Just listen to the tones and dig what sounds good. But you can use other strategies with the M6, like cranking the discrimination control all the way to max. This is a good setting for those times when my patience with digging trash is at a minimum, as about the only things that will signal at this setting is a coin.

Let's wrap this up. In summary I think the White’s Matrix M6 offers top end performance in about the simplest to operate form possible. The detector will not outperform detectors costing hundreds of dollars more, nor do I think it was intended to. I do think White’s has succeeded in offering MXT level discrimination performance but with more tones and quiet operation to those who were wishing for it. Considering the price, the performance, and the incredible coil selection, the White’s Matrix M6 is worth serious consideration. It offers solid performance and simple operation at a very reasonable price.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2006 Herschbach Enterprises

I thought I'd point out a link to the Minelab GP 3500 review I wrote for the September issue of Lost Treasure magazine. They have it on their website (edit Dec 2018 - Lost Treasure magazine is out of business and link is gone) for those of you that may have missed it. One thing I made a point of doing in the article is trying to get people to consider the Minelab GP 3500 as much more than just a "nugget detector". The fact is that it is one of the most powerful metal detectors available today, and can hit coins, jewelry, relics, and yes, nuggets, deeper than most metal detectors. Since it is a pulse induction (PI) detector, it has a relatively limited ability to discriminate targets. That said, by learning the tones the machine puts out and using the iron discrimination circuit you get more ability to read targets than is the case with most PI detectors.

I've been experimenting with my GP 3500 as a coin and jewelry detector. The short story is it easily hits targets deeper than the best VLF detectors. Yes, you dig more junk, but the biggest limiting factor may be that the unit is TOO powerful. You can only dig holes so deep in public places, and so many parks and other groomed areas are in effect off-limits to the GP 3500 as digging holes over a foot deep in not an option in many parks. But for beach use and relic or coin detecting in areas where digging extra deep is allowable, the GP 3500 is certain to pull up finds people with VLF machines are leaving behind.

The GP 3500 control box is protected with a Coiltek neoprene cover. I have a half-size Minelab battery tied to the side of the unit in its own Minelab battery belt pouch. Another option are the new Pocket Rocket Lithium Ion batteries. The battery is connected to the control box with a Coiltek short power cable, the one Coiltek sells for use as a charging cable instead of using the 3 foot Minelab cable.

6.8 pennyweight gold nugget found with Minelab GP 3500

This setup allows me to set the detector down and dig without being attached to the machine by a normal backpack mounted battery and cable setup. The half-size battery is fine for more hours of coin detecting than I'd normally ever undertake in a day. And the whole setup is not so heavy that I cannot handle it for long hours. I plan to use it for nugget detecting in brushy areas next summer or for some "dig and detect" sessions where the machine spends more time on the ground than on my arm.

I'm using the Coiltek 14" mono coil which seems to work well for the coin detecting. The stock 11" coil is ok but is a bit too sensitive to tiny surface trash the larger coil tends to ignore. Being a mono coil the 14" has terrific depth for its size, but I have given up the ability to use the GP iron discrimination circuit. I'm going by the tones only (the review describes this in detail), but I'm looking at a mid-sized DD coil for this use to get back that extra discrimination ability. This would help eliminate a few of the iron targets I'm currently digging.

The headphones are the DetectorPro Uniprobe combination headphone/PI pinpointer setup that is a must for this type of detecting. The Uniprobe pinpointers are easily the most powerful I have used, in that they are a full-fledged pulse induction metal detector with a probe attached instead of a coil. In fact, there is an optional 11" coil and handle assembly available to convert the Uniprobe into a great little PI detector. Normally with a GP 3500 you just dig a huge hole while nugget detecting. But for coin and jewelry detecting better pinpointing skills must be developed, and the use of a good pinpointer is a real requirement. I highly recommend the Uniprobe pinpointers. The headphone model is mounted in a set of Gray Ghost headphones, which works great for me as I am a headphone addict. DetectorPro makes a Pocket Uniprobe that has a speaker but I cannot hear it very well with headphones on. Plus, it is just another gadget to carry. I tried the Pocket Uniprobe and decided having it all in one unit works better for me.

Minelab GP 3500 rigged up to hunt without using harness and bungee setup

The final item in the picture is my digging pick. I do not like the short handles that are standard on most picks. I got a 36" hickory sledge hammer handle and replaced the stock handle, although I can switch it back as both handles mount with a single bolt to the head. I like these long-handle picks as I use them as a walking stick (great for side-hilling at Moore Creek!), and I have to bend over less when I dig. There is, of course, a super magnet attached to the head of the pick for sucking up small iron trash.

The only other items I am using that are not in the picture are my nylon belt and large trash/treasure pouch and plastic scoop. The scoop is great for getting deeper into the bottom of the holes I dig, and for locating some small items as would be done in nugget detecting. All trash goes in the pouch for later disposal.

I know these detectors are expensive, but if you have a serious need to get some REAL extra depth, you need to look hard at the Minelab GP 3500. These things would be awesome for hunting Civil War relics in a "worked out" location.

  
Goose lake, Alaska plus gold nugget and old coins found with GP 3500

Two last hints. Carry a VLF detector along, and check the targets the GP 3500 finds for you. In some cases the target will be shallow enough you can save a little digging. But better yet, if you get no signal at all from your VLF unit, you'll know you have a deep target. You will be surprised how many of these there are that a VLF unit just will not hit. I'm afraid once you experience this for awhile you will tend to lose a certain amount of faith in your VLF detector. Yes, you are missing targets. LOTS of them.

But the second hint is the best. Take the GP 3500 to a once good place, but one that has been hunted so much that there are no targets left using a VLF detector. I am sure that you will end up like me, simply amazed at how all of the sudden the place seems like it has never had a detector over it, there are so many targets. Better yet, all the shallow stuff should be gone, with only the deepest finds, and therefore some of the best, remaining for you!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2005 Herschbach Enterprises

After returning from Moore Creek in July I put the word out that I was looking for Honda 200 three-wheelers. I was offered one in good condition and bought it, plus another one not running that I purchased for parts. My father came up with a Honda 110 that a friend gave him. Our little fleet was growing. I wanted to make sure that for our assault on the old bulldozer we had plenty of ability to transport people and tools the three miles over the mountain to where the unit was stuck in a bog.

When we acquired Moore Creek some of the equipment we got was actually over the mountain at another creek named Deadwood Creek. In fact, that other location was where the bulldozer was coming from when it got stuck three miles out from our camp. There was another Honda 200 ATV over at that far camp, and so my father and I decided to fly up to Moore Creek, drop off one of our just purchased Hondas, and then fly over the hill and get that three-wheeler.

This proved to be a true Alaska Bush pilot adventure. I’ve flown around Alaska with my father for 40 years now and we have seen some pretty exciting moments in that time. But in recent years usually the flying is uneventful and even downright boring. Every once in awhile though you tackle some new airstrip in a remote location and things can get very interesting, to say the least. This proved to be one of those times.

We crammed a Honda 200 3-wheeler into the Cessna 206 and flew it into Moore Creek. No big deal there. My father had checked out the Deadwood Creek airstrip previously when we had a friend up to Moore Creek with a Super Cub. He figured he could put the 206 in and so we went for it. The strip is dozed over the curve of a hill and grown up with brush. It is always something to be making a landing for the first time on a strip like that, and this was no exception. We hit the ground going uphill, and then had to skid to the left to stay on what appeared to be the best route. You roll up over the crest and down the other side, so forward visibility is limited. We made it but it was one of the more exciting landings I've made with him in some time.

Airstrip at Deadwood Creek, Alaska over the hill from Moore Creek

We explored a bit, and then loaded up the Honda 200 three-wheeler to take over to Moore Creek. The unit appeared to have real low hours but had been sitting in the weather for years. Two tires were flat, and although it would turn over the fuel tank was full of rust and it would not start. Then came the fun part... takeoff. A Cessna 206 with two guys and gear is iffy on this strip. We ran flagging over the hill so we would know which way to go since we could not see over the crest of the hill. Not only does the strip run over the hill but it is not straight. We had to spend an hour breaking brush and even tall grass as it slows you down plowing through it. We rolled the plane on down to the lower end of the strip, which meant a takeoff run up a pretty good slope, leveling at the top, then hopefully getting off the ground as we rolled down the other side.

We had a preference for one direction as there are ridges to clear both ways, but the one way the ridge is farther away. Plus, if we had to abort the crash zone was smoother that way. We would run into downhill sloping brush as opposed to falling into a small valley the other way. No, I'm not kidding, you plan your crash... just in case. Only problem was a tacking tailwind going that way. So we parked and waited a half hour watching a piece of flagging tied in a tree. It finally hung down straight indicating a lull in the breeze, and we went for it.

After all the suspense, we got off with no problem. That, my friends, is what it is like flying small planes in Bush strips in Alaska. This scenario may sound insane to some but it is what you have to do to be able to see and operate in the vast 99% of Alaska that nobody else ever sees. You have to be willing to land on beaches and ridges and marginal airstrips just barely carved out of the wilderness. The secret to success is an old Alaska Bush pilot saying - “There are old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold pilots”. You have to know when to go for it, and when to just give it up and go back home. And dear old Dad has proven he knows how and when to make those calls.

The stage was set for the next attempt to get the old bulldozer back into camp. However, before I would return to Moore Creek I planned on making one last nugget hunt at Ganes Creek. This trip was prompted by Steve Burris finding an incredible 33.85 oz nugget at Ganes in June 2004, right on top of the ground in an area heavily hunted by others in the past, including myself. It was the largest nugget found at Ganes with a detector up until that point, and highlighted just how easy it is to miss nuggets when dealing with an area the size of Ganes Creek. Seeing a picture of the nugget gave me a case of gold fever, and the desire to give Ganes just one more try.

I put the word out I was planning a trip to Ganes Creek, and in short order a group of people signed up to go the same week. Half were local people I know, and the other half were visitors from down south, mostly from Arizona and Nevada. Some of these I knew by reputation and the internet to be knowledgeable nugget hunters and so it had the makings of an interesting week. I planned on meeting my father in McGrath as the group left Ganes Creek and going straight over to Moore Creek rather than returning to Anchorage.

The stuck D9 bulldozer

The Ganes Creek trip is a long story in itself, but one I’ll leave for another time. The short story is that we had delays getting both into Ganes Creek and out due to the smoke from the many forest fires in Alaska that summer. It also became apparent that the years and number of hunters at Ganes Creek have had an effect on the chances of finding nuggets at Ganes Creek. I actually was very pleased with the nuggets I found, but the fact is that most of the visitors from the Lower 48 had pretty poor luck finding gold. In the early days most anyone swinging a detector at Ganes Creek could find a nugget, but at this point I think only the very experienced or very lucky will be finding nuggets in the future at Ganes Creek. It also was obvious that nugget detecting experience elsewhere does not prepare people for nugget hunting tailing piles in Alaska. It is a different game, and requires a different set of skills. Some of the guys from down south were not too happy with their finds… or lack thereof… for the week.

While I found some nice nuggets and had a good week at Ganes Creek, it was with a certain amount of relief that I found myself watching the rest of the group get on the plane in McGrath and head back to civilization. I count among some of the very best times of my life those times when I have been totally on my own in remote locations of Alaska. There is something enlivening about being totally dependent on ones self and the knowledge that there is nobody to bail you out if something goes wrong.

So now what? The smoke from the forest fires prevented my father from making it over the Alaska Range to McGrath to pick me up for the trip to Moore Creek. It was morning still, and I faced the prospect of checking into a hotel and waiting it out. By the time I got supper and breakfast I’d be looking at a $100 bill.

The smoke was thick in the area but had lifted since early morning, and it looked flyable to me. So I wandered over to Magnuson Air and asked Lucky if he thought he could get me to Moore Creek. It costs $250 one way to the mine from McGrath but I figured I’d be getting a $100 discount by not staying in McGrath. Plus, I’d be able to get to work at the mine instead of just killing time. Lucky figured we could make it to Moore Creek, and so I loaded my gear up into the Magnuson 206 and we headed for the mine.

It was actually a nice, sunny day despite the smoke, and the smoke thinned as we got to Moore Creek. We landed at the mine, and then Lucky took off to head back to McGrath. I opened up the camp and did odds and ends work waiting for my father and cousin Bob to arrive. I hung around camp a bit the next morning half expecting them to show up, and was just getting ready to go up and clear trail when they did finally arrive. They had a tale of wandering mountain passes in thick smoke trying to find a way over the Alaska Range that sounded not a bit fun, so I was glad they had made it to the mine safe and sound.

We cleared the last bit of trail to the top of the mountain and so were finally able to drive our three-wheelers all the way to the bulldozer. The trail is actually an existing bulldozer route that has grown up over the years and so along some portions is actually like an old road in the lower elevations but fades to a bare trail above tree line. Once you get above tree line the ridges are rounded and smooth and so it is pretty easy to get around on an ATV.

Using Honda 3-wheelers to run supplies over hill to stuck D9 bulldozer

We took a dual approach to getting the bulldozer unstuck. A combination of trying to dig it out and trying to get the old beast started up. The D9 is a 1950’s era model that uses a small gasoline motor referred to as a “pony motor” for a starter. So first step was to try and get the pony motor started. It uses a 6V car type battery and so we used the ATVs to haul up a battery plus some fresh gas. The first thing we discovered was that the small exhaust pipe sticking straight up out of the top of the dozer had not been covered, and when we cranked the pony motor over water puked up out of the exhaust pipe! We drained what we could, and then ran the battery dead trying to clear water out of the system. The battery did not last any time at all, actually. The old starter motor seemed to just suck it dead in very little time. We spent the rest of the day digging away at the lower rear track where it was sunk in the mud.

If we could get the motor running, we could hopefully use the rear ripper hydraulics to push down and lift the rear of the dozer up, so that logs could be stuffed under the tracks. But since we had more people than we really needed digging seemed to be another approach to take while also keeping busy. The old bulldozer has a cable lift blade in front, which unfortunately cannot be used to do the same thing up front. It can only lift, not push down.

We headed back to camp eventually and put the battery on a charger overnight. Dad and Bob decided to fly over to one of the nearby mines to borrow a jack and returned with a loaned 40 ton jack. Then back up to the dozer for more digging and work. We got the rear corner of the dozer dug out far enough to get the jack under it and this started an effort of putting rocks and timbers under the jack and driving them down into the muck until a solid base was created. It took a lot of work to finally get the rear of the dozer to lift a couple inches. And with that accomplished, we stuck timbers under the rear of the track, which when the jack was let down just sunk into the muck. Over and over we jacked the unit up, stuffed timbers and rocks under the track, and let it down to all sink right back to where we started.

We got the pony motor clear of water but it still would not start before the battery ran dead. And finally after a couple days we ran out of time and had to return to Anchorage.

Lots of digging, lots of work with hydraulic jacks and log sections

This time I returned with my other partner John, along with more batteries as the single battery was not giving us any life before it ran dead, and having to return to camp to charge it overnight was taking too much time. Plus a new jack. I found there was no spark on the pony motor, and so I pulled off the magneto, cleaned up the points, and put it back together. And Pow, Pop, Pop, Pow! Smoke came out and more water came from somewhere and got the plugs wet but at least we had fire! But we ran the batteries dead without the motor actually starting. We spent more time digging, and more time pulling every part of the pony motor apart we could trying to get it to start. It would pop and backfire and do everything but actually run. Finally we gave up and once again we had to return to Anchorage, frustrated by our inability to get the motor running. The dozer was now so dug out that it would most likely drive out of the hole, if only we could get it running. The fall colors were out in full, and winter was coming fast. We needed to do something soon or winter would put things off for another season.

I got a hold of my old friend Tom, who has worked with heavy equipment for many years. He is a very busy person, but he agreed to come up and try and figure out what was up with the pony motor. I was stymied at this point, and was worried about the delay. Overland permits for bulldozer travel off claim blocks can generally only be had in the winter months. The ground is softer in the warmer months and so travel when the ground is frozen protects the ground. If we could not get the dozer running before winter set in, we would most likely lose an entire season. The main limitation in the permits is the requirement that the ground have snow cover. We needed to get the bulldozer onto the claims while the ground was still frozen.

Tom, my father, and I returned to the mine for one last try in early October. The snow could fly at any moment, and we not only wanted to try and get the bulldozer running, but also wanted to stake some more mining claims. We had our hands full, and this was likely to be the last chance with the bulldozer for the season.

We made it to the mine, and settled in for the evening. And awoke the next morning to snow and thick fog. It was only a dusting of snow, but it covered the ground just enough to hide the trail to the bulldozer. Add in the heavy fog, and we were soon basically lost up on top of the mountain trying to find our way to the bulldozer. Luckily I had used my GPS on the previous visit to trace the trail. Even so, what the GPS said argued heavily with what our eyes were seeing. Were it not for the GPS I have doubts we would ever have found the bulldozer that day.

Winter is coming - fresh snow at Moore camp

But find it we did, and Tom proceeded to try and figure out why the pony motor would not start. We had over time eliminated almost every possibility, and when you get right down to it these old motors really are not very complicated. You need fuel, compression, and spark. The only thing that seemed weird was all the backfiring and that the carb would want to blow out backwards instead of pulling air.

There simply seemed to be no options left, when I thought back on my previous work on the motor. Early on I had pulled the magneto apart to clean the points. Did I maybe not put it back together correctly? It is a simple thing to disassemble, but if you are not careful you can put it back together 180 degrees out of where it came apart. I wondered about this for awhile, and finally piped up with “you know, maybe I put the magneto back together backwards”.

So we pulled the magneto off, rotated it 180 degrees, and put it back together. Tom got on the dozer, turned the pony motor over… and it fired right up! I felt a very strange combination of embarrassment at having been the cause of a lot of extra work, and happiness at having finally figured out what the problem was.

Tom let the pony motor run a bit, and after a rough start it smoothed out and sounded just great, albeit loud as heck. Kind of like listening to a shotgun firing 3600 times per minute. Then he engaged the clutch to the main motor, and smoke puffed out the big stack. And puffed, and puffed, and then all the sudden our bulldozer was running!

Smoke coming out of the stack - the D9 starts!!

What an incredible moment! The main engine really sounded good, and Tom let it warm up for some time. Then he gave a pull on a lever, and the blade lifted. We have a ripper unit on the back of the dozer, and had filled the tank with fresh hydraulic fluid. Tom pulled another lever, and the ripper blade lifted up.

Dad and I got all the remaining timbers we had and laid out a parking pad just ahead of the dozer on level ground. We had just enough logs to cover two track lengths. Then the moment of truth arrived, Tom pulled more levers and the bulldozer drove out of the hole.

Whoops and yells and handshakes all around ensued. Tom parked the bulldozer on our logs, and powered her down. We drained and covered everything to the best of our ability for the winter ahead, and left the dozer for the next spring. It was amazing how everything finally happened in so short a period of time, but it was all the hours of preparatory work that made it all seem so easy at the end.

Dozer up and out of the hole, ready to drive to Moore Creek next spring

We did our claim staking, and closed up the camp for winter. The year 2004 at Moore Creek came to an end, and the snows of winter came shortly after we left the mine. Success could not have come any later that year.

Events slowed, but I did get an Overland Permit lined up in anticipation of moving the bulldozer into camp in the spring of 2005. Travel within a claim block is covered under our mining permits, but since the bulldozer was off the claims we needed a permit to bring it into camp. The main limitation was that overland movement had to be while the ground was frozen and covered with snow, and so we were aiming for an early spring operation.

We were planning for April, but the winter of 2004-2005 proved to be one of the heaviest snow years on record. Dad and I flew up to the mine in April, but the dozer had snow drifted over the seat. It was still too early, and so we took advantage of the snow, and asked our friend Mike to fly a load of gear up to the dozer with his Super Cub, which was on skies for the winter. He landed on the hill by the dozer, and left a battery, propane tanks, a heater, and tarps plus some miscellaneous gear. Dad and I planned on flying into Moore Creek just before the snow melted, and so getting that gear to the dozer would have meant lots of snowshoeing. Now we were set.

We monitored the snow situation, and finally flew up in early May in my brother-in-laws Citabria. Our original permit expired the end of April but I was able to get a two week extension due to the extreme snow conditions. There was still a few feet of snow on the ground in places but in most areas there was less than a couple feet. We made some passes over the bulldozer, and I launched sleeping bags and some basic camping supplies out of the plane. I’ve done some of these “bombing runs” before and they are actually kind of fun. Dad does all the work, however. I just hold stuff out the door until he yells “Go”! and I let go of it. With any luck it lands halfway close to the target.

Aerial view from Citabria of snow in the hills in early 2005

We landed at Moore Creek, and hiked up to the dozer on snowshoes. We planned on camping the night, and heating the motor overnight, but it was rather warm (relatively speaking) when we got to the dozer so we went ahead and tried to start her. And amazingly, it fired right up!

I had been studying my D9 bulldozer manuals, but the fact is I have never driven anything even close to one of these monsters. I really had no true idea what I was doing, but just followed the manuals. That worked well enough in getting the unit started, but finally after warming her up I had to make the big move. We loaded up all the tools, batteries and other gear. I held my breath, put it in gear, and engaged the clutch. The next thing I knew I was driving a D9 bulldozer up a mountainside.

I had been warned that no matter how big these things seem, driving into too deep of snow conditions could get you high-centered in short order. The snow was only a foot or two deep, but I could not tell really how deep it was, except for my what seemed like endless trips over the trail on the three-wheelers the previous fall. I just kept her going slow and forged ahead, and after a bit it actually seemed pretty easy. Dad and I both had grins on our faces as well drove along, with all the overnight gear we had pre-staged loaded on the bulldozer unused.

Up the hill I went, and down the other side. Basically just a drive over the hill, and I got to being lulled into how easy it all was. Finally we were on our claims, and camp was only minutes away. I was on cruise control, just enjoying the ride. And then the dozer broke through the crust and muck started churning! Only a heartbeat seemed to pass, but next thing I knew we had come to a stop in the middle of the trail. Apparently the low flat bog areas which we were passing through just before arriving at camp had thawed under the snow. The only good news was that it was still frozen a short distance below, but the dozer was spinning on the frozen muck and could gain no traction to get up and out of the hole we were in.

Still, we had made it 99% of the way into camp, and so could not feel all that bad about the situation. It was only a 10-15 minute hike to camp, and we got a good nights sleep. Then up and back to the dozer the next morning, to get out of our little situation. We took chains, cables, and clamps for camp with us, and a chainsaw. We cleared a bunch of alders ahead of the dozer and laid them down in front of it to make an exit pad. The we cut a big dead spruce and levered it over in front of the tracks with a long pry bar. We took cables and ran then through the tracks and around the log. I fired up the dozer, and when I engaged the clutch the front end climbed up on the log and what seemed an incredible angle. I half closed my eyes, and the front end came up out of the hole, and fell over out and onto the alder pile ahead of the log. We were unstuck and on the first try.

Project a year in the making - D9 finally back at Moore Creek and Steve clearing airstrip

I now was much more cautious heading into camp, as my inattention the day before had got us stuck. If it even threatened to get soft ahead, I drove over the alders next to the trail, which created a natural pad. The next thing I knew I was driving the bulldozer into camp, and when I finally parked it and got off it was one of the happiest days of my life. I literally wanted to kiss the ground! Dad and I hugged and shook hands and slapped each other on the back. In all our years I do not think we have tackled a project that took so long and so much effort as moving this D9 bulldozer into Moore Creek camp. And like all things difficult to achieve, the final success was all that much more satisfying. In all the excitement I forget to take any pictures, but here is a shot of the old girl back in camp later in the year, with me working on clearing and extending the runway.

I have to finish this tale by thanking Bob, John, Tom, Doug, Mike, and most of all my father, Bud Herschbach, for all their hard work and contributions towards getting our bulldozer back to camp. There is no way I could have done it without them. Thanks guys!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2005 Herschbach Enterprises

Steve's Mining Journal Index

I've been metal detecting in Hawaii several times over the years, and have used several makes and models there. They include the White's Surf PI, Minelab Excalibur, and Garrett Infinium. My wife and I have obviously taken a liking to the south shore of Kauai, as we keep going back there. It is like a second home to us, and certainly a nice place to be when it is the middle of winter in Alaska. See the links here and here for stories about previous visits. I have more details in those previous stories that I am not going to repeat here so you'll want to check them out if you have not seen them before.

This trip I decided I wanted to try out the White's Surf PI Pro, the latest version of the White's Surf PI that I used previously in Hawaii. The PI Pro has improved sensitivity to small gold items and a redesigned, more reliable control box design. The Surf PI Pro has only two controls and so is very easy to operate, and better yet it is a real bargain for an underwater detector with a list price of only $699.95. Many diving detectors run well over $1000.00.

This is the beach fronting the resort area where we stay on Kauai. I've done very well here before and every time I leave I'm sure there is plenty left to be found. The sands runs out onto a coral bottom, and right about where the waves are breaking there is about a foot of sand on top of the coral. I find the rings in nooks and crannies in the coral basement and so I try to work in that zone where I feel the coral bottom is not too deep. I've detected out in the bare coral and find lots of coins but have had less luck with jewelry out beyond the surf. The results are similar up out of the water, with lots of coins but an even poorer chance of jewelry finds. The surf break has been the hot spot for me.

Poipu Beach, Kauai, Hawaii

Since it is mid-winter the surf is about all I can handle when it comes to staying in one place. I use a neoprene suit to keep from getting beat up if the waves toss me on the bottom. I have a 40 lb. weight belt that keeps me in place, and allows me to instantly duck to the bottom to retrieve the finds. Frankly, using too much weight is dangerous and should not be attempted by anyone not very comfortable in the water. I have numerous SCUBA certifications plus thousands of hours of hookah diving time so I'm more comfortable than most people in the water. I have an excellent US Divers snorkel that sheds most of the water taken in as waves pound over me. After awhile you develop a sixth-sense about when and when not to take a big breath of air!

Gear used for metal detecting in heavy surf

I've found a scoop to be just one more thing to be hanging on to, and since the rings are down in coral depressions a scoop would miss them most times any way. When I get a signal I duck down and with my left gloved hand I quickly fan away the sand. I usually blast it hard for the first breath hold dive, then come up for air, and go down a second time to retrieve the target. The glove protects my hand when I dig around as I sometimes scoop out a hole. I keep my right hand bare, as sometimes stuff gets into such little holes I can't get my gloved fingers on it. Everything goes in a little goodie bag I keep attached to the armrest of the detector.

Seven morning finds - aluminum trash, coins, lead weights, rings, and ferrous junk

I hit the beach at daybreak, because once the boogie boarders and novice surfers get going it is too dangerous to be ducking down and popping up. If I was to get hit in the head and knocked out I would immediately sink to the bottom from being over-weighted. Since this is pretty hardcore detecting 2-3 hours a day is just fine with me anyway. The picture above shows most of the finds except the oversized junk which I toss in the trash cans down near the beach. The Surf PI Pro did just fine. It falsed on basalt rocks buried in the sand and falsed when picked up off the bottom but I generally had no problems discerning good target signals. Overall the machine was quieter than the Garrett Infinium I'd used previously at this location. I've decided that this is because the two-tone signal used by the Infinium inherently generates more noise when the machine is falsing than a single tone unit like the Surf PI Pro. It is not so much that the Garrett falses any more than other units but that it makes more noise when it does.

Steve's gold and platinum ring finds with White's Surf PI Pro

I got four platinum and three gold rings. One of the gold rings is white gold so it looks like only two gold. All fairly plain men's bands reflecting the rough surf area I was hunting. Once again that big diamond ring eluded me, but the number of platinum rings really pleased me. I guess I'll just have to keep going back and trying until I find that big diamond!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

Our first trip of 2004 to Moore Creek got a lot accomplished, but the big jobs remained ahead. I was contacted by my friend George, better known on the internet forums as seeker. He has a background with heavy equipment and offered to help out with the generator and bulldozer. George is a very accomplished and well traveled detectorist and this trip would give him a chance to try out his brand new Minelab GP 3000. And so we scheduled a another trip up to the mine.

Our first attempt was aborted at Rainy Pass due to bad weather. It was some of the poorest flying conditions I have experienced in some time. We sat and drank coffee in Skwentna hoping for the weather to lift, but it never did. This is one of the frustrations of flying in Alaska that one faces from time to time. There is nothing much to be done about it but try again in the future. But the false starts are disappointing and you never get back the lost time.

Yet another trip was scheduled for a couple weeks later, and this time we made it. My brother Tom was able to break away from work for this short weekend trip, and so it was my father, George, Tom, and I. This time the weather was better and so we made it into the mine with no problem. Then came the usual task of hauling our gear to camp and opening the place up. Every time we leave we have to try and “bear-proof” the place by covering all the doors and windows with steel. Every time we return we have to open everything back up. I want to make some heavy-duty hinged steel doors for covers to speed this process up. For now it is lots of work with hammer and nails.

George took a look at the generator and after a bit of work with the fuel system got it going. The previous owners had rigged it to auto feed with a fuel pump out of a barrel. George hooked the original fuel tank back up and bled the fuel system and it finally fired up. We now had electricity to add to our propane stove and propane refrigerator/freezer amenities. Suddenly Moore Creek was starting to feel civilized; the microwave even worked!

Aerial view of Alaska Range on way from Anchorage to Moore Creek

Arrival days are always short days. We decided to look for a little gold. I gave Tom my Minelab GP 3000 and I tried the White’s MXT I had brought along just to see how it worked in the hot rocks. George had his new GP 3000 and my father his Tesoro Lobo. It was a bit of fun at the end of the day, but only Tom came up with gold, a nice 0.55 oz specimen. Tom has always had a knack for detecting although he has done relatively little detecting over the years. It must run in the family.

The next day we got more serious. George wanted to try and start the old D9-18A bulldozer that we have sitting in camp. This unit had been sitting next to the trail going from the airstrip to the cabins during all those early years when we had made visits to Moore Creek. It apparently was abandoned as dead but in the last couple years the previous owner had finally got it running. A piston was replaced and they got a little trail work done before the unit started shaking badly again. They thought it might have a bent crankshaft, which would be bad news. Still, it was running when it was parked, so we figured we might as well try and get it started to see how bad it was. The fact that it is parked in camp makes it easier to work on than the one located over four miles by trail out of camp.

These old bulldozers have a small gasoline engine referred to as a “pony motor” that acts as a starter for the main diesel engine. The first thing to be done is to get the pony motor running. They use a six volt battery instead of a twelve volt to run their own little electric starter motor. We hooked up a battery with a charge and determined the starter worked. We then checked for fuel… and there was none to the carburetor. It turned out the fuel line from the little gas tank to the pony motor was plugged up with rust particles. The line was so well plugged it was hard to believe they had used the pony motor to start the dozer. Nothing all that hard to fix but time consuming taking all the lines apart, cleaning them out, and reassembling everything, especially since many of the fittings were stripped or otherwise in poor condition.

D9-18A bulldozer in camp

The throttle controls were disconnected from the pony motor, so George sat up top and ran the starter while I worked the choke and throttle manually. The pony motor started and I immediately wished I had hearing protection on. That little motor was loud. It also became immediately apparent we had a coolant leak in the head. But it did not look too bad for a short try, and so George kicked in the clutch and turned over the big diesel. It cranked and my brother shot some starter fluid in the air intakes while I kept working the pony motor throttle. The big motor turned and we got some smoke puffing. It looked ready to start. So we backed off.

We wanted to let the pony motor cool down as the short effort had it pretty hot. We also looked the big motor over and checked for coolant and found none. Off to the creek with buckets we went. We dumped the water into the system, and it promptly ran right back out of the bottom of the radiator. Well, we looked but the radiator is fairly well enclosed. We think there is a drain open or hose pulled. We sure hope so, and that the radiator is not cracked. I have to believe they drained it before walking away.

We were tired of fighting with the unit, and decided a set of manuals would be very helpful at this point. The dozer seemed like we could start it, but I had no desire to hurt things more by running the unit without better information about the recommended oils, coolants, etc. We decided to round up manuals before making another try at starting the dozer so we could run the unit through a full pre-start checklist. And find out where that drain is.

My father and I figured to start trail work up to the other bulldozer outside of camp and it was decided that George and Tom should go hunt for gold. It was hard to say when Tom would get a chance to visit again, and George had already done well in getting the generator going and a start on the dozer in camp. Dad and I figured we would go off and do some work and let them have a little fun. Prospecting can actually be pretty tough work, but looking for gold always beats working on equipment or clearing trails since you just might find gold.

There is an old bulldozer trail up to the unit that the operators were following when they got the dozer stuck about three miles from camp. It is about 4.25 miles by trail to the dozer along the trail itself. It starts out in the woodlands at camp, rises above tree line into that nasty alder and willow zone one runs into in Alaska, and then up onto the clear areas above. The small mountains around Moore Creek rise a couple thousand feet above camp, to total elevations of around 3000 feet for the tallest. Once you get above the alders it is very open terrain and very easy travel whether by foot or ATV.

Old dozer trail in wooded area above Moore Creek camp

The old dozer trail was in pretty good shape but alders had grown into some lower stretches and willows choked off some upper stretches. These two plants are like giant weeds in Alaska, and the alders in particular grow at amazing rates in the long daylight hours. They are the bane of the Alaska hiker due to their propensity to grow outward horizontally from a slope before curving upward. Along trails they curve in from both sides and crisscross in the middle. You don’t hike through alders; you climb over and under them, and so they really slow travel. It is impossible to drive an ATV through them, and they rapidly grow into and shut trails off to ATV access unless a trail is constantly maintained.

One secret of locating old trails in Alaska is to look where the alders are thickest. They love disturbed ground, and old trails and ditches are easily spotted by looking for lines of alders and willows on hillsides.

My father and I headed up the trail with chainsaws. He walked on up ahead and I followed with the Honda 200 three-wheeler. He was pretty much just scouting ahead, while I followed up at a slower rate, making sure the trail was clear enough to easily get through on the three-wheeler. With the dozer over four miles away by trail and over a couple 2000 foot hills, we wanted to be able to drive there with fresh batteries, tools, oil, etc. We could have just bushwhacked on up and got to work, but it would be a case where something would be needed, and then you would be looking at a long hike to camp and back. The trail needed to be cleared for ATV access to the dozer. This proved to be a very wise decision.

My father disappeared up the trail while I worked along. I would park the ATV, then clear on up ahead with the chainsaw. Then set the saw down, walk back tossing brush aside, and get the ATV to drive it up to the chainsaw. There was lots of back and forth but I was making pretty good time. There were long stretches that needed no clearing, and so after slowly getting though a thicket a sudden advance would be made for some distance.

I was bringing the three-wheeler forward at one point, when the unit made a loud squeak and stopped like the brakes were on. A long period of rolling back and forth and cutting logs to get the rear off the ground and I determined a rear axle bearing was seizing up. I decided to hike down and get George to seek advice as I had no tools on me anyway sufficient to tackle an axle.

I was about a mile out of camp but it was all downhill and therefore a short hike. I found George by the ponds above the cabins with his new Minelab GP 3000 metal detector. I told him what had happened. Then I finally asked him if he was having any luck. He said he thought so and dropped a heavy rock in my hand. I could tell by the heft this was more than one of our regular gold/quartz specimens. Amazingly, George has not washed it off yet. Gold was glinting thought the yellow mud caked on the nugget. I headed over to the pond and washed it off. I think I was almost more excited than George. It was a fantastic gold nugget about the size of a golf ball! Not just any nugget, but one with small fingers of gold creating a delicate pattern over the entire surface of the nugget.

George's amazing museum quality gold nugget from Moore Creek

Moore Creek has lots of smaller nuggets that are predominately just gold, but the gold here is very close to the original source. Even the smallest gold is not worn or rounded, but just as it appeared as the rock that enclosed it rotted away. This also means that much of the gold has quartz attached, and the larger multi-ounce pieces have generally been about half gold and half quartz. I had come to expect this, and was surprised and very happy to see such a large relatively solid chunk of gold come from Moore Creek. The fact that George found one means that more are out there to be found in the future, and that made me very excited indeed. We went back to the cabin, and the nugget weighed in at 3.74 ounces. This surprised George somewhat as it was heavier than he thought and so he was thrilled. Not a bad find for his very first nugget with his new Minelab GP 3000 and his first at Moore Creek!

Bottom view of George's Nugget

Another very good sign for the mine is that the nugget was found in virgin soil on the edge of what we suspect is a large chunk of virgin ground. The fact is that I and others had missed the nugget by the smallest of margins. We had all hunted the area getting just smaller gold. I’m sure I’d been within a couple feet of the nugget, and it was only a few inches down. Anyone could have found it, but George was the first to get right over it. In any case, that virgin area is looking pretty good right now.

I figured George would be hot to go look for more gold after a find like that. But on hearing the problem with the three-wheeler he put his detector aside and we hiked up to the Honda. After a brief consultation we decided I should just get on it and ride it back to camp. It needed more work then we wanted to tackle there in the woods. So I got on and went. It squeaked, and would seize up but I would roll it backward to free it up and go on again. Then it seemed like it decided to work again and I cruised into camp without pause.

We drained the oil out of the motor and got the Honda turned upside down. We got it apart enough to determine there was really not much we could do without a new rear axle assembly. One wheel had actually been welded onto the axle and the rest was in poor shape. We drilled a hole in the bearing carrier and pumped it full of grease. Then got it back together and I drove it around camp a bit. It seemed better, but it was obvious we had not repaired it. The bearing could totally give out at any time.

Honda 200 ATV with trailer at old cabin in Moore camp

Tom finally showed up and he had quite a pile of gold to show. He actually had not been doing very well, but got into a hot spot and found several specimens in a fairly small area. He had 0.19, 0.43, 0.53, 1.06, and 1.78 ounce pieces and so was feeling pretty good about it, but his eyes about popped when he saw George’s nugget. George was playing it all kinds of humble and stuff but we assured him we’d trade twice the normal type of gold finds at Moore for a fantastic museum quality piece like he had found. It is truly a find to be proud of.

It was late and we all were tired so we cooked up some food and waited. It was starting to get darker, which tells you how late it was, and still no sign of dear old Dad. I learned a long time ago not to worry about Bud Herschbach in the wilds of Alaska, but still as it got even darker I started to wonder at what point we should go out looking. But then he finally showed up, and just as well as it was getting dark enough to be hard walking.

My father can out-hike most people half his age, and had decided to go all the way up to the stuck bulldozer to check it out. He reported that a half mile up the trail from where I had stopped there was a very thick patch of willows where he lost the trail. He calmly described literally crawling through these willows and having “something very large” jump up a few feet in front of him and make a huge amount of noise moving off in the brush, but he never did figure out if it was a bear or a moose the brush was so thick. It was probably a moose. He is telling this and I’m thinking I would have had a heart attack right about that time but he refused to make much of it. He has run into a lot of animals in the woods in his years as one of Alaska’s pioneer surveyors.

He finally made it up to the bulldozer and reported it looked in a lot better shape then he had expected and certainly better than the one in camp. It was buried to the top of the track on one side and to about half a track on the other side. On his return trip he found looking downhill that he had gone through far more willows then need be, and had picked out what he thought was the shortest route possible through the thicket and marked it with flagging on both ends.

There was one day left to go on our three day weekend trip. After a good night of sleep Dad and I hiked up to do more trail work. We decided to save the Honda for now for the critical task of hauling heavy loads to and from the airport, like the big empty bottles of propane we planned on backhauling out this trip. I had decided to go on a hunt for more three-wheelers to fly into the mine. Honda three-wheelers are still pretty common in Alaska and can be had for very little money. Most importantly, we can fly them in easily in the Cessna 206. Being dependent on a single three-wheeler that could break down any moment did not seem like a good idea. I wanted some redundancy and more spare parts. We could also use more ATVs for the upcoming bulldozer project to make it easier to get multiple people with loads up to the site.

This trip wound down with little excitement to report. We got the trail cleared all the way up to where the willow thicket started, and once through that it would be clear sailing. My father and I had had enough clearing for the day and so we figured we’d leave that last small but tough stretch for later. Tom and George had prospected most of the day, but the luck had run thin and only Tom had found a 0.35 ounce piece. Funny how quick you get spoiled finding gold that I now say things like that. Not long ago a third ounce nugget would have really seemed like a big nugget.

Just over 8 ounces gold nuggets and gold specimens found at Moore Creek, Alaska

Overall the nugget detecting was quite productive. Tom and George did most of the detecting and found over 8 ounces of specimens between them. George's 3.74 ounce nugget is his largest ever, and Tom's 1.78 ounce piece surpassed his previous largest of 1.64 ounce, found at Moore Creek on his last visit. While this nugget detecting is fun it serves a very serious purpose at Moore Creek. First, 50% of detected nuggets go to the LLC to help fund operations. Or, as in George's case, the finder has the option of purchasing back the LLC percentage which achieves the same goal. More importantly, every nugget find is plotted on maps. As of this trip almost 70 specimens and nuggets have been located totaling over 50 ounces of finds. The map is revealing certain "hot" areas on the creek. Certain zones are producing more nuggets than others. Some tailing piles have produced multiple finds, some none at all, and some just a single piece. Any finds at all increase the probability of a particular pile containing more gold from mere speculation to almost total certainty. Some areas that look very good have turned out to be not so good and vice versa. At Moore Creek it can truly be said that metal detectors are a vital part of our initial exploration program.

Our short but really productive trip wrapped up and we flew back to town. Our generator is running, old dozer puffing, trail nearly cleared to the stuck dozer, and more. But this particular trip will always be remembered as the one when George found that beautiful 3.74 ounce gold nugget. It truly is a find of a lifetime and the nicest at Moore Creek so far.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

Steve's Mining Journal Index

This entry in Steve's Mining Journal is a bit different. It is a copy of a couple posts I made on some forums regarding the Garrett Infinium as a coin detector. It is part of the Detectorprospector.com goal of collecting all my scattered internet posts into one location.

I have found gold nuggets with the Infinium and done well with jewelry using it as an underwater detector. Since the Infinium has a dual tone id system it has some interesting potential as a coin detector. To test this and to simply get in more use with the machine I went out to a local playground to test the unit. There is loose pea-gravel around the playground equipment, and I wanted easy digging material as I wanted to dig all items in this test.

The group of coins on the right, plus two pieces of wire and a nail all came up lo-hi tone. Quarters, dimes, and copper pennies. Basically, if I only dug lo-hi tones I would dig nothing but coins and a small amount of trash!

The results on the left are from the hi-lo "gold range" tones. This equates to the jewelry range on VLF detectors and as any jewelry hunter knows this is also the foil, pull tab, aluminum range. The Infinium also reveals it's love for wire in this range, in particular bobby pins and paper clips. I found quite a few broken zipper parts. The stuff by the battery that looks like large wire is actually string and other items with small metal connectors. The bent shallow "V" shaped item is a plastic ink tube from a pen, and several of the smallest targets were pen tips. Also a few pencil eraser ends, a common school yard find. There are also a couple very rusted nuts. Most large iron items normally read lo-hi but if they rust enough they sometimes come in as hi-lo, as these did. This is also where you get the nickels and zinc pennies. And jewelry. I found an earring, a couple pieces of broken chains, a couple pins, and a pendant.

Coin detecting with the Garrett Infinium

It looks to me that if you are in the right area and willing to forgo the nickels (and nobody cares about zinc pennies) then the Infinium might actually work very well as a coin detector. Just dig lo-hi tones only.

No surprise on the hi-lo tones. If you go for the jewelry range you are going to dig lots of junk. Not bad on a beach or in the pea-gravel, but it would wear you out in an average park setting.

In a nutshell the hi-lo tone equates to the zinc penny and lower range on a VLF detector, and the lo-hi tones equates to copper penny and higher. The wild-card is iron items which can id in either range depending on shape and amount of decomposition (rust).

I can't comment too much on the depths as I did not dig anything that was in the hard packed ground under the pea gravel. My main goal was to just dig lots of targets to see which tone I got. Everything was less than 6" deep. However, I did have my Fisher CZ-5 and White's MXT along, and the Infinium easily detected a dime I buried beyond the discrimination range of both detectors while correctly giving the lo-hi id. The only way the VLF machines could hit it was to go to all-metal mode.

Needless to say I plan on trying this in a couple heavily worked "old coin" sites later to see what might turn up.

One thing I did find is that the Infinium has what is referred to as a "modulated audio" In other words, smaller or deeper targets sound fainter. I did find that I could reliably predict many of the nickels and could have dug less small trash as the nickels really bang out on the Infinium. It hits nickels harder than any other coin due to the machine being tuned for gold range targets. If I did not think jewelry finds were a possibility I think I could get many nickels and dig less trash by paying attention to the intensity of the audio. The wire items also seem to "move" as you walk around the target. The coins stay centered.

Steve Herschbach

Garrett Infinium Pulse Induction metal detector

I went coin detecting with my Infinium... Posted by Steve Herschbach on 5/1/2004

Hi, I finally got my hands on the 14" mono coil for my Infinium. I've been wanting one for some time, as in theory it should get better depth on target in mild ground than the DD coil that comes stock with the unit. I have a ten day prospecting trip coming up the first week of June and so was desperate to get the coil before the trip.

I'll have to weigh the mono coil as compared to the stock coil but I immediately liked its lighter weight. The stock coil is just plain heavy. The mono is epoxy-filled so not as light as it could be, but it is big improvement over the DD in this regard.

I took the unit to a nearby freshwater beach that has been heavily detected for many years. It dates back to the 1920's. Like most beaches it replenishes with new stuff constantly but the older coins have been detected out of it for the most part. Those that can be reached, anyway. A friend with an Explorer has been trying to get the last few and declared to me a few days ago that he figured he had about cleaned it out. He even went so far as to use the big Coiltek WOT coil on the Explorer. Nice thing about beaches... you can dig big holes!

The Infinium has a dual tone system. You get a hi-lo tone on low conductive items and a lo-hi tone on high conductive items and large iron or steel. I've found in the past that smaller nails and other elongated steel items like hair pins read hi-lo as if they are low conductive items.

Excepting iron and steel, which can go either way, the hi-lo tone is where you get jewelry, aluminum, zinc pennies, and nickels. Lo-hi tones are copper pennies, clad coins, and silver.

What makes the Infinium different from other PI units is the tone system. Most pulse induction detectors are single tone "dig it all" machines. So the Infinium tone system, while far from perfect, allows for some uses that are not practical with other PI detectors.

The beach I was at is littered with aluminum trash of all sorts, and deeper down there are lots of nails and other iron trash. And some jewelry. Basically, every swing gets at least one or more hi-lo tones. Lots of noise, but I've found if I keep my headphone volume low its no big deal.

What I've found to be rare on the beach is the lo-hi tones. Lots of detecting keeps the beach fairly clean of newer coins. And the larger nails are rarer than the smaller ones. So I set out this morning to only dig lo-hi tones.

I headed right for the middle of the beach, one of the most detected places in my town. After only ten minutes I got a nice mellow, lo-hi tone. The sand on this beach is of varying depth, and is on top of a clay-like base. At about ten inches I hit the clay, and there embedded in the clay was a 1953 silver dime! Now, this may not be a very old coin by most standards, but to find it where I did pretty much blew me away. Countless detectors have been over this dime. The signal I got was not weak. It did have a more mellow response than a shallower coin would, but it was a solid signal.

So I used the dime as center base and started spiraling around it. Lots and lots of hi-lo tones which I'll go dig some other day. Probably deep aluminum but I'm sure I passed over some deep jewelry today. But I stuck with the program.

After a couple hours I had dug 16 targets, four of which were coins. The other three were all wheatbacks from the 1940's. All were in the clay layer below the sand.

The pennies were shallower than the dime, which might lead some to wonder why they were still there. All I can tell you is the ground runs about 78 on a White's MXT, so pretty mineralized, and there are hi-tension power lines nearby. So while the depths I'm talking about here my not seem impressive, all I can swear to is that these coins were missed by hordes of detectors over the last 30 years. I was very impressed.

The mono coil, while I did not compare it directly, seemed to me to have a clear edge over the stock DD coil for depth. I could pinpoint MUCH easier with it, as the signal were right in the middle where they should be. The mono coil has a traditional cone-shaped detection pattern with best depth and signal dead center.

Add the fact that it is light and I have a new favorite coil for the Infinium. I can't wait to get it out nugget detecting next month. But tomorrow morning it is back to the beach to tackle some of those hi-lo tones and see if I can find a gold ring. And look for more lo-hi coins after I get tired of digging aluminum trash!

In any case, to use a PI on a trashy beach and be able to come up with one in four targets good as opposed to just digging everything is what the Infinium is all about. It has some real power in dry land areas where other detectors may be having issues due to mineralization, and once you get used to its dual-tone id system you can do things with it that you cannot do with a normal "dig-it-all" PI detector. I really have to caution that the discrimination is not perfect, and in some areas it may be useless, but depending on the mix of targets it can work well, as I think this day showed.

Pulse induction is not for everyone, but I have to tell you I'm really having fun with this thing. I can't wait to see the look on the face of my Explorer buddy. He is not going to be happy that a Garrett got coins he missed.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

Winter in Alaska. The days are short and the ground covered in snow. What is a miner to do? It is time to work on the permits.

Since we just acquired the Moore Creek property in 2003, the first order of business for 2004 was permitting. We have quite a few things to do before mining can commence, and so I decided to put in for a five year Annual Placer Miners Application for general exploration and facilities work.

There are several things we need to accomplish. First, the previous owner left one of our D9 bulldozers stuck about four miles out of camp in a mud hole. We need to get the bulldozer started up and get it unstuck. Since it is outside our claim block, we need a Miscellaneous Land Use Permit for Cross Country Travel to move it to the claims. Once we get the bulldozer into camp, we want to use it to lengthen our airstrip. This needs a plan and permitting. We also want to clear existing trails that have grown over with brush.

One thing some people do not understand is that structures on mining claims also need permitting, even if they already exist. We have several cabins on our claims. In these days of lawsuits, abandoned structures represent a liability to the government. Part of the permitting process includes getting a permit to have permanent structures. Things like fuel storage and outhouses must be covered.

Then there are the mining and prospecting activities. Our initial operations will be of a small-scale nature, but still they must be described in detail in the plan. The main thing on state land is that activities that disturb less than 5 acres do not require bonding. Any disturbance over 5 acres requires that bonding via the State Wide Bond Pool be obtained. Yearly reclamation reports must be filed for all work performed, even that under 5 acres. Suction dredges need an EPA permit, Corps of Engineers permitting, and possibly a fish habitat permit. Other agencies, like the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology must be notified to review your plan.

If this all sounds like a lot, you are right. Moreover, because there are so many agencies to notify, it would be easy to miss something and get in trouble. Luckily, in Alaska the state has a master permit in the form of the Annual Placer Miners Applications (APMA). This one master application is filled out and the state farms it out to most of the various state and federal agencies for approval. Various applications can be made for periods of up to ten years.

Aerial view of tailing piles and ponds at Moore Creek, Alaska

I filed for a “Multi-Year” Miscellaneous Land Use Permit and Reclamation Plan Approval for five years. There is a $100 fee for the first year, and $50 for the other four years, so the filing fees came to $300. This is a bargain considering all that is done for you in one application. You can find all the paperwork online at the Alaska State Division of Natural Resources (DNR) website. If you examine the forms you will note that they are designed to cover many different scenarios. Just fill out the applicable sections, and draw lines through areas that do not apply. Overall, it is not terribly difficult, and the process has the virtue of making you think through the entire process by asking some questions you may not have thought of.

Anyone thinking miners can just go out and tear up the earth without a second thought should read these things. You have to have a plan for filling every hole and ditch and a need a permit for just about everything except breathing the air.

Our main permitting covered moving the bulldozer into camp, getting the facilities and fuel storage covered, the use of suction dredges and highbankers for placer sampling, and possible pitting or trenching on the hardrock prospect. We also applied for the ability to upgrade the existing airstrip to make it safer, as it currently is a bit too short for continual safe access. It also is limiting the amount and size of equipment that can be flown in, as it is dangerous to attempt to fly in with anything larger than a Cessna 206. Safety is the main concern over time.

You might expect all these permits to take forever to be approved, and for operations that are more complicated, they can. However, our low level of initial activity made permitting easy, and the state of Alaska is doing a fantastic job of getting these things processed. I got the approved permitting back in less than 30 days. Huge kudos to the people at the Division of Mining, Land, and Water. Do remember, however, that it can take longer if you want to do something more complicated, so file well in advance.Overflight of D9 bulldozer stuck on hill The only real surprise I received was from the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology. I had proposed that as part of continuing operations that old pre-existing ditches and other remnants of mining be reclaimed and derelict old structures removed. I thought this would be a benefit in that we would in effect be "cleaning up" after the old miners. You can imagine my surprise when I got a letter notifying me that these old ditches might be historic, and that we should not disturb them. Funny how the ditch I dig today must be filled back in, but if the ditch is old enough, it now must be left alone!

The first order of business to consider was the bulldozer move. The overland permit stipulated that the move had to be made by May to take advantage of frozen ground conditions and snow cover. This meant that we must get to the bulldozer in the winter, which presented difficulties of its own. The bulldozer was stuck up to the top of the track on one side, and so would be frozen in and hard to get out. Combine that with the size of the unit, a D9, its age, mid-sixties, and our general lack of operating knowledge, and I came up with what I thought was a good solution. We offered to trade the dozer itself to a local miner on the condition he got it unstuck and did what runway and trail work we needed done before taking the unit off-site back to his own mine. In this way, I figured we avoided the difficulty of not only getting the unit into camp from its current location but got our work done by a more experienced operator. So we made just such a deal.

Old D9 bulldozer stuck in soft spot over the hill from Moore Creek

Our plan was to acquire a smaller, newer bulldozer that would be more reliable and more fuel efficient for the smaller scale operations we anticipated. But as we researched the situation it became obvious that this was going to get real expensive. Even a used bulldozer was going to run a good chunk of change, not to mention the cost of getting it to McGrath. Then would come the difficult task of getting it from McGrath to the mine, a distance of over 60 miles. That old bulldozer began to look better all the time. But the deal had been made, and so we waited for spring to come.

As has often happened in this Moore Creek story, things worked out for the better. The miner was unable to retrieve the bulldozer for us. On one hand I was unhappy to see the opportunity missed for the season, as we would now have to wait until the next winter to move the bulldozer overland. But that was more than offset by the fact that I now realized what a valuable thing a bulldozer is that is already on-site in remote Alaska. We were far ahead to work with what we had. Now it was left to us to get the bulldozer running and out of the hole it was stuck in, and then move it into camp in the spring of 2005. Our runway improvements would have to wait another year

Memorial Day finally approached and our first trip to the mine for the season. A new 6” suction dredge was purchased to take the mine for some bulk sampling work, as well as a little 2.5” dredge and small highbanker for more portable sampling efforts. I wanted in particular to sample some of the old tailing piles to get an idea how much smaller gold there was in them. We already knew they contained scattered large nuggets, but if it is to pay to re-mine the old tailings it will be the smaller gold that really makes it pay. The inefficient old recovery methods used at Moore Creek, combined with the large amount of heavy magnetite and chromite in the concentrates, and the clay content of the material, all indicated to me that the gold losses would have been substantial.

High of the list was getting the old existing bulldozer trail up to where the dozer was stuck cleared out of brush enough so we could get our Honda 3-wheeler up to it. Four miles over small mountains toting tools, batteries, and whatever else we might need on our backs was not an option we liked. We needed something cheap and small that would fit in the 206, so I shopped around and found a used Honda 3-wheeler. If you ever buy one of these be sure and check the tires because even if the unit is free three new tires is going to set you back a few dollars. Once we got the trail cleared for the 3-wheeler we could then begin the task of getting the bulldozer started and out of the hole.

Honda 3-wheeler stuffed in back of Cessna 206

My father and I planned on heading up with a full load of gear in the Cessna 206, and my brother Tom wanted to make his first trip up to the mine. I was excited to have Tom along as his job as a surveyor usually kept him busy summers so we rarely get out together. This made for a full load so I had the 6” dredge shipped to McGrath prior to our departure. We would fly to the mine, open up the camp and deliver our equipment. Tom had to go back to town the third day, so the idea was to fly him to town and then go into McGrath to bring the dredge in the same day. A 6” dredge is more than a single load for the 206 but by staging half the unit in McGrath we saved an extra trip to Anchorage.

My cousin Bob planned to come up from Missouri a few days after we left for the mine. He would hook up with a friend of ours, Mike Graves, who would fly them up in Mike’s Super Cub. And so, with plans all made and dredge waiting in McGrath, we finally headed out for Moore Creek. The flight was rather uneventful. When we arrived at Moore Creek, it was obvious that spring was early this year. There were more leaves on the trees than there normally would be on Memorial Day weekend. Usually things are still pretty bare this early, and patches of snow and ice would not be unusual. But as you will see in the pictures the trees are were pretty much leafed out when we arrived.

I had been waiting all winter to do some prospecting, and since Tom had a limited amount of time we decided to go prospect the tailing piles. Metal detectors have been effective in determining which tailing piles have larger pieces of gold in them, and presumably smaller gold also. We have been mapping all nuggets found and so a picture of where the hot areas are on the claims has been slowly building up over time. Since I wanted Tom to have the best shot at finding some gold, I loaned him my Minelab GP 3000, while I used the Garrett Infinium. The Minelab has a significant edge in that I have it outfitted with a 24" x 12" Coiltek UFO coil. This larger coil not only gets some extra depth, but probably more importantly allows the operator to cover more ground while detecting. In some ways I think the amount of ground one covers with a detector is more important than an extra inch or two of detection depth. If my detector covers twice as much ground as your detector, I am going to be electronically processing more material than you, even if your detector gets a couple more inches of depth than my detector. Just like when running other mining equipment, it is often about how much yardage you are processing more than recovery efficiency.

By the time we got the camp opened up and equipment put away we did not have too much time left. We headed down to some tailing piles next to the runway where a couple nuggets had been found the summer before. It seemed like a good area, but all we dug was small steel trash and bullets. Tom finally found a little 0.13 oz piece but that seemed about it for the spot this time so we headed back to camp. We decided to do a little more hunting near camp and just at the end of the day Tom found a 1.21 ounce nugget, by far the largest he had ever found in his life. Not bad for the first day on the ground, and a short day at that! I, on the other hand, had no gold to show for the day.

Tom with Moore Creek gold specimen excavated from tailing pile

The next day we decided to head way down the creek to check areas we had not hunted before. In theory the chance for larger gold should diminish as we head downstream, but you never know until you try. We hoofed it on down and did quite a bit of work getting through thick brush in low lying areas. But try as we might we had no luck down the creek. After some time with no success you get the feeling maybe you should wander back to areas where gold has been found before. We did just that, and Tom found a 0.15 ounce piece near Nevada Gulch below the airstrip. Then back to the cabins and he goes and finds a 0.25 and 0.10 ounce pieces near to where he had found the 1.21 ounce chunk the day before. And here I am again on the second day without a nugget to show. It appeared I was on one of my rare cold streaks. Not much you can do about them except persevere. Given the choice I'd rather Tom was finding the gold anyway but it is even better to both be finding gold.

My father was not much into detecting this trip and so was doing general camp work and scouting out the trail over to the bulldozer. Tom and I headed off the third day down the the area below the airstrip where Nevada Gulch comes in, and I finally got a couple small pieces, 0.09 and 0.07 ounces respectively. Not very big, but lots better than my time on this trip so far. My father and I got involved in more camp work, but Tom wanted to do some more detecting. I pointed out an area between the cabins and Moore Creek I thought really should have some gold. I had hunted there so far with no results, but the area just felt right. There was some bedrock outcropping there and that seemed like a good sign. And so right at the end of the day Tom goes and finds a 1.64 ounce nugget with my detector exactly where I pointed with my finger when I pointed the spot out!

Tom's time was up, and so he and my father flew off to Anchorage the next morning. This also offered the opportunity to fly in another load of equipment and fuel from Anchorage. I on the other hand finally had my GP 3000 back in my possession, and so I headed down and across Moore Creek to try some areas on the far outer edge of the paystreak. In theory the northern side of the creek is where the gold occurs and so by heading over to the south side I was heading in the wrong direction. But gold is where you find it, and I figure any disturbed material at all in an old mine is worth running a detector over. You just never know. And sure enough, I came up with four nuggets weighing 0.08, 0.14, 0.27, and 0.68 ounces, for a total of just over an ounce. This was more like it and it showed gold at the far extreme edge of the old operations.

Tom's 1.64 oz and 1.21 oz nuggets showing iron staining common at Moore Creek

My father returned, and we made the flight into McGrath to pick up the 6" dredge. This is the Keene model with twin 5.5HP Honda pumps. I like the twins as they are easier to handle than one big pump, and also have the advantage of allowing a person to use one or the other or both pumps for other things. One of the pumps works great on a 4" dredge or as a highbanker pump. So the twin pumps add some versatility to the operation. A 6" dredge is a pretty bulky unit, but we had flown the floats and hose in on the previous two loads. We were able to get all the remaining parts of the dredge into the plane and then on into Moore Creek in a single load.

The main reason for the 6" is for use as a sampling device on the many large tailing piles left by the old mining operations. There are several factors that combined to put what I guessed was a substantial amount of gold into the tailings. First, the nature of the gold itself. Even a lot of the smaller stuff has quartz attached, making it lighter and harder to catch. Then Moore Creek has an exceptionally high chromite (chrome ore) content in the concentrates, with some concentrate containing over 35% chromite. Chromite is a lot like magnetite (black sand) in appearance, but is not nearly as magnetic. It is likely the old-timers experienced quite a bit of riffle packing from the heavy concentrates. Another factor is that the decomposed material near bedrock has a fairly high clay content, and much of the material would have clumped and run completely through the box without completely breaking up and releasing the gold. However, years of sitting exposed to rainfall percolating though the tailing piles should have broken down a lot of the clay in the tailing piles by now. Most of the loss was due to the nature of the recovery systems employed. The old operations used long straight sluice boxes with angle iron riffles. They fed everything a one yard at a time into the sluice, including all the larger rocks. They did not screen off the rocks but instead just pitched the larger ones that stuck in the box out by hand. These large rocks created turbulence as the water flowed around them which could blow the gold out of the riffles. And the dumping of full bucket loads caused surges in the flow of material instead of the steady even flow that is desired. All these factors combined meant we have good reason to suspect the 1.5 million yards of tailings at Moore Creek contain substantial amounts of smaller gold in addition to the obvious loss of the larger pieces we are finding with the metal detectors. Since nearly all the tailing piles have large ponds of water adjoining them, a 6" dredge makes for a relatively inexpensive and portable device for testing the tailing piles.

Newly assembled 6" suction dredge ready to go to work

We used a Honda 3-wheeler and trailer to haul the dredge up to the tailing pond at the upper end of the mine and got it assembled. While we put the unit together I heard a "woofing" noise on the hill behind us. There sat a nice little black bear, watching us and no doubt wondering what we were doing. We watched him and he watched us, and finally he lost interest and wandered of around the edge of the pond.

We floated the dredge over to the pile where we had first found a number of nuggets with detectors in 2003. We measured the section of the pile we wanted to dredge to calculate out the yardage so we could come up with a per yard figure of the gold content of the material. The dredging itself was the easiest I have ever done. This particular tailing pile was mostly decomposed bedrock with a few larger cobbles scattered through the material. The pile looks almost sandy on the surface and has little vegetation growing on it, indicating that it came from on or in the decomposed bedrock layer and has little of the organic surface material in it. These types of piles have almost always proven to be a good place to metal detect. I placed the suction nozzle for the dredge just below water level on one end of the pile, and fired the dredge up. A hole was created just below the water line, and then we used picks and hoes to rake the material down into the water where the nozzle just sucked it up. The occasional oversize cobble that appeared was grabbed and tossed before it could get to the nozzle. We ate into the pile, creating an underwater shelf a little over a foot underwater as we moved forward. There is an incredible amount of dredging that can be done at Moore Creek with a pair of knee-high boots and little need to bend over. Basically you just stand there and rake material down to the nozzle. All the material being dredged is actually being dumped back into the bottom of the excavation from which it originally came years ago, so we are in a way we are returning the place to it's original condition by mining it a second time. The old timers dug a hole and put it in a pile; we are taking the pile and putting it back in the hole.

About this time Mike Graves and my cousin Bob show up in Mike's Super Cub. The tailing pile we were dredging on is actually an island in the middle of a pond created when the excavation the miners created filled with water. We were using a little inflatable boat to travel back and forth to the island. It was a one person raft, so a person would paddle over while a string was tied to the shore. Once you get to the far shore, someone back where you started pulls the raft back for their use. Well, Bob paddles over with no problem. The trick with these little rafts is to sit or kneel in the middle. But Mike tried sitting on one end, a thing my father had tried previously, and got similar results. Backwards and over into the ice cold water! I really felt sorry for Mike but luckily it was a nice day and the cabins near at hand so he could get out of his wet clothes in short order.

We wrapped up our little test dredging operation. A half day of dredging moved approximately 9 yards of material and produced 0.21 ounce of smaller gold or 0.023 ounce per yard. Not counting the larger nugget that might be found now and then it looks like this pile might deliver 1/4 to 1/2 ounce a day of gold if worked with the 6" dredge. This pile had produced nuggets weighing over an ounce while detecting the surface and so it is likely that the diligent dredger would have the occasional day running over one or even two ounces of gold due to this "nugget factor". Normally I would not consider a 1/4 ounce of gold in a day with a 6" dredge to be something I'd get excited about back in my old dredging haunts on the Kenai Peninsula. But there I dredged along with the knowledge that it would be the rarest of things to ever dredge nuggets weighing more than 1/4 ounce in size. That average daily take of smaller gold is all a person can really count on. Here, I'd be a much more motivated dredger knowing that it is almost inevitable that nuggets weighing one to three ounces will be found from time to time. We will never really know just what this will really average out to until somebody goes ahead and works a tailing pile for a couple weeks in this fashion.

Suction dredge sampling tailing pile at Moore Creek

One thing I know for sure is that in my over 30 years of dredging the largest nugget I've ever found with a suction dredge was a one ounce nugget at Crow Creek Mine in 1998. I have no doubt I could easily break that personal dredging size record at Moore Creek, and so I think in some ways the dredging opportunities here are almost better than the metal detecting. Many people, like my father, prefer to see some kind of reliable, steady gold production. Metal detecting is for the select few who can go for days finding nothing and not get anything and still not get demoralized. But from what I've seen more people are happy getting at least some gold every day as long as they know they still have that shot at a really good day now and then. As the surface areas get detected out this type of steady production work will be more and more important. The main goal for me is to prove enough yardage by this type of testing to justify setting up a small excavator and trommel operation to reprocess the tailing piles. I have had a gut feeling it will pay but I do not buy excavators based on gut feelings.

The next morning I got Bob set up with my GP 3000, and Mike had his own Minelab Eureka Gold. I told them about the area below the airstrip where I had found my largest nugget the summer before, a 3.5 ounce section of a rich gold bearing vein. The area had produced a good number of nuggets so far and the area was regarded as the "hot spot" on the creek by the previous owner. I had good reason to believe the area still held good promise, and Mike and Bob headed down to check it out. My father and I moved the dredge over to the next closest tailing pile. This one looked distinctly different from the other pile. It had more cobbles and rocks and more vegetation growing on the surface, indicating that it contained more overburden than the other pile. Yet it had produced some nice nuggets with the detectors also so I was curious how it would prove out with the dredge.

We worked away at this new tailing pile. This one was much taller, and so the face of the excavation got to be over 10 feet tall. It is important not to undercut the material adding to the risk of falling rocks or a complete collapse of the material, and so we found ourselves standing high above the water raking material down to the nozzle below. Careful raking and the tossing out large rocks before they could fall to the nozzle made this work remarkably well. We threw all the rocks into a zone between the island and the edge of the pond with the idea of eventually creating a causeway that would allow us to walk over instead of using the little raft. The pond is deeper than it looks and so it will take some time but I've always found it to be beneficial to direct rocks to a certain area than just tossing them randomly in every direction.

Bob and Mike showed up halfway through the day, and as Bob stood on the bank of the pond he held up something big to show us. We paddled over to check it out, and it turned out Bob had gone right to the area I had sent him with my detector and found the largest specimen we've located at Moore Creek to date. A 5.13 ounce chunk of what appears to be a perfect cross section of a rich gold-bearing vein. Just like the type of vein I'm dreaming of finding on the hill above our claims. It is exciting to find this kind of large gold specimen, but more exciting for me is what they keep telling me could exist elsewhere on our claims. These specimens have not traveled far at all from their source. Bob was of course ecstatic at having set the Moore Creek record for our group, but since nuggets up to 20 ounces have been found in recent years and up to 100 ounces in the early days his glory may be short-lived. I have since performed a specific-gravity test on the specimen, and it consists of 2.94 ounces of quartz and 2.19 ounces of gold. Some exceptionally rich gold ore indeed.

Bob Herschbach and his 5.13 ounce specimen

Close up of 5.13 ounce gold specimen seen on edge

2011 Update: I purchased the specimen from Bob. The gold was only visible around the edges and so I tried an experiment. I ground the specimen down on all sides until gold was visible, and then put a partial polish on it. The quartz is partially translucent so you can actually see below the surface and see gold enclosed in the quartz. The price of gold increased enough that I finally sold the specimen.

5 ounce gold specimen ground down and polished to better show gold

We wrapped up the dredging for the day as soon as we moved about the same 9 yards of material as we had from the other tailing pile. This time there was only 0.11 ounce of gold to show for the work, and so it was obvious this pile did contain more of the worthless overburden material than the other tailing pile. This calculates out to about 0.012 ounce per yard. Nothing to get too excited about with a dredge but an excavator with a one yard bucket it would add up. Since this material is already sized and stacked and next to an existing tailing pond/settling system the cost to process it is much lower than it would be to process virgin material. A good trommel system should also get better small gold recovery than a 6" dredge. More sampling is needed but the initial results so far look very promising with at least some small gold to be found, without consideration of larger nuggets.

A couple days of dredging left me feeling like doing some detecting. Even that easiest of dredging operations was a lot more work than swinging a detector. We got in a coupe hours before turning in for the evening, and I found a 0.09 oz nugget and my father found a 0.29 oz nugget. The real chance would come the next day, our last for the mine on this trip.

We loaded up the next morning and headed down to where Bob had found his piece. It was one of those chunks myself and others had walked within feet of. And like most nuggets, this one, although found with a Minelab GP 3000, was shallow enough that any detector at all would have found it. Bob just got his coil over it first. We all started hunting, but results at first were pretty slim, with me finding a few smaller pieces. It got very hot, and everyone started running out of energy as the temperatures climbed. I finally wandered off down the creek on my own and back into an isolated little area back in the brush. And boom, up comes a 1.93 ounce specimen! I got really excited, of course, and in short order I found another piece weighing 0.28 ounce. It was time to call in the troops so I climbed a nearby tall tailing pile and yelled away for the other guys to come over, but could not hear anyone reply. I hiked on over and rounded up Mike and my father, but Bob had already returned to camp. Unfortunately I had broken the spell, and try as we might my new area dried up. I ended up with the gold of the day, with the 1.93 oz and 0.28 oz pieces, plus 0.18, 0.09, 0.07, 0.08, and 0.05 ounce pieces for a total of 2.68 ounces . That put me over 4 ounces for the trip, but Bob beat me for total weight, most gold, and largest specimen so far, all in one find!

4 ounces gold specimens found by Steve at Moore Creek

The pictures above show my finds for the week, plus the 0.35 ounce of gold dredged from the tailing pile shown below. The pictures are not to scale; my specimens that are shown too small as the dredged gold is closer to life-size as seen in this picture. Those larger pieces found dredging would brighten most people's dredging days. As you can see even the smaller gold is very rough and has quartz attached. This gold has not so much rolled down the creeks as it has just rotted out of the rock and so there are going to be lots of pieces with quite a bit of character to them. The only real downside to this gold is the quartz content does not make it very amenable for jewelry work, as the quartz tends to pop out when heated.

Gold found while suction dredge sampling the tailing piles

All in all a very good start for the year. We got our propane refrigerator working but were frustrated by the 3 kw diesel generator. The darn thing has a hand crank starter and although it would pop and cough we could not get it running. It appeared to be some sort of fuel supply problem, but take apart what we may it just would not run before we all got so tired of cranking we gave up. The dozer problem remains to be tackled. Getting the dredge on site was a big plus, as getting good volume samples is critical in deciding just where and how to set up larger scale mining operations. I'm a very cautious miner in that regard. I do not believe in proceeding with any kind of serious mining without sufficient yardage blocked out and proven in advance. Too many people think that is time wasted and just jump in and start mining, but that is why the vast majority of mines go broke. We will block out enough pay to make whatever operation we go with have a high probability of turning a good profit. Part of that will be determined by exactly what equipment gets used in the actual mining operation, which also gets determined by the sampling program.

Final lesson for this trip - if I ever loan you my detector and point you in a certain direction, you'd better head there! Both my brother and cousin got their best finds ever on this trip and I was glad to see it. The next best thing to finding a nugget or me is seeing other people find them. The happiness is contagious whenever gold is being found in our camp, no matter who is doing the finding.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

I walked a little ahead of my detecting buddy Jeff as we searched along the bulldozer trail for gold nuggets. The bulldozer had pushed little berms of material along each side of the trail as it made its way through the old tailing piles. I swung off the trail to one side where the tailing pile sloped down into the brush. Sweeping my White's MXT over a moss covered cobble pile resulted in a loud beep. I peeled the moss and cobbles back with my pick and looked down at the largest gold nugget I have ever found!

This story actually starts in 1972. That is when I purchased my first metal detector, a White's Coinmaster 4. I put in lots of hours with that detector, finding thousands of coins in Anchorage, Alaska, in the days before metal detectors became more common.

I was already doing a little gold prospecting and so I just had to try my new detector out for finding gold nuggets. I purchased a little 4 inch coil touted by White's as being the hot ticket for finding gold. They actually called it the "Gold Probe". However, after a couple outings I discovered that the detectors of the day were just not up to the task. The inability of the early units to compensate for ground mineralization made it impossible to find all but the largest nuggets. I am sorry to say that these large nuggets were very uncommon in my area, and so the chances of my finding gold with the early model detectors were slim to none.

Steve in 1973 on very first nugget hunt - Moore Creek, Alaska & White's Coinmaster 4

This early experience caused me to overlook metal detectors as a practical mining tool for many years. In fact, when my partner Dudley Benesch and I got into business in 1976 we sold metal detectors from the start but strongly downplayed their usefulness for prospecting. My standard line was "you can probably find more gold with a $5.00 gold pan than a $500.00 metal detector".

During the 1980's, I was heavily involved in gold dredging, so much so that I did if full-time for a couple of years. The amount of gold I thought I might find with a metal detector seemed trivial compared what I was producing with my suction dredges. I continued coin detecting from time to time but did not spend as much time at it as I had previously. It was at this time that stories of fabulous gold finds in Australia started to appear. My attention returned to using metal detectors to find gold nuggets, and I finally found my first nuggets with a Compass Gold Scanner Pro in 1989.

I was still selling metal detectors as a dealer and it was about 1990 that White's introduced its breakthrough Goldmaster II. At an operating frequency of 50 kHz, it was by far the most sensitive detector available for smaller gold nuggets. The Anchorage area has lots of gold but it is mostly in match head size and smaller nuggets. Nuggets weighing up to one-quarter ounce are very rare and nuggets weighing an ounce or more are almost unheard of. The Goldmaster II opened up the local area to nugget detecting with its small gold sensitivity and ease of operation. Put all this together with its bargain retail price of $499.95 and the Goldmaster II quickly became one of the fastest selling metal detectors ever. It is one of the only detectors I ever sold that quite literally could not be produced fast enough to meet demand.

I contributed to this electronic gold rush by taking my new Goldmaster II to local gold mining sites and finding thousands of gold nuggets with it. One popular site, Crow Creek Mine, had produced only small numbers of nuggets with other metal detectors. However, the Goldmaster II and its successor, the Goldmaster V/SAT, appeared be the perfect detectors for Crow Creek. The creek has only moderate mineralization and tremendous amounts of the smaller gold the White's units could find so easily. All of a sudden it seemed like gold was pouring out of the mine, all due to the introduction of the Goldmaster models.

Steve with White's Goldmaster II in 1992

Jeff was managing our Mining Department at that time, and if anything, he was even hotter than I with the Goldmaster. We were both having a great time finding gold and posting photos of our finds at the store. The Goldmaster models got so popular at Crow Creek that problems started occurring with so many people running the same frequency unit in the same area. Detectors running at the same frequency interfere with each other electronically, and it got to where people would have to take turns running the detectors at some of the more popular locations at Crow Creek. This problem was finally solved with the introduction of the Goldmaster 3 and its frequency shift control.

Despite these successes, gold dredging still occupied the majority of my free time in the 1990's. I was using a 6-inch dredge as my production unit, and the consistency with which I produced gold with it could not be matched by the more sporadic success one has with a metal detector. That, and the finds at Crow Creek and other local sites were depleting and so more and more time and effort was required to be successful detecting gold in these areas.

A couple things about my dredging bothered me however. One was that I was finding good quantities of gold but I was finding very few large nuggets. It was not until 1998 that I finally found a 1 ounce gold nugget while gold dredging. My use of larger dredging equipment was tying me down to local areas where large nuggets are very rare. I really wanted to be able to find a monster nugget like I would read about other people finding. Second, I was spending all my time going to the same nearby areas, over and over again. Days, if not weeks, were spent working in the same stretch of creek. I wanted to get out and spend more time exploring remote areas of Alaska. I became convinced that if I wanted to get serious about gold and prospecting I needed to get away from the local area.

Therefore, I made a conscious decision in 2000 to focus on metal detecting as a prospecting method instead of suction dredging. I sold my mining claims near Anchorage and my 6 inch gold dredge and invested the money in new metal detectors. I have used all the various brands over the years and found each one has strengths and weaknesses. In my opinion one key to successful nugget detecting is to have a variety of machines with differing capabilities. I invested in several makes and models of metal detectors that I use depending on particular nugget detecting tasks.

I was amazed with the results of my new strategy. Not only did I see no real decline in the amount of gold I was finding each year, but my nugget finds blew away decades of dredging results. I was finding more gold nuggets weighing over an ounce than I had thought possible. My previous record of a 1 ounce gold nugget from Crow Creek Mine was totally eclipsed by 4.95-ounce nugget from Ganes Creek in 2001. Finding that nugget was one of the biggest thrills of my life!

The real secret proved to be the freedom afforded by my metal detectors. With only a few pounds of gear to pack, it became far easier to go to remote Alaskan sites where large gold nuggets are found. It helped tremendously that I have developed many contacts with miners in my years of business and as a member of the Alaska Miners Association. These contacts are helpful when it comes to getting access to nugget producing mining claims. The fact is that most of the good locations for nugget detecting Alaska are on mining claims and so getting permission from the claim owners is critical.

Ganes Creek is in west central Alaska near the town of McGrath. Ganes Creek has produced some of the largest gold nuggets ever found in Alaska, including a 122 oz monster. The creek has a long mining history and so has many miles of tailing piles from old bucket line dredge operations, and from more recent heavy equipment operations. It was at Ganes Creek that I found my 4.95-ounce nugget and numerous other gold nuggets in the 1 to 2 ounce range in 2001.

Fall colors and old tailing piles at Ganes Creek, Alaska

With some prodding on my part the owners of Ganes Creek decided to give a "pay to detect" operation a try. Opportunities to metal detect at places like Ganes Creek are rare, especially for people from outside Alaska. As part of the effort to get the word out about the operation, I received permission to bring a couple "key players" in the detecting industry up to Ganes Creek for a short visit. The idea was that once they saw the potential firsthand they would no doubt spread the word to others.

In the spring of 2002 I decided to organize a Gold Show at Crow Creek Mine near Anchorage. We had never done this type of show in Alaska before and I thought it would be fun for all involved. Little did I know the work that goes into making a show like this come together. It proved to be a massive undertaking, but a rewarding one.

One key to a successful gold show is to try to convince manufacturer representatives into making the expensive trip to Alaska. We received a lot of support from various suppliers but that shown by White's Electronics and its Alaskan distributor Renton Coin Shop was truly exceptional. Many accessory items and gold coins were donated as prizes to be given out for various activities of the gold show. Most impressive was the latest version of the White's Goldmaster, the new GMT, which was donated as grand prize in the detector hunt held during the show. This was very fitting, as there have probably been more Goldmasters at Crow Creek over the years than any other single model of metal detector. The generous donations were greatly appreciated by everyone attending the show. I would like to offer particular thanks to Mary Gladding of Renton Coin Shop for her enthusiastic support.

Steve Houston of White's Electronics had come up for the gold show, and so I took the opportunity to arrange a trip up to Ganes Creek. Steve is an avid nugget hunter and so he jumped at the opportunity. I arranged for a visit immediately after the Gold Show ended.

Steve had never been in a small airplane before, and so the bush plane flight into Ganes Creek from McGrath was an adventure in itself for him! Having flown in small planes my whole life, I underestimate the effect swooping low over the terrain and landing on small runways has on the inexperienced flyer.

After we arrived at Ganes Creek, we did a bit of metal detecting in the immediate camp area, as quite a few gold nuggets had previously been found right around the cabins. The whole camp is built on old tailing piles that have been flattened out. After a little time spent with no results, we decided to head upstream.

The first group of 10 visitors was already at the mine, and two nuggets weighing over 5 ounces each had been found the day before. The nuggets were found just upstream of a large drainage ditch that had drawn my attention the last time I had visited the mine. The ditch is piled high on both sides with excavated material. I reasoned that the piles might contain some nuggets, since the material from the bottom of the ditch was from deep below the surface.

We started detecting the area, and in an amazingly short time, I heard Steve yell that he had found one. Sure enough, scanning the sides of one of the piles with his GMT produced a chunky 3.2 oz gold nugget! Well, that was so easy we figured there must be a bunch of nuggets along the ditch. However, as much as I tried I could not find a nugget myself, and Steve's initial find remained his only find. As if he really cared! I finally wandered away and found a small gold nugget on a large tailing pile nearby but that was it for the day.

Steve Houston with 3.2 ounce gold nugget found at Ganes Creek with White's GMT

This was a very short trip and so we only had the following day to try and find more gold. I found a few more small nuggets and Steve found none. Searching tailing piles for gold nuggets is literally like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Entire days go by with no finds, but when gold is found it tends to be worth the wait. I was grateful Steve Houston found a nugget as large as he had in our limited amount of time. It was the largest nugget he had ever found, and better yet, larger than anything his regular hunting buddies had found.

More than 30 people visited Ganes Creek in the summer of 2002. Over 10 pounds of gold was found, with many nuggets weighing over an ounce and several in the 5-ounce range. The success rate was amazing; with a large majority of the visitors able to say they found the largest gold nugget of their lives at Ganes Creek.

Still, people started to wonder if the creek was "worked out" and that all the nuggets had been found. I scoffed at this idea, as I have seen even small parks produce old coins missed by decades of diligent metal detecting. The idea that a few dozen people could find all the nuggets to be found in many square miles of tailing piles is not something experienced detectorists would worry about. To prove the point, I put the word out that I would make a visit to Ganes Creek after all the visitors had been there that summer and go find some gold.

OK, I have to admit there was a certain amount of bravado in this. The fact is that detecting tailing piles is very much a hit and miss proposition. In general, sheer hours of diligence will pay off, providing the nuggets are there to be found at all. However, there also is a bit of luck involved, and sometimes even the most dedicated person will get skunked. If it was easy we would all be out swinging a detector looking for gold nuggets for a living, but that is not the case. So, although I was talking big I certainly had my doubts about how much gold I would find.

It was late in the season when Jeff, Brian, and I made that final 2002 visit to Ganes Creek. Brian is an avid gold dredger and so his focus for the trip was to do some exploratory gold dredging. Jeff and I were both hot to go detecting for gold, however. As I noted before, Jeff is a very accomplished detectorist, and we usually have a cheerful competition going while nugget detecting.

We brought along several different detectors to try. I had my GMT but also White's new MXT model. I was intrigued with this machine that combined the basic Goldmaster circuitry with the features normally found on high-end coin detectors. I figured its exceptional target ID features might prove useful in the trashy tailing piles, and especially around the camp area. Jeff and I traded machines back-and-forth to get a feel for how the different detectors worked at Ganes Creek. Jeff in particular was in the market for new unit, and so was most interested in trying them out comparatively.

Jeff with White's MXT at Ganes Creek, Alaska

We first headed back up to that ditch area where many of the large nuggets were found, including Steve Houston's. The area had been hammered hard all summer, but we figured there might be some gold left to be found. I located a 13.8 dwt (dwt = pennyweight) nugget, and then a 3.8 dwt nugget (20 pennyweight per ounce) the first day. Jeff, although he tried in earnest, came up with no nuggets. We also tried some old tailings upstream farther, but found no more gold that day.

The second day dawned under rainy skies. We decided to stay near camp, and see if there were more nuggets waiting to be found around the cabins. I grabbed the new White's MXT, while Jeff used the GMT. The rain poured, but we stuck with it. Lots of bullets and shell casings were dug, which I consider a good sign. You cannot get all the nuggets and leave bullets in the ground. However, by the end of the day we had no nuggets. We headed up to the bench deposits above camp and found some small nuggets, just so we could say we did not get skunked. Jeff found a nice little pennyweight nugget, and I got a few smaller bits. Nothing to brag about, but at least we could say we found gold.

I have to note that I was very impressed with the MXT around camp. I used the 6" elliptical coil, and ran the unit in the relic mode. This mode, when set up a certain way, gives a high tone on non-ferrous targets, and low tone on iron targets. It was easy and efficient around camp, and all the targets I dug were non-ferrous items. It has very good trash separation with the small coil, and easy target ID with the dual tone system. The machine was great for places where trash is literally inches apart.

The weather cleared the third day. Jeff again ran the White's GMT, and I the MXT with the small coil. We started in camp, and I found a small nugget just behind the cabins. We then tried some of the dragline piles above camp near where I found my 4.95-ounce nugget in 2001. I switched the MXT to the 950 9.5" coil. Both Jeff and I found nuggets weighing several pennyweights each.

So far we were not exactly knocking down the nuggets. Frankly, we were both a bit puzzled, as our constant digging of bullets indicated nuggets were still to be found. If an area were thoroughly detected we would be digging nothing at all. Nevertheless, our nugget results were lean, and so our enthusiasm was flagging.

I am a big fan of aerial photos, and had some new ones showing an area downstream opposite the old bucketline dredge machine shop. Long rows of old bucketline tailings ran far back away from the road, and so I suggested we run down and check them for a change of pace. Jeff was running the White's GMT with the Sierra Max 14" coil, and I ran the MXT with stock 950 coil.

The more I used the MXT the more I liked it. On the cobble piles I ran in prospect mode, with full gain, minimum V/SAT setting, and in automatic ground balance. The 14.7 kHz frequency ran smoother on the mixed rocks of the cobble piles than the higher frequency GMT. High frequency detectors tend to get weak signals from mineralized rocks because of their extreme sensitivity. The MXT seems well suited for searching areas of mixed mineralization due to its lower frequency and fast automatic ground balance.

We followed an old bulldozer trail back towards the area I had spotted in the aerial photos. I concentrated on the edges of the main trail near to and in the brush. My goal was to cover obscure areas others may have missed. I finally got a good clean signal and gave a couple digs with my pick. The moss and rocks flipped back, and there lay a large gold nugget.

I did not get as excited over this one as with my 4.95 ounce nugget of the previous year, as I was not sure exactly how much the nugget weighed. Jeff, however, knew immediately it was something to jump up and down over. And he was right, as upon weighing it came in at 6.85 ounces! My largest nugget ever, and the largest found at Ganes Creek that summer. I also had the satisfaction of proving that finds always remain for those willing to look.

This particular nugget is strange, with very dark, lustrous quartz encasing a solid gold core. The quartz is almost like agate. Fingers of dendritic (leaf) gold reach up from the gold core into the quartz shell. It is a unique nugget, unlike any I have seen before. And at 6.85 ounces it gives me entry into a very exclusive club. Few people can say they have found a gold nugget weighing over one-half Troy pound without heavy machinery.

Steve with 6.85 ounce gold specimen from Ganes Creek found with White's MXT

My White's MXT had paid for itself rather spectacularly. It is hard not to like a detector that finds a big gold nugget. However, while it bench tests well on small gold, frankly it does not hold a candle to the White's GMT when it comes to very small gold under actual field conditions. If small gold is your bread and butter, the GMT is still the way to go. Not only do higher frequency detectors have an innate edge on tiny gold nuggets, but also the manual ground balance on the GMT offers better control for small gold. The MXT must be auto ground balanced, then "locked". The GB point is then fixed, but it cannot be manually adjusted from there. The GMT has both automatic and manual ground balance.

The MXT does do very well on nuggets weighing a few grains or more, and the bigger the gold gets; the less difference there is between the MXT and GMT. Frankly, for nuggets weighing in pennyweights or more, I actually prefer the MXT. It operates smoother than the GMT in mineralized ground, and has depth as good as, and maybe under some circumstances better than, the GMT. It is a great machine for large nugget hunting.

Combine that with the fact that it has a superior target ID system, with both iron readout and conductivity measurement, and you can actually do things like tell most gold nuggets from a .22 shell casing. I used the relic mode with the small coil on the MXT to work extreme trash areas to good effect. This machine has lots of potential to explore, and yet is very easy to use. Add in the fact that it has a 6.5" x 4" elliptical DD, 5.3" round concentric, and 10" x 5.5" elliptical DD coils available as options, and I think the MXT is now the machine to beat for all-around use. Coin, nuggets, relics, and jewelry... it does it all. Moreover, despite its wealth of features, the list price is only $799.95.

This article may seem like a White's ad, as I have purposely made the brand a centerpiece of the story. The fact is that I have owned and used all the major brands of detectors and continue to do so. I think all the major manufacturers make good units; Nevertheless, White's will always hold a special place in my heart as being the first brand I ever owned. It was that White's Coinmaster 4 that got me started metal detecting all those years ago. To come full circle 30 years later and find the largest nugget of my life (so far) with a White's detector is particularly fitting.

You may contact me online at the DetectorProspector Forum if you have questions regarding this article.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

It's now the middle of winter as I write these words. It has been one of the busiest years of my life, and so I've fallen off on keeping up with my Journal entries. Time to do some catch-up.

My father Bud Herschbach and partner John Pulling and I took the time to make a few final visits to Moore Creek in September and October before the snow set in. We spent quite a bit of our time on claims work, staking additional ground and readying the property for winter. We now have a total of ten 160 acre claims and three forty acre claims covering what we believe to be the ground with the best potential. Although there is gold on all these claims, only more testing will determine which claims will be worth further development and possible mining.

The weather ranged from cold, dreary, rainy fall days to beautiful, clear blue days. Freezing temperatures at night have a bonus in that the mosquito population drops of to levels that are actually bearable in the late fall. Some of the best times to be in Interior Alaska are early spring and late fall because of this. I've always enjoyed fall, with all the colors, and that cool air in the morning seems to add a little extra zest to the days. It's just too bad that falls are usually so short in Alaska, although this year it did extend out later than normal. We really did not get winter weather until November.

John was particularly anxious to do some sampling with his highbanker that we flew in to use for test work. We set it up at the edge of the large tailing pond just above camp where we have previously found gold metal detecting and panning. The area has been mining, but the miners did not excavate far enough into the decomposed bedrock, and so digging the rotten bedrock up with shovels was showing some nice gold with pans. We decided running a little more volume through a highbanker would be instructive. There is a fairly large unmined bench deposit at this location that has good potential.

Moore Creek claim marker

We ran a couple yards of material through the highbanker, with good results. Since the cream of the crop has already been skimmed off here, however, more work remains to be done to determine the potential of the site. A larger volume of virgin material from the bench needs to be tested, but that will have to wait for 2004 after we get all our permits in order. For now, it was certainly encouraging to see some gold. More sampling in the immediate area of the cabin at camp returned similar results where the old miners did not excavate enough bedrock to get all the gold.

We also made time to do some metal detecting, of course. My father used his Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ, plus tried my Minelab GP 3000 and Garrett Infinium. John experimented with the Troy Shadow X5, Fisher Impulse, and Fisher Gold Bug 2. This trip I favored my Garrett Infinium. I did use my Minelab GP 3000 also but I wanted to give the Infinium a good try at Moore Creek. Although I believe the GP 3000 with its large coils has superior depth on large nuggets, I like the Garrett for working in the rain (it's totally waterproof) and in thick brush. It does not get the depth of the Minelab but is better than the VLFs so it falls in the middle performance wise. In any case, while I knew I would do well using the Minelab, I decided to just stick with the Infinium the majority of the time just to see what it could do.

Testing the bench deposits with a highbanker

As you can see I usually hip mount the unit so there is less weight on my arm. About the only time I would use the unit in one piece would be if I were doing some sort of work where I was constantly picking the detector up and setting it back down again. Sometimes I'll work a likely location by spending quite a bit of time removing rubble or scraping off surface material with a rake, then taking a few minutes to scan the area with the detector. Then back to digging or scraping. In situations like this it is nice to have a unit you can pick up, use a few minutes, and set back down again, without having to strap on a control box or battery pack. But for normal use the hip mount is the way to go, as the waterproof control box with it's included batteries is a bit heavy for long hours of use.

Garrett has released a coil cover for the 14" coil which came in handy, as the open coil design would normally like to hang up on low lying brush. I also used the new 10" x 5" DD elliptical coil which is very light in weight, and more pleasant to use than the epoxy filled stock coil. The 14" coil balances well with the unit assembled in one piece, but it is "nose heavy" when the control box is hip mounted as you no longer have the control box to balance out the weight of the coil. I really wish Garrett or a third party would produce a large coil for the Infinium that is not epoxy filled. A coil like the Coiltek UFO 24" x 12" open-spoke design I use with my GP 3000 would be ideal.

Steve with Garrett Infinium at Moore Creek

The smaller coil worked great around the base of bushes and around rocks. In general I favored the larger coil though as it covers more ground and I'm certain it hits larger nuggets a bit deeper than the smaller coil. The smaller coil is a little "hotter" than the stock coil but this means it also tends to give a weak signal on some hot rocks that the larger coil ignores. Still, it is a great little coil, and is the one to use for tight areas and for slightly smaller nuggets than the 14" coil may be good for.

The Infinium ran quiet in the mixed hot rocks at Moore Creek, with only a couple that gave a signal with the 14" coil. Hi-lo tones were either gold or slivers of steel. Larger pieces of steel and iron, including nails, gave a lo-hi tone. Theoretically a large enough nugget might give a lo-hi tone but all mine have been steel so far or aluminum cans. I pretty much dug everything but as I do so I'm finding my faith in the dual tone id is growing. If trash was thick I'd ignore lo-hi tones and be pretty confident of not missing gold. But always remember, that no discrimination system is 100% accurate, and so if the amount of trash is acceptable, digging it all is the only sure way not to leave a nugget behind.

The results with the Infinium were seven nuggets totaling 4.11 ounces of gold. The largest nugget is 1.5 oz and the second largest 1 oz. I did find one nugget with the GP 3000 that weighed 1.26 oz. By the way, although I'm calling these nuggets, they are really more properly termed gold quartz specimens (in my opinion). These have been cleaned to remove the rust staining they pick up from sitting in the soil for ????? years and so reflect the actual color of the quartz better than my previous pictures. The enclosing rock is grayish quartz and sometimes bits of the quartz monzonite that the quartz veins are eroding out of. Quartz monzonite is a "salt & pepper" looking type of igneous rock, much like granite in appearance. I did better than I expected, as looking for gold was secondary to claim staking and winterizing the camp. But my hot streak from my previous visit continued, and I ended up with some nice nuggets. One nice thing about larger nuggets is that I actually only found eight nuggets total... but they added up to 5.37 ounces.

5.37 ounce gold specimens found at Moore Creek with Garrett Infinium

Results with the other detectors helped confirm this is an area for ground balancing pulse induction (PI) detectors like the Minelab SD/GP detectors or the Infinium. The Troy X5 was not happy at all with the hot rocks. I was most interested in Johns use of the Fisher Impulse. The Impulse is similar to the many PI detectors on the market for diving use. In theory they can be used for prospecting, and many people ask about them for just that reason. But the lack of ground balance means they actually do not do well for prospecting mineralized areas, and the Impulse hit the rocks at Moore Creek nearly as much as the VLF detectors. The Lobo and Gold Bug 2 were useable primarily due to their iron discrimination modes. In all-metal they were extremely noisy, but set with iron rejection cranked in they worked fairly well, although with lots of pops and snaps of hot rocks breaking through the discrimination. Luckily the noises are discernable from the clean sound of a gold nugget. The biggest problem is that any nuggets near or under hot rocks are just plain going to get missed with VLF detectors at Moore Creek.

My father scored a couple nuggets totaling 0.65 oz with his Tesoro Lobo and John got about 2.5 oz with his Fisher Gold Bug 2. Both are now looking to get the Infinium for next year. The Minelab is a fine machine, but they are more comfortable with the price/performance ratio of the Infinium. Lots of bang for under $1000 and simple to operate. So it looks like there will be lots of Infinium gold to report from Moore Creek next summer. I'm sure I'll be using my GP 3000 as my primary unit, with the Infinium filling in the niches. It's the machine for sure for rainy days, and I think I'll even jump in some tailing ponds with mask and snorkel and nugget hunt underwater. For me the GP 3000 and Infinium are a great match for Moore Creek, each excelling where the other is weak.

We finally had to give up on detecting in September and get all our final claim staking done. It is a lot of work but compared to the old days it is easy due to the ability to use GPS while staking state mining claims. Our final days in early October were really nice. I like those crisp fall mornings, color on all the leaves, and the bugs basically all gone. We staked up new claims plus re-filed on the original prospecting sites that we purchased to convert them to mining claims. These prospecting sites constitute the core property at Moore Creek and since prospecting sites are only valid for a short time it was time to get them converted to claim status. Then it finally came time to wrap up the camp for winter and go home one last time.

As I noted at the start of this entry, it's now the middle of winter. All I can do now is work on permits and wait for spring to come to Alaska... and dream about the gold yet to be found!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

Well, I'm back from 8 days at Moore Creek. It was a great trip, and one from which I have returned with a certain feeling of relief. The fact is that I got myself and my partners into this property based on my knowledge of the ground from old reports and previous visits. But until now all the gold I've ever found at Moore Creek amounts to about an ounce. Everything in the old records told me the gold should be there, but we had just not had much luck finding anything significant. But I've also not spent much time trying.

My father flew out with my cousin Bob and I flew out with our friend Mike. We had lots of other stuff to do while out there this week. We staked some more claims, cleared brush... even put up a real windsock on the runway! We also did some test work panning, highbanking, and a little dredging. But I finally did make time to do plenty of detecting this trip.

The result was more gold than I've ever found in a week before. Just over 23 ounces of chunky nuggets - almost two Troy pounds of gold! My fear that just maybe the old-timers had done a better job than I thought have now been relieved.

I can attribute the success in no small part to my Minelab GP 3000. I've used the Minelabs for a few years, but had never found the spot to really clean up with one. Either the gold would be too small, like around Anchorage, or way too much trash, like at Ganes Creek. I did have some success in the Fortymile but did not get into those multi-ounce nuggets that really add up.

Old mine tailings and pond at Moore Creek, Alaska

At Moore Creek I've finally found a place where my Minelab really sings. Good sized gold, minimal trash (except a few areas), and ground VLF detectors do poorly on. The bedrock and ground matrix is a fairly neutral shale rock. But mixed with the shale are both very positive and very negative hot rocks. A combination that generates a tremendous amount of noise from a VLF detector.

The only way machines like the my Fisher Gold Bug 2 or my father's Tesoro Lobo would work quietly would be to use the iron id modes. This would more or less eliminate the false signals from the rocks. But any gold under or very near the rocks would be lost and performance is not what it could be.

I ran my GP 3000 with the Coiltek 12"x24" mono coil, giving me a double edge. Not only does the Minelab ignore and see through the various hot rocks, the big coil covers more ground and gets better depth on large nuggets than smaller coils. The GP 3000 is not an inexpensive machine, but I paid for it several times over last week. It will be getting a lot more use at Moore Creek in the future.

3.47 ounce gold specimen found with Minelab GP 3000 - fresh out of the ground with rinse in nearby pond

A closer view of 3.47 oz gold specimen from Moore Creek - my first chunk over an ounce at Moore Creek

As you can see from photos below the nuggets are very coarse and many contain lots of quartz. Quite a few are sections of quartz vein shot through the centers with cores of nearly solid gold. The largest nugget, the white piece in the upper right hand corner, pretty much looks like a quartz rock seen from either side. But seen on edge it has a 1/2" thick layer of gold running through it. I'll be doing specific gravity tests on many of these nuggets to find out the gold to quartz ratios and will report them here later. The total weight of that particular piece is 3.47 Troy ounces.

My favorite nugget is probably the 3.15 ounce piece pictured below. It has darker quartz that runs from deep reddish brown to almost black. Between the color and the pitting it looks a lot like a gold meteorite. It's thicker and rounder than the other gold and appears to come from a different source. The 3.5 ounce specimen above is more typical of Moore Creek - a thick layer of gold with a skin of white quartz on two sides. These are chunks of extremely rich gold veins that have broken out of the source nearby and are now scattered down the creek.

3.15 ounce gold specimen found at Moore Creek with GP 3000

The weather was great, the mosquitoes not bad, and the gold fantastic. It's certainly enhanced our feelings about the claims, as at least some of the tailing piles obviously have some significant gold in them. Some of them may be worth reprocessing.

Here is the Coiltek 12"x24" UFO coil along with a 0.55 ounce nugget I just excavated. It really puts a smile on my face digging these things up! The UFO coil is very nice. Very light for it's size due to the open spoke design. In brush you need the coil cover (comes with) to avoid hanging up on sticks. My favorite thing about it is that it pinpoints like a dream. Just drag the tip of the coil pointed straight down over the target and you get a sharp signal off the tip. The narrow design works better in the excavated holes than the round coils.

24" x 12" Coiltek "UFO" mono coil for Minelab detectors

I actually found almost all iron gave a low tone with the unit as opposed to a high tone for the gold, but a large enough nugget will also give a low tone, so I just dig it all. Luckily, this is not too much of a burden at Moore Creek. I only abandoned one target giving me a low tone since the last few were all iron, but I'll go back and get it someday when I'm not as tired. The combo ignored 99% of the hot rocks, but some were so hot compared to the ground I got a faint signal with the mono coil. Luckily these were always shallow isolated rocks that needed no more than a kick to eliminate them.

I can't overemphasize enough how this really is a dream of a lifetime for me... and I know it is for many. I've been involved in various mining claims since the 1970's, but it was on local creeks like Stetson Creek, Cooper Creek, Canyon Creek, and then Mills Creek. They were all "working man's claims" suitable for dredging but just not the kinds of places that are destined to knock your socks off with gold. Good stuff, but you really have to work for it. And the chances of finding "the big one" are nil. In all my years on the Kenai Peninsula I have found only one nugget that is just shy of an ounce.

No, what I've always wanted was someplace that I might find larger gold, and someplace I might really be able to mine. I've come close a couple times, and in fact nearly ended up with Moore Creek back in 1998. It would have involved taking advantage of a paperwork snafu by the legitimate owners, and so I backed off. It has paid off as it was my actions at that time that has finally put the property in my hands now. On good terms with all involved. After over 30 years of searching and dreaming it looks like I've found that magic place. I have to tell you that last week, as I sat on top of a tailing pile in the sun with a pocket full of nuggets... well, the feeling was truly indescribable.

Anyway, hopefully some of you that do not have the opportunity that I have had can at least live a bit of the dream as I keep the story going. Or maybe it will motivate a few to keep pursuing the dream!

Are there mining claims for sale? Well, there always are claims for sale. Most people, including myself, would probably prefer to stake our own claims. The problem is finding good ground open to staking. It's easy to find "OK" ground to stake, but to find real serious mining ground, like a Moore Creek, just sitting open waiting to be claimed is very difficult. Difficult as in time consuming. You basically have to make a job of claims research and constantly looking for a prime piece of ground to lapse for some weird reason, like the owner dying with no heir. But most really good ground stays under claim and in many cases stays within families for generations.

Long story short is that buying good ground will get you there quicker. The problem there is of course money. Good ground does not come cheap. In mining claims you often do not get what you pay for. Many poor and worthless claims are sold for way too much money on a regular basis. On the other hand you will have to pay well to get good ground. In that sense you do get what you pay for.

Frankly, that has been part of my problem. If I had been offered Moore Creek even just a few years ago I would not have had the money, although I still could have found others to invest to make it happen. Despite being a business owner I really am just a working stiff making a living, and running two daughters through college had me totally broke until very recently. I've just been getting my head above water, so the offer to sell came at the right time for me. Even so I needed others as this kind of stuff just costs way more than I have to spend by myself. I'm not willing to disclose what we paid for the property, but all I will say is that you'd better be prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for decent claims with equipment. And if you are looking at patented ground, do not be surprised to be looking at millions of dollars.

Detecting tailing piles - note parallel paths walked on piles from top to bottom - "corkscrewing"

You can find mining claims listed for sale online at Mining Claims For Sale to get an idea of price ranges. In general, claims in the Anchorage area that are suitable for small scale dredging and such, the kind of ground where you might get an ounce of gold in a day once in a while with a 4" or 5" dredge, run from about $5000 to $15,000 per 20 acre claim. I've bought into a couple of these type claims in the past and was happy with the results.

As soon as you start talking larger properties with real potential for heavy equipment mining the sky is the limit. It varies wildly due to things like how rich the ground is, access issues, potential restrictions on mining, amount of equipment included, etc. Patented ground, which is in fact private property, carries the biggest premium, as you can use it for more than just mining.

One big thing to really watch these days is the "mining restrictions" issue. The Mills Creek claims where good ole Bob(AK) is getting all the beautiful gold have real potential for heavy equipment mining. I think a little hoe and trommel operation in there could make a good go of it. The problem is a rabid anti-mining attitude in the Chugach National Forest. In theory those folks are supposed to support mining under the multi-use concept of our National Forests. That is the way it was as recently as 20 years ago. But it seems they have decided National Forest means National Park, and I've heard lots of stories of small miners being bullied and lied to in the last few years. A guy that knows the law and is willing to stand his ground could mine in the Forest, but they would be waiting to pounce on the smallest error.

The feeling today is that State mining claims are the way to go, because Alaska still looks to mining for revenue and jobs. The attitude varies somewhat depending on who is governor, but in general at its worst it is still better than the Feds. The only place Federal claims may be ok are those way out in the middle of unrestricted BLM administered land.

I do have to note on partnerships - they can work. In fact, I've always had partners on all the claims I've been involved with. It helps to know the people, but do not rely on that. A good set of written rules, agreed on in advance by all, can go a long way towards avoiding problems. Do not avoid discussing hard issues, like what to do about a disagreeable partner. If these things are not clearly spelled out in advance you can expect trouble. Even then you may have trouble, but with a formal set of rules that is agreed upon, signed, notarized, etc. you have a legally binding contract to handle disputes.

The good news is that the process of developing such a set of rules will bring all involved to a common understanding and avoid the problems. Most issues simply develop due to a lack of understanding between partners about certain issues.

Here is a simple example. I have three partners. I have by far the most experience nugget detecting. It can be expected I will find more gold detecting. I actually worried about being too successful, and so a guideline I came up with is:

1. 50% of all gold found with a detector goes into the "group claims fund". Division is by weight as decided by the finder.

2. 25% of all gold found by motorized equipment such as dredges or highbankers goes into the group fund.

3. All gold found hand mining, such as in panning or sluicing, may be kept by the finder.

The rules apply to everyone, including visitors like my cousin. Although in his case (he found a 1/2 ounce nugget) I'm covering his percentage out of my finds.

Now why would I come up with a deal like this when I know I'm likely to find the most gold detecting? Fairness. Be fair with your partners. We all have invested equal sums, but we all have varying abilities and time. If partner A looks on while partner B is finding a bunch of gold on "his" claims and partner A is getting nothing... well, let's just say that smells like potential trouble to me.

So I find about two pounds of gold. One pound of my choosing will go in the claims fund. As a group we decide what to do with the fund. We could split it later four ways, in which case I get 25% back. More likely we will sell out of it to raise funds for claim and permit fees and other expenses.

This system in a way costs me potential gold finds I may make. But I simply feel better knowing everyone is seeing benefits from their investment. It makes people happy to see the other guy succeed, rather than laying the groundwork for possible resentment. And let's face it, the tables could turn, I could be busy on other projects, and still seeing some gold come my way from a partner who scores at the claims.

In the other claim partnerships I've been in it's been keep all you find, and that can work well also. Or all gold can go in the pot, expenses covered, profits split. You just have to look at the particular situation and really do your best to be fair to all involved. Look out for partners that are totally in it for themselves... they will be trouble. Everyone in a partnership needs to be looking out for the group. You want team players, and as miners are rugged individualists this is the root of most problems.

Just over 23 ounces gold specimens found by Steve with GP 3000 at Moore Creek, Alaska

One other stipulation is that since we are truly and seriously doing exploration and evaluation, all finds must be noted as to location, nature of deposit, amount found, etc. I'm collecting and mapping this info, and already know of several particular tailing piles that I believe have literally hundreds of ounces of gold in them. Information collected like this is of immense value and should not be overlooked. If you get a group of partners that get competitive and secretive about their finds this kind of information will be difficult to develop.

Testing is what it is all about. I'm amazed at how many people just get ground and start mining. And then are surprised when they go broke. Real mining should never commence until proper testing has proven it will pay. Too many miners figure the expense of testing is throwing money away they could just use for mining. But to commence mining without proper testing is not mining... it's gambling.

Here is another guideline regarding buying mining claims. Never invest a single dollar that you cannot afford to just walk away from. Especially in partnerships. Failure is a lot less painful if you are not hocked to the hilt. Partnerships are easier to handle if you always know you can just walk away from a bad situation.

But enough of that talk. We are off and running on our new claims at Moore Creek. Everything looks great so far, what with a pile of chunky gold specimens recovered already. There is a lot of work to do yet, and a lot more test work remains before we really know just how much potential the ground holds. I cannot help be be optimistic at this point that we are really onto something at Moore Creek.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

Well, I've been kind of quiet lately about a trip I took last week. But the papers have been filed and so now I can spill the beans.

This is a long story, so bear with me. There is a creek in the McGrath area that I have been aware of for 30 years. I first visited Moore Creek in 1973, actually as a detour from Flat, Alaska. I had researched out the Flat area as being a likely place to look for gold, and talked my father into flying me there. But when we got over the area there was all kinds of obvious activity below and so we turned back towards Anchorage in disappointment. On the way back we flew over some old mine tailings that looked inactive. We landed and poked around a bit. My father and I panned nice quantities of coarse, quartzy gold... and the place has had my attention ever since. I actually refer to it in another story I have online but the reference passed unnoticed by most. Moore Creek is the first place I ever tried to use a metal detector to find a gold nugget!

An old-timer named Don Harris held the ground for decades. We got to know Don and visited the mine several times over the years. I let it be known that I was interested if he ever decided to sell the place. I was dismayed when he sold the ground a couple years ago to someone else but understood as it was someone he knew well in the McGrath area. But a few weeks ago I got a call from the new owner. Family issues demanded he leave the area and so he wanted to sell, and he had been advised by Don to give me a call. I jumped at it. The price was out of my range, so a limited liability company was formed by myself and three partners to buy the claims.

Large gold specimen found by previous mine owner at Moore Creek

We got the core 480 acres but some of the surrounding ground had lapsed over the years. I went in last week with my father (one of my partners), and we spent 95% of the time on claims work, including staking 4 more claims comprising 520 acres of ground. So the total property is now 1000 acres. I did find time to prospect a bit, and found a 1/4 oz nugget with my detector and some other gold, but I had little time to devote to metal detecting this trip. Enough time for that down the road.

Anyway, we got the additional ground staked, and paperwork fired off to Fairbanks via Express Mail as soon as we returned to Anchorage. So the new claims are now recorded and I can relax a bit.

Aerial view of old mine workings at Moore Creek, Alaska

Why have I been interested in this ground so long? Well, it has produced over 60,000 ounces of gold by rather conservative estimates. The creek has a long history, and the information on the early years is sparse. A nugget over 100 ounces was found in the old days, but recent times have seen nuggets of up to 20 ounces. The kicker for me is that the gold is extremely rough, much rougher than even Ganes Creek gold. Lots of quartzy nuggets, and many that are just sections out of thin, super rich gold veins. I can just smell the hardrock gold! This was driven home by the chunk of quartz vein shown below which the previous owner found metal detecting on the claims.

But unlike Ganes the hardrock source has a been narrowed down to a very small target area. The source lies uphill of the creek, and a couple small veins have been uncovered. Battle Mountain moved in to do drilling work in the 1980's, but claims disputes kept them from the actual work and then the price of gold collapsed. The ground never was drilled So while the hardrock is there it has seen minimal exploration. Until the hardrock prospect is drilled it will never be known how much gold remains in the hill. The big question is whether there is substantial hardrock gold still in place, or has most of it eroded to form the creek placers? Nobody knows the answer to that... yet. I've got the whole hillside staked and hope to find some of the answers eventually.

My main goal was to just get the ground for now. We have already started cleaning up the camp from years of neglect and clearing the inevitable alders that have grown over trails and such. But we will stay low key and simply develop and explore for some time, doing lots of sampling and getting a feel for the potential of the ground. I'm curious how much of the quartzy gold was lost by the old miners into the tailings, and if their old workings are worth re-mining. There is some potential for virgin ground that needs to be nailed down. And the big question is the hardrock. All good questions that will take lots of sampling to get answers.

So there you are. I ditched my last claims as they were tying me down and I wanted to be more free to bounce around the state. Now I'm tied down again, and the future will no doubt see me spending most of my free time at Moore Creek.

Now you know why I was not back at Ganes Creek this summer. Though Ganes Creek is just 40 miles away. If you draw a line from Ganes Creek to Donlin Creek, another big new strike in Alaska, Moore Creek is midway between on the same mineral trend. Good neighbors to have! If you are interested a Geologic Report on Moore Creek is available in pdf format at http://www.dggs.alaska.gov/webpubs/dggs/pr/text/pr096.PDF 

So I'm a very excited guy right now. But also mourning the fact that my trips to Nome and the Coldfoot area have once again been shelved. Just not enough time...

For now we are just doing claims improvements and exploration. We need to get established and get a better feel for the potential. There is a lot of work to be done upgrading the facilities. Item #1 is the airstrip. It's about 1400 feet, just enough for a 206 but scary for a 207. Even the 206 is pushing it somewhat if the wind is unfavorable. I just got back from a meeting with some miner friends and they have talked me into getting a permit to lengthen the runway. Did I mention I have a couple of old D9 cats? So I'm rounding up the paperwork and getting the application in for that. I'll probably just go an APMA for five years for low-level exploration activities. Luckily the current state political environment is quite favorable compared to previous years and this should be no major problem, aside from those normally associated with filing for permits.

View looking up old overgrown airstrip at Moore Creek Mine, Alaska

There are existing cabins in place that I need to get approval to use in the APMA. We own them and their contents, but existing cabins are a sticky issue on state land. Technically the state wants them removed at the end of mining activities. But as operations are ongoing and open-ended at the moment it's mostly just a matter of getting proper permits to use the cabins for now. The theory is we own the cabins and contents but do not have permission to have them on State land yet! So I'm getting up to speed on all the ins and outs of state claim ownership. In general, it's considered far better than owning federal claims nowadays, as the state looks at claims and mining as a revenue source to be more or less encouraged. The feds seem more inclined to just make mining claims go away.

Setting up the LLC (Limited Liability Company) was really easy. Every state has it's own process, but it's basically the same. In Alaska you go the the Alaska Banking, Securities, and Corporations website and download the application. It is all of two pages. Fill it out, and file with a $250 filing fee. It's somewhat like a business license as you have to renew every couple years. An LLC is a cross between a partnership and a corporation. You manage it like a partnership but it affords you most of the legal protections against liability of a corporation. You also need an operating agreement to really cover yourself against things like partners dying, etc. Generic agreements can be had and modified to suit. Your liability is essentially limited to what you have invested in the LLC, in this case our claims. If it turned out we had an EPA toxic waste site on our hands we could walk away. We would lose what we invested in the claims, but they could not come after my house or my business. At least, that's the theory!

Getting the LLC set up was a key first step. With this done a business checking account was the next step. Monies were deposited by the LLC members, and the claims purchased using a Quit Claim Deed for Mining Claims Form found at the DNR website. This form must be filled out and notarized, then filed with the Recorder's Office. We executed a second Quit Claim Deed on all rights to structures, tools, equipment on the claims. Exclusions were noted on some items the old owners want to retrieve.

That done, the ground was examined for potential claims on surrounding land. These claims were staked using Alaska's new MTRSC forms located at the DNR website. A factsheet on the process is found at is also found there. A copy of the form is put on the NE #1 corner of each claim while staking. Our claims are located in the Mt. McKinley Recording District, and that means documents are recorded in Fairbanks. Kind of silly in this day and age. But that's the way it is. A copy of the claims form is filed with the Recorder's Office, in this case via Registered Express Mail. You actually have 45 days to file the paperwork but why delay? I always fear paper stakers mucking up the process and so I want to get on record ASAP.

Old cabins at Moore Creek Mine, Alaska

The only part of the whole process I found confusing was the filing fees. Since all the paperwork for four claims was being filed at once, was it $15 for the first page, and $3 for each additional page? Each claim form had a plat copy attached with existing and new claims plotted, so each claim had two pages - eight total. I finally called the Recorders Office and the very nice lady that answered told me $15 for each claim form of one page, plus $3 for each attached page. So it was $15x4=$60 plus $3x4=$12 for a total of $72. I also paid $2 per filing, another $8, to have copies returned immediately. I was told I did not need to pay for postage for this but I enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope anyway.

Rental fees are also due on new claims. You can pay at a later date but have the option of paying at the time of filing if the calculation form with the MTRSC Form is filled out. I elected to pay the fees at time of filing. The initial Alaska rental fee is $25 per 40 acres. We filed three 160 acre claims and one 40 acre claim so the initial fee was $325. The fun part about that is the fees expire in September and must be repaid by the end on November for next year. The only way to avoid this was to wait until after September 1st to file the new claims, but we did not want to wait that long. Besides the risk of someone else staking the ground weather gets very dicey in September in Alaska and we might have access problems.

The MTRSC system is sweet. You basically stake claims by the quarter section (160 acres) or quarter-quarter section (40 acres). The old claim system can still be used for claims where section corners do not fit the actual deposit well, but in this case it was fine. The advantage is that it is easy to pre-map the claims, and calculate Latitude/Longitude coordinates for the corners. This is all done in advance, claim forms filled out, etc. I had all the claim corners input as waypoints in my GPS. So once you get on the ground you use your GPS to get to each corner. I also had little metal tags prefilled out with corner identification info for each corner. Doing this all in advance at home saves a lot of frustration in the rain and the brush!

GPS is fine for claim staking... you are not doing an actual survey. My Garmin would get me close but when you get to the spot a GPS gets flakey and you find you can't quite get a fix within the last 40 feet. It does not matter. Just get on location and if you are in the right terrain find the best close tree to use as a corner post. I had to actually dig posts in at a couple spots but most of my corners ended up being trees. The marked corner on the ground is the actual legal corner, not the GPS coordinate, so keep this in mind when placing the actual corner.

So the hardest part was just doing it. I scoped the corners by aerial photos, but reality on the ground is harder than when you are looking at aerial photos. It all looks so easy when looking at the photo, but get on the ground and thick brush and wet areas make it more fun. Still, we are not talking a vast number of claims and distances here, and since I had plenty of time I took one day to do two claims and another day to do the other two.

So that's it up to this point. I'm now looking over the Annual Placer Miners Application found at the DNR website to proceed to the next step.

I did do some detecting, almost as much to find out where the old trails were as much as to go find gold. Here are the few nuggets I found. The largest, at 4.7 pennyweight (20 pennyweight per Troy ounce) was off the top of a large tailing pile well below camp. Just like at Ganes Creek. It's fairly quartzy but thick with gold. The next is about a pennyweight and solid gold and came off bedrock just above camp. The smaller ones all came off bedrock at the uppermost workings above camp.

A few nuggets found on claim staking trip

The ground is exactly the opposite of Ganes for detecting. The bedrock is fairly neutral, but the cobbles are strongly negative and positive. So when ground balanced to the background you get both big "boings" off negative rocks and strong positive gold-like signals off positive rocks. I had a Fisher Gold Bug 2 and my father was using his Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ, both of which we have used with great success at Ganes Creek just a few miles away. But here at Moore Creek the ground noise was such that we had to use the detectors in their iron rejection modes just to operate. The iron id systems rejected the rock signals, but the signals were so powerful that the machines clicked and blipped constantly. Still, you can tell a good signal from these hot rock overloads with no problem

Anyway, there was little time for detecting this last trip. I'll be headed back the first week of August to give it a more serious workout, so I'll have a better idea after that as to the detecting potential of the ground. There are old detector holes scattered about, but other than a couple nuggets I have no idea what they were finding. All the holes were very shallow indicating older, less powerful detectors were used. I'll be using my Minelab GP 3000 here in the future as it is obvious the hot rocks are a real issue at Moore Creek, and the GP 3000 deals with difficult ground better than any other detector made.

I've been inundated with inquiries and rumors regarding our intent for these claims. Everyone assumes it is intended as a Ganes Creek style operation. It actually was not the intent in acquiring the claims. The real thing that happened here was a great opportunity arising and being taken advantage of. While we have discussed the possibility of a Ganes style operation there are issues with the State on doing a non-mining business on mining claims. As in... you can't. So to just advertise out as a tourist operation is a no-no. State mining claims are for mining.

That is not to say that metal detecting is not a legitimate form of mineral extraction. Obviously I can use a metal detector to efficiently recover nuggets from tailings that would prove uneconomic if mined by traditional methods. I could hire a guy to look for gold with a metal detector if I thought it would pay (and I could trust him!). Mining also has a long history of work being done for a share of the final cleanup, and so percentage deals are a legitimate form of mining. I am a professional detectorist and have made quite a few miners happy splitting my finds with them 50/50 and locating potential mineable ground at the same time. It's not recreational, it's mining and prospecting. It's all in the intent.

Old Northwest dragline parked on Moore Creek property

But I digress. The Moore property has tremendous mining potential. The Iditarod-Nixon fork Fault is one of the most important mineralized gold structures in Alaska. The Iditarod Mining District is the fourth largest gold producer in Alaska at 1.5 million ounces. There is a high potential on the remaining placer resources at Moore Creek and good potential for the hardrock. In fact, the hardrock is what has my main interest. The placers may simply serve as a way to keep the property active while exploring for hardrock. I have one located vein on the property, but it takes more than that to prove a mineable deposit. Basically, it takes drilling, not an inexpensive thing to do in Alaska.

The immediate goal is to clean up the access and start sampling of the placers interspersed with hardrock prospecting. The vein has been traced for about 300 feet but both ends are covered by topsoil and brush, so trying to establish it's overall length is an obvious early step. It needs more assay work to determine it's tenor. I really do not think this vein is THE source I'm after, however. What you need these days is lots and lots of veins in a fairly large area to make it mineable by open pit methods.

So people need not hold their breath waiting for some big announcement about a Ganes style operation at Moore Creek. It's not impossible something like that may be worked out someday, but for now we have other plans for Moore Creek. The more we talk about it the more excited we get. My partner Dudley is already shopping for dozers and excavators and getting shipping costs. This guy is getting gold fever! My father called today all excited about using simple seismic or ground penetrating radar to search for deep channels in the main streambed and then firing up the churn drill to sample.

Big picture factors are playing into this also. The economic structure of the U.S. is getting shaky (big deficits soon to be followed by the printing of more money) and so the future of gold is looking brighter. Inflationary times are always good for commodity prices. The Donlin deposit is looking more like a go all the time, and if so we could just find ourselves with a road system and a world class mill nearby. The Kuskokwim region could explode development-wise over the next few years. These are good times to be sitting on a gold mine, and the Iditarod area is a good place for that mine to be.

Anyway, I'm working on my Annual Placer Miners Application (APMA) now, and hope to file it soon. The APMA is a single application that is then sent to all the appropriate agencies for approval (and no doubt additional requirements) and it is a real nice system. You do not have to chase down separate forms and make separate applications with a bunch of different agencies. They can cover you for up to 5 years, which is what I'll be shooting for. They can also be amended as needed. Once I get it filed I'll keep everyone up-to-date as to how long it takes and what problems crop up.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

This ended up being one real busy trip. I blew out of here about 7PM last Friday night and got to Mentasta by midnight. I sacked out in the front seat of my truck, and was back on the road by 5:30AM. Had breakfast in Tok, then on to Chicken to deliver gold pans to Sue Wiren in "downtown Chicken".

Then off to Boundary at the Canadian border. I spent several hours chasing down miners to get permission to hunt land. Permission had been lined up in advance from a couple but one in particular I was trying to find. He was around, but I kept missing him. It was worthwhile as I got to talk to a couple other guys in the area. The area looks interesting so once I get permission I will have to head back up for another try. I finally headed to one of the fallback locations I had lined up, and by 10PM had found just over an ounce of gold with my new Minelab GP 3000. The largest nugget was just shy of 1/4 oz and the rest were nice chunky pieces. The area was pretty brushy and so I ran the 11" DD coil instead of something larger. I like the GP 3000... it ran smooth as silk and lacks the faint "warble" of earlier Minelab units.

Steve with Minelab GP 3000 hunting gold in Fortymile area, Alaska

I camped out in the truck again, and was up early again the next morning. By afternoon I had just under an ounce of gold with the GP. I wanted to hit the magic one ounce mark and so grabbed my White's MXT with 10" elliptical DD coil and headed back to the spots where I had found gold with the GP. I found another pennyweight of smaller nuggets that put me over the ounce mark.

I had to meet my father and brother at the Chicken airstrip by 5PM and so I hightailed it back to town. They were there when I arrived. My father had flown up while my brother and sister-in-law had driven up. We loaded up the plane and flew over the hill to Napoleon Creek to visit Judd and his son David.

"Downtown" Chicken, Alaska

My brother had never detected gold before so I hooked him up with the MXT to start with. But as usual his beginners ear interpreted the threshold ground noises as signals. Nugget detecting requires more expertise in interpreting signals than most other types of detecting, especially when using VLF detectors. So I set him up with the GP 3000 instead. The Minelab SD/GP detectors are Pulse Induction (PI) detectors and by virtue of their design essentially ignore ground mineral and mineralized rock signals. What this means is they generally do not have a variation in the faint threshold sound unless an actual target is under the coil. This can be much easier for a beginner than learning the sounds a VLF detector puts out in highly mineralized ground. The GP 3000 does have a lot of control settings that can overwhelm a beginner, but using the suggested stock settings works just fine. I made a few extra adjustments for Tom (my brother) and sent him detecting.

And he started finding nuggets! I always get a kick out of helping someone detect their first nuggets, and it was just that much better in that it was my brother. He decided he really liked the Minelab. Still, to prove a point I grabbed the White's MXT, and started finding about two nuggets for every one he found. Expertise does count, and in trained hands the MXT is a very capable detector. I thought it did quite well indeed in the admittedly mineralized soil conditions.

Steve with White's MXT metal detecting for nuggets on bedrock exposure

My father was having no luck at all. He has fairly poor detector technique, and I just can't convince him to slow down and keep the coil close to the ground. I have no doubt he walks right over many nuggets as his coil is often several inches off the ground. Coil control is one of the real secrets of nugget detecting. If you only have a few inches to play with, giving them up by running the coil high over the ground really makes it hard to find gold. But he insists on doing it his way, as he eventually always finds some gold. But he could find more.

Judd put us up for the evening. We got some more time in the next morning, and Tom and I found some more gold. I ended up with about 3/4 oz with the MXT while Tom got just over 1/2 oz with the GP 3000. Dad still came up dry.

Our real reason for being in the Chicken area was that we had volunteered to survey a lot for the 40 Mile Miners District. We had to meet a State survey team in Chicken in the afternoon, and so flew back to Chicken. We hooked up with them and planned the lot survey. It is amazing how something that years ago would have been very simple can turn into a major project these days. We got the planning done and then my bother and sister-in-law drove back to Anchorage.

I had planned on heading back to Anchorage that night also, but the time was late, and my father still had no gold. So he talked me into going back to the border to my earlier digs to score a few nuggets. A good decision, as I came up with four fat nuggets that totaled over an ounce in weight. One round chunk weighed over 3/4 oz plus three other nice pieces. I had set my father up with the Troy Shadow X5. It was getting quite a lot of ground noise in the all-metal mode, so I set it up in the silent search discriminate mode with the discrimination set at 3. Dad ended up finding two round nuggets weighing in at over 8 pennyweight (20 pennyweight per ounce). So he was happy... he had his gold for the trip.

Over 4 ounces of chunky Fortymile gold found with metal detectors

I ended up with the gold above for the trip. 4.27 ounces of nice, solid nuggets. The larger ones on the left were found with the Minelab GP 3000, and the smaller nuggets grouped to the right were found with the White's MXT.

I had a 9 hour drive ahead and so took Dad back to the airport and sent him on his way. A 2-1/2 hour flight for him, and an 8-1/2 hour drive for me. But well worth the drive, with gold in the poke and lots of visits with friends and miners in the Fortymile!

2011 Update: As great as this gold and outing were it turned out to be the end of this stretch of Fortymile gold adventures. In 2003 something else came along that diverted my attention for years to come - Moore Creek, Alaska.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

I'm one of the luckiest people in the world to have been born where I was and to be doing what I am. This last weekend was truly fantastic. Great country, great people...great gold!

I decided to take advantage of the long weekend and my new Bombardier Traxter ATV to make a run up to the Fortymile country in search of gold. The plan was to head up Friday, get in a couple days of detecting, and get back to town on Monday. The drive up was uneventful though long at 400 miles. I saw a few moose along the way and stopped in Chicken to visit a bit. There were still patches of snow in the high country between Tok and Chicken but the snow was gone in the Chicken area.

My travel rig is a Toyota 4-Runner with Bombardier Traxter behind on single place trailer. The trailer is neat because I can also pull it behind the ATV on good trails. The second picture is the Traxter off the trailer ready to go. I have an oversized suitcase that believe it or not has my GP Extreme with 18" and 14" coils, Infinium with three coils, Shadow X5, and all sorts of detecting accessories, plus extra clothes all in it. I just strap it on back and everything is protected. The Traxter has a large storage box up front and all my food/canned goods are there. A couple picks and my 12 gauge shotgun are strapped on front. I carry a rucksack with things like GPS, camera, binoculars, first aid kit, etc. One reason I chose the Traxter was that I have heard too many tales of people losing ATV's crossing streams, and as a larger, heavier unit it is better than most in that regard. I had a winch installed for this trip as visions of having this rig stuck in a mud hole miles from help and by myself haunted me before I left.

Toyota 4Runner towing new Bombardier Traxter ATV

As I got ready to head out I turned around and there was a black bear watching me. For all the bears I see I have yet to get a decent photo of one since they always run off too soon. I managed to get a picture of this one at least before he took off. Then off I went down the trail to the river crossing. Despite the snow melt the water was low so no problem at all driving the Traxter across. I got to the claims where I had permission to hunt a bench deposit high above the creek itself. The owner was curious as to what was there, so the plan was for me to flag the locations where I found any nuggets. If it looked good enough he was considering doing some mining on the site.

Black bear watching, and Fortymile River crossing

I played around with the Shadow X5 and Infinium a bit, but really there was no point in having brought them along. I had the Minelab GP Extreme outfitted with an 18" coil and I knew it was the machine to use to get the gold. And get the gold it did. Despite having detected this location in the past I immediately started popping nice, fat nuggets out of the ground.  While I am at it, a fierce little snow squall blew in and plastered me with sloppy wet snowflakes for awhile. Luckily it did not last long. I dug a bit of junk but mostly gold. The picture below has a half dozen locations flagged where I pulled up nuggets. The size of the gold and the fairly small area I found them in made it look like this spot might be worth mining. 2011 Update: The miner later did just that and the location paid off fairly well.

Steve hunts with Minelab GP Extreme

The weekend went too quickly and soon it was time to head back out. The weather had taken a turn for the worse and when I got back to the river crossing the water was so high I just stopped and stared for a very long time. I could not bring myself to attempt the crossing and turned back. Luckily there was an alternative trail out to the road, although much longer, which allowed me to avoid the river crossing. Better safe than sorry and so after a much longer ATV ride than I had planned I made it back to my truck. A bit of time to load up and make the long drive back to town.

2.32 ounces of Fortymile gold!

It was all worth it of course. Not only was it a great adventure, but I did very well on the gold. Not so many nuggets but they are all solid slugs which add up fast. The results above are 2.32 ounces of nice, solid Fortymile gold, the largest nugget weighing in at 8.7 pennyweight. Hard to beat that for a couple days of detecting!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

I became aware of a new detector that was going to be introduced awhile back. The Shadow X5 by Troy Custom Detectors. The X5 is not intended as a nugget detector per se, but as a general purpose high performance metal detector. What caught my eye was the operating frequency, which at 19 kHz is much higher than the 6-10 kHz commonly used in many coin detectors. That, and the fact that it has a manual ground balance. This led me to believe the detector might make a very good all-around detector for someone wanting to both coinshoot and nugget hunt.

I received an initial unit, and my bench tests confirmed this was the case. The Shadow X5 is much more sensitive to small gold than most coin detectors, and in fact I will go so far as to say that it will pick up gold the vast majority cannot. Its gold performance is right up there with the best of the dedicated nugget detecting units, and is better than a lot of them.

Still, what was needed was a field test. I planned on getting out to Crow Creek over the weekend to test the X5 on small gold. Troy Galloway was kind enough to send up his new 7" concentric coil for me to use, so I was raring to go.

Well, my weekend did not go quite as planned. I ended up working Saturday, got tied up Sunday, and so took Monday off to go to Crow Creek Mine to test the Troy Shadow X5. Then I made the mistake of stopping by work Monday morning, and got caught. We were short handed, and so I worked again.

By Tuesday the good weather was gone, and a light rain was falling. Plus, I found I had picked up a cold. But I was anxious to give the X5 a spin, and so headed off to Crow Creek under gloomy skies and with a runny nose. The place was empty when I arrived... nobody but Sean around. I set the X5 up with the 7" concentric coil I had been sent, and headed up the creek.

Troy Shadow X5 metal detector at Crow Creek Mine, Alaska

I stopped at a knoll not too far up the creek, and tuned up the X5. In all-metal mode there are few controls to play with. I turned it on, and set the sensitivity at max. Set the threshold for a bare sound, then pumped the coil and ground balanced. Although the ground balance control is a ten-turn knob, I found it took short adjustments to get the machine tuned for a slightly positive response as the coil approached the ground.

I started scanning, and the X5 was very smooth, even though I had it set at full sensitivity. It only took a few minutes, and I got a nice little signal. A bit of work with my plastic scoop, and there was a small flake that later weighed in at 0.6 grain (480 grains per Troy ounce). The coil is very resistant to false signals, as I rubbed it in the soil and knocked it against rocks with no problem.

In short order I found two more small nuggets, weighing 0.6 grain and 1.0 grain. I then wandered up the creek to a clay layer that usually give a bit of trouble with high-frequency detectors, and located another small nugget, weighing 0.7 grain. Also a small piece of lead shot weighing 2 grains. At this point, my cold and the rain were wearing on me, and I had found out what I had come for, so called it a day. Without splitting hairs I'd say I can easily find gold down to about 0.5 grains at up to a couple inches with the X5 and 7" concentric coil. Very impressive! The machine should do even better with smaller coils.

Those unfamiliar with nugget detecting may wonder why finding these tiny gold pieces is important. After all, it's the big nuggets we are after, right? The fact is that in some areas all there is to find is smaller gold. Even in areas with larger nuggets, the ability to find small gold can help prevent boredom from setting in. But the bottom line is that most any detector can find a very large gold nugget. It's the ability to detect small gold in mineralized ground that really sets the gold machines apart from the more common coin type detectors.

Anyone familiar with the Fisher Gold Bug or Gold Bug 2 will feel immediately at home with the X5 in all-metal mode. The machine is more sensitive than the 19 kHz Gold Bug, and actually reacts more like the Gold Bug 2. Small hot rocks and the clay layer were giving some responses that most lower frequency detectors would not. The response on small gold is more mellow than the somewhat harsh, loud response you get with the Gold Bug 2. A very pleasant audio tone, actually, but one that requires a bit more attention than with the Gold Bug 2.

When run at max sensitivity, the detector acts more like a higher frequency detector than a 19 kHz machine. This is good when we are talking sub-grain gold. I also noted that I was getting faint responses on rocks that normally only my Gold Bug 2 or GMT with small coil will respond to. I suspect that in more mineralized ground, or in areas with hot rocks, the X5 will get more ground response than one would expect of a 19 kHz detector. I'm sure the sensitivity will have to be backed off in places like that. I'll be curious to hear what detectorists in more mineralized areas think of the X5. It's a rare area where you can run detectors maxed out like I do at Crow Creek.

Lead shot and small gold from Crow Creek - found with Shadow X5 and 7" concentric coil

The 7" concentric coil only seemed marginally more sensitive than the stock 9" coil to small gold. I would pass on it and wait for the 5" concentric due soon if small gold is the goal. There is also a 10" elliptical DD coil in the works, which may help address some of the ground response issues at higher sensitivity levels.

I did find a couple nails, and when I switched to the discrimination mode I found it took a minimum setting of about 2.5 on the disc knob to get them to audibly "break-up" and read bad. Unfortunately, the gold weighing under a grain also wanted to be ignored. This is not surprising, however, as sub-grain gold is smaller than most detectors can find at all. The X5 is very hot in its disc mode, and for larger gold running more than a few grains should see good use in iron infested areas. I'll have to explore this more in the future. But for the tiniest pieces of gold, I'd stick with the all-metal mode.

Again, I must mention the X5 is not really a nugget detector, but an all-around unit. It has many features intended for coin, jewelry, and relic hunting. I have not touched on these features here, and will leave it to the coinshooting crowd to decide how the X5 works for them. The machine should really excel on gold jewelry for freshwater hunters, as the features that make it great on small gold nuggets should prove valuable for earring studs, small rings, and thin gold chains.

To sum up, my initial reaction to the Troy Shadow X5 is very positive. It was a pleasure to swing a detector that only weighs 2.5 lbs. total, and the weatherproof design made for worry-free detecting in the rain. The nugget hunting features are very basic by today's standards, however. I don't want anyone to think I'm pushing the X5 as the latest thing in nugget detectors. But it really is one of the few units I've used that can really claim to "do-it-all". The Shadow X5 packs real power into a small package, and serious detectorists would do well to keep an eye on this detector.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

Well, here is a report on my last visit to Ganes Creek, Alaska for the year. I set myself up for this visit this spring by saying I would go to the mine after everyone had been there this year and find gold, just to prove there was still some left to detect. To show that it just can't all be found... no matter how thorough the hunters. I also wanted an opportunity to work with some new machines, and so in addition to my White's GMT I brought along a new White's MXT and Garrett Infinium LS.

Brian, Jeff, and I left Thursday morning for a five day visit. We got to Ganes and settled in, then decided what to do. Brian was set on doing some prospecting with the 5" dredge Doug had purchased for visitors to use, so he was off in search of places to use it. I grabbed my new Garrett Infinium LS detector to try out, and Jeff used my White's GMT. Jeff and I headed upstream to where most of the large nuggets have been found this summer, on the theory that more were waiting to be found in the area.

We scanned an area that has been heavily hunted. Three nuggets over 5 ounces were detected in the area this year, and I found out it is the same area where the 122 ounce nugget and a 62 ounce nugget were found. Definitely the center of big gold on the creek.

The Infinium ran smooth and clear, so much so that I found myself waving my ring over the coil to make sure it was really working. Absolutely no signals from rocks in the tailing piles. Very odd when you are used to constant background sounds back from a VLF detector. The Infinium is a ground balancing pulse induction (PI) detector and as such it excels at canceling out ground mineralization. I got a signal now and then, and dug either a shell casing, or an iron trash target.

The discrimination on PI detectors is crude at best, and so iron targets that might be rejected with a VLF (Very Low Frequency) will often be signaled as "good" on a PI detector like the Infinium LS. The basic idea with PI detectors is to go ahead and dig everything, although this can be problematic at a place with so much junk as Ganes Creek. I found the shell casings encouraging however, as that meant that not everything had been detected. I figure if non-ferrous items like bullets and shell casings are being missed, then some gold has also been left behind.

Still, the area had been well searched, and the finds were few. I finally located a 13.8 dwt (dwt = pennyweight) nugget, and then a 3.8 dwt nugget (20 pennyweight per ounce). Two very nice, relatively solid gold nuggets. The Infinium had done its job. Jeff, although he tried his darndest, came up with no nuggets. The area has been hammered pretty good. We also tried some old tailings upstream farther, but found no more gold that day.

Gold nuggets found with Garrett Infinium at Ganes Creek

Day Two dawned under rainy skies. We decided to stay near camp, and see if there were more nuggets waiting to found around the cabins. I grabbed the new White's MXT, while Jeff stuck with the GMT. The rain got going pretty good, but we stuck with it. Lots of bullets and shell casings were dug, again, a good sign. But by the end of the day we had no nuggets. We headed up to the bench deposits above camp and found some small nuggets, just so we could say we did not get skunked. Jeff found a nice little nugget over a pennyweight with the GMT, and I got a few tiny bits.

The MXT is a brand new detector from White's Electronics. Steve Houston from White's had a prototype MXT along on his visit to Ganes Creek in the spring and I had a chance to use it then. We both agreed then it had all the right stuff for finding gold at Ganes Creek. We did not use it much, however, as time was limited and we stuck with more familiar detectors.

I have to note that I was very impressed with the MXT around camp. I used the 6" elliptical coil, and ran the unit in the relic mode. This mode, when set up a certain way, gives a high tone on non-ferrous targets, and low tone on iron targets. A setting right at "2" seemed to be the point where ferrous and non-ferrous sorted out with low and high tones. It was easy and efficient around camp, and all I dug were non-ferrous items. It has very good trash separation with the small coil, and easy id with the dual tone system. Great for places where trash is literally inches apart.

Brian had set up in the ditch near the big nugget area, but was plagued with start-up problems with the gear, especially a leaky pump intake hose. He spent most of his day just getting set up and getting the dredge operating.

Brian running suction dredge at Ganes Creek

The weather cleared up the third day. Jeff again ran the White's GMT, and I the MXT with small coil as I had been impressed with it the day before. We started in camp, and I found a small nugget just behind the cabins. Then we tried some of the dragline piles above camp near where I found my 4.95 ounce nugget last year. I switched the MXT to the 950 9.5" coil. Both Jeff and I came up with nuggets weighing several pennyweights each.

So far we were not exactly knocking down the nuggets. Frankly, we were both both a bit puzzled, as our constant digging of bullets indicated nuggets were still to be found. You simply can't dig all the gold while leaving the bullets in the ground. But results were lean, and our enthusiasm was flagging.

I'm a big fan of aerial photos, and had some new ones showing an area downstream opposite the old bucket line dredge machine shop. Long rows of old bucketline tailings ran far back away from the road, and so I suggested we go down and check them for a change of pace. Jeff was running the White's GMT with the Sierra Max 14" coil, and I ran the MXT with stock 950 coil.

The more I used the MXT the more I liked it. On the cobble piles I ran in prospect mode, with full gain, minimum V/SAT setting, and in automatic ground balance. The 14 kHz frequency ran smoother on the mixed rocks of the the cobble piles than a higher frequency detector like the White's GMT or Fisher Gold Bug 2. They tend to get weak signals of rocks because of their higher operating frequencies. The MXT was definitely smoother in the cobble piles than the GMT.

We followed an old trail we had followed last year. I concentrated on the edges, off the main trail in the edges of the cobble piles near and in the brush. I got a good, clean signal, and gave a couple digs with my pick. The moss and rocks flipped back, and there lay a large gold nugget!

I did not get as excited over this one as my 4.95 ounce nugget last year, as I was not sure exactly how large it was. Jeff, however, knew immediately it was something to jump up and down over. And he was right, as upon weighing it came in at 6.85 ounces. My largest nugget ever, and the largest found at Ganes Creek by visitors with metal detectors this summer. Sorry guys, but you left a big one for me to find!

6.85 ounce "Ugly Nugget" gold specimen from Ganes Creek - found by Steve H with White's MXT

The nugget is strange, with very dark, lustrous quartz encasing a solid gold core. The quartz is almost like agate. Fingers of dendritic (leaf) gold reach up from the gold core into the quartz shell. It's a very unique nugget, but I'm hard-pressed to say if I like the looks of it. It has more quartz showing than gold. Some people say it really looks good, others say it's ugly. Oh well, all I know is it weighs more than any other found this summer. And that's remarkable considering the number of people over the ground, proving you just can't get them all.

Side view of "Ugly Nugget" showing wispy dendritic gold

Brian's initial dredge hole in the ditch near the big nugget area did not get him excited. A bit of small gold, but no bedrock, and no large nuggets. So he decided to move to a point of bedrock sticking out into the current location of Ganes Creek. The creek has been moved to the north side of the valley, which is reputed to have poor gold, but Brian wanted to check it out. At least there was bedrock showing he could get at.

The next day (Day Four) Jeff took the MXT, and I went back to the Garrett Infinium LS. I wanted to put its ground canceling capabilities to use on the cobble piles, and Jeff wanted to see why I had grown so infatuated with the MXT. What's not to like about a machine that had found me my largest nugget ever? We searched far into the edges of the cobble piles along the creek. Our search led us way out on the dredge cobbles as far from the road as we could get, opposite the old dredge machine shop. There were no signals for some time, as many of these old cobble piles are relatively trash free. I was ahead of Jeff a bit, and so sat down to wait while he scanned up to me. Then he gets a signal in the middle of the cobble piles.

The MXT said only 10% chance it was iron. VDI number of 55, exactly what it called my large nugget. No signal for some time, in big cobble pile... man, this looked good.

He dug and dug. Got to over a foot. All indications were still good. I was getting excited, and came up to take pictures of the big find. And literally cheer him on, as he was getting a bit grumpy about the depth of the hole. The cobbles kept caving in, which can be very frustrating. And I'd exclaim "But Jeff, this is just how digging the two-pounder will be"!

Jeff excavating large "gold nugget" that turned out to be a rusty can

So at two feet, there is the quart paint can. Oh well, such is nugget detecting. Those large steel targets at depth really baffle discrimination systems. What is interesting, however, is I tried the Infinium out on the can, and it did call it an iron target! It seems the PI discrimination system does work well on some items that have problems on the VLF systems. The thing about VLF discrimination is it will sometimes call ferrous items non-ferrous so you dig some junk. With PI discrimination the problem is more serious - a gold nugget can easily be identified as iron, especially the large nuggets, so it is dangerous to use PI discrimination where large nuggets lurk.

In any case, I sure like to see other people find gold. I always get excited when anyone finds gold, because it tells me there is more for me to find also. It's when nobody is finding gold that I get worried, and today was turning into one of those days. One the other hand, if I go out with Jeff one more time and find a big nugget, I'd best not turn my back on him. I'm likely to get hit over the head with a detector!

Since we were having no luck for the day so far we decided to switch gears. Back to the old reliable airstrip to find nuggets. I've found if I'm just patient, dig lots of bullets, I can always find gold on the airstrip or around camp. But since the Infinium has minimal discrimination, and digging the compacted airstrip material is a lot of work, I switched to the GMT. Jeff stuck with the MXT.

Before an hour was up Jeff found a 12.2 dwt nugget. Shortly after I found a 2.7 dwt nugget with the GMT. We both had nuggets for the day. Jeff's was a very nice, nearly solid gold piece. Mine was a broken, very quartzy nugget. Still, that seemed to be it, although we dug a small pile of bullets and shell casings. We headed up to the bench deposits above camp once again to look for smaller gold.

The MXT is a great detector, but the difference in operating frequencies was obvious. We scraped areas free of overburden over the bedrock, and checked them with the detectors. The White's GMT with it's 48 kHz operating frequency had an obvious edge over the 14 kHz White's MXT, even considering the fact that the MXT was using the more sensitive 6" elliptical coil versus the 10" elliptical coil on the GMT. We dug a couple pennyweight of small nuggets, but the GMT clearly got better signals on the small gold.

Small gold nuggets found with White's GMT

Brian again found little gold with the dredge, and decided to wrap it up for this trip. He had his work cut out for him pulling the dredge out of the creek and getting all the gear put away.

Day Five dawned a bit cloudy and cool. The only real good thing about this time of then year is the lack of mosquitoes. The cool nights have driven them off, and so our days were relatively mosquito free. A few biting flies replaced them, but not so many that I ever had to use a head net this trip. Cold weather has it's advantages.

Since we were leaving that afternoon, we made a short day of it. I had pulled my left arm out of joint, and so was down to digging only targets that gave perfect id. We did a little detecting in the pile of material near the ditch in front of camp. This pile has produced several nice nuggets, and been heavily detected. But Brian is short order found a nice weighing several pennyweight with the White's GMT. It ended up weighing more than all the gold he got dredging on the trip.

The weather cleared as the day went on, and I decided to spend my last few hours up in the big nugget area near the ditch. I ran the GMT again while Jeff used the MXT. I hit the road itself real hard, as I saw no signs that it had been detected much. But Ganes had given us all the gold it was going to this trip, and we went in early to pack and clean up our cabins. It may be I missed out this last day simply because I passed up lots of targets I normally would have dug.

Well, it was a fun trip, with over 9 ounces of gold found. Even discounting the big nugget I found over an ounce of nuggets, with the largest being 13.8 dwt. Jeff found about an ounce with his largest at 12.2 dwt. Good-sized nuggets remain to be found, and even a few clunkers. Still, the easy pickings are gone, and it will take patient detecting to get results at Ganes Creek now.

There are actually many miles of undetected tailings running upstream above the more recent workings. The areas are generally lightly brushed over, with some large open areas. A few brief exploratory runs into these upper areas have produced no real finds, but the area is vast in extent, and worth attention in the future.

A talk with Doug revealed that next season there will be a lot more work done with bulldozers to make areas "fresh" again. The good news is many worked areas will be rejuvenated in this way. The bad news is you guys that did not dispose of your trash properly... well, it's just going to be there to dig up again. The future at Ganes creek is more likely to be a mixture of working material freshly turned over, and then wandering off searching for those missed areas.

Finally, the detectors themselves. I like the Garrett Infinium LS. It has great bang-for-the-buck in the PI department. Its current lack of accessory coils is the only thing really holding it back at the moment. I see the Infinium as being the machine I will turn to when my normal VLF detectors won't do the trick. Ganes Creek is really not the best area for PI detectors, as the low mineralization and lack of hot rocks means the PI units have no real edge over VLF detectors.

The White's GMT is slowly becoming my primary nugget detector. I've favored the Fisher Gold Bug 2 the last few years, but the extra versatility of the GMT is causing me to use it more and more. The extra depth on large gold versus the Gold Bug 2 is the big plus at Ganes Creek.

The machine that really wowed both Jeff and I was the White's MXT. It's the first detector I've ever used that I really think "does it all". Now, while it bench tests well on small gold, frankly it does not hold a candle to the GMT when it comes to very small gold under actual field conditions. If small gold is your bread and butter, the GMT or Gold Bug 2 are still the way to go. Not only do the higher frequency detectors have an innate edge, but the manual ground balance offers better control for small gold. The MXT must be auto ground balanced, then "locked". The GB point is then fixed, but it cannot be manually adjusted. The GMT has automatic and manual ground balance, while the Gold Bug 2 is manual only.

Steve's Gold - 8.15 Ounces Total

But the MXT does do very well on nuggets weighing a few grains or more, and the bigger the gold gets, the less difference there is between the MXT and GMT. Frankly, for nuggets weighing in pennyweights or more, I actually prefer the MXT. It operates smoother than the GMT in mineralized ground, and has depth as good as, and maybe under some circumstances better than, the GMT. It's a great machine for large nugget hunting.

Combine that with the fact that it has a vastly superior id system, with both iron readout and conductivity measurement, and you can actually do things like tell most gold nuggets from a .22 shell casing. I actually used the relic mode with the small coil on the MXT to work extreme trash areas to good effect. This machine has lots of potential to explore, and yet is very easy to use. Add in the the fact that it has a 6.5" x 4" elliptical DD, 5.3" round concentric, and 10" x 5.5" elliptical DD coils available as options, and I think the MXT is now the machine to beat for all-around use. And despite it's wealth of features, it's list price is only $799.95. I think we will be hearing a lot more about the MXT in coming years.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

A large placer mining operation that has produced many large gold nuggets has been made available to the public for a fee, and this week saw the first group of ten people visiting the claims. Steve Houston with White's Electronics, Fred Brust with Fisher Research, Fred's grandson Brian, John Pulling, the local Fisher representative, and myself flew into Ganes Creek Tuesday morning. I had convinced the owners of the mine that it would be a good public relations move to have to factory representatives visit the mine.

The big news on arriving was that Bob(AK), who had not found any nuggets the first two days, has just scored a 5.81 ounce and 5.62 ounce nuggets in the same day! So there goes my record of a 4.95 ounce nugget, and my single day record of 8.41 ounces. Bob blew them both away at the same time. His White's Goldmaster V/SAT paid for itself many times over.

Most everyone had gold, but a few people did not. Everyone seemed happy, however, as large nuggets were being found. And when our little plane load of "celebrities" showed up everyone was out hunting gold. So much for our celebrity status.

More gold had been found right in camp, so we gave it a quick try, but soon we decided to head upstream to a spot I had in mind from my last visit. My big goal was for my guys to find some gold before we left, as we only had the two days.

A large ditch had been dug at one location, and I thought the material piled up next to the ditch looked interesting. We hit the material along the ditch, except for John, who got right down in the bottom, since the water had dried up.

It was not long before John yells up "I've got one"! That always helps raise spirits, and everyone got even busier. Fred got a target and proceeded to dig it, while Steve and I worked nearby. It was deep, and Fred was cussing the junk he was probably digging. Steve later remarked that Fred was down to his elbow in the hole. Then I heard a whoop and Fred got up with a big smile. He had a real nice nugget that looked about 3 ounces, but later weighed in at 1.48 ounces due to the quartz in it. It was about the size and shape of a walnut, and is the largest nugget he has ever found.

Fred Brust and Brian with 1.48 ounce nugget found with Fisher Gold Strike detector

And less than 15 minutes later Steve lets out a yell. A big 3.25 ounce nugget, pretty solid gold, and lots of character. It was also the largest nugget Steve has found, and better yet, larger than the nuggets his regular hunting buddies have found.

Steve Houston with 3.25 ounce gold nugget

John found a couple more nuggets, including a 1/2 ounce nugget, his largest to date, and then the nuggets stopped. We all wandered off in different directions, and I finally found a 0.23 ounce nugget wandering up the ridge of a large tailing pile. And that was it for the day. We continued after lunch at other locations, and late into the evening after dinner at other spots, and came up dry. The others were having luck that day though and the nugget count climbed.

We slept in a bit, but got a decent start. We were all rooting for Brian to find a nugget. Everyone else was happy, including myself. Fred, John, and Steve had already found their largest nuggets ever, and I was just along for the ride.

We went downstream, and covered lots of ground. My record hot streak had sure come to an abrupt end... now I could not find any gold at all. Just goes to show how in tailing piles where the nuggets are randomly scattered that luck is a big factor, and on my last visit I was exceptionally lucky. Finally John came up with a really solid 2.21 ounce nugget; a real beauty. I decided I could not go a day with no gold, so went up to the top of the Windsock Pile where we had found numerous nuggets Memorial Day weekend, and put my detector in all-metal mode. Up came several nuggets, the largest 1.2 pennyweight. I had gold for the day.

John Pulling with 2.21 ounce gold nugget

And that ended up being that. We hunted until late, but found no more gold. Brian was a bit disappointed, but still had lots of fun, and a smile on his face. He was happy to see his uncle find a nugget, which is nice to see. Our little visit was deemed a resounding success. Just the visit itself is an adventure for people from out-of-state, and Steve commented repeatedly about the small plane ride. Bush flying is an adventure in itself!

More nuggets came in from the main group, and when we left only two people had no gold, and of those one was not putting in many hours. Large nuggets when I left were:

5.81 oz Bob(AK)
5.62 oz Bob(AK)
3.01 oz Harold(FL)
2.98 oz Todd(AK)
1.85 oz Stephen
1.22 oz Todd(AK)
1.16 oz Bill(AK)
1.12 oz Bill(AK)
1.11 oz Todd(AK)
.89 oz Bob(GA)
.79 oz Zooka
plus
3.25 oz Steve Houston
2.21 oz John Pulling
1.48 oz Fred Brust

Bob(AK) 5.81 oz "Goldfinger" nugget and 5.62 oz "Heart Throb" gold specimen

And me? My largest nugget the two days was .23 ounce. My lucky streak finally petered out. But then again it was not long ago I would have considered a .23 oz nugget to be a monster. I guess I'm getting spoiled.

Numerous smaller nuggets were found by the visitors. Everyone seemed happy, even the guy with no gold. He always had a smile on his face. One interesting fact is that not one person in the first group has any real prior nugget hunting experience. I was surprised to find most had never done it or considered themselves novices. You'd think some pros would have jumped at this first. Maybe the pros have places they can go already for less money. What makes Ganes exceptional is anyone who can come up with the money can visit.

So what are my current thoughts on the chances of finding gold at Ganes Creek? Well, the chances of finding large nuggets is great... most everyone is scoring in that regard. But it is pretty much a crapshoot, with large spells of patient scanning and trash digging punctuated by large nugget finds.

All involved agree good iron discrimination is a must, but do not overdo it. The only guy without gold so far is using an Explorer, and has it really tuned to reject iron. In theory, he has it set up ok, but no gold so far. Bob(GA) had no gold, and when I checked he had his disc cranked way too high. He'd probably walked over nuggets. After setting it lower, he scored several nuggets in one day.

But the biggest factors are patience, persistence, and perseverance. It is needle in a haystack work, and you can go for two days, like Bob, then get two 5 oz nuggets in one day, like he did. You may get lucky right off the bat, like my group, or go days without a big nugget. You have to put the coil over a big nugget, and the more ground you cover, the greater your chances are. Next week the troops return and we will finally get other thoughts than mine on Ganes Creek.

The real proof of Ganes Creek will lie in the second group. I still must assure everyone that the area involved is vast, and all the detecting going on is random wandering - "hit and run" detecting. The nuggets are still out there. Obviously some of the easier pickings are being covered, so a little more effort will have to go into it. That, and Doug will push dirt around if the results seem to be thinning out. I've asked him to hold off until that happens, however, as we will only get one chance to see the tailings undisturbed. After they get flattened out a certain magic will be lost.

And for what it is worth, Fred Brust and Steve Houston, who have both been around, promptly declared Ganes a "once in a lifetime opportunity" The term came up repeatedly. Steve was already figuring out which friends to get together for a return visit.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

There is a prelude to this story. In mid-May my wife and I flew down to Reno for our youngest daughter's college graduation. Her older sister was also there, and the last night of our visit we went out for dinner. The place had Asian food, and we all got fortune cookies. My fortune:

''You will have gold pieces by the bushel.''

I put it in my wallet.

My friends Jeff, Brian and I made a spur of the moment trip to Ganes Creek near McGrath, Alaska to metal detect for gold over the three day Memorial Day weekend. We made a similar trip last year in July, and had good luck finding gold nuggets, including the largest I've ever found, a 4.95 ounce nugget. As you may imagine, we have been anxious to make a return trip. Brian is new to detecting, so I loaned him my chest mount converted White's GMT with 14" coil for the trip. Jeff and I used Fisher Gold Bug 2 detectors, both with 14" coils.

It was spring at Ganes Creek, but the weather had been hot in Alaska, and so the only ice was left on some ponds and along the creek. Daytime temps were hitting the 70's and 80's, but it was into the 40's at night. There were many fires in Alaska due to our abnormally hot, dry spring making for hazy air, and at times you could smell the smoke. The mosquitoes were not yet out in force, and head nets were not needed. Unfortunately, this is not normally the case later in the summer.

Jeff went up Friday morning, and Brian and I met him Saturday morning. Brian was feeling a bit competitive and worried Jeff would get a big jump on him, but my hopes were to see a lot of gold on our arrival.

I was a bit worried that perhaps our visit last year was a fluke, and that gold might be harder to find than we thought. So I was not happy when Jeff reported only one nugget for a long days hunt just upstream from where I had found the 4.95 ounce nugget last year. And only a pennyweight nugget at that. Not very promising.

I had my heart set on hunting some old dragline piles next to the airstrip. We had hit them a bit last year, with no results but some trash. But I felt there had to be gold there. We had found several nuggets in the airstrip itself, including a 3.5 ounce nugget my father found. The airstrip was topped with material from this tailing pile, and so we figured the gold had come from there. We loaded up our detectors and headed off to give it a try.

Tailing piles along airstrip at Ganes Creek (Brian standing in top center pile for scales)

I walked up onto the pile and in ten minutes had a 1.11 ounce nugget! Jeff was amazed. He had spent a long day before looking for gold, and I score a big nugget right off the bat.

That set the tone for the three days. I had numerous areas I wanted to try, pinpointed from my aerial photos. At most we hit I had the first nugget, in about ten minutes. Sometimes the other guys found gold, sometimes not. I on the other hand was unusually lucky this trip. I just kept putting my coil over the gold.

Still, Jeff found his largest nugget ever this trip, a one ounce nugget not 50 feet from my first in the ''Airstrip Pile''. Brian also found his largest nugget ever, a 1.33 ounce nugget from a pile within a couple hundred feet of the camp, christened the ''Cabins Pile''. I found a 1.89 ounce nugget in this same pile.

Brian with his 1.33 oz "Bear Nugget"

The next day I got off to a slower start, but caught up at the very end of the day with a 2.45 ounce nugget off the ''Airstrip Pile'' down in the brush. I like hitting oddball spots, and my willingness to work in the brush paid off big time.

The last day, Memorial Day, I went clear off the scales. We went over a mile upstream above the camp, and I found a .97 ounce nugget. Another tall tailing pile by the runway with the windsock stuck in it, the ''Windsock Pile'', gave me 9 nuggets, five a 1/4 ounce or better. Everywhere we went I found gold.

I wanted to try the old bucketline tailings way downstream, and within ten minutes found the largest nugget of the trip, a 3.22 ounce gold/quartz specimen. Finally, trying above the cabins upstream on the tributary, Potosi Creek, got three more nuggets; 4.2 dwt., 6.0 dwt, and 11.3 dwt.

Steve with 3.22 ounce gold/quartz specimen

The bottom line is I could do no wrong with a detector this on this trip. Brian got 2.5 ounces, Jeff 2.8 ounces, and I ended up with an incredible 14.4 ounces! The last day alone I found 8.14 ounces of nuggets. Grand total for three people in three LONG days - 19.72 ounces.

So is it all gone? Did we get it all? No way. We did not scratch the surface. Ganes Creek is vastly larger in area than you can imagine. The tailings run for miles. There are a couple areas we have given pretty good attention, but none I would not hunt again. All hunting was with the Fisher Gold Bug 2 or White's GMT with 14'' coils, with full rejection of any iron targets. Only solid good signals were dug, and all scanning was ''speed scanning''. All the areas that produced gold should produce more with careful work. All I can say now is there is plenty of gold to be found, and after everyone gets through hammering the creek this summer I will go up again this fall, and find more gold to prove it.

But really, what do I think of the odds for finding gold at Ganes Creek now? Brian is relatively inexperienced compared to Jeff and I, and was learning a new detector. I'd say his finds were about on par with what I expected of him. Jeff was way off... a real cold streak. He should have found twice as much. And I was hot as could be. I found about twice what I would expect. All this is based on bare gut feelings, but I'm thinking 1 ounce a day is a sort of average. But any number of nuggets will blow that away... and bad luck could shoot anyone down.

Steve shows off gold found at Ganes Creek over Memorial Day weekend

Close up of the gold nuggets and specimens from Ganes Creek

The big thing here is the ''nugget factor''. You can find nothing all day, then end up with a couple ounces in one nugget. I was just plain lucky in that regard. I simply happened to place my coil over more large nuggets. They add up fast, and so really get you ahead fast.

So the biggest advice I have is never quit, never give up, never slow down. We put in about 15 hour days, and used them well. But if you are easily discouraged, you'll have a tough time at Ganes Creek. Persistence is the name of the game. And a good fortune cookie might help.

The newer dragline/bulldozer tailings are vast in extent, and seem to have more nuggets, but more trash, than the old bucketline tailings. But I can't help but feel that really big nugget is in the bucketline tailings. They are relatively trash free, and so require real patience. You can hunt for a couple hours with hardly a signal, and those are usually large steel. It's easy to get the feeling there is not much gold in the cobble piles. But in all those cobbles I just have to believe there is a fist-sized cobble of gold/quartz lurking. Just like my 3.22 ounce piece... but larger! 2011 Update: I was right - many nuggets weighing over a pound have come from the cobble piles since.

But if you do not mind more trash targets, the dragline/bulldozer piles seem to have more nuggets in general, and would be worth the most attention for most people.

Steve's five largest "chunks" of gold from Ganes Creek weekend

Ganes Creek is being opened to the public for the first time this year, with one week stays at the mine running $3000 per person, room and board provided. You keep all the gold you find. The largest nugget found at Ganes Creek weighed 122 ounces. For more information and photos see the Ganes Creek page here.

2011 Update: Those early days of easy pickings at Ganes Creek are gone forever. Now, ten years later the pay-to-mine operation continues. I was at Ganes for two weeks in 2011 and will be there again for two weeks in 2012. These days bulldozers are run every day to turn material over and expose new nuggets. Every nugget found is one less to be found, however, and it is getting harder to find gold at Ganes these days. In 2010 I found 6 ounces of gold in one week at Ganes Creek. My spring 2011 trip of two weeks also got me 6 ounces. A half ounce to an ounce a day average may still sound pretty good, but the fact is only a few very experienced detector operators like myself pull it off. The majority of people who visit Ganes would do better to set their sights on perhaps an ounce of gold in a week of detecting. Though big finds still happen now and then - the largest nugget found at Ganes Creek by a visitor in 2011 was a solid 10.5 ounce beauty.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2002 Herschbach Enterprises