The summer of 1998 was one of the best summers I've seen in Southcentral Alaska for gold dredging. The spring thaw was exceptionally early, and the fall freeze very late. Gold dredging in Southcentral Alaska is best done early and late. The water is very low in the spring and fall, but high most of the summer as the snow in the high country melts. Spring, when the creeks open, but the higher elevations are still frozen, is my favorite time. The daylight is long, and the temperatures are warming. The only problem can be getting equipment in when the snow is still deep on the ground. Fall, when the higher elevations freeze up, but the water is still flowing, is also very good, and I have usually done better this time of year. The daylight is getting shorter, and the temperatures are plummeting, but the timeframe is usually longer than in the spring. It is however just plain colder this time of year.

Spring dredging in Southcentral Alaska can start as early as March, but more often April. The water usually starts to come up in early June, and so the canyons and gorges that are most productive become difficult, if not impossible to work. The water levels begin to decline at the end of September, and dredging can usually proceed into November. A few tough individuals may work in the December to February timeframe, but these kind of operations are extremely difficult and rarely undertaken, unless the weather is unusually mild.

In 1998 I was able to start dredging at Crow Creek Mine in March, and was hoping to repeat the early start this year. Unfortunately, record snow in the area kept the creek frozen until much later this year. If a person is determined to start mining anyway, it is possible. A friend, Andy, went down to Crow Creek in March. He shoveled all the snow off a stretch of creek, then chain sawed out sections of ice to open up the creek. Needless to say this is very hard, time-consuming work, but Andy's job allowed him the time to pursue this task. I decided to wait for the creek to thaw out on it's own before I started. Andy's reward for his hard work and earlier start has been about a pound of nice, coarse gold so far. The pictures below are of Andy, his pound of gold, and his suction dredge in lower Crow Creek canyon.

  
Andy with his gold, and his dredge on Crow Creek

I went down to Crow Creek Saturday morning, April 24th, with the intention of digging out my equipment and getting it setup on the creek. I had heard from Andy that the creek was starting to open up finally. There was still 3-4 feet of snow at the parking area, when at this time last year there was no snow at all! I talked to Andy, and took the pictures above. He is wrapping up his operations at Crow Creek soon, and is looking forward to some mining at Nome and on the Fortymile River this summer.

Crow Creek Mine has two basic areas: the lower canyon, which was mined first, and generally mined out completely to bedrock by the old miners, though some side areas remain. This area is a steep, rock-walled gorge. The upper portion of the mine opens up into a wider area that is still above bedrock. This was the site of later mining, and the tailings from the large scale hydraulic mining in the upper area were flushed into the previously mined canyon below. I have been working the canyon deposits for years. The material in the canyon is tailings that have been reworked by floods over the years, reconcentrating the gold that was lost by the inefficient hydraulic operations of yesteryear. The gold is generally smaller, but very consistent. Sometimes larger gold is found, as is the case with Andy's gold above. It is most likely gold lost from material flushed from a side canyon into the area he was dredging, and so has some coarser gold than is usual for the canyon.

The canyon portion of Crow Creek is closed to the general public, and only available by special permission of the mine's owners. The terrain is very rough, and the canyon is generally only minable in the very early spring and late fall. During the summer, the glaciers that feed Crow Creek melt, and it swells in size to where it is difficult, if not impossible to cross. It fills the canyon with wall-to-wall water. The creek also fills with glacial silt for the entire summer, so underwater work is difficult due to the water being so muddy. The clear water seen in these pictures is not the norm for Crow Creek in the summer, but will only be seen when freezing temperatures keep the glacial melt from flowing.

I grabbed my pack and shovel and proceeded to where I had stored my dredge the previous fall. I have worked at Crow Creek for many years, and Sean Toohey is kind enough to let me store my equipment at the mine. This can be a risky proposition in some areas, but Sean lives at the mine year-round, and so he keeps an eye on the equipment for me. I was dismayed to find my dredge buried under 8 feet of snow! Needless to say it took the entire day for me to dig the largest hole in the snow I have ever dug in my life. The sheer weight of the snow caused one of the Marlex floats to be partially deformed, but it was not cracked. A cross brace on the bottom of the sluice box was flattened, which I hammered back out. I also managed to put a hole in one foot valve while chipping it out of an ice layer at the bottom of the hole. All in all, though, I was lucky the extreme snow depth (over 25 feet fell at the mine this winter) did no more damage than it did. I have learned from past years to be careful to arrange items in such a way as to not be crushed by snow loads.

Steve's Dredge Site on Crow Creek

The pictures above show the area I am going to work, both as I found it, and after I opened it up by hacking away at the snow with my shovel. This is where I stopped dredging last fall, and below Andy's dredge. His site is just around the farthest corner visible upstream in the second picture above. I got my dredge mostly assembled and in the water by the end of the day Saturday. Note that the water is murky in the second picture as compared to the first. This is from snow melt and small avalanches upstream as the temperatures warm throughout the day. Because of this, and the possibility of other dredging upstream of me, I try to start as early in the morning as possible. Luckily the days are getting longer, and it is easily light enough to mine by 6AM. After taking a careful inventory of additional items I would need Sunday, I headed back home.

Sunday was clear and sunny, and the conditions for dredging were perfect when I got back to my dredge. I replaced my broken footvalve, attached the remaining hoses, and overcame a startup problem with one motor. Water in the fuel bowl, a common thing when running motors around water all day, had to be drained. Then it was time to dredge.

The canyon walls have pinched in on me at this site, and the gold is deposited near the surface in a layer of reconcentrated tailings. I am following the remnants of the old sluicing system, which was supported by uprights and cross-pieces of hemlock logs. The sluice is gone, but remains of the support framework are buried in the creek. Keep in mind that this area was mined completely to bedrock, which at this spot is 4-5 feet below my dredge. The old sluice was built in the bottom of the channel, and has since been buried by the tailings from mining upstream. The top layers, anywhere from 1-3 feet in thickness, are concentrated tailings, and quite rich with gold. Below that is a jumble of broken rock, wood, and other debris discarded into the channel behind the old miners as they worked up the channel. I have dredged the bedrock in the past, and found small amounts of gold the old-timers missed, but found the overall effect was less gold per day in my dredge, as I had to work too much worthless material to get there. So now my goal is to mine down until I reach a layer of sand that lies on top of the debris layer.

Since the channel has narrowed at this spot, the creek has scoured the top pay layer and it is thinner than normal. I hit the framework for the old sluice system less than a foot down, and the pay layer is only a couple feet thick. I saw quite a bit of gold as I worked, so it looked ok, but not as rich as the area I had worked below, where the channel flares out wider. I expect the gold to improve as I work forward, to an area where the channel once again widens out.

The pictures below show my dredge, and a shot of the work area with the old sluice support framework visible as submerged logs running up the creek. My dredge is a Keene 6" model with the nozzle reduced to a 4" opening. This helps prevents clogs, and allows the unit to qualify for the EPA small dredge permit. This permit is required to dredge in Alaska, and is divided into two basic permits. The small dredge permit is for dredges with a 4" or smaller nozzle opening. The hose may be up to two inches larger than the nozzle opening. The small dredge permit has a basic set of requirements, and requires no reports to be filed with the EPA. Anything with a larger than 4" nozzle opening requires a stricter permit that has daily logbook requirements, with a report to be filed at the end of the season. 2012 Update - these permits have since been revised to allow dredges with up to 6" nozzle openings to operate without reporting, and are now issued by the State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) instead of the EPA.

Steve's Gold Dredge

The dredge is powered by twin 5.5HP Honda pumps, and has an air compressor to supply me with air if I need to work deeper material. I use a Harvey's drysuit and generally mine with a mask and snorkel, unless the material to be worked is more than three feet down. I then go to the hookah air supply system. This dredge has been a very dependable unit, and has served me well. It can be broken down to pack in, and takes me about fourteen round-trips by myself to pack to a particular location. I find it very easy to operate the unit by myself. Working with a second person does not double the production, so if a 50/50 split is made, I end up with less gold. For this reason, I work the unit by myself, and if I partner up with someone, they have to use their own dredge.

I have a plastic tray mounted on the frame ahead of the engines to hold tools and items such as my gloves when I take them off. All the hoses have quick release couplers, and the pumps have been tapped with drains to prevent them from freezing up in cold weather. Hoses have been attached to the oil drain plugs on the motors, so easy oil changes can be made without removing the pumps from the dredge. Everything is setup to keep my efforts to a minimum. This allows me to get six to seven hours of actual dredging time on the nozzle each day. A single six gallon jug of gas is packed in each day to supply the motors.

The results? I dredged about 5 hours Sunday and ended up with 1.4 troy ounces of gold. Basically an average take, but better considering the rather short work time. I usually average 1-2 ounces of gold per day at this location. I'll try and get in longer days next weekend now that I am set up, and see what develops. The gold itself, also as usual, is on the smaller side, since it is primarily gold lost by the old mining operation.

1.4 ounces of gold from Crow Creek Mine

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

Unseasonably cold weather continues in Southcentral Alaska. The snow at Crow Creek Mine was still 1-2 feet deep Saturday morning, and minor amounts of snow were actually coming down as I arrived at the creek! The good news is that if it was warmer, then the snow melt would cause the creek to be higher and muddier. Even with the cool weather, the creek was up slightly and a little murky, as the photo above shows. The creek did completely open up over the week, and the snow bridges are all gone now.

My dredging was rather uneventful this weekend, and a little on the short side time-wise. I wanted to get home a little early each day because of Mother's Day (good idea to let my wife know I do exist) so I got in about 5 actual hours of dredging each day. This was okay on Saturday, as I picked up a little coarser gold and still managed to get about an ounce. The short hours worked caught up with me Sunday.

I was approaching a small set of rapids with some fast moving, boiling water. The creek was widening slightly at this point, so I decided to tackle the fast moving water by diverting the water to the right and then working up the left side. You can see the small diversion dam in the photo above at the head of the dredge excavation. The idea is to work a channel up the left hand side, then divert the water into the new channel. The material on the right hand side of the creek may then be worked, without having to deal with the fast moving water. Unfortunately, I worked outside the paystreak somewhat, which is more or less centered on the middle of the creek along this stretch. I only picked up .7 oz. Sunday, short of my normal daily goal of 1 ounce. If I had put in that extra couple of hours, I no doubt would have made my goal. This puts the total for the weekend at 1.7 ounces, and the 5 day dredging total 5.8 ounces. I'll have to work my regular hours again next weekend to move the average back up.

1.7 Ounces of Gold from Crow Creek

So where is all this gold coming from? The ultimate source is a group of historic hardrock mines at the head of Crow Creek valley, discovered around 1909. Two of these, the Monarch and the Jewel mines, produced a total of about 5,000 ounces of gold by 1947. These mines consist of thin irregular quartz veins carrying arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, galena, sphalerite, pyrrhotite, molybdenite, pyrite, magnetite, and of course, gold and silver. This is a common type of gold ore in Alaska, in that it has a little bit of everything... gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, iron, and arsenic. The veins are in the graywacke and slate bedrock typical of the Kenai peninsula, are are grouped around some small quartz diorite masses that intrude the surrounding bedrock. The mines do not seem particularly rich, but are listed as having a high mineral potential by the former Bureau of Mines.

Gold eroded from these and other gold-bearing veins was deposited in Crow Creek, mostly before the last glacial advance. Crow Creek is very unique, in that the advancing glaciers did not totally disperse the gold deposits, but instead buried them and left much of the old deposits intact. The original miners on Crow Creek discovered the presence of several deeply buried canyons, and excavated most of these. These deposits were very rich, with material with up to 6 ounces of gold per yard of gravel recorded. A yard of that gravel discovered today would be worth almost $2000. (2011 Update: Over $10,000!) The original bed of Crow Creek exists as a dry channel directly below the Crow Creek parking lot. The creek is now flowing through one of the old excavated channels far lower than the dry channel. Over 250 feet of material was removed to excavate the old channels. Despite the visions of environmental havoc this may cause one to imagine, the excavation has fully grown back such a profusion of trees and other vegetation that most visitors believe they are standing in a natural valley, not a large man-made excavation.

The upper portion of Crow Creek Mine has many exposures of virgin gold-bearing material on both banks of the creek, as well as tailings redeposited along the creek itself. This area is open to the general public for a fee and produces the larger gold nuggets found at Crow Creek Mine. Nuggets of up to 1/4 ounce are fairly common, with nuggets of up to 1 ounce sometimes found. The largest nugget recorded from Crow Creek weighed 3.37 ounces. Almost all the nuggets found with metal detectors come from the upper area. I have found thousands of nuggets metal detecting in the upper area, the largest weighing 7 dwt. and numerous 1-5 dwt. pieces.

The old canyon on the lower claims where I am dredging was mostly mined out, but the waste material form the upper workings was dumped into the canyon. Gold was lost in the tailings due to the large volume nature of the hydraulic mining methods used, and the gold has been concentrated by floods over the years into workable deposits. The gold is more consistent then in the upper areas, but overall of a much smaller size. Larger nuggets are very rare in the tailings, although I did find several, including a beautiful 1 ounce specimen last year. I do find pieces of up to a pennyweight on a regular basis, such as the one in the photo above, in the canyon material.

1 Ounce Nugget found at Crow Creek in 1998 by Steve Herschbach

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

I finally got my dredge completely out of Crow Creek canyon this weekend. Water conditions in the canyon forced me to don my drysuit; I did not feel comfortable trying to cross the creek in waders while carrying a six foot long sluice box over my head. I was tempted to leave the last items until the water dropped in the fall, but I already had a buyer for the dredge, and so had to get it out. After carefully fording the sluice, suction hose, and other gear up the canyon to the base of the cable pullout, I stripped out of my drysuit. Then came numerous trips in and out of the canyon, attaching gear to the pulley system, then climbing up and pulling it out. By the time I finally got it all out to the parking lot, I was ready for a break.

Sluice headed up cable

The pictures below explain why I dredge Crow Creek in the early spring and late fall. It has been a dry summer, but since Crow Creek is fed by a small glacier and snowfields, it remains at flood stage all summer. The water is fast enough to be barely crossable, and is gray with glacial silt. Compared with the slow moving, clear water of spring and fall, it is simply not worth fighting the season. In particular, the inability to see the material means more worthless material is dredged, and more frustrating hose clogs occur. Still, there are those who work the creek in the summer and do well; they simply have more patience than I have.

Crow Creek on July 10, and back on April 24

I decided I had to find at least a little gold before I went home, so I grabbed my trusty metal detector and headed up the creek. Mine owner Sean Toohey was working with a backhoe up the creek grooming a place for a GPAA mining party the next weekend. He was also scouting for a place to mine in the future.

A rather obvious (to my eye, at least) layer of cobbles was cutting across a bank exposed by floods a couple of years ago. A looser cobble layer rests on a finer grained, and much tougher lower layer. The fine-grained lower layer is much older, and formed a false bedrock surface for the more recent upper streambed layer. At one time Crow Creek itself was running up at this higher point, and the cobble layer represents the bottom of this now high and dry deposit. Remnants of older streambed material, perched above and parallel to the existing steam are referred to as "benches" or "high bench deposits". Often a flattened area on the banks above the current creek can indicate a bench deposit, but often times material sliding downhill from above bury the deposits so that they are not immediately obvious. Such is the case at this location.

Old streambed layers exposed at Crow Creek

I checked the exposure with my detector, and was not too surprised when I had found three small nuggets in less than ten minutes. They all were at the base of the cobble layer, on top of the fine-grained layer. They were also of a chunkier character than the gold found in the canyon downstream, having been subject to less stream action since being released from the gold veins upstream.

The two larger pieces are 4 grains each, while the smaller piece is a 1 grain nugget, for a total of 9 grains. Not much, but not bad for ten minutes. Sean promptly declared the location "Steve's Bench" and made plans to expose the hillside with the backhoe in the future. Chances are the deposit is limited in extent, but one never knows until a little digging is done. In any case, the area bears more attention from metal detector users and others.

Three nuggets

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

I have been out gold prospecting with the Garrett ATX recently and wanted to share my latest thoughts on the unit. That, and show off a particularly nice nugget I just found with the detector!

I got my ATX right at a year ago. The machine has easily paid for itself and remains one of my favorite detectors. With all the other new detectors I have been using lately I have not had it out enough however, and so I have made an effort to start using it again the last few weeks.

I guess my constant prospecting these days is making me tougher as I have no problem using the ATX for long hours with no extra support. Still, for long days I like to use a bungee support off the shoulder of my Camelback style rucksack. Garret was kind enough to send me a set of scuff covers for my coils, and I find the solid scuff cover for the stock coil to be very helpful. It prevents the coil from hanging up in stubble and in northern Nevada allows me to let the coil just ride on the ground. There usually is just a little grass or weeds that act as a buffer for smooth riding. If I get directly on hard rock surface I still pick up some coil falsing but not so much as when the bare coil edges would catch on rocks. The only issue with the solid cover is that it collects debris and must be shaken clean on occasion. I think I will get another scuff cover or even just a flat piece of plastic to fix in place over the top to prevent this from happening.

I have been using the headphone adapter so I can run the ATX with my Sun Ray Pro Gold headphones, which sound a bit better to my ear than the supplied headphones. The Garrett headphones are pretty good but I would rather keep them available for backup use. I have toyed with the idea of using my B&Z booster along with a shoulder mounted external speaker but have not quite got around to trying that yet. I think that would be preferable for long hours in very quiet locations. I like to hear what is going on around me.

Related to that, I normally run the ATX with a very faint threshold. I have also experimented a bit with running it set just barely quiet, and for patch hunting wandering around I am thinking I may do this more often. The performance edge lost is minimal, and I do enjoy the solitude and silence. Many days detecting for me is nothing more or less than a wonderful long hike over the hills in the middle of nowhere. No headphones and no threshold buzz just might be something I do more of in the future. I know, I should be preaching the opposite but my primary goal these days is enjoying myself and those little things make a difference. Being able to hear a wild horse in the distance or a coyote howl is important to me.

Garrett ATX waterproof pulse induction (PI) metal detector

I usually dig it all but I do like the ferrous check function on the ATX. It can only be trusted on targets I really know to be junk anyway - nice loud surface signals. But maybe, just maybe that signal is a large shallow nugget! It is nice to push the button and get a solid ferrous indication from the ATX allowing me to work more efficiently in areas with lots of surface nails and other ferrous trash. I don't trust it on weak signals however, especially in very mineralized ground.

The waterproof part is nice but really not needed. What I do appreciate is being able to collapse the unit down into a compact package and toss it in my truck. That the ATX uses rechargeable AA batteries is also a bonus because I am starting to standardize on them. All other things being equal I try to get detectors or accessory items that use AA batteries, and I have a lot of AA batteries and chargers due to this. This makes having plenty of extras available for use in the ATX very simple and cost effective.

The bottom line is the Garrett ATX is a very capable nugget detector with good performance on a wide range of target sizes. I appreciate the solid, stable performance. I have got no problem going out and finding gold with the ATX. Better yet, I use the ATX for more than nugget detecting. It is my preferred water hunting detector and so in that regard a true bargain.

Northern Nevada Outback

I was just out and hunting an area where I picked up a few nuggets with other detectors recently. I got the ATX out of the truck and wandered down to the wash. I had barely really got the unit ground balanced up and the soil I was walking on just looked like sandy mud with grass growing on it, so I decided to walk upstream a bit for a better location. I got a whisper of ground noise as I walked and a couple steps later stopped and thought "hmmmm... was that really a ground noise?" It had that little something and I was just assuming I did not have the ground balance spot on yet. I backed up and checked, and sure enough there was a soft signal in the grass. I gave a little dig and came up with a 0.7 gram nugget.

Well ok then, that was more like it. I started to work the immediate location and just six feet away got a largish signal, probably trash. I dug a bit and it was still in the hole. So I gave it a vigorous scoop and up pops a mud covered nugget. A large nugget! It later weighed in at 26.3 grams or 0.85 Troy ounces.

0.85 Troy ounce gold nugget found by Steve with Garrett ATX

I was ecstatic. I have to tell you that nugget really means a lot to me. Why? Because the location I was hunting was nothing anyone pointed out to me. I was running around looking at some old prospects and had a theory going on the geology and where the gold was coming from. I decided the location would be good on my own just based on what I was seeing, and I scored a really great nugget. The satisfaction of figuring things out and making a good call means more to me than the nugget. It is what real prospecting is all about. The fact that it is also one of the nicest nuggets I have found so far in Nevada certainly does not hurt though. It is a beauty, solid and chunky with a nice kind of flat matte finish.

A bunch of hunting later and I scored another small 0.6 gram nugget, for a total of three nuggets and 27.6 grams with the Garrett ATX. I am sure there is more gold waiting out there to be found so can't wait to get back at it. Just a great time in great country, and I have to say I am not missing being in Alaska at all. This beats being in cold rain ate alive by bugs any time.

Nevada gold nuggets found with Garrett ATX

I am getting ready to have a major weeding out of detectors and accessories. My collection of gear has ballooned too far in excess of what I need, and in 2015 I want to just focus on detecting instead of detectors, if you catch my drift. I need a few good machines to cover the bases for my varied detecting needs, but all the rest need to go. I am not much on clutter. One thing I do know for sure though, and that is that the Garrett ATX has earned a permanent spot in my collection. In particular I plan on being on California storm watch this winter, and at the first sign of major beach action I am grabbing the ATX and heading for the coast. The California beach boys will be seeing a new face this winter. And I am very sure there are many more nugget hunts in the future for me and the Garrett ATX.

This article originated as a thread on the Detectorprospector Forum and more information may be found there in later posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

Winter is slow in coming this year. November has arrived, and temperatures are still relatively mild. I have decided to take advantage of the good weather and make one last dredging trip to Crow Creek Mine. Crow Creek is close to town, and when the weather makes a change it is easy to pull out. It is an ideal spot for a mining trip late in the year.

The old location I was dredging in the canyon a couple years ago was taken over by friend Andy. He worked the creek up until he reached a narrow spot choked with boulders. He also worked above this area, but a stretch about 100 feet long remained that had not been dredged yet. I decided to take up where he had left off and see how I could do.

My little 4" was easy to pack into the location and setup, so I was working away the first day. I started seeing some good gold, and was happy I had returned to this spot. The gold here is gold that was lost by the old mining operations, and is distributed rather evenly in the top few feet of material. It makes for easy dredging, and I used mask and snorkel rather than my hookah gear to mine the gold.

The second day was the best. I got in a long days dredging, and took out most of the width of the creek. Everything was going great, and I was constantly seeing gold as I removed the gravel. When it was time to cleanup at the end of the day, I was happy to see over an ounce of nice gold for my efforts. It's days like this that make dredging great!

It snowed that night, and temperatures plummeted. It seemed winter had finally arrived. Ice was forming on the creek as I dredged, but still it was not too cold to mine. I dredged up the gut of the creek, but I was not seeing as much gold as the day before. My cleanup revealed that I had only found about a 1/4 ounce of gold for the day.

Steve's 4" subsurface dredge & some gold recovered

I looked at the weather, and decided that if I left the dredge and returned the next weekend that I might be frozen out. I decided it would be easier to just go ahead and hang it up for the season, so I packed the dredge out and headed for town. A successful last trip for the end of my mining season.

What does a person think about while they are dredging for gold? Good question. Obviously, you think a lot about what you are doing, and where the gold is going in the creek. But sometimes the mind wanders, and strange things can cross a dredger's mind while they are working. While working this deposit I imagined a little fantasy about what it might be like to be a gold nugget buried in the creek for centuries, and to finally be uncovered by a miner. What follows is a little news release I imagined while dredging. I posted it to some mining forums, and it got quite a response. I'm reposting it here for the record.

Nugget Rescue A Success!

(AP Wire 11/5/00)

Girdwood, Alaska - Rescue crews braved frigid winter conditions early this morning in an attempt to rescue numerous gold nuggets buried under tons of gravel and rock. A crowd gathered under gray skies to witness the heroic effort. The scene was one of tense waiting, interspersed with periods of high emotion.

Finally… success! A cheer went up as first one, and then many more gold nuggets saw the light of day. Rescue crews worked slowly with special equipment brought in to deal with the unique situation.

"These little nuggets have been buried here for countless years," said Rescue Coordinator Steve Herschbach. "The material has hardened a great deal, and there are many large boulders to deal with. We considered the use of explosives, but decided the nuggets might suffer unduly from its use. We chose to use suction dredges to protect the gold nuggets from possible harm."

One nugget positively glowed with happiness upon his liberation from the dark depths. "You can't imagine what it was like" he said. "The floods were the worst. I used to be quite a bright, crystalline nugget. But once the boulders got though stomping the living daylights out of me… well, look at me now. They say it builds character, though."

Not every rescue attempt had a happy ending, however. Mr. Herschbach described one of the failures. "I saw a beautiful nugget perched on the edge of a crevice under a large rock. It was all I could do to hold on in the current as I reached for her with my rescue tweezers. The current must have reflected off my hand, because she slipped away just as I reached for her. Try as I might, the rock proved impossible to move. Her pitiful wail as she fell out of sight will haunt me forever."

In spite of tragic events such as this, the overall mood by the end of the day was one of jubilation. A crowd of gold nuggets lay gathered in the rescue pan, excitedly discussing their futures now that they are free. "I can't wait to see the sun," said one. "I hear it looks like a giant, glowing gold nugget!" There was the inevitable promise of a book or movie to come. Most heartwarming of all was the wish of one little gold nugget. "I just want to find my Mom," she said. "I hear that many people are looking for my Mother Lode. I hope someone finds her so I can tell her how much I've missed her."

AP Correspondent Les Silver

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

I headed out of town the morning of October 9th to meet Jeff Reed at Crow Creek Mine to do some dredging. Jeff had been working the creek hard while I was at Mills Creek, but was not having much luck. I convinced him that I knew a spot in the canyon that I was sure had some gold, so we determined to pack our 4" dredges in and give it a try.

I was just leaving the outskirts of Anchorage, when a large moose with a very nice set of antlers ambled across the highway. Ironically he was next to the local shooting range, which must have frustrated the hunters there to no end. I stopped and took my photo of him with my camera, and then headed for Crow Creek.

Those that have read my entries from the spring know that getting into the canyon area of Crow Creek is a bit of a chore. Jeff and I have both constructed very light weight subsurface 4" dredges for these kinds of areas. Our units have 4HP Honda pumps, and so are not only light but very fuel efficient. They are great little units if you want to spend your time mining instead of packing equipment.

Jeff crossing Crow Creek log bridge

Our friend Andy was working his dredge in the canyon just upstream of where we were headed, so we stopped to chat a while. He was doing quite well, with lots of gold showing in the box. It certainly made us anxious to get to work.

Andy in his Harvey's drysuit

The spot I had in mind was where my brother and I had worked many years before. We had spent several weeks with a 6" dredge working a long stretch of the creek, and had done quite well. I took Jeff down to just below where my brother and I had started dredging, figuring to get into the same paystreak.

I was so confident that the area would have gold most of the way across the creek that I let Jeff have the coveted inside corner. Gold tends to take the shortest route downstream, and so inside curves are usually very good places to dredge. I also wanted to give Jeff the best shot at the gold, since he had really put in some hours in the last couple of weeks, and was disappointed by the gold he had found so far (don't feel too sorry for Jeff folks... most people don't get what he does, but his expectations are all the higher for it).

Jeff working the corner

Jeff went to work on the corner. I set up on some bedrock on the far side and followed it into the creek. After working awhile and not seeing much gold, I moved into the center of the creek. Andy was causing the water to get a bit murky, so at this point I could not tell if I was into the gold or not, but I dredged away confident that I had to be into the pay.

Then came cleanup time. The best way to put it is to say that Jeff kicked my rear end. I only had a couple of pennyweight, while he had over an ounce. The gold was hanging on the corner much more than was the norm for the stretch of creek just upstream of us, where it tends to run clear across the creek. The gold is from reconcentrated tailings out of the old mining operations, and so is rather small, but our little subsurface boxes seemed to do quite well with it.

Steve's gold, and Jeff with his (no wonder he's smiling)!

We came back the next day, and I moved into the corner upstream of Jeff. Jeff did about as well as the previous day, while I got even less. Oh well, that's mining for you. The good news is that I have been doing this long enough that I am as happy seeing others find gold as finding it myself. Well, almost!

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

I met up with forum member Condor on Thursday and as promised he took me for a heck of a hike in steep terrain. We got in and pitched camp and that was it for the day. Friday through Monday we shinnied up bedrock chutes and bushwacked through the hills trying to get to old mine workings. This high Sierra 1800's stuff is well grown over and I am learning just how impenetrable the vegetation can get here. Alaska it can get slow going but there is nothing that will actually stop you dead in your tracks. Looks like I need to get a mini chainsaw.

We basically detected in the morning and evening with a little siesta in the main heat of the day. Those old pits can be like big dry, dusty ovens. Only real issue was that Condor had a new SDC 2300 and a new charger system and batteries and there seemed to be issues with the batteries. I had my three pre-charged sets of rechargeables and a couple sets of alkaline batteries. Between what I had in extras plus what he could get charged off his solar panel we did just fine and had power to spare but he needs to sort out what is going on with his batteries. I found a set of my batteries easily got me through a day and maybe a little more so I see no need for me to deal with solar charging unless I am out for more than five days, which honestly I doubt I will be doing.

My Minelab SDC 2300 takes a break

A look at the ground

The gold was sparse and scattered but I did finally hit a mini patch of a few chunky nuggets on the edge of a small pit where material looks to have sluiced over a small bedrock outcrop. My largest was a couple pennyweight and I ended up with 11.2 grams or 7.1 dwt for four days of detecting. I'm happy with a couple grams a day average so I am pleased with the result. Condor got a bit less due to my hitting that little patch. Main thing was hooking back up with old friends, seeing new terrain, and getting my gear sorted out. My boots, sufficient for normal terrain, let me down in hours of near vertical. My toes kept cramming into the ends and I will not be surprised if I lose both big toenails. I have good Alaska mountain boots but they are probably too hot for most of this stuff so a new pair of boots may be in order. Other than that I was fairly happy with my setup.

My mini gold patch

11.2 grams or 7.1 pennyweight of nice chunky gold!

The SDCs once again proved their worth. Man, this ground was hot!! Serpentine bedrock, with patches of red soil on it that must have been at least 50% magnetite by content. The SDC would want to groan if moved too fast but that was easily remedied by simply doing what we are supposed to and going slow. Worse was when getting what appeared to be a faint signal, and then after scratching off the surface the ground would light up with many faint signals in the disturbed magnetite. It was like it was magnetically aligned resting undisturbed in place but once disturbed the ground responses became mixed. A VLF would be totally dead in this stuff. It actually was a bit like what Chris Ralph and I ran into in a couple very small places and in this case it was more widespread. That all said, I generally was able to easily hunt in sensitivity level "3" very effectively and smoothly, with only small foot or two square areas making me slow way down and see what was up.

Tons of bullets, piles of nails, and basically no sign of prior detecting to speak of. I can see why between the terrain and the ground conditions. It really was a kind of textbook case for having the SDC 2300.

Thanks Condor!! Great little trip, great hanging out with you and catching up on our lives. See you again soon!

This story was promoted from a DetectorProspector Forum thread where more information and discussion may be found.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

My friend Rich Lampright and I planned a joint dredging expedition to Crow Creek Mine in the fall of 1996. We planned on a three week trip in October, which is generally after the rains but before any seriously cold temperatures. We obtained permission to stay in one of the cabins at the mine, and spent a day one weekend cutting firewood to supply the barrel stove in the cabin for the duration of our trip.

We planned on putting both our dredges in the canyon at Crow Creek and working up the creek together. This allows each person to work at their own pace, and avoids the need to split the gold as would be the case if a single dredge were used. I have found that rarely do two people double the production on a dredge. Yet, it is wise to dredge with a partner, both for safety and for companionship.

Steve breaks up the ice around his dredge - Photo by Rich Lampright

This trip, as is often the case, ended up going completely differently than planned. Rich, who was in the Air Force then, was called upon to go to do a tour of duty in Saudi Arabia. He ended up deciding the time before he left would be best spent with his family. The weather also took a surprise turn, and a very early snow storm made things interesting. Temperatures fell to about 10 degrees by day and below zero at night. It just plain got cold.

Rich has done such a good job detailing this trip at his website that I will not duplicate the effort here. Instead, follow the link below to Rich's website:

Suction Dredging at Crow Creek in October 1996

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

I held off on posting about this one for a bit while I got around to some unfinished business. Since my move from Alaska I have been slow to get another safe deposit box set up. I have always had one for my gold and other important valuables. The problem with posting about this stuff on the internet is it can attract the wrong kind of attention. This is something I would encourage everyone to think about. Now that all my gold and other goodies are residing at Wells Fargo I feel a little more free to post about this.

Chris Ralph and I were prospecting in Northern California not too long ago. I was running the Nokta FORS Gold and concentrating on some areas littered with square nails, cable bits, rusted cans, and other ferrous junk. There were places the Nokta running in dual tone DI2 mode sounded like a machine gun from ferrous low tones. I would go along with the detector going "putt - putt - putt - putt - putt - beep - putt" and on hearing that beep, stop to dig a bullet or some other non-ferrous item.

The weather was a bit wet but not unpleasant; kind of brings the forest smells out and makes for softer walking. I was afraid we were going to get rained out but it keep just on the edge of really starting up. There was not much sign of detecting, no doubt due to all the trash. Chris was off hitting some bedrock with his detector while I wandered around in the trees and duff overlying the old tailing materials.

There was a bit of a mound around the base of a tree and I swept around it getting ferrous tones, when all of the sudden I get a strong non-ferrous beep. I looked down at the target id displayed on the end of the FORS Gold handle and it was showing 82. I thought "That's odd, a coin." I was still not tuned in one what the numbers meant exactly on the Nokta but on a typical 1-100 scale an 82 would be something like a penny or a dime. I have yet to find a really decent old coin since moving south, so I thought I was maybe going to dig some nice silver.

I gave a couple digs and was surprised to see nothing pop up. Hmmm... must be bigger, deeper. So I open the hole up and dig deeper, and this dirty gray lump pops out of the ground.

Dirty lump hides spectacular gold specimen

My exact thought "you have got to be kidding me!" It was a filthy lump but I knew instantly it was gold. I could not believe my good fortune. I got out my water bottle and washed it off a bit and saw gold and large chunks of white quartz - I had found something really special. After cleaning it ended up as 1.83 ounces of stunning gold and quartz that would do a museum proud. Just a really spectacular specimen, the best I have ever found. I won't claim that only the Nokta would have found it because any good detector would have. Yet I do think this is a case where a good discriminating VLF detector proved to be of benefit in approaching an area that might cause most pulse induction operators to wander off in another direction.

I cleaned the nugget by giving it a couple trips through my ultrasonic cleaner and picking the roots out with tweezers. An ultrasonic cleaner is perfect for these types of specimens with deeps pits and crevices. Other than that it has not been treated with acid or anything.

Anyway, this is a fabulous chunk of gold and quartz. One thing that strikes me repeatedly while detecting in Nevada and California is how much nicer the gold is that that I used to find in Alaska. The gold here is generally purer with a richer, more butter yellow color. Many Alaska nuggets are higher in silver content and therefore have paler gold. The quartz in the gold here also tends to be cleaner and whiter. A lot of Alaska gold quartz specimens are discolored with gray and brown quartz variations.

This does matter not just for appearance but for value. Large nuggets and specimen gold can command premiums over the value of the gold content, but that premium is based almost entirely on appearance. It a nutshell, the better a specimen looks, the more it’s worth. There are quite a few places in the western U.S. that produce extremely high quality specimen gold that can fetch premiums many times over the basic gold value.

Alaska, not so much. I have no doubt the quality of my finds had improved since leaving Alaska. This specimen easily eclipses anything I ever found in Alaska for overall beauty. Just a terrific find, one of my best ever!

This article was originally posted on the DetectorProspector Forum and additional commentary may be found there in follow up posts.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 2014 Herschbach Enterprises

The adventures continue! I left Anchorage rather late Saturday morning. I was happy to find that the creeks had dropped by over half compared to the previous week. I met Al and his partner Kenny at the claims, and found that they were pulling their equipment out in anticipation of the coming snows. After a short visit, I headed up to my camp.

The weather was nicer than I expected. The forecast had called for rain, but it was only cloudy. Everything was looking good. I suited up and headed down to my dredge. Since the water was now down, it was an easy chore to move it across and down the creek. I fired up and ran a tank of gas, cleaning up the area I had worked by hand the previous trip. The light began to fail, so I cleaned up and found I had about 1/4 oz of gold.

This encouraged me and I decided the site was worth more effort. I set my tent back up and moved in. The clouds cleared and the temperature was dropping as I turned in for the evening.

The thermometer read 30 degrees when I got up, and heavy frost covered everything outside. The weather was clear but the clouds were moving in again, and the day soon warmed up into the 50's. I headed down to the dredge and got back to work.

New dredge site at Mills Creek

The bedrock is quite shallow at this site, less than two feet underwater and with only a foot of overburden. The overlying material has some gold, but not as much as I had hoped. Most of the gold is in the shale bedrock crevices, and is not readily visible until you split open the crevices. Unfortunately this slows things up a lot, as you don't know where the gold is, and so all crevices must be broken open. Some have gold and some don't. The bedrock is really rotten at this point, and so I basically just rip it all up, remove the larger pieces that will clog the hose, and then dredge up the rest. The value per yard is high, but the going is too slow to do really well. Running two more tanks of gas netted another 1/4 oz of gold.

My father was still interested in coming up, so I had told him I would drive out Sunday night to give him an update. I quit before running my normal third tank of gas (each tank lasts about 2 1/2 hours) and buttoned up the camp. I headed out as dusk fell.

My truck had made a funny noise on the way in, and now it was apparent that something was really wrong. My transmission grumbled and chirped on the way out, but the noise quit once I got on the highway and into high gear. When I got to Anchorage and had to go to lower gears, it REALLY made noise. I decided it had to go in the shop in the morning.

I cleaned up the gold, and it weighed in at 9.8 pennyweight. Not bad for the equivalent of a days dredging, so I want to work the site some more. So far the gold is a little smaller than I would like to see.

I ran my truck into the shop, and was told it would take a couple days. I called my father, and told him the creek looked good, so we decided to head up the morning of the 5th in his truck. We plan on metal detecting the bench deposits further for a couple of days. Then back to town, and hopefully my truck will be ready so I can get back up to do some more dredging before the snow hits.

Gold for October 2nd & 3rd

Since I had some time to kill, I drove down to Crow Creek to see how my friend Jeff Reed was doing. He started dredging Saturday in the upper creek, and I figured if he was finding lots of nuggety gold that I might be tempted to pull out of Mills and head his way. I met him coming up the creek. He reported that a couple days dredging upstream had produced very little gold. The area is spotty, so this was no surprise, but we had been hopeful of finding coarser nuggets in the upper creek. He had just spent the day sniping around for a new site, and had found about 1/2 oz of gold in bedrock crevices. The crevices were isolated spots, though, and he was still unsure as to where he would dredge next. In any case, since he was not getting rich quick, I felt better about continuing at Mills for the time being. We'll see how it goes.

~ Steve Herschbach
Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

The July 2016 issue of the ICMJ magazine contains an article I wrote reprising my 2011 trip to Australia to hunt gold with Chris Ralph and Jonathan Porter. Subscribers can view the article online.

There was of course a lot more to say about the trip than was contained in the article, and in particular I have a lot more photos to share. I kept a diary while on the trip, and this thread is intended to provide a much more detailed look at the trip. I will keep posting on this thread in a serial fashion similar to what I did with my Alaska gold adventures with my diary providing daily details.

It all started in 2010 at the old AMDS Adventure Forum when I made this post on a thread:

"Hi murph,

You know, for many years it was my dream to go hunt nuggets in Australia. I got Doug Stone's books and read everything else I could and dreamed of those monster nuggets.

But as years went by I read between the lines and figured it is a tough go to find the big nuggets in Australia these days. The fact is you only read about people making finds, but plenty of visitors to Oz find no gold. There is always the home team advantage. It is not so much what you know as who you know, and I'll always have a tremendous advantage in Alaska just because I've lived here all my life. Though I do have a few contacts in Oz that might give me a leg up on the average visitor. Still, it may be that my chance to visit Australia is coming as my circumstances have taken a turn for the better. So maybe in a couple years?"

That in turn generated a response from famed Australian gold prospector Jonathan Porter:

"Steve I will tell you this, if you ever decide to visit Australia it would be my pleasure to show you around. There is still plenty of potential here in Australia, the auriferous areas are just too extensive and in some cases very inaccessible so there just has to be good nugget patches waiting for someone gutsy enough to come along and swing their coil over that first lump. I intend to get into some tiger country this year and could do with a good partner who doesn't need a gold fix every day, interested? - JP"

It turns out that JP and ICMJ Associate editor Chris Ralph had been discussing the possibility of a joint prospecting trip in Australia. I had met Chris previously when I had invited him up to visit my Moore Creek pay-to-mine operation several years earlier. A few messages were passed back and forth offline, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to join in on the adventure. Trying to pick the best time as regards weather was a big priority, and it was decided that the fall of 2011 would be the best bet for putting a trip together. Australia is in the southern hemisphere, and so the seasons are the reverse of what we experience in the United States. Our fall is their spring and we timed it to hit cooler temperatures that would be warming while we were there. Jonathan's advice was critical here. We wanted several weeks to give it a good go and decided the entire month of September 2011 would work well. That gave us plenty of time to plan and make arrangements so we put it on our calendars.

This adventure is continued on the DetectorProspector Forum as a series of posts - see here for the full story.