Steve Herschbach

I decided it would be nice to take a trip to Petersville and do a little exploring. Some miners in the area recently purchased some mining gear from me and invited me up to visit. It turned out that my friend Ben knew them also, so we decided to meet at the Petersville State Recreational Mining Site Saturday morning to try to go find them. We both planned to leave Friday, but our differing schedules made hooking up at Petersville easier than trying to coordinate going up at the same time. I tried to get off work early, but as usual barely made it out before closing. It is 150 miles to Petersville from Anchorage, and so it was getting dark by the time I pulled into the Recreational Site. I threw my sleeping bag over myself in the front seat of my truck, and went to sleep. The next morning revealed overcast skys with a little blue showing here and there. I had one of the new Bombardier Traxter ATV’s on a trailer behind my truck, and so after a quick breakfast I got it off the trailer. Ben showed up about that time, and we decided to take a quick exploratory run over towards Cache Creek. I drove the Traxter and Ben followed in his truck. Our real goal was upper Peters Creek, so as we went down the road we kept our eyes open for a side road heading off in the right direction. After a short while, we decided we must have missed our turn-off and doubled back. We found a road headed the right way, and proceeded on. The road ended up following upper Peters creek into a narrow canyon. We came to a creek crossing followed by a very steep hill that tested both the truck and the Traxter. We both got across the water and up the hill, but Ben got a flat tire somehow in the process. A short tire change and we were once again on our way. A little side trail ran off to one side, and Ben thought it led to the miner’s camp. It was a good thing Ben was with me, as I would have missed it entirely. The women of the operation were in camp, and after visiting a bit, they led us up to the dredging operation. The miners had two 4” dredges working in the creek. They were on some shallow bedrock, and reported finding some decent gold, but nothing to get too excited about. The bedrock sure looked nice through that clear water, however, and it made me wish I had my dredge along. Ben did have his, and he took the guys up on an invitation to throw his rig in the water and give it a try. One 4” dredge was a standard Keene 4” dredge. The other was one of the more creative dredges I have seen in quite a long time. The miner had the frame mounted on a set of axles and ATV tires. He could roll it around and drag it up the creek on gravel bars, and when the water was deep enough the tires actually had enough floatation to keep the setup above water. It looked like a very good dredge for shallow water use. Dredge On Tire Floatation! I decided to explore further up the valley on the Traxter. These units are some of the larger and more powerful ATVs available, and driving the machine around was a lot of fun. I drove up the valley as far as I could go and got pretty far up on the hill overlooking the valley. It was a great view, well above tree line. I sure do like alpine country! I decided to explore down the valley, and ended up following an old ditch line that had been converted into a rough trail. It got to where I was pretty far down below the road, with no end of the trail in sight. Rather than double back, I decided to really put the Traxter to the test and see if I could just head straight up the hill across rough terrain. Traxter Overlooking Valley The hill was about as steep as I could negotiate, and rocks covered with moss tossed the machine around quite a bit. I wondered if this was such a wise idea after all! There were many brush patches, and it looked like I might not be able to pick a path all the way to the road. It turned out to be a close thing, but I did find a narrow passage through the brush, and after a heart-stopping last second climb, I found myself back on the road. I went back up to where the dredging was going on. Not much gold to report, but Ben wanted to spend the night and keep trying Sunday. The thought was tempting, but I was feeling a little under the weather at that point, and so decided I’d head back towards town after some more exploring. I wished everyone good luck and headed back on down the valley. On the way up the valley, some large mining pits had caught my eye, and I explored them a bit. There was an old pipe system feeding into the pit, and a large triple box sluice down in the middle of the operations. The pipe and some old mining gear appeared to date from the early mining in the area, but the triple box was obviously from a more recent heavy equipment operation. Old Pipe System and Loader Fed Triple Box I poked around the pit and some gullies exploring, but someone up along the road started firing a gun. They were obviously target practicing, but did not know I was in the area, and I did not know which way they were firing. It made me nervous enough that I cut my explorations short and got back up on the main road. The area looked like it would make for some interesting metal detecting, but I will have to track the claim owner down for permission first. I made my way back to my truck and loaded up the Traxter. Although I had not found any gold, I have found that these exploratory trips are well worth the time. In fact, I need to do them more often. Once I get looking for gold I tend to stay in a pretty small area. So taking a day now and then and just looking the country over can be a good idea. You never know what new prospects might be waiting just over the next hill. Postscript: I talked to Ben on Monday and reported that he had found a bit of gold, but not enough that I felt like I had missed out on a major strike. In fact, the miners were anxious to move on to some new ground they had staked farther up the valley. However, it sounds like I missed a great meal at the camp that night! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2001 Herschbach Enterprises

My father, two friends, and I flew northwest to the Interior Alaska town of McGrath Friday morning. I have permission to hunt several creeks in the area, but have had a hard time getting there the last couple summers. Bad weather or scheduling has kept me away. Everything finally came together this year, so off we went. My father is a classic Alaska bush pilot with a Cessna 206, so I'm luckier than most when it comes to access. The destination for this trip was Ganes Creek, owned by Doug Clark and Dan Wiltz. Ganes Creek has produced over 250,000 ounces of gold, and some of the largest gold nuggets ever found in Alaska. Some very large nuggets have been found here with metal detectors, and I have wanted to visit the creek for years. After reaching the mine and settling in, Doug pointed us to some old tailing piles. A friend of his, who knew little of detecting, had found a half-ounce nugget in the vicinity, so it seemed a good place to start. I had brought my Minelab SD2200D along, but found the ground to have low mineralization. Bedrock around McGrath is mainly slate/shale. There are lots of igneous cobbles in the overburden, but nothing real hot. Easy detecting ground. The main problem with the tailings was lots of iron trash. I decided to give my Fisher Gold Bug 2 with 14'' coil a try. Since we were hoping for large nuggets, I put it in Iron ID mode, which I normally have not used before. I did find that the machine chattered a lot until I turned the threshold knob down. It appears the threshold control does affect the machine in the iron id mode, although you cannot actually hear the threshold. Tailing Piles Along Ganes Creek Everyone else was using the Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ, all outfitted with the 11'' DD coil. Again, due to iron trash, they all ran the discriminate mode instead of all-metal. The Lobo is one of the rare nugget detectors with a full range discriminator. This proved valuable this trip. The control is adjustable, and it is very important that it be set no higher than needed to tune out nails and other small iron items. We ended up finding all the nuggets on this trip while employing iron discrimination. Our theory was simple. There were large nuggets in the area, and we wanted them. Tuning up for the little ones was not the idea. In fact, no one wanted to waste time trying to recover small nuggets and digging lots of worthless iron trash would definitely be a waste of time. I started chasing gold in the early seventies. I've dredged and detected all over Alaska, but spent most of my time in areas where large nuggets are rare. I've always wanted to find a big one, something over an ounce, but it has eluded me. I have made numerous detecting trips to large nugget locales, and detected literally pounds of gold over the years. I have no problem finding 5-7 pennyweight nuggets, but nothing larger has come my way. I finally dredged a .98 ounce nugget in 1998 at Crow Creek Mine, but even then felt like I had not really done it. .98 ounce is close enough to generally say I found a 1 ounce nugget, and I do. But I still did not feel I had hit the big one. So I went ahead and decided to back off on spending so much time dredging, to spend the time chasing hot areas to detect for large gold. A trip to the Wrangell Mountains last year netted me an 8 dwt nugget, my largest with a detector. Then off to the Fortymile last fall. That expedition turned up a 3/4 ounce nugget. Things were looking up. So this adventure was a part of my new game plan. Big nuggets the goal... heck with the little ones! Bud, Steve, Brian, and Jeff My father is always game to go mining, but does not have my passion or patience for it. I bought him a Lobo last year, as the automatic ground balance is right up his alley. The machine is very forgiving. Still, he has sloppy habits, mainly a very poor swing. He is only near the ground directly in front of his feet. I've tried to get him to do better, to no avail. We've searched lots of tailing piles before, with little success. We all start detecting, and in less than 15 minutes Dad gets a beep and kicks the ground. In a very surprised voice, he exclaims, ''I'll be damned... I found a gold nugget!'' There lay a nice 13.1 dwt piece, his largest ever. That got us fired up!. It was the end of the day, but in short order I found a 7.5 dwt nugget, a 1.1 dwt nugget, and .7 dwt nugget. Jeff hit a 2.6 dwt piece. We got some sleep, figuring to strike it rich the second day. But it was not as hot as we had thought. About noon I finally found a quartzy 14 dwt nugget. Since these are nuggets lost by the original operations, many of them have lots of quartz. The nuggets with higher gold content were generally caught. I found a 1.8 dwt, and Jeff hit a 1.3 dwt piece, but nobody else had any luck by 2PM. It was sunny and about 90 degrees. We are not used to such temperatures in Alaska, and everyone of us was suffering. Dad, Brian, and Jeff rolled up and announced it was time to head back to camp for a break. ''Leave me here; I want to keep hunting'' was my reply. Jeff decided to keep hunting. Dad and Brian gave in and decided to stay, but sat down to rest. Jeff and I hit the tailings again, and in maybe 20 minutes Jeff found a nice solid 17 dwt nugget. This rejuvenated the troops and the hunt was back on! Jeff With 17 dwt Nugget Found With Tesoro Lobo We wandered down back trails through the tailing piles, and Jeff finds another 5.6 dwt nugget. Some time later we were detecting some tailings next to the creek, and I hit a nice 15 dwt piece. Jeff and I are pretty happy at this point, but Dad and Brian had no gold for the day. Brian had not found any gold at all yet, and this can be very hard on someone relatively new to nugget detecting. It was nothing but bad luck, as he basically was doing everything right. He simply had not put the coil over a nugget yet. After dinner Brian, Jeff, and I headed for the tailings off the end of the runway. After less than an hour, the mosquitoes were bothering me enough that I headed back out to the runway. Nobody was in sight, so I wandered down the shoulder of the runway swinging my detector. The runway is made out of flattened tailings, so I figured it was worth a shot. Besides, there were fewer mosquitoes in the open! One hundred feet down the runway I get a beep and a 1.7 dwt quartz pebble with a couple chunks of gold in it. I met Brian and Jeff back at camp; they had found no gold. My father returned from exploring up the creek. He also found no gold. Steve With 14 dwt Nugget Found With Gold Bug 2 The third and final full day started with rain. We did some exploring upstream, but with no success. The mosquitoes were out in force, so Jeff and I donned headnets and searched more tailing piles. Dad explored up a side creek, while Brian indicated he wanted to search in the camp vicinity. The rain let up, but not the mosquitoes. They liked the cooler, damper conditions. Jeff and I searched tailings without luck for some time. We finally wandered back to the runway. Jeff finally picked up a couple nuggets on the runway shoulder near where I found the one the day before. I then hit a nice one also. Jeff was hot to get with it, but I convinced him we should go find our partners and tell them about the new finds. I was anxious for Brian to find a nugget. As we got to camp, up wanders Brian with a big grin. He had obviously found gold. A beautiful 7.8 dwt nugget that everyone agreed was the best looking nugget found. Solid gold with just a spot of quartz, and a bit of twisted wire appearance. The find really raised Brian's spirits, and he was raring to go now. Brian's 7.8 dwt Gold Nugget My father was way up a side creek exploring, so we hooked up with the Doug and his crew and did a little instructional detecting. They were getting the idea that maybe these things were good for something after all. My father wandered up as the group headed up the creek. He said he was too tired to go with us, but when I mentioned we had found some nuggets on the end of the runway, he decided to head that way. Jeff could hardly stand it, but we wanted to spend the time with the miners in appreciation of the opportunity they had given us. We finally explained we wanted to go try the end of the runway, and headed that way. We asked Dad how he had done. He says, ''Well, I found one. It's ugly, but kind of heavy. Maybe it weighs an ounce''. He pulls a palm-sized nugget out of his pocket. Our eyes grew wide and we explained to him that the nugget was at least 2-3 ounces. It had a lot of quartz, so it was hard to tell. It turned out to weigh 3.5 ounce. Unfortunately, it appeared to have been run over by a bulldozer. One edge was a clean break with ragged edges of gold hanging out. It is hard to tell, but I'm guessing it is one half of a 7 ounce nugget. Bud excavating a target - is it a bullet or a gold nugget? Gold nuggets Bud found with Tesoro Lobo ST at Ganes Creek We figured the other half was waiting to be found. It was also our last full day, as we were flying back around noon the next day, so we detected late into the evening. All told, we found about 15 nuggets in the runway material, mostly in one area. Brian found a second nugget weighing 2.4 dwt. I ended up with five nice nuggets ranging from 1.3 to 7.5 dwt. Jeff found six from .9 to 4.5 dwt. But we did not find the other half of that big nugget. It was late, so off to bed. Everyone had gold; Brian’s was the biggest he had ever found, Jeff’s was his largest, and my father had hit the jackpot. I was happy, but my largest nugget was a tie for the one I detected in the Fortymile, and still not larger than that .98 ounce nugget I had dredged. Jeff was also been hoping for something over an ounce, but at this point time was running out. I slept poorly that night, waking constantly. I woke a 4AM, and after an hour awake decided to get up. It was light (all night this time of year) and time passes slowly staring at the ceiling. I figured I might as well do a little detecting while I waited for everyone else to get up around 7AM. I wandered off up the creek, mainly wanting to get far enough away so as not to disturb anyone. I went to the first big tailing pile I came to, and covered it pretty well. Nothing at all. So I wandered up the road a bit, and came to a wide set of tailings that appeared to have been pushed up in a pile by a bulldozer. From the looks of it a sluice had been set up, and the bulldozer was pushing tailings to one side. I started scanning along, and near the top of the pile got a strong signal. I dug it up, and peeking out of the soil lay a little gold potato! I gazed at it in disbelief, and picked it up. It was caked in dark soil, but I knew I had finally found the big one I had been looking for all these years! 4.95 ounce nugget found by Steve at Ganes Creek It was still only about 6AM, so I looked an hour longer. I did find another 2.9 dwt nugget a few feet away, but that seemed to be it for this pile of dirt. About 7AM I headed back to camp. Dad and Brian were up, but Jeff was still snoozing away. We got him up, and I did show and tell with the nugget. After washing it up, it came up at 4.95 ounces on the scale. Literally the find of a lifetime, as no other nugget will mean as much to me as this one does. I showed the guys where I had found the nugget, took some photos, and started packing up to leave. I decided I was perfectly content to kick back and relax. The rest of my crew searched my magic tailing pile for a while, but did not find anything. Maybe my find was luckier than I know. In any case, they headed back to the end of the airstrip to search, but only Jeff found a nugget, 1.5 dwt and the last of the trip. Time to go home, so we packed up and flew back to Anchorage. I’m back to work now, and it is hard to believe I found that nugget just yesterday morning. In retrospect, what was so wild about the whole thing was that I had essentially given up on finding the big one this trip as we were basically out of time. Talk about the early bird catching the worm! I found every nugget but one with my Gold Bug 2 set in Iron ID mode. It ignored most trash except for old rusted cans and larger steel items, such as oversized bolts. I dug a pocketful of bullets and shell casings, but they were not so common as to be annoying. I did run my batteries dead at one point, and spares were at camp, so I fired up the SD2200D and found one nugget with it. A nice 1/4 oz nugget at about a foot. But I soon grew frustrated digging trash, sometimes at extreme depth. I have been getting pretty good at reading targets with the SD, but it is nowhere near as good at discrimination as other detectors. I was happy to put new batteries in the Bug and get back to using it. 18.5 Ounces of Nuggets Detected Ganes Creek, Alaska For the low mineral ground we were in, and the desired goal... pennyweight plus nuggets, any good discriminating detector will do the job. My Gold Bug 2 worked well and the Lobo did a great job for the other guys, and is a hard machine to beat for all-around detecting. But all in all, the name of the game on this trip was ''keep your coil low, and keep it moving''! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2001 Herschbach Enterprises

My cousin Burton stopped by the store, all excited about gold mining. He had already done a little sluice box work at Sixmile Creek near Hope and at Crow Creek Mine, but had very little fine gold to show for his efforts. I decided we needed to go out together so I could get him headed in the right direction. It is a lot harder to find gold when you are starting out then most people imagine. The average person tends to assume that if there is gold on a creek, you just need to pan or sluice some material, and you will find some gold. The truth is just the opposite. Put a beginner on a gold-bearing creek, and they will be very lucky to find any gold at all. Just because a stream is known to contain gold does not mean all the gravels in the valley have gold. Most of the gravels at any gold mine have little or no gold. The secret to successful gold mining is to identify which gravels contain the gold. You then try to process as much of this "pay material" as possible while avoiding moving worthless material as much as possible. Sounds obvious, doesn't it? Placer gold is gold that by definition has been liberated from the original lode (hardrock) deposits and concentrated by water action. Most of the gold in Crow Creek originated in quartz veins upstream in the vicinity of the Crown and Jewel Mines at Crow Pass. As the gold eroded from the quartz veins, erosion carried it downhill into Crow Creek, where countless years of water action concentrated the gold into placer deposits. Look at a stream valley as nothing more than a gigantic naturally fed sluice box and you get the idea. Running water is very efficient at separating materials by weight, with the heaviest minerals, including gold, working downward over the years. Massive floods do most of the work, as the entire volume of material in the bottom of the creek must actually be in motion for any concentration to take place. These floods are rare events, and are referred to by geologists as 20 year, 50 year, or 100 year floods, depending on the average amount of time that will pass before you see one of these floods occur. The larger the flood event, the rarer they are. View up Crow Creek from Area #1 The last major flood on Crow Creek occurred in 1995, and it changed the entire valley. The creek changed channels completely in several locations, and eroded 10-20 feet lower into the valley bottom, leaving the old channels high and dry. This is how bench deposits are created, when remnants of old stream channels are abandoned and left above the new creek level as the creek erodes downward. Subsequent erosion and hillside mass-wasting will eventually destroy most hillside or bench deposits, putting their gold back into the stream. But some survive for hundreds or thousands of years to create today's bench deposits far uphill of the modern stream. Crow Creek is more complicated than most gold deposits due to the fact that Crow Creek Mine is an artificial valley. The old stream valley is a small bedrock canyon just to the right of the parking lot as you enter the mine. The old miners discovered that prior to the last glacial advance, Crow Creek had eroded a valley much farther down into the material than the modern creek. The glaciers alternately dammed Crow Creek from below and pushed material over it from above, completely filling the old canyon and burying the old gold deposits under hundreds of feet of worthless glacial material. Crow Creek is rather unique in that the glaciers buried and preserved the old gold deposits, rather than gouging them up and destroying them. The gold deposits at Crow Creek are much older than most deposits on the Kenai Peninsula, which have only formed since the last glacial advance. This is one reason why Crow Creek is the richest gold mine in Southcentral Alaska. The old-timers mined their way down to the bottom of the ancient stream valley. The top material was nearly worthless glacial material. It does contain some gold, but the material has not been concentrated by stream action and so the gold is scattered haphazardly through the material. A large exposure can be seen from the parking lot by looking directly across the valley. It is mixed round rocks and gravel, with no apparent layering, and is generally very light tan in color. The layer is over 150 feet thick, and the nearly vertical exposure is now slowly falling into the old mining excavation below. Below the glacial till the miner finally reached old streambed deposits. I refer to these as the "brown layer" as the material usually contains lots of yellow-brown clay. When processed in a pan or sluice you gets lots of muddy brown water. In some areas this layer is saturated with water and relatively soft, but much of it is very compacted and tough to dig. In some places a pick is needed to break out even small chunks of the material. The material consists of rounded rocks and gravels, and contains many boulders, usually larger than the rocks in the overlying glacial material. In some exposures it is obvious as a "bouldery layer" sandwiched between the other layers. The brown layer was the rich layer, and produced most of the gold mined at Crow Creek Mine. The gold in the layer can be very concentrated, with some material running up to six ounces of gold per yard of material! The gold is coarse and chunky, with match head sized nuggets common and larger nuggets running up to several ounces. This was the "pay layer". Layers of material at Crow Creek Mine, Alaska In the lower portion of Crow Creek valley the brown layer often rested directly on bedrock. Most of this area has been completely mined and is the canyon portion of Crow Creek below the parking lot that is off-limits to the general public. A series of old bedrock channels were uncovered and mined to their bottoms. This area was then used as a tailings disposal area as mining proceeded further upstream. There are still remnants of the brown layer resting on bedrock in lower Area #1. When the miners got to what is now referred to as "Area #1", in other words, the first mining area you reach as you walk up the creek, they found another major layer below the brown layer but over the bedrock. Walk up the trail and turn down to the creek at the Area #1 sign. You will see lots of bedrock exposed on your right, with the creek cutting a narrow gorge through the bedrock. But oddly, as you look upstream, the bedrock disappears. There is a large bowl, or depression in the bedrock above this point, and bedrock is only exposed at one other location on the creek above this point at the upper end of Area #1. This depression at one time must have had a glacier upstream of it, for it is filled with a dense, dark layer of material I refer to as the "blue layer". The layer has a distinct bluish-gray color because it mostly consists of clay formed from glacial silt. It has many small, angular rocks mixed with it, and hardly any rocks over a few inches in diameter. It can be relatively soft in it's upper reaches, but as you dig down it becomes very tough and eventually turns into rock. There is a good exposure of this layer turned into a conglomerate rock directly against the bedrock across the creek in Area #1. The layer is dozens of feet thick, and may be over 100 feet thick further upstream. The brown layer, instead of resting on bedrock, rests directly on top of this "blue layer" from Area #1 and upstream. Map of Area #1 at Crow Creek Mine, Alaska The blue layer is "glacial outwash", in other words material that flowed out from streams issuing from the face of a glacier. The layer is mostly silt and clays formed from silts, and small rocks that have not been rounded by stream action. There is only small, fine and flaky gold in the material, and since it is very tough it tends to roll through sluice boxes in chunks without breaking up. At some locations it is rather "sticky" and can actually pick up gold out of a sluice box as it rolls through. The absolute richest material that you can find at Crow Creek Mine is where the brown layer rests directly on bedrock, or where it rests directly on the blue layer. The brown layer was once streambed material in motion. The gold tended to work to the bottom of the brown layer, and very rich pockets of coarse gold can be found in bedrock crevices below the brown layer, or in the top few inches of the blue layer where gold worked into the clay's surface. The clay did not have a smooth surface, but many depressions and pockets where gold could lodge. Rolling rocks literally hammered gold into the top few inches of clay. But don't dig too deep into the clay, as there is usually little gold under the top few inches. There is gold throughout the entire brown layer, and most of it is worth running through a sluice or highbanker. Like all layers, however, it does have its barren areas. So, to recap. We have glacial material, over brown layer, over blue layer, over bedrock. From Area #1 downstream the brown layer may rest on bedrock, but there are sections of blue material below Area #1. From Area #1 upstream the brown layer rests on the blue layer. There is one final layer we must discuss. The tailings layer. It is the final layer that can produce large amounts of gold for the miner at Crow Creek. The miners started mining Crow Creek near the end of the valley, then proceeded farther and farther upstream. The old-timers were using hydraulic giants, or huge water cannons, to strip the overlying glacial till away, then process the brown layer through a series of wooden sluices. The high volume of material processed caused lots of smaller gold to be lost into the tailings. In some areas, gold washed over the blue layer got caught in pockets and depressions and never made it into the sluice boxes. In Area #1 the brown layer has been almost completely removed, and what remains is the blue layer, covered with loose tailing material. The old miners excavated into the blue layer about 50 to 75 feet at Area #1, so the creek is actually now running in a mini-valley in the blue layer well below where the brown layer existed. From creek level at Area #1 you need to walk at least 100 feet up the hill or more to find any brown layer material remaining. The tailings do contain gold, and the floodplain in Area #1 consists of tailings less than ten feet thick lying on top of the blue layer. Floods have reconcentrated the tailings, and most of the gold contained in them has settled to rest directly on the blue layer. The creek ran against the far bank before the 1995 flood, but now rests in a channel closer to the trail. The foot of material where the tailings meet the blue layer can be very rich, and I have taken a lot of gold from Area #1 over the years by staying on the blue layer. Stream cross section Area #1 at Crow Creek Mine, Alaska The trick to Area #1 is simple. If you dredge in the creek (and I have) there is little gold in the overburden. You get 95% of the gold directly off the blue layer, where it is lodged in small pockets and depressions. The blue layer was severely eroded by the flood, and in the middle of the current stream channel is about 3-5 feet from the surface. It is very tough and very much like soft asphalt in consistency. The layer rises away from the center of the creek until it finally runs up out of the water. The entire floodplain, and the old dry channel against the far bank, and completely underlain by this layer. Remember that during major floods, the entire floodplain is underwater and all the gravel is moving downstream. Gold is concentrated on the blue layer across the entire floodplain, and many rich pockets will be encountered well away from the current creek channel. If you dredge the creek, you are forced to process the generally worthless tailings on top to get rid of them, but you get little gold doing so. Getting to the blue layer is the key. The blue layer was exposed directly on the surface of the far side of the creek after the flood, and I did quite well with a metal detector along the edge of the creek. Unfortunately, as you follow the layer away from the creek, the tailings get thicker, and contain many large rocks. Most of the material is worthless, so much so that the best strategy with a shovel is to simply throw it aside. Only the foot of material directly on the blue layer should be processed through a hand sluice. You may toss a little gold with the tailings, but if you waste too much time processing generally worthless material, you will get less gold, not more. Finally, if you use a metal detector, get to that blue layer! Detecting the material directly on top of the layer will get you nuggets. Detecting the tailings will get you iron trash of every description. Area #1 is being overlooked by the public at this time. This will no doubt change next summer after this report gets around. Tourists all cluster in Area #1 on the near side of the creek. The real place to hit is the floodplain area across the creek. Therein lies the problem. You can only wade the creek in the early spring or late fall. Midsummer there may or may not be a bridge crossing way upstream where you can cross, then walk downstream to the floodplain, but there is no good trail. Burton and I loaded up a hand sluice and digging tools and headed for Area #1 on a wonderfully sunny day. We crossed at the log bridge in upper Area #1 and bushwhacked downstream to the floodplain area. I pointed out little bits and pieces of the blue layer showing along the edge of the creek to Burton. The area we chose had the layer running under 3-5 feet of overlying tailings, but had the advantage of being directly next to the creek. We set the sluice box up directly next to the bank where we could shovel directly into it without using buckets. We could throw large rocks and the worthless overburden over the sluice into the creek, which was a raging torrent this sunny day. Crow Creek is fed by a glacier, and if you are on the far side keep in mind that it rises steadily everyday with the temperature. Crossing over early in the morning can make for a risky return later on a hot day. Removing overburden to get to gold bearing layer We got with the program, and started clearing off the blue layer. We would knock off a portion of the bank to remove overhanging rocks, then toss and shovel until we were about to the blue layer. It's easy to tell when you hit it... it's really like digging pavement! Then we carefully scraped the few inches off the top of the layer and fed it through the sluice. Burton got real excited when gold started showing up almost immediately. Here is a good picture of the blue layer as we exposed it. The water was rising throughout the day, and so slowly crept up over the layer as we worked. This same spot will be high and dry in late fall as water levels drop. You can see the cement-like quality of the layer. In some places in upper Area #1 the layer is pure clay with no rock, in other spots like this there is a lot of rock in the clay. It actually makes a good rough surface for catching gold, but unfortunately it is soft enough that the material is constantly eroding during a flood and releasing the gold as fast as it traps it. Most of the gold gets caught right where it is when the flood starts to subside, and the material stops rolling and eroding. Close up of clay "blue layer" exposed underwater One thing this day reminded me of... I am not a big fan of shovels! The day was very hot, and we were sweating like pigs throwing rocks and dirt. The water kept rising, making it hard to scrape the blue layer clean, and causing me to worry a bit about our return crossing over the log bridge. The water had been touching the logs when we came over as it was. We had a nice amount of gold to send Burton home with, more than all his previous trips combined had found, so we called it a day. We pulled the sluice up, washed it into a pan and panned the day's take. A couple pennyweight of chunky little nuggets looked up at us from the gold pan. Burton was ecstatic, and thrilled about this new revelation about finding gold on layers, or "false bedrock" as it is often referred to. It really is the key to success at Crow Creek, and at nearly all other placer gold mines, especially in Alaska. I have visited numerous large mining operations, and nearly all operate by stripping worthless overburden as cheaply and quickly as possible, then running only the likely gold bearing material through the recovery system. This is usually material on or in actual bedrock, or sometimes on a false bedrock layer, like the blue layer at Crow Creek. Learning the same principle of "identify the pay layer, and process only likely pay material" will go a long ways towards helping many weekend miners to increase their chances of finding gold. Chunky gold from pay layer A few final notes. I've given you generalities here, and there are things to look out for. The tailings are usually relatively loose gray materials with lots of iron trash. In the upper areas of Crow Creek, the tailings had more mud in them, and some of these tailings appear to be the brown layer. In fact, they are brown layer materials that have been processed, and where they were dumped in some areas they rehardened into what appears to be virgin material. Like all the tailings, it can have good gold in it, but it has been through a sluice box. The dead giveaway is nails. If you are finding nails in it, it must be tailings. The other thing to watch out for is that in Area #2, the brown layer and blue layer do not always have a clean dividing point, but appear as alternate layers. In other words, you dig down through the brown layer, hit a blue layer, then dig through it and hit another brown layer. This indicates some kind of repeated pattern of gold deposition followed by glacial outwash, then more gold deposition. It can get interesting, as hitting the blue layer usually means stop, but in Area #2 you may hit another brown layer farther down. I'll focus on the brown layer and the upper areas of Crow Creek in a future article. Until then, Good Luck to all you miners out there!! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2001 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

My dredging equipment has changed a lot over the last two years. I have been using a Keene 6" dredge with dual 5.5HP Honda pumps for many years. This was great while I concentrated on working a few choice locations, primarily Crow Creek Mine. A 6" dredge is great for production work, but it is too heavy for one guy to be packing around much. It usually took me 14 round trips to pack the entire dredge into any one location. The problem is that I have been spending years going to the same locations over and over. This is because I've been successful at finding gold at these locations, so why go elsewhere? Most of the vacation time I've been using each year has gone into working these same locations. But much as I hate to say it, I've been getting bored. I'm sure many people would like to have this particular kind of problem. I've been using 5" and 6" dredges for so long now that the fun and adventure has been fading. It has been turning into a job of sorts, in that I go and and do some heavy labor and get some gold. A certain number of hours dredging produces a certain amount of gold. The deposits I have been working are fairly predictable and I've found lots of nice medium-sized gold, with a few nice nuggets to spice things up. Unfortunately, this relatively predictable situation has taken a lot of the adventure out of of my mining trips. They are still fun, but just getting gold is not as exciting to me as it used to be. The day was when an ounce of gold in my pan at the end of the day was unimaginable to me. Now I look at it and just figure it was a decent days work. I've decided to switch directions in my mining efforts. The biggest change is to stop going to the same old places over and over. I've gotten in a rut, and need to break out of it. There are lots of new and exciting spots waiting for me all over Alaska, and I've realized I'm not getting any younger. It's time for me to start visiting new locations around the state. With that in mind, I need a new goal. Instead of quantity of gold, I'm going to focus on the quality of the gold. More to the point, the size of the gold. I like big nuggets, and I'm going to put more effort into finding them. The Kenai Peninsula areas I have concentrated on for the past 25 years are not the best areas for large nuggets in Alaska. It's time for me to go north. I'll be spending a lot more time metal detecting, and less time dredging. Steve's old 6" Keene gold dredge and 5" subsurface assembled from Keene parts This all means my old 6" was too big for my future plans. No more taking two weeks off just to go run the 6". So I sold it last year, and down-sized considerably to a 5" subsurface dredge. After using it a short while, I decided it was still to big for what I wanted. I need a dredge small and light enough to use for one or two day trips. I need to be able to pack it to a location, dredge for a day, and pack it out. The 5" was still a little on the large size, particularly in the amount of room it was taking up in my truck. So I sold the 5" and proceeded to build a 4" subsurface. The first version was built on a set of floats that proved to be a bit on the small side. The dredge worked well, but tended to nose-dive in fast current. Keene has also come out with a new 4" subsurface dredge tube with a redesigned riffle tray. I went ahead and rebuilt the dredge around the same marlex floats that Keene uses on their 2.5" dredge. The normal Keene frame is needlessly complicated for this application, some I made my own from simple aluminum stock. A primary design goal was that the frame, float, and recovery tube assembly had to fit in the back of my truck fully assembled. I wanted to get away from assembling and disassembling the dredge unless absolutely necessary. Steve's new 4" subsurface dredge under construction & in back of truck The new version looks great! Compact, lightweight, simple. The 4HP Honda provides plenty of power while being very fuel efficient. I can mount an air compressor if I need one, but for most of the shallow water dredging I do I can use a mask and snorkel, and forgo the extra hookah gear. Best of all, the unit slides into the back of my truck fully assembled. All I have to do is hook up the hoses. I think I've found my main unit for the next few years. A dredge that will be fun to use for short trips. My cousin Robert has recently moved to Anchorage, and my cousin Bob was in town visiting my father. We decided to get together for a trip to my claims on Mills Creek. Robert is new to mining, while Bob has been involved in numerous mining adventures in the past. I've been thinking of selling my share of the Mills Creeks claims, but wanted to try one spot out in particular to see how it paid. Jeff had sniped a nice pocket of nuggets on a corner of the creek on one of our past trips, and I've been curious if more gold was waiting to be found there. We also figured to metal detect for gold along the banks on bedrock exposures. We got my tent set up under a gloomy sky. Winter is on the way, and fresh snow is falling on the mountain tops. After settling in, I spent some time with Bob and Robert detecting for gold along the edges of Mills Creek where bedrock is exposed. We've detected lots of gold here before, but the location is getting picked over, so we had to work extra hard to find those nuggets. We shared my detector and started dropping nuggets in our vials. Once Bobby and Robert were under way metal detecting, I hauled my dredge down to the creek and got setup. The little 4" is so small compared to what I am used to that it seemed to be no effort at all to carry it around. I was setup in no time at all, and proceeded to work the bedrock area where Jeff had found his gold. 4" subsurface gold dredge at Mills Creek The bedrock was shallow, but I did not get into any major pockets of gold. There were flakes and a few nuggets scattered along the bedrock, but nothing to get excited about. By the end of the day, I had about a 1/4 ounce of gold to show. I had been hoping for something a little more dramatic, and so was a bit disappointed. The dredge was working great, however, and I was very pleased with it's performance. If I had found a great paystreak, I probably would have kept going, but the mediocre results made my mind up. I decided to sell my share of the claims and more on to greener pastures. I pulled my dredge out of the creek and packed it back to camp. I spent the rest of the weekend detecting with Bob and Robert. Bob seemed to be finding chunkier gold, but I was getting more nuggets. I finally ended up with 62 nuggets metal detecting, in addition to the gold I found dredging. Bob found 50 nuggets, while Robert only found seven. Since this was his first mining experience he was quite pleased, however. 121 Gold Nuggets Found Metal Detecting My nuggets are the ones in the bottom of the picture; Bob's are in the upper right hand corner. Robert found the seven to the left. A very successful weekend, with fun had by all. We tore down camp and stuffed everything possible into my truck and headed back to town. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

My new mining strategy is to concentrate on adventure and seeing new places, instead of just revisiting old locales to get more gold. This trip is the first test of this emphasis on chasing large gold in new locales. The first step is to research locations where large gold nuggets have been found in the past. This is fairly easy, and involves nothing more than reading lots of old mining reports. The best place to look for large gold nuggets is where they have been found in the past. The next step is getting access to those locations. It should come as no surprise that the kinds of locations that have produced many large gold nuggets in years past are most likely claimed by somebody. Rich mining ground is hard to come by, and the proven producers of yesteryear are obvious to anyone who wants to take the time to research them. Many of these areas are not only claimed, but have been for generations, with the claims passing from father to son. There are many second and even third generation mining operations in Alaska. In those cases where the claims have not stayed in a family's name, they have most likely been sold to someone else when the miner was ready to move on. Good ground is valuable, and a miner usually does not just walk away from it. He finds a buyer and sells it. The chances of finding good nugget locales in Alaska that are not claimed are slim. If they are not, it is most likely because the ground is now in a park, and therefore subject to restrictions on mining. Denali National Park has some good nugget creeks that are no longer claimed, but since they are in a National Park even metal detecting is restricted. Other creeks are now on Native lands, which are private property and require permission from the applicable Native corporation to visit. Bucket line dredge on Wade Creek, Alaska My mining buddy Jeff made the acquaintance of a miner in the Fortymile region of Alaska, and after a couple years of quietly asking had finally received permission for us to visit the claims. The Fortymile area is named after the main river in the area, the Fortymile River. The Fortymile district is really just the U.S. side of the famous Klondike goldfields of Canada. It is one of the earliest areas to see mining activity in Alaska, with gold rushes in the 1880's. Jeff and I also know several other miners in the area, and so we made plans to visit the area and see what we could find. Jeff drove his camper, while I followed pulling a trailer behind my truck. We brought along a new Bombardier Traxter XT ATV and a little dirt bike. We had no set plan as to where we were going, so we wanted to be prepared for any eventuality. Our first goal was a creek where a miner I knew was running a small bulldozer operation. If that did not work out, we had a couple alternative creeks lined up to visit. This was to be real exploring at it's best. It is about an eight hour drive from Anchorage to Chicken, Alaska. The drive was uneventful, if a little long. It was exciting to be seeing country I had not seen in many years. My business partner Dudley and I had mined in the Fortymile back in the 1970's, so I have been this way before. The roads have improved a lot since then, I can assure you. When we got to Chicken we stopped at the Chicken General Store and visited awhile. We got a few clues as to locations we might want to visit, and where to find the miners on a couple creeks. Chicken has a long mining history and is still being mined today. The major landmark in the area is a very large bucketline dredge still sitting where it stopped just a short way off the road as you leave Chicken. You can visit the dredge by stopping by the Chicken Gold Camp. We drove north up Jack Wade Creek and headed for our first destination. The creek we were heading for was on a small side road that wound down a narrow valley. Jeff and I had never been here before, and so were only vaguely aware of where we were heading. We pulled into one mining camp and talked a bit. The folks pointed us down the valley, and we continued on. We then came to a second mining camp, and stopped to visit. Fall Colors in the Fortymile Area We knew the miners by chance... it seems I've met most of the guys over the years at work or prospecting. We chatted a bit, and they told us that there was some pretty high water where we were headed. I was leery of making a high water crossing in my Chevy Blazer, as I had blown up the transmission last summer crossing Mills Creek in high water. The transmission is vented directly on top, and water going over the top can get in and cause damage. We decided to turn back and head for Jack Wade Creek. Jack Wade has a good mining history, and parallels the road for some distance. Some of the largest nuggets ever found in Alaska had been found here in the past. We did not know the miners on the creek, but had been told where to look for them. Night was starting to fall as we got back to Jack Wade, so we camped for the night. The next morning dawned clear and beautiful. The fall colors were showing, making for a spectacular sunrise. We drove up and down the creek looking for the miners. The camp we had been told to find them at was deserted, and so we decided to poke around the old bucketline dredge. We had been told it was ok to look for gold there, but I'm not sure if this is true. Still, we wanted to find something, and finally turned up a few smoothly rounded nuggets on bedrock above the creek. The location showed signs of being thoroughly mined, however, and did not hold out much hope of finding much gold. We stopped by the miners camp one last time, but they still were not there. The day was wearing on, an so we decided we had better head for one of our other alternative destinations. We had two creeks in mind, and both would require going overland for quite a few miles. We mulled it over for awhile, and decided to go on in and visit one of the creeks and see how it looked before the day wore completely out. Jeff put most of our gear on the Traxter, and I followed him in on my little dirt bike. Jeff on Bombardier Traxter XT The ride was easy for Jeff, but exciting for me. The little bike scooted along all right, but it was white knuckle riding to keep it on the ridges between the mud holes. I have not done much riding on motorcycles, and was kind of proud that I managed to not completely wipe out. We finally pulled into the mining camp that afternoon, and let the miners know we had arrived. They invited us to stay with them and put us up in their cabin. It seemed we had finally found somewhere to search for gold! There was some time left before the sun went down, so Jeff got out his Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ and I fired up my Minelab SD2200D. The ground in the Fortymile area is fairly mineralized, and low frequency machines with automatic ground balance perform more smoothly than high frequency detectors like the White's Goldmasters. There are lots of false signal on mineralized "hot rocks". The Minelab SD detectors excel under these kinds of conditions. There was some bedrock exposed along the valley wall just below the miner's cabin, so we started looking there. We started find a few nuggets almost immediately! The nuggets were thick and worn very smooth, as is much of the gold in the Fortymile area. The gold has rolled around in streams for eons, and has very little quartz left in it. The day was drawing to a close, however, so we called it a night. We were excited to see what the next day would bring. The next day dawned under clear fall skies. We offered to show the miner what we could do with our detectors by running them in his mining cut, and offered to give him any gold we found. We just wanted to be able to dig some nice nuggets, and realized this is how the miners make their living. It would also give us a chance to learn more about the mining operation and how the gold was deposited in the creek. This operation is using a bulldozer and a couple track hoes to strip the overburden to bedrock. The gold is concentrated entirely on the bedrock, with little in the overburden, so the overburden is stacked to one side. The bedrock is completely decomposed and much darker than the overlying material, so it is easy to tell where the gold begins. Several feet of the decomposed bedrock is scooped up and run through a recovery plant. Tailings are run into areas previously mined, and the stockpiled overburden is then pushed over areas once mining is complete. These kind of modern mining operations are more environmentally friendly, leaving gently rolling hills and ponds in their wake, but they are not very good for metal detector operators. Old mines where the workings were left open have much more potential for finding lost nuggets, but the newer mines cover up the holes as they go, so there is little chance of finding gold at many of the newer mining operations. But since we had permission to look in the current mining cuts, we were almost sure to find gold. And so we did, with nuggets turning up right and left as we detected the bottom and sides of the excavation. The miner watched with great interest, since any nuggets we found along the edges of the excavation indicated he might have to widen the hole to reach gold outside the current edges. The miner did have a Fisher Gold Bug that he personally uses for just that, and he has found it to be an important testing tool in his operations. Mining operation in progress We found a couple of ounces of gold, the largest being a 3/4 ounce piece I found that was shaped like one of those elongated fishing sinkers. It was great fun, but we had been hoping to find something larger. The miners have found quite a few nuggets weighing several ounces in the past, but the current cut was in what they called "smaller gold". Considering that all of the nuggets we found weighed several pennyweight each, I'd take that kind of small gold any day! Still, while this was great fun, we wanted to find some gold of our own. Jeff and I headed for some of the old high bench workings, and the miners told us we could keep any of the gold we found in the old mining areas. Benches are remnants of old stream locations now perched high and dry above the current creek level. Once the water was flowing over these locations, but as the stream erodes downward it eventually leaves portions of the old streambed deposits above the creek. Sometimes these deposits can be hundreds or even thousands of feet from the modern stream. Steve with Minelab SD2200D and gold just found We hit an old area far above the creek. I seemed to have the edge over Jeff, as my Minelab SD2200D was outfitted with the Coiltek 14" mono coil, whereas his Tesoro Lobo had the 11" DD coil. The extra coil size and the ability of the SD2200D to ignore mineralized ground seemed to give me that little bit of extra depth required to hit nuggets that the Tesoro was missing. In short order I found about an ounce of nice chunky nuggets. Jeff was only finding a couple of pieces. The area started to play out, so we headed down the creek to some other bench deposits. Jeff's fortunes improved, and he started finding more nuggets. One stretch of bare bedrock extended up steeply from the creek up the valley wall. Since this was nearly bare bedrock, we switched to smaller search coils. It was slim pickings, but we both found a few nuggets. Jeff was working at the top of the exposure right where it was going into the trees, when he yelled down at me. Steve's Nuggets - Just over 1.5 Ounces I walked up, and Jeff had a big grin on his face. The day was about over, but Jeff had found a nice 1/2 ounce nugget to make up for my finding the majority of the nuggets earlier. It turned out to be the largest "keeper" of the trip. We did a little more hunting, but finally turned in for the evening. We spent the night, then rose the next morning and headed back for town. Jeff ended up with over an ounce of gold, including that nice 1/2 ounce nugget. I had 1.5 ounces of chunky gold to take home, but my largest keeper weighed 3.5 pennyweight, so Jeff had me beat for big nugget bragging rights. The miners invited us back next summer, so we will have another chance to look for large gold nuggets here someday. For more information on the Fortymile Mining District, get Gold Placers of the Historical Fortymile River Region by Warren Yeend ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

The owner of the High Grade lode mine in Hatcher Pass stopped by the store. He was interested in buying a metal detector to aid in hardrock prospecting. I’ve done a bit of this before, and realize how hard it can be for a beginner to get results. I offered to meet him at the mine last Sunday to demonstrate what I could do on his mine dump. If he liked what he saw, great. If not, he would save the price of a detector, and I would still get a fun trip out of town. I took my to the mine under gathering clouds. When chasing tiny gold enclosed in quartz a high frequency detector like the White's Goldmaster with a small coil is the way to go. The High Grade is up behind the Independence and Gold Cord mines at Hatcher Pass. The High Grade was named because it literally produced some very high-grade ore. The veins were narrow, however, and the mine only produced a limited amount of ore. The dump had so much iron trash in it that I found it easier to simply pick up quartz samples and wave them over the detector search coil. The ore in Hatcher Pass is relatively clean quartz with free gold. The gold does tend to associate with pyrite, so any quartz with reddish staining or obvious sulphides is worth extra attention. The pyrite here is non-conductive, and so will be ignored by the detector. Many very rich samples, such as those pictured, have little or no pyrite; so all quartz should be detected. I have seen gold in perfectly pure, white quartz in the area. In less than an hour I found eight pieces of quartz that gave obvious signals. Some had visible gold, while others were giving signals from gold totally enclosed within the quartz. Unfortunately, rain began to fall, and then it REALLY began to fall. I was not prepared for rain, but we had proven the point… the detector worked very well on the ore. I headed on home. I left the ore with the owner. BLM is putting the squeeze on him, so I figure he needs all the samples he can get. The ore pictured below is from the Fern Mine, also in Hatcher Pass. I obtained it from a geologist that worked the mine years ago. It is shot through with gold, and is a good example of what might be found by a lucky prospector in the Hatcher Pass area. It exhibits black streaking that is often associated with the better ore in the area. High Grade Mine, Hatcher Pass, Alaska An excellent source of additional information is Hatcher Pass Gold by Ron Wendt. Ron tells about all the mines in the area, and includes many maps and photos. The book is out of print but can be found used. ee also the USGS report for the area - Geology and Ore Deposits of the Willow Creek Mining District, Alaska (1954). Be aware that most of the hardrock mines in Hatcher Pass are patented properties. In other words, they are no longer just mining claims, but actually are private property. Few of the mines in the area are ''abandoned'' and permission should be sought from the mine owners to sample the mine dumps. Use extreme caution around the old mines, as many tunnels, shafts, and old structures present a hazard to the unwary. How was the gold deposited at Hatcher Pass? What follows is a simplified view of gold deposition. In reality is this is all theory, and entire books are devoted to the many theories of how gold deposits form. So what I am presenting below is a layman's view of a commonly accepted theory... not a "fact". Still, the theory works well enough to be used to predict where gold occurs. Gold most commonly occurs in quartz veins. The quartz and gold were deposited within crevices and fractures in rock far below the earth by circulating hot water. You will see the term "hydrothermal" a lot. hydro = water + thermal = hot. Most gold was formed by hydrothermal processes. Note that most quartz veins do not contain gold, so quartz alone means little. So we need two things... rock with crevices and fractures, and a source of hot, mineral laden water. The classic gold deposit is the hardrock mine area at Hatcher Pass north of Anchorage. A large mass of molten rock, in this case granite, rose towards the surface from far below. This kind of activity tends to result in a pattern of fractures or faults in the surrounding rock as this molten mass forces it's way upward. When this mass of molten rock cools, it shrinks, and more fractures form within this rock as it cools. What finally results is a "granitic intrusive", another term you will see often when reading about gold deposits. The hardrock deposits at Hatcher Pass are a were formed around a granitic intrusive. As the molten rock cools, water seeping down from the surface reaches the zone of newly introduced minerals and heat. Water that is extremely hot and under pressure can dissolve many minerals that we think of as insoluble, especially when some of the dissolved minerals cause the solution to become even more corrosive. The water, now mineral-laden and hot, rises back towards the surface. As it circulates through the crevices and faults in the rock it deposits many of these minerals. Much of the mineralization is simply because the solution is cooling, and so can no longer keep the minerals in solution. Often, in the case of rich mineral deposits, the solution comes into contact with another type of mineral that causes a chemical reaction. The classic mineral in this case is limestone. Many of these solutions are acidic, and when they come into contact with limestone, the acidity is neutralized, and the mineral drop out of solution. Many very rich mineral deposits have been found where limestone comes into contact with other rock types. Gold ore from Fern Mine, Hatcher Pass, Willow Creek Mining District, Alaska In the case of Hatcher Pass, the deposit follows the classic example. There was a rounded mass of granite far underground. Fractures formed in the top of the granite, and in the other rocks immediately above and around the granite. Hot water solutions deposited quartz and gold in these fractures. Ages of erosion exposed the top of the granite and the fractures to the surface. Erosion released the gold from the veins and deposited some of it in the streams and rivers in the valley. The rest remained in the hardrock veins, to later be discovered and mined. Very common in this scenario also, is the concept that the gold veins have a limited depth. The gold veins tend to occur just above and within the upper layer of the granitic mass. As erosion (or mining) extends downwards below a certain level, the gold deposits tend to thin out and disappear. A situation arises where areas that have extensive gold in the streams often have little in the rock (it all eroded out) and areas where the stream deposits are poor will often be associated with very rich hardrock mines (most of the gold is still in the rock). Again, a generality. Granitic intrusives are common along major fault lines. Maps can readily be had of faults and their related intrusives, and it is no surprise these tend to coincide with many of the major gold regions of the world. Volcanoes are another process where by molten rock rises to the surface, surrounding rocks are fractured, and circulating waters deposits minerals, including gold, in these fractures. The oldest hardrock mine in Alaska is the Apollo Mine on Shumagin Island in the Aleutians, near Sand Point. This and other gold deposits in the Aleutians and the Alaska Range are volcanic in origin. The Aleutians are a "volcanic chain", a long string of islands that are actually volcanoes. There are many other types of gold deposits, and many variations on these types. The best reference I have seen on the subject is "The Geochemistry of Gold and its Deposits" by R. W. Boyle, (1979) Geological Survey of Canada, Bulletin 280, 584 pages. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

One of my favorite places in Alaska is Bonanza Creek near Chisana in the Wrangell - St. Elias mountains. This location is accessible only by air and is about 250 air miles east of Anchorage. The elevation of around 5000 feet makes for a very short season. Snow persists into June and starts falling again in September. One reason I talked my father into visiting this site in the early 1970's was that it is very remote, and mining in the area concentrated on finding the richest deposits. Material that is very good by today's standards was left as too poor at the time. The gold was reported to be large, and it seemed reasonable that some good gold had been overlooked. I've known the claim owners for a long time, and have done very well metal detecting on this creek over the years. My original supposition was correct, and much rich ground remains. The ground is heavily mineralized, but even so I have done well with a variety of VLF detectors here, including the Compass Gold Scanner, Fisher Gold Bugs, White's Goldmasters, and Minelab XT17000, XT18000, and Goldstriker. My family and I have found thousands of nuggets here over the years. Old mine workings above Bonanza Creek I purchased a Minelab SD2200D specifically to try this locale again. The last trip to Bonanza Creek gave me the impression the area was getting hunted out, but I suspected more nuggets could be found with the SD. When I say hunted out, I mean of larger nuggets. The area is still full of smaller nuggets. But it was getting hard to find any nuggets over a pennyweight. The largest nugget I had found here so far weighed 6.8 dwt, found with my old Compass Gold Scanner. My sister actually beat me out, having found a 7 dwt nugget with the original Fisher Gold Bug model. The history of the area indicated larger nuggets could be found, but they have eluded us so far. As we went back over the years with more sensitive detectors, larger quantities of smaller nuggets were found, but the big nuggets were found early on. My father, Bud Herschbach, is an Alaskan Bush pilot, having flown here since the 1960's. He currently owns a Cessna 206, a very capable plane with a large load capacity, yet the ability to land on small unimproved runways. My father, Jeff Reed, and I departed Anchorage in fair weather and headed for Northway to meet the claim owner to get the keys to his cabin. After leaving Northway we made our way through the mountains to Chisana. The mountain strip we land on is something that would amaze most people. The approach is made flying up a small valley. A turn is made up a side creek and a landing is made uphill directly into the side of a mountain. It is something that must be done correctly the first time, as a missed approach means a nearly impossible climb out against the face of the mountain. The landing strip is just some bare dirt in the tundra, and very short at that. It is the kind of landing that has a person clutching their seat and hoping nothing goes wrong. As usual Dad aced the landing, however, and we parked the plane. We loaded our gear up and walked over the hill towards Little Eldorado Creek and camp. Upon arrival we found all in good order, although a bear had forced entry into one of the cabins. We straightened things up and settled in. Since we had hunted the area with detectors carefully over the years, Jeff and I wanted to try something new. The current owner has done well dredging the claims, and we figured we might do well to snipe the many exposed bedrock areas in the creeks with drysuits, masks, and snorkels. So our first morning Jeff and I suited up and headed down Bonanza Creek to snipe for gold. Jeff had a cold and was feeling a bit under the weather, but we had visions of underwater crevices full of large gold nuggets to push us on. My father took his Tesoro Lobo and headed out on his own to look for gold. Jeff sniping for gold in drysuit Well, Jeff and I ended up disappointed. We spent a long day poking and prodding into crevices with our hand tools. We found quite a bit of gold, but none of the rich pockets we were anticipating. The old timers, and more recent dredgers had done their jobs well, and shallow exposed bedrock areas did not give us as much gold as we had been hoping. I got kind of discouraged and started skipping along over areas. Jeff, for all that he was not feeling well, was more persistent, but no hot crevices were revealed. Jeff and I finally gave up and headed back to the cabins. Dad was waiting there for us, and we told him about our lack of results. We then asked how he had done, and he tells us he had ranged over quite a bit of ground, and had finally got a good signal with his detector. He then pulled out a very nice 3.1 pennyweight nugget laced with quartz to show us! Needless to say, Jeff and I were very excited about his find. It was the largest nugget my father had ever found, making it even better yet. We decided that the area he had found it in was well worth our attention (naturally!) and excitedly made plans for the next days nugget hunt. The weather was pretty poor the next morning, so we headed out under cloudy skies to search for gold. Jeff and I diligently searched bedrock along Bonanza Creek while Dad wandered on up ahead of us. There were lots of great looking bedrock exposures along the creek, but try as we might Jeff and I found little but nails. Jeff was using a Fisher Gold Bug 2 while I was using my new Minelab SD2200D. We finally caught up to my father in the area where he had found the nugget the day before. Bedrock was exposed in the middle of the floodplain along one stretch, and this is where the 3.1 dwt. nugget had been found. We started detecting in the area and finding some small nuggets. Finally I looked across the creek and saw some bedrock exposed along the bank. I decided to cross over and give it a try. I did a little scanning, and after a short while I got a strong signal. It sounded big enough to be a nail, so I had no big expectations. Imagine my surprise when an 8 pennyweight nugget popped out of the ground! It was the largest nugget I had ever found in this area, and I just stared at it a bit before I picked it up. There are few things in life as fun as finding a nice nugget with a metal detector, as far as I am concerned!! Steve points to where 8 dwt nugget was found with Minelab SD2200D Well, a lot of activity ensued along that bank, and a few more nuggets were found, but I had found the big one. We finally wandered back towards camp, and got caught got in a torrential downpour at the mouth of Little Eldorado Creek. We hid out under a rock ledge for awhile, and the rain let up. We then proceeded up to our old detecting grounds on some high bench deposits above Bonanza Creek. The old miners found that there was a lot of gold in old stream deposits well above the current stream level of Bonanza Creek. These type of gold deposits well above the current creek level are referred to as "bench deposits". They built a ditch and flume system several thousand feet long to bring water from the upper creek to deposits on the valley wall farther downstream. Lumber had to be made from trees miles away, then transported into this high mountain location and assembled into a water transportation system crossing valleys and cliffs. The remnants of this old water transport system are truly awe-inspiring, and are something I dwell upon every time I visit this locale. Once the water reached the high gold deposits, it was directed through large nozzles (giants) to wash the gravels into sluice boxes. Large areas of the hillside were stripped completely to bedrock, and much coarse gold was recovered. Today acres of bare bedrock exposed by these old mining operations exist well above the creek, and represent a perfect opportunity for the new age metal detector user. Gold was lost in these old washing operations. As material was washed with the nozzles down the hill to sluice box recovery systems, an occasional nugget would get stuck in a crevice in the bedrock. These nuggets were few and far between, and without the aid of modern electronic detectors it would have been very hard to find these few lost nuggets. The old miner would literally had to have split open and scraped out every crevice to find the lost gold. Metal detectors allow the modern day prospector to easily scan the old workings to find the scattered lost nuggets with ease. Jeff, my father, and I spread out and started looking for these lost nuggets. The main problem was that my family and I had already scanned the area and found the easy pickings in previous years. Still, with diligence one can always find more gold. My particular hope was that my new Minelab would find gold I had previously missed. Well, we didn't miss much! I found a few nice pieces in nooks and crannies, but nothing outrageous. Jeff was finding some smaller nuggets with his Fisher Gold Bug 2, but no larger nuggets. He was able to hit lots of smaller nuggets that my SD2200D missed, but my larger nuggets were more what he was looking for. We did locate an area literally in the ATV trail that was producing lots of little nuggets. So many, in fact, that my father and I decided to set up a sluice box and process the gravel rather than metal detect. Bud Herschbach shoveling gold bearing dirt along edge of trail The morning of the last day was nice and sunny. Dad and I went ahead and set up our sluicing operation. Jeff decided to keep metal detecting. We filled buckets with gravel and ran them through the sluice box. The material was incredibly rich, with more gold appearing in the sluice box after every bucket of material was run. We grew tired of shoveling, and decided to clean up the sluice. Processing less than a yard of gravel produced nearly two ounces of gold! It just goes to show how rich some of the material was that the old miners were after. There is still gold where we were digging. Someday we will have to go back and get some more. In summary, I was very happy with the Minelab SD2200D. It operated on this difficult ground very smoothly, ignoring the hot rocks and ground entirely. I ended up with some nice nuggets, including an 8 dwt piece. It's the largest one in the picture below. I only wish I had had more time, as we were cramming a lot of activity into three days. There is a lot of deeper ground here I need to search. The second largest nugget, weighing 3.5 dwt, was found by my father with his Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ. It is the quartzy piece in the picture. All the other 1/2 dwt to 1 dwt pieces were found with my SD. Jeff was using his Fisher Gold Bug 2. He found a lot of smaller nuggets, but was frustrated in not even finding a 1 dwt nugget. He is usually very hot with a detector, so I attribute this to simple bad luck more than anything. Steve with gold found running sluice box, and some detected nuggets (largest 8 dwt) My main feeling about the SD was not that it got overwhelmingly exceptional depth as compared to the VLF units, but that it was so much easier to operate in hot ground that more time could be spent simply covering ground. The VLF's require slow, careful work due to the background noise, which simply slows you down. Actually, I ended up impressed by what a good job we had done on previous trips with the VLF machines, as large swaths of ground that once produced many nuggets now seem completely cleaned out. All in all a very nice trip, with about three ounces of gold found. Hopefully we will return someday soon! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

The Gold Prospectors Association of America has a new set of mining claims on one of the best mining sites on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. The claims are only accessible to GPAA members, but access to this ground alone is well worth the cost of membership. The membership kits contain a guide to GPAA claims nationwide, a gold pan, panning video, snuffer bottle, and more. The membership also includes a one year subscription to the GPAA's excellent magazine. The claims are relatively new, and so I decided to drive down and check them out. IMPORTANT NOTE - THESE CLAIMS ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE TO GPAA MEMBERS. I loaded up my nugget detector and headed out of town. The drive south is very scenic, and wildlife is usually seen along the way. One location just south of Anchorage, along Turnagain Arm, is a good spot to see Dall Sheep. The sheep come down in the spring and feed on the slopes just above the highway. They will often come down right beside the road, much to the delight of tourists and locals like myself. It was at this location that I took this picture of a Dall Sheep walking along the shoulder of the road. Mills Creek, Alaska The GPAA claims are on the same location as the old workings of the Polly Mining Company, one of the most productive old mines in the area. The creek has extensive deposits of gold along the banks above the creek, and most of the gold was mined by washing these bank deposits. There was a pretty good group of GPAA members and visitors there when I arrived, as a general outing and picnic had been planned for the weekend. After chatting awhile, I grabbed my detector and proceeded to explore the area. Most of the people were working the bedrock exposures along the right bank of Mills Creek above the point where it joins Canyon Creek. Many small gullies cut the bank, and old bench workings are evident in abundance. Some gold has been found with detectors on the bedrock, but most people are using highbankers and sluices at this location. Some dredging is also taking place along the creek, with decent results. Nuggets up to several pennyweight have been found in the area. The only problem is that getting to site requires crossing Canyon Creek. The road crosses the creek, but the water depth requires your vehicle to have good clearance. My Chevy S10 was fine, but you would not want to cross with a vehicle that has any lower clearance. Many people park and cross in waders. The stream flow is fairly slow at this point, so crossing in hip boots or chest waders presents no problem. Steve detecting bedrock at Mills Creek I worked one of the gullies for a while, removing rocks and brush to uncover bedrock, but only found one small nugget. I headed up the creek, checking the exposed bedrock with my detector, and found a couple more nuggets. I was not having much luck, but finally found a bedrock exposure on the trail, where people were literally walking over the gold. I worked at removing the rocks and small amount of overburden from the site, finding small nuggets periodically as I checked the bedrock with the detector. Twenty little nuggets found with Gold Bug 2 The day was wearing on, and I decided to head back to town. My vial ended up containing twenty small nuggets, weighing a total of just over a pennyweight (1/20th of an ounce). I highly recommend this area, particularly for those wishing to enjoy the camaraderie of the members of the GPAA. They are simply a terrific group of people, friendly, and always willing to share what they know about mining with new members. This is a great way for someone new to mining to learn what it is all about. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

I've wanted a Minelab SD2200D metal detector since last summer. I almost purchased one last year, but shied away at the last moment. The reason is that I have hard a hard time justifying the detector for the areas I normally hunt. The SD excels on larger gold, especially in highly mineralized ground. The areas I frequent have low mineralization and small gold, unfortunately, so I was not able to convince myself the SD would help me much under those conditions. I resolved this by promising myself I would get out of my rut, and make a concerted effort to get to more locations, particularly those that might offer a chance of finding a large nugget with a metal detector. My mining buddy Jeff Reed feels the same way... we both want to find some nuggets weighing over an ounce. We are trying to cram as many trips to remote sites as possible into the short Alaskan summer. The main investment is getting the time, and I want to have my bases covered detector-wise, so I have added an SD2200D to my detector cabinet. It will supplement, not replace, my Gold Bug 2. I also purchased a number of Coiltek accessory coils. When setup to test run in Anchorage, my new SD had a strongly wavering threshold. It did function, though, and I assumed this was normal, as all the new units we have in stock do the same. It was a kind of "warble". Then I got the unit home and gave it try in my front yard. It would barely work! I remembered a problem I had at my house with a couple years before with a Fisher Gold Bug. A guy a couple houses down has a serious ham radio setup. It killed the Gold Bug, and was having the same effect on the SD. The machine seemed to work, but would barely pick up it's own battery! I decided it must be the ham radio unit, and decided not to worry about it. It did start me wondering about the uneven threshold, however, and I was curious to see how it would do out of town. I decided to make a trip to Crow Creek Mine to play with the machine. I truly did not expect to find any gold with the SD2200D, however, as the creek has had thousands of detectors on it. It has been getting hard to find much gold by simply scanning the surface; you need to dig into the material to expose deeper gold. In the back of my mind I did hope it might find a larger, deeper nugget that had been missed, but realistically I figured to dig nails and bullets. When I go setup for small gold, I always find gold. When I go with large coils looking for large nuggets, I often get skunked. Still, I had seen my friend Will Holden find a nice nugget on his first outing with a Minelab SD2200D last spring at Crow Creek. Steve's new Minelab SD2200D When I arrived at Crow Creek I was pleasantly surprised. The threshold got much quieter and very smooth. The detection depth increased over my tests in town. It turns out that electrical interference in Anchorage is rather severe, and that the Minelab SD2200D units will only function well if removed from town. I suspect the radio installations at our Elmendorf AFB may be the source of the interference. So if you get a new SD, and it seems it has performance problems with the audio, be sure to consider that it may be radio interference in the area before you complain to your dealer. The photo above shows my standard outfit. My new SD2200D outfitted with a Coiltek 14" monoloop search coil, a set of Gray Ghost headphones, a Hodan pick, a cut-down garden hoe, a plastic scoop to recover targets, and a wide-mouth plastic vial for those nuggets. The battery for the SD2200D is carried in a little pack on your back, which has an extra pocket for a cold drink and mosquito repellent. I took the machine to the very head of the claims. This area is mostly virgin ground, and so has less trash. It has produced some coarser gold, but finds have been sparse. I decided to start at the top and patiently work my way downstream into areas with more gold, but more nails. The SD was smooth and quiet, but I hit only a couple of targets in several hours of careful scanning of cut banks. No trash, but no gold either. I finally approached the middle of the claims. Many of the larger nuggets found at Crow Creek have come from this area, but it is heavily infested with nails and other trash. I started hitting some nails and bullets. Many of the nails were at depths exceeding a foot, requiring that rather deep and time-consuming holes be excavated. I don't mind this much, it is just part of the game. The SD does have a type of discrimination, but I dug all targets to get used to the detector and what it could do. Typical trash targets found with SD2200D The monoloop coil was absolutely steady, and I did hit a couple of bullet fragments with it that would have weighed about a half pennyweight if they were nuggets. The main item of interest was a type of rock found at Crow Creek. The hard rock mines upstream have shed some chunks of ore that are found in the creek. It is a wild mix of arsenopyrite, pyrite, galena, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, and even a little free gold. The sulphide mix normally gives a VERY strong signal from a White's Goldmaster. They are a type of positive "hot rock", in other words they respond with a positive signal similar to metal. The SD ignored them entirely. The day wore on, and I still had found no gold. I decided it was time to find something to take home, so I got my Gold Bug 2 out of my truck and hit the hill. I had the 6" coil on it, and hit some holes where people had obviously been getting some gold. I managed to eke out 30 small nuggets that had been missed. They were all smaller than the Minelab could hit with the 14" coil, with a total weight of just over a pennyweight. The nice thing about going for the small stuff is that you rarely go home empty handed. Thirty little nuggets found with Gold Bug 2 The real tests are upcoming. The SD2200D will see my claims on Mills Creek this fall. I am working on a drive-in trip north to Petersville the weekend of the 4th of July. The area has extensive heavy equipment workings and hotter mineralization. I have never worked there, so it will be fun. I am also working on a fly-in trip to some old hunting areas in the Wrangell Mountains. I have pulled thousands of nuggets from the location, up to 1/3 oz in size, but the big one has eluded me. One to three ounce nuggets were common there in the old days, and some of the ground is very iron mineralized. I'm hoping the SD will find the big one I have missed. I also have hopes for other areas, but summers are so short here it is hard to pack it all in. I will be posting results of all these trips on this site as they occur, so stay tuned. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

Spring has sprung! I'm off to a slow start this season. Other commitments have kept me busy this spring, so I have not made my annual spring dredging trip this year. The short window of opportunity for low, clear water has already passed as water levels rise with the temperatures. It has been a rather cool spring in Southcentral Alaska, and as a result the snow is staying a little later than usual this year. My first trip to Crow Creek Mine just prior to the Memorial Day holiday revealed snow patches along the creek still. The mine is open for business, however, and many of the local miners were at the mine as I surveyed the area. I had left my little 4" subsurface dredge down in the canyon in the fall, hoping to use it early in the spring before the water came up. Since that time has passed, my first order of business was to get the dredge out of the canyon before the water gets any higher. I waited too long to haul out last spring, and the water rose to the point I could not ford the stream safely while carrying gear. I had to scale the canyon walls up a much less pleasant exit route, and did not want to repeat the experience this year. I've also taken a change of direction in my future mining plans. I've spent quite a few years mining the same locations, and want to start prospecting new areas. In particular, I want to spend more time metal detecting, looking for "the big one" so to speak. I've downsized my dredging equipment for now, having sold my 6" dredge last summer, and my 5" earlier this spring. I plan to upgrade my 4" subsurface with a better set of floats and a longer recovery box, and use it as my main unit for the time being. I won't be moving the volume, and so will take a hit in overall production. I'm hoping to stay more mobile and try and target a little larger gold than the quantities of smaller gold I have been getting. I guess I'm willing to trade quality for quantity for now. We'll see how this pays off. At the very least, I'll have new spots to write about for this Journal! Late Snow at Crow Creek I climbed on down to where I left my dredge last fall. I've learned from past experience that deep snow can really bury a dredge, so I try to leave them upright against a rock face or under a tree. This is not a problem now, since the snow is about gone. The dredge was fine, and the water conditions nice, so I decided to do a little dredging as I hauled the unit upstream. I set up where Darryl, Juli, and I had done a little sluicing last fall. The location was at the water's edge, and will be under two to three feet of fast moving water within a few weeks. It is the edge of a paystreak I had bypassed a few years ago, and from the sluicing we did last fall I figured I could pick up a little gold with no effort. Check my June 24th Journal entry from last summer if you are unfamiliar with subsurface dredges. The recovery system is underwater, which lowers the horsepower requirements, which in turn allows for smaller floats. My little 4" dredge only weighs about 90 pounds. I can pack it in two loads. Frames, floats, and sluice in one load, 4HP Honda and hoses in another load. Ideal for sites such as this. The downside is greater loss rates for fine and flaky gold, but they are not as bad as some people think. I have had so much interest in these units that I am writing a magazine article up on them at this time. Dredge stashed along bank and in water at work I worked behind a large rock along the edge of a gravel bar, or should I call it a rock bar? Not much gravel in this canyon! After an hour or a little more I cleaned up, and found I had just over 2 pennyweights of small gold, or just over a tenth of an ounce. At that rate, I could have easily got about a half ounce by the end of the day. The problem, again, was that the water was coming up as the sun rose in the sky, and I still needed to get the dredge out. I decided to bite the bullet and pack it out. Besides, I had brought my metal detector along, and wanted to do a little nugget detecting before the day was out. It only took about two hours to pack the dredge out, thanks to the lightweight design. It was a far cry from packing the old larger dredges out. Close up of tiny riffle tray, and gold recovered I still had some time left, so as planned I grabbed my metal detector and headed up the creek. I scouted around the exposed areas from the previous summer, but only found some surface trash. It is getting very difficult to find gold at Crow Creek by just swinging your detector. It has been hit hard by a lot of people with metal detectors. The best way to get any gold with a detector at this point is to move some dirt around. One nice thing about early spring is that you can see ground features that will be obscured by brush and leaves later in the season. I saw a little ridge back in the brush along a gully about 500 feet from the creek that looked interesting. The area had been stripped clean with hydraulic water cannons years before. Sometimes a lot of gold was left right on the surface, but now a thick layer of leaves covers the ground. The layer is thin on banks, and I like to scrape the thin covering off to get at the old wash layer below. The slope of the bank helps when pulling the leaves and surface material down the hill. I cleared the side of the gully a bit, and was immediately rewarded with a couple small signals from the Gold Bug 2. I was using the 6" accessory coil, which is very hot on small gold. The nuggets were small, only about a grain each, but it was gold! I continued to work the site, but the gold was small, and on the surface only. Leftovers from the old washing operations. I moved to another location farther up the hill where someone had dug under a tree. I got another signal in the back of the hole, and turned up another small nugget. One more scoop and the last guy would have got it. I cleaned up the hole and enlarged it a little, but only turned up a few more small nuggets. Small overgrown bank and small nuggets recovered from it The day was wearing out, and the sun going behind the hill. The mosquitoes started to get more active, and I had put in a long day, so I decided to head on home. I ended up with 15 little nuggets using the detector. They ranged from .5 grain to 1.5 grain and totaled a half pennyweight. Along with the dredge gold, I had 2.5 pennyweights for the day, and had my dredge out of the canyon. Not a bad start for the season, and all of summer is ahead! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

Winter in Alaska! What is an Alaskan gold miner to do? Go somewhere warm to look for gold, that's what!! My wife and I have been long overdue for a vacation together. We wanted to return to Kauai, Hawaii, as we had been there years ago and fell in love with the island. Kauai still retains much of the quiet, laid back style of Hawaii that has been lost in some of the more popular areas of the state. We chose to stay in the Poipu resort area, which is on the southern-most tip of the island. The area tends to have sunnier weather than other parts of the island. I have wanted to do some underwater metal detecting in Hawaii for many years. Friends have returned with some incredibly nice jewelry finds after vacations there, and I wanted to give the sunny beaches a try myself. I underwater detect in the Anchorage area quite a bit, but the cold water tends to mean that the quality of jewelry found is that lost by teens and young adults. The items lost in warmer waters tends to be from older, more affluent folks, and so the finds can be more exciting. I have never found any kind of serious diamond jewelry (except tiny little things) and hoped this trip would produce a gem or two. We stayed at the Kiahuna Plantation, the only beach-front condominiums on Kauai, directly adjacent to the Kauai Sheraton. One of the nicest beaches on the island fronts this location, and several other popular beaches are within walking distance. I figured this to be a hot location for metal detecting. I had purchased a new White's Surfmaster PI detector just for this trip. The PI is a pulse-induction unit that excels in saltwater/iron mineral conditions found in the marine environment. I usually employ VLF/TR (very low frequency/transmitter receiver) units, such as the Fisher Aquanaut, in the freshwater lakes around Anchorage. This is because the VLF/TR units have superior discrimination capabilities, since they are standard coin hunting type units packaged for underwater use. Some of the lakes have a lot of trash, especially nails and bottle caps, and the discrimination can help a lot. Steve with White's Surf PI detecting on Kauai The pulse units feature the ability to work in areas that will give VLF/TR detectors difficulties with false signaling, but for all practical purposes one digs all items with a pulse detector. Some, such as the Surfmaster, feature a type of discrimination circuit, but it is not very effective compared to that on the VLF/TR detectors, especially when looking for jewelry items. The best idea when gold nugget hunting is to dig everything, and this is a good idea when looking for jewelry also. Digging sandy areas is so easy that trash items are not as much an issue as in hard pack soils in parks or elsewhere. Just remember to take the trash to a garbage can. A little side note here: Test a new machine underwater before a big trip such as this. I have previously had a brand new detector leak like a sieve after bringing it on vacation with me. I never was able to get it to seal, and had to stay above water for that trip. Just because it is new does not mean it will work. My new unit spent a night weighted to the bottom of my full bathtub before coming along with me! I watched where people were playing a lot. There was the line of beach towels and chairs at the top of the beach where it leveled out. The hot spot in the water seemed to be the waist to shoulder deep area, where people would wait for waves to ride in. There was also the "wipeout" zone close to the beach where the rides ended, sometimes spectacularly. I also checked out the bottom with mask and snorkel. The condition of the bottom seemed ideal. Much of the area had less than a foot of sand on top of a hard coral base. I wanted to concentrate on this kind of spot, with a layer within range of the detector where items would come to a stop as they settled into the sand. The main problem was the waves. They were rather large, more than I could handle un-weighted. I was retrieving targets by holding my breath and ducking to the bottom, and needed to stay in place while I worked. I had considered SCUBA since I am a certified diver, but hauling the gear around is a pain, and I did not like the thought of being underwater for long stretches with lots of people around. It is too easy for them to lose track of where you are, and I could not very well "claim" the area as mine by putting out a dive flag. I solved my problem by going to a dive shop and renting a 40 pound weight belt. This helped me stay put while waves crashed into and over me, and allowed me to drop straight to the bottom to recover the finds. Steve's finds, including first gold ring from Hawaii! I put in quite a few hours of time in the water, plus hitting the beach itself. The Surfmaster worked very well; coins were easily detectable down to about a foot, and the machine was very stable. The smallest ring I found (pictured above) was nothing more than a silver wire. I found plenty of coins, a bunch of pull tabs, but only a few jewelry items. These included a fake-diamond encrusted broach, a silver hoop earring, a the very thin silver ring (with a black stone), a twisted silver ring, and the real find of the trip, a very large men's gold band. It was located in a trough on the bottom near the coral base layer. An interesting find was a dollar bill that I saw floating a couple feet underwater. All in all, not bad, but no large diamond ring. I certainly was making finds, and the pull tabs and coins indicate the area is not hunted out, but there was less jewelry then I expected. Oh well, I'll just have to keep returning here until I get it right! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

It is winter in Alaska! Maybe not by the calendar, but certainly by the snow on the ground and the ice on the water. Jeff Reed and I decided to make one last mining trip for the season. Snow is falling at low elevations now, but only a few inches have accumulated on the ground. We decided to take a gamble and see if we could drive back into our claims at Mills Creek. There was a chance, however, that we would find too much snow on the road to get back in. The only way to know was to drive down and find out. We decided to take both our trucks, just in case one of us got stuck. We headed out early under cloudy skis. On the way through Portage we passed a cow moose and her calf breaking ice in a pond next to the highway. I met Jeff at the gravel pit next to the highway where our access road starts out. We decided to take it easy driving in. There was only two or three inches of snow on the road, but that can be enough to cause problems on steep hills. We did not think it wise to be too aggressive getting in, as we might not make it up a couple of the hills coming back out. The drive in, however, proved to be no problem. We arrived at my campsite on the claims just above tree line to find a winter wonderland. Our plan was to take advantage of the low water conditions to snipe for gold on shallow bedrock. Our claims have quite a bit of exposed bedrock, and relatively coarse gold. Sniping consists of the use of simple hand tools to recover pockets of gold, usually from bedrock cracks and crevices. This is more commonly done above water, but can also be done underwater with the aid of a wetsuit (down south) or drysuits in Alaska. A prospector outfitted with a suit, mask, and snorkel can examine bedrock underwater in search of concentrations of gold. The gold is then recovered using simple tools, such as small pry bars and suction guns. The best (perhaps only) book exclusively on the subject is Underwater Sniping for Gold by Sam Radding & Jim Garlock. Moose crossing pond, and Steve with Kirby Gearing up for underwater sniping in Alaska is kind of like preparing for battle. Jeff got into his AMDS drysuit while I donned my Harvey's drysuit. We have tried every kind of kneepad imaginable over the years, but never found anything that really stays put in fast water. I finally came up with my own solution years ago, which is to wear an oversized pair of work pants. I sew carpet to the knees with fishing line. The trick is to get a pair of pants with wide enough legs that you can easily slide them on over the drysuit. This may mean a rather large waist size, so I usually use a bungee cord for a belt. I have been using miners moss for the kneepads lately. It does not last quite as long as the regular sluice box carpeting I used to use, but is soft and cushy on my knees. This solution not only protects the knees of the suit, but the entire lower half of the suit. Jeff has adopted the idea, but is a bit more stylish in that he uses a weight belt for his pants! Next comes the hoods with under caps. A good neoprene drysuit hood, like that made by Harvey's, is all that is needed, but we both use Henderson Ice Caps also. The ice cap is a thin under (or over) neoprene hood used in addition to the regular hood that covers your face completely, except for the eyes and a small opening for the mouth. Once a mask, snorkel, and gloves are put on, the only part of your body touching the water is your lips. The gloves can be five-fingered for some people, but three-fingered mitts are warmer in extreme conditions. I coat the entire working area of my gloves with a thin coat of Aqua Seal brand sealant. A little of this stuff goes a long way. Too thick an application will result in a glove that is stiff and tiring to use. Jeff & Steve suit up Our sniping kits are similar. I use a cheap nylon rucksack to carry the gear. I have an 18" chisel-edged pry bar and a large screwdriver for prying crevices. I also have a small screwdriver, some very large crevice tweezers, a set of fine point tweezers, and a snuffer bottle. The main tool is a suction bulb. These are similar to the snuffer bottle idea, but with a squeeze bulb and a larger intake tube. I sometimes bring along a larger unit made out of a modified grease gun, but find the little bulb unit gets the most use. Finally, I include a 10" gold pan and a large plastic vial in my kit. The process of sniping is actually simple, and can be a lot of fun. You can recover quite a bit of gold by sniping in itself, but it serves an even more important role as a prospecting method to locate future dredging ground. In areas where dredging is prohibited, sniping may offer the only way to recover gold from some streams and rivers. The picture shows the area we were in. There is bedrock outcropping on both banks and in the creek. I usually leave everything in my rucksack on my back, except for the 18" pry bar. I jump in the water and thoroughly examine all the bedrock I can get at. If there is a bit of sand and gravel on the bedrock, it can be scraped aside and "fanned" away by waving a hand at it rapidly underwater. Any interesting crevices, no matter how small, should be investigated with the pry bar. Other tools can be pulled out as needed. When any gold is located, the snuffer bottle or suction bulb is used to recover it. I spent quite a bit of time in the area around the falls, finding a bit of gold here and there, but no major concentrations. Jeff wandered on down the creek, and I followed a little later. He had his head stuck in a pool behind a rock, and indicated he was finding some nice gold. I kept scouting around, finding an occasional flake, but a good crevice eluded me. It is possible to find single crevices that will produce a few pennyweights of gold, and sometimes a hot set of crevices can produce an ounce or more of gold. This area is at the upper reaches of the coarse gold deposits on Mills Creek, however, and the gold is a bit sparse. I looked up the creek, and Jeff still had his head in the same pool. I knew something was up... he would not stay put unless the gold was good. I came up, and with a big smile he dumped what he had so far in his pan. A few pennyweights of chunky gold looked back up at me from his pan, and I must admit I was a bit jealous. I had only little flakes to show in return. Jeff indicated the pocket was working out, though, and pretty soon he headed downstream. Mills Creek freezing up, and Jeff's gold We continued on, but neither of us got into any other hot pockets. Jeff saw a couple of spots he wants to come back and check next summer. My main goal is to put my dredge on the corner where Jeff located the best gold of the day. It is in the area I am actively working, just upstream of my last dredging location. There may be more gold under the deeper overburden, or it may simply be a single pocket of gold, now worked out. I'll have to wait for next summer to find out. So ends my gold mining for 1999. Overall, it was not one of my more productive summers for total gold found, but for fun it was tops, as I think my entries for the summer show. A determined dredger can work through the winter, but frankly I am not so gung-ho as to fight the cold for a few ounces of gold. Better to wait for summer to return again. Jeff ended up with about 1/4 ounce of nice nuggets for the day. I had a fairly pitiful showing of small flakes and a half pennyweight nugget. I would have liked to finish the year with a bit more of a bang, but so it goes. This is two trips in a row that Jeff has kicked my fanny in gold production, so I can't wait for next year and a chance to show him up in return. The gold will wait under snow and ice for us until then! Steve's Gold from Crow Creek & Mills Creek 1999 Largest Nugget 5.4 Pennyweight P.S. I get a lot of comments on the color of the gold in my photos. Please keep in mind these are digital photos, and have often been lightened (as in the photos above) or darkened. Most gold around Anchorage is about 85% pure, and had a nice yellow color, but is much paler than much of the California gold I have seen. Crow Creek Mine gold is of lower purity, usually 70-75%, and so has a lighter color than the Mills Creek gold on the right. I have some gold from Crow Creek that has enough silver in it to qualify as "white gold" or more properly, electrum. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

I took Darrell to Mills Creek earlier in the year on his first mining trip. His girlfriend Juli has now arrived in Anchorage, and we decided it would be fun for the three of us to run down to Crow Creek to look for her first gold. Temperatures are reaching freezing at night in Alaska now, and the water levels are dropping. We decided to use a sluice box to dig at water line, hopefully exposing gold-bearing material that is normally underwater in the summer. Snow started to fall as we approached Crow Creek, and a light dusting covered the ground when we reached the mine. Luckily we were prepared for the cold and it just added to the fun. We carried the gear to the creek and looked for a likely location. We all grabbed gold pans, and I showed Darrell and Juli how to sample for gold. It always makes sense to do a little checking with gold pans before setting up a sluice box. We dug small holes behind larger rocks at the water's edge up and down the creek. For awhile it was just a flake or two per pan, but I finally got a decent showing against one bank. I set up the sluice while Darrell and Juli panned for gold. We were using Keene's A51 sluice, a very popular three foot model. The trick to setting up a sluice is to find some fast water. Most people set up a sluice with water running too slow. There seems to be a general fear of washing the gold away. I tend to set my sluice on the fast side. I may lose a few fines, but in areas where the gold has some size, it is more important to run a good volume of material. I try to set my sluice so that when a 14" pan of material with rocks less than 2" in size is dumped in everything just runs through. Like I said, I'm sure I lose some fines or flat flakes, but I feel I more than make up in volume with larger gold. If you have to toss every little pebble out by hand it slows you down too much. I always tell people to look at how a 2" dredge sluice runs... rocks 1.5" in diameter run through completely on their own. The A51 is about the same size as a 2" dredge sluice and should be run about the same way, unless you have nothing but fine gold. If that is the case, then the material should be screened and the sluice run slower to enhance fine gold recovery. I'm sure some would argue, but I simply find that if I shovel more yards through my box then the next guy, then I also usually get more gold. Darrell & Julie at first sluicing location & sluice set up Here is another way to look at it. Let's say we are looking at 4 yards of material that runs an incredible 1/2 ounce per yard. You are determined not to lose any gold, so you first screen the material to 1/2" minus, then run it carefully through your sluice. By the end of the day, you manage to process one yard, and get an impossible 100% of the gold. You end up with 1/2 ounce. I work the same time you do, but I dump directly to my box, discarding only rocks larger than 2" in diameter. I run my box faster and deeper to move these larger rocks through. As a result I lose 25% of the gold since a lot of it is fine and flaky. But my increased volume allows me to process two full yards of material. I end up with 3/4 ounce of gold to your 1/2 ounce. To add insult to injury, we return the next day. There is one yard of this incredibly rich material left. We both go after it; you manage to process another 1/3 yard while I move the remaining 2/3 yard. Your final weekend total is .83 ounce of gold, while my weekend of work nets me 1.25 ounce of gold. The bottom line - from any theoretical 100% recovery position, if you double your volume of material the recovery percentage would have to drop to 50% or less to end up with less gold. My observation is that most recreational miners are under-utilizing their equipment for fear of losing gold, or just plain not working hard enough. So my advice is "you want more gold, move more dirt"! The only time this is likely to be a losing proposition is if the gold is exceptionally fine and/or flaky. It is also for miners with limited time. If you have lots of time, and limited reserves of material, (or are commercial!) then increased attention to recovery rates makes more sense. Juli's nugget & Darrell at second sluicing location Before I get a firestorm of email about this (recovery rates are a type of religion with miners) let me just note that this is a suggestion based on what seems to work for me, nothing more. I'm the kind of guy who tosses the bit of fines left in my pan back, so it can grow! Besides, I made all the numbers up in my example. It just all depends on your situation, and if this got you to think about it, then I've achieved my goal. If you are happy with the gold you are getting, then by all means keep on at it. Back to the story... Darrell and I fed the sluice while Juli worked on her panning. We kept seeing smaller gold showing up in the sluice, but nothing too large. Then Juli came up with her first nugget. It was larger than anything we had found in the sluice so far, about the size of a watermelon seed. Not too bad for her first nugget! In fact, it turned out to be the largest nugget of the day. Cleanups from first & second locations The site we were at did not seem to be paying out all that well, just lots of fines, so we went back to prospecting with pans. I located a spot behind a large boulder about 100 feet downstream that produced a dozen pieces of gold in a pan, so we moved on down. The gold was in a layer just at waterline, and seemed fairly rich. Again, however, the gold was pretty small stuff, with no real nuggets. We worked another couple of hours, and then called it quits as our backs began to get stiff. It is much harder to run a small sluice than a 6" dredge in my opinion! We panned out the sluice and were rewarded with between two and three pennyweight of medium and fine sized gold. Juli thoroughly enjoyed her first gold mining trip, and fun was had by all. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 1999 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 particularly enjoyed this little expedition. It is always nice to get out and spend time with my father, Bud Herschbach. He has taken a liking to Mills Creek and was anxious to return and look for more nuggets. This was also helpful since my truck was out of commission and he was able to give me a ride to the claims. He picked me up Tuesday morning and we headed for the claims. The drive down the Seward Highway was brightened by exceptional fall colors, with the leaves hanging on the trees a little longer than normal this year. A little note here on trucks and water. The shop informed me that my transmission was full of water and that the bearings were shot! I was not aware that transmissions were vented on top of the body of the unit. On many 4WD vehicles it is routed via a hose to a higher location in the body to prevent the entry of water. The Chevy S10 Blazer has no such extension on the vent, and so any water rising to the top of the transmission can enter and destroy the bearings. I have no doubt that when I stalled my truck out crossing Mills and had water flowing under the doors that it was also flowing into my transmission. An expensive lesson for me, and a warning to others who drive in deep water. Find out where the vents are on your transmission and differentials! If I had been aware of this problem and changed the transmission fluid immediately I could have prevented the damage. When we arrived at camp we moved our gear into the tent and then went down to the creek to metal detect for gold. The water had dropped some more, so bedrock exposures were easy to come by along the edges of the creek. We spent the remainder of the day removing loose rock and debris from the bedrock and carefully detecting the crevices. The work produced numerous small nuggets up until the light began to fail, and we headed back into camp. Fall colors along Turnagain Arm I decided to spend Wednesday dredging, as I needed to decide whether to try and continue at Mills or to pull out and head for Crow Creek. I worked the shallow bedrock area I had exposed earlier while my father continued to metal detect for nuggets. I attacked the material aggressively, determined to give it a good shot a producing. However, after uncovering a wide expanse of bedrock I found nothing more than the same scattering of gold trapped in small crevices. There were no large nuggets and not even any nice little pockets of gold to perk me up, just tedious crevice work for a bit of gold here and there. Finally, even that seemed to peter out, and towards the end of the day I was not finding much gold at all. I have no doubt the gold continues in this area but after pausing and considering the situation I decided to come back for the gold next season. I had about 7.5 dwt for the work so far that day, and could probably have ended up with about 1/2 oz for the day if I continued to dredge. BUT... my father had to return to town the next day, my truck was in the shop, and I was not sure when I would get it back, and serious snow could fall at any time. Everyone else had already pulled out of our claims for the season. I decided the amount of gold I was seeing was not worth pushing the season any further under the circumstances. 1/3 oz gold dredged Thursday We got up Thursday morning and proceeded to load up the dredge and tear down the camp. We spotted a good-sized black bear cavorting around at the very edge of the brushline up the mountain. It is the first bear I have actually seen at Mills Creek, and he had managed to evade the bear hunters that were in the area the last few weeks. I am often asked what I do about bears. It seems to be a serious concern for a lot of people. In general, I do nothing other than keep a very clean campsite. The statistics do not support everyone carrying weapons because of bears. More people are shot accidentally in the woods than are eaten by bears. It makes more sense to be afraid of people, and the bears know this. They will give you a wide berth if given the chance. That being said, I sometimes carry a 12 gauge pump shotgun. This is usually when I am alone in the woods, and it is basically a security blanket issue. Here I am over forty years old, but when I am alone in the middle of nowhere in the dark, and I start hearing funny noises in the woods, well, let's just say I rest easier having my shotgun nearby. But realistically, in this part of Alaska bears are not usually a real threat. There are other parts of the State where they are thick, and encounters can be a daily event, and it may warrant having a weapon in those areas. Packing up the campsite We finally got everything loaded up, and decided we had enough time to do a little more metal detecting. Dad had found a few more nuggets on Wednesday and we decided to try the last area he had been working in. We immediately began to get some nuggets. I tackled an area where the material was a little deeper and the bedrock dipped below the surface of the water. I started getting some nuggets, and so Dad started helping me work the hole. It kept filling with water, so we would scoop out the water with a pan, then detect a nugget or two before it filled with water again. After getting a very strong signal, we were both on our knees peering into the hole as I scooped water out. Suddenly, as the water washed back after a scoop, a large nugget appeared on the side of the hole! It looked like a monster, and I swore it was a 1/2 oz nugget at the time, solid and thick. It turned out later to be 5.4 dwt, just over 1/4 oz, and still a very nice nugget. I have to tell you, I sure get a thrill when a nugget like this shows up! It makes it even better that I shared finding it with my father. We ended up with about 1/2 oz of gold from that one small hole in bedrock in about an hour. The pocket worked out, however, and we had to leave, as I wanted to drop my dredge off at Crow Creek as we headed back towards town. We gathered up our tools, and did just that. There was no sign of Jeff at Crow Creek, so we dropped the dredge off in the upper area of the creek and headed for town. Bud Herschbach with his detected nuggets (including the big one!) Steve's detected nuggets, plus the 1/4 oz nugget All in all, a very nice trip. The weather was fine, it's always fun to get out with family, and we found some very nice gold. The plan now is to try my luck at Crow Creek, which is closer to home, and has less problem with being snowed out without warning. I'll hook up with Jeff Reed, and we'll finally get to do some dredging together. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 1999 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 fireweed have ceased to bloom, and snow has appeared in the high country. Snow in this part of the country normally appears on the mountain peaks in early September. Fall is a very short season in Southcentral Alaska, with only six to eight weeks between the first appearance of snow in the mountains and serious snow at sea level. I headed up to Mills Creek Sunday morning and proceeded to setup camp. I had acquired a steel tube and tarp frame tent for the trip, and was anxious to try it out. I often camp out in the back of my truck for short trips, but as I had a couple of weeks off, I decided more room was in order. The tent is 10x13 feet and 6 to 9 feet tall. I outfitted it with an old military woodstove given to me by Al Adams (Thanks Al!). The extra room, plus propane stove, propane lamp, and small propane heater all seemed quite luxurious compared to my normal Spartan camping style. My father and cousin were coming up later in the day to spend the night and do a little gold mining. I headed out to meet them at the creek crossing, and found they were already almost to camp, engaged in clearing excess alders from the trail in. I helped them finish up the trail work and we got back to camp. They helped me set up the rest of the campsite, and then we headed down to do a little gold mining. We crossed the creek and proceeded to use my metal detector to search bedrock along the creek just above my dredge site. We immediately started finding some rather nice gold, ranging from match head to little fingernail sized pieces. My father was checking the side of a very steep bedrock outcropping when he got a very loud signal about six feet up above the water. I was surprised when the target turned out to be a very nice two pennyweight nugget lodged in a small pocket in the side of the outcropping. Frame tent at Steve's camp and faithful mining dog, Kirby It started to rain quite hard, so we decided to call it a day. My cousin, Bob Herschbach, cooked us up a great meal. I usually just heat up a can of stew, or some other simple fare, so it was a treat to have someone cook up a real meal. We turned in for the evening, and discovered one of the drawbacks of living in a tent. It rained hard all night, and gusts of wind periodically hit the tent, causing quite a bit of noise. It made it hard to sleep but I finally managed to doze off. We arose Monday morning to find the creek had risen tremendously, and the clear water had turned a thick gray color. Bob was visiting us from Missouri, and had a plane to catch home the next morning, so we were a bit worried as to whether we would be able to get him out in time, as the creek must be crossed to get back to the highway. It had stopped raining, however, so we hoped the water level would drop later in the day. Since the water made crossing risky, we looked for new digs on our side of the creek. Some old channels and hand stacked rock piles are in the brush across from where I was dredging, so we checked bedrock along the creek in that area. Once again, we started finding some nice gold. By the time Bob had to head out that afternoon, they had found about 1/2 ounce of nice nuggets, including the previous afternoon's finds. The water had come down, and Bob and my father were able to head back to town. Now it was just me and my faithful Golden Retriever, Kirby. As we settled in for the evening, I planned the next days activities. I was impressed by the size of the nuggets we found on the near side of the creek, where the old channels dump in from the side. I decided that perhaps gold from these old channels had formed a paystreak where they had emptied into the main channel, and also that the old-timers tailings would have dumped in at these points as they worked the channels. Any gold they lost would end up in the creek along the near side. I decided to bring my dredge across the creek and try the area just below where we sniped gold on the bank, and work up towards that location. Bob & Bud Herschbach sniping bedrock, and their gold Tuesday morning was spent getting my dredge across the creek. The water had come down, but was still high, and it took careful work to get the dredge across the creek. I spent more time removing rock from the dredge site, then started dredging. I only dredged a short time, but got a couple of pennyweight of smaller gold. Wednesday I got up, and plain felt lazy! I had a good book with me, and kicked back and read away the morning. Jeff Reed showed up around noon to report that he might come up later that afternoon to do a little bench mining. I decided to get back to work, so after waiting to see if Jeff would show back up, I suited up and got back to dredging. I uncovered quite an expanse of bedrock, but the deposit of coarse gold I was hoping for did not appear. There was gold, but only small amounts scattered about in bedrock crevices. I had about 1/4 oz of gold by the end of the day, and in general the gold was smaller than what we had sniped off the bank just above! I did find one nugget that was over half quartz, a departure from the well worn and solid character of the gold normally found here. I headed down the creek to check up on Jeff, as I did not see him back up in my area. He had gone back up the creek with his 4" subsurface, and reported that he was not doing very well. The section of creek he was working turned out to have smooth bedrock, and no gold was being held for him to find. I invited him up to my area if things did not improve, and went back up to my camp. Thursday I continued to work the site, but the area did not improve. Working up the creek, and out nearly to the middle of the channel exposed no real concentration of gold, just sporadic deposits in crevices. Again I got about 1/4 oz of gold. Not enough to really keep my interest in the site. I began to consider moving back across the creek, but figured I had about one more days worth of dredging to finish up material I had exposed. Thursday night was horrible! It started to rain very hard, and increasingly hard gusts of wind developed. By around 9PM the gusts were up to the 50-60 mph range, and my tent was taking a beating. It was very well staked down, but each gust that hit puffed up the sides and roof, and then sucked them back in. It was very noisy, and somewhat nerve-wracking, wondering if the whole thing was going to fly down the valley at any minute. Poor Kirby probably thought the world was ending, and both of us could not get to sleep. I finally gave up and we both crawled into my truck at midnight. The back was full of gear, so I slept in the front seat, and Kirby curled up in the passenger seat. It may not have been as comfortable, but it was much quieter, and I finally got a little sleep. Friday morning the rain was coming down in sheets, and the wind had not let up at all. My tired, cramped body stared at out the weather and thought "This is nuts!" Kirby agreed, so I quickly tore down camp, secured the dredge, and got the heck out of there before the creek flooded so high that I could not get out. We got back to Anchorage and I spent the weekend doing odds and ends. Steve's dredge site and 5" subsurface dredge I returned Monday morning and found the water was still pretty high. I had decided to try and get my dredge back over to the far side of the creek, but was barely able to cross the creek in my drysuit without a load, let alone carrying/dragging any equipment. I could have dismantled the unit, carried it upstream to a better fording area, carried it back downstream and set it up again, but it seemed like too much work when the area I wanted to move to was only fifty feet away. I decided the time would be best spent prospecting for a better spot to dredge, so I got my sniping tools and proceeded to check bedrock along the sides of the creek. I did finally find an area on the far side and downstream of my dredge that shows promise. I found what appears to be a layer of virgin pay material resting on very decomposed bedrock. The material is a rich yellow/brown color and fairly compacted. Working the area by hand on Monday and Tuesday produced about 1/4 oz of gold. The gold is distributed throughout the yellow layer and in the underlying bedrock. What struck me most was the gold mixed in the material, as most material on upper Mills Creek seems relatively barren, with the gold heavily concentrated on bedrock. This tends to make for spotty dredging, but if I can get into a stretch where the material has gold in it, dredging can be more productive. I traced the deposit for some distance and it looks to have good dredging promise. Unfortunately, the weather continued to go downhill. September is our rainiest month, and this one was proving to be no exception. By Tuesday night the rain was continuous, and by Wednesday morning I decided to pull out and wait for better weather conditions. I want to move my dredge to this potential new site and try it out. When I got back to town, my father contacted me and indicated he and my brother Tom were interested in going back up to Mills to try some more detecting on the banks. They met me Thursday morning in Anchorage, and we arrived at the Mills crossing at about noon. Mills Creek was a raging brown torrent. I paused in my truck, thinking it looked too deep to cross. Since I had my Dad behind me, and a long chain in my truck, I foolishly forged on ahead. I made it about 1/3 across, when my motor stalled. Then I noticed my feet were getting wet. Looking down, I saw water coming in under the doors! Luckily, after a little coaxing, my motor restarted, and I was able to back out. After a brief stop to bail the water out of my truck, we retreated to Crow Creek Mine, and spent the night camped out in one of the cabins. We did find some gold metal detecting before turning in for the evening, so the day was not a total loss. My brother and I looked the creek over for potential dredging sites, as I plan to move my dredge here after giving Mills Creek one more shot. I'm probably going to try the upper areas of the creek, in hopes of finding some nicer sized nuggets. 1/4 oz and larger nuggets are relatively common in the upper areas of Crow Creek Mine. We were back at the Mills crossing by 10:30 Friday morning, and the water, though lower, still looked quite high. I now had a better idea of what my truck would handle due to my failed crossing attempt the day before, so we decided not to push it. We headed back to Crow Creek, and detected some more gold. We ended up with a couple dozen small nuggets before deciding to head back to town. Mills Creek gold and close-up of quartzy nugget My total finds for several days dredging and sniping came to 17.4 dwt, not counting the nuggets found metal detecting and sent home with my father and cousin. Those finds probably added up to a little over 1/2 oz of gold. I am currently back at work for the week, and plan to head back to Mills Creek on Saturday, October 2nd. It is Wednesday as I write and the weather does not look good. It has rained all night, and the forecast is for more clouds and rain. I face the prospect of continued high waters at Mills Creek, plus the increasing risk of an early snowfall, which could trap me and my gear high in the mountains. Two years ago heavy snows fell October 10th. I would like to evaluate the new paystreak I found at Mills with my dredge for a couple of days, but will probably pull my gear out and move to Crow Creek for the remainder of the season unless conditions improve. The water is dropping at Crow Creek and is clear enough to dredge now. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

Fireweed bloom in the fall on the year, and Alaskan lore says that when the fireweed cease to bloom, winter will be close at hand. So it is that when I look at the hills blazing with fireweed in the sun, I cannot help but think of the winter soon to come. Hopefully, before the ice freezes thick on these mountain streams, a few more ounces of gold will see the light of day. I spent Friday evening loading up my 5" subsurface dredge. Since I have retired my 6" dredge, this will be my workhorse in the future. I am very pleased with the unit, which is incredibly more portable and uses half the fuel of my old dredge. I was thinking of bringing my 4" subsurface to Mills, but decided the small extra weight was worth the extra capacity to move gravel. This is the same unit I used at Mills Creek last summer, but with marlex floatation instead of the inflatable pontoons. I decided I liked the durability of the marlex over the compactness of the pontoons. I took all of Saturday to clear a trail to my worksite and set my dredge up. I prepared to go over some ground below a bedrock outcropping where I had found gold last year. It is a good thing we have long daylight hours in the summer, as I worked until 9PM to get everything ready for Sunday. Sunday I put in a long day of dredging. I worked from 10AM until 9PM and got roughly 10 hours of dredging in. The dredge worked well, and I did find gold, but had to work for it. The gold was evenly dispersed over a wide area in bedrock crevices. There was little gold in the overlying material, and so the day was spent splitting crevices open to reveal the gold inside. Unfortunately, this is time-consuming work, and I ended up with 1/2 ounce of gold for the day; about 1 pennyweight per hour. Not exactly getting rich quick, but not bad for a new area. One nugget was just over 1 pennyweight. The subsurface box did well on the rather substantial amount of finer gold that was recovered from the crevices. Steve's 5" Subsurface Dredge at Mills Creek I had taken Monday off from work, so put in about 5 hours more dredging, with similar results of about 1 pennyweight per hour. This gave me another 1/4 ounce of gold, or 3/4 oz for the weekend. The gold is a little smaller than that from downstream, but I hope that is just because of all the bedrock splitting. I hope to get into some coarser gold in the deeper, faster water areas. The area was pleasant to work, however, with shallow bedrock and relatively slow water, so it was a real pleasure compared to most of my dredging at colder times of the year. Jeff was working downstream but I did not see him at all over the weekend. I was just too tired each night to make the trip downstream to visit. By the time I put my dredge up and pulled up camp, he had already left for home. When I got back to work Tuesday, He revealed that he had found just over an ounce of gold, and that the hot streak had played out, so he had moved upstream a little. Steve's gold from Sunday and Monday Now that I have my dredge on-site, and have a basic campsite set, I will be able to concentrate more on mining in the coming weeks. I have hopes of reasonable gold in this stretch of creek, with plenty of material that is workable even at higher water levels. Jeff and I both plan to take off significant amounts of time in September to mine at Mills Creek. Hopefully the weather cooperates by not getting too rainy. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

Summer passes too quickly in Alaska. August has the last hot days of the year, but the weather usually turns rainy. By September snow will start to appear on the mountain tops, and by the end of October snow arrives at sea level. I am trying to plan my fall operations, but the weather is always a question. I am afraid that the rains and high water of September will turn to snow and cold weather quickly this year, leaving only a short dredging season. The current plan is to work at Mills Creek first, and then possibly at Crow Creek later, depending on weather and gold. My mining buddy Jeff Reed decided to move his 4" subsurface dredge up to Mills Creek and start working. He had marked out a stretch of creek that had very productive sniping (extracting gold with simple hand tools) last year and wanted to hit some of those same areas with a dredge. The gorge I had marked out for myself upstream of Jeff's ground was still full of whitewater, and it made me rethink my position. Here Jeff was starting mining, and I was still waiting for the water to go down. I decided to look for an area further upstream that would be more suitable for dredging at higher water levels, as I want to do some dredging before it gets cold this year. I can then go after the gorge when the weather gets cold and the water level drops. Jeff's 4" Subsurface Dredge at Mills Creek The pictures above show Jeff's dredge. It is based on a new 4" subsurface sluice box by Keene Engineering, bolted between a small set of marlex floats. A 4HP Honda pump provides plenty of power for the dredge and air compressor. The entire unit, with 15' of suction hose and suction nozzle weighs just under 100 lbs. These units are nice for remote sites, as they weigh less and use less fuel than the equivalent surface dredge. The trade-off is some loss of fine or flaky gold, but I have found it to be an acceptable trade for the areas I work. I hiked up the canyon to where the valley starts to open up, and located a very nice stretch of creek on a wide, sweeping bend below a waterfall. I had found gold in this location last year, so made the decision to move my markers up to this site. It is far enough upstream that I will have to abandon my normal campsite (pictured at the top of the page) and move upstream. The area is set in a beautiful alpine meadow, so I do not mind making this move, although the road up to this area will require some clearing. It is amazing how fast alders grow in Alaska's long daylight hours. Views from camp down to creek and looking up valley I will be camping on a hill overlooking my future dredge site, so it will be a short walk down to the worksite each day. I plan to set my dredge up in the lower portion of the on the inside curve (the upper left hand corner of the picture on the left). I'll proceed up the creek, generally hugging the inside of the curve. Bedrock is quite shallow, with no more than 1-2 feet of material in much of this area. Satisfied with my new plan, I headed down to see how Jeff was doing. He had about 3 pennyweight (20 pennyweight per troy ounce) of nice gold as I came by, and had the rest of the evening and the next day left to dredge. I had to work the next day, however, so headed on back to Anchorage. When Jeff came back to work the following day, he had 2-1/4 ounces of very nice gold gold to show off, with quite a few nuggets weighing over a pennyweight each. His dredge had worked well and he got into a small, but hot stretch of crevices in the bedrock. His showing of gold certainly has me anxious to move my dredge up to Mills Creek the next weekend! Jeff with weekend's gold ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

It is a fact that a lot of the very best mining ground is already claimed. The diligent prospector can find new ground, or careful study of claims records can sometimes reveal a claim that has lapsed and can be restaked. These methods are time-consuming, and the ground acquired is still not usually the best. Excellent mining ground tends to be claimed, and these claims rarely lapse. This leaves working out permission to access claims, whether on percentage or lease deals, or the outright purchase of mining claims. When it comes to purchase, the problem becomes money. When that good deal arises, money can be all that is lacking. In 1997 a group of mining claims on Mills Creek on the Kenai Peninsula came up for sale. This creek is one of the better producers historically on the Kenai Peninsula, and so attracted my attention. Unfortunately, I did not have the funds to buy the claims outright, and so did not pursue them. Luckily, some friends, also excited about the claims, decided that a group of us should pool our money to buy the claims. The idea was discussed, possible pitfalls worked out, and the purchase proceeded. So it was that I am now a member of the Mills Creek Cooperative. We made a group purchase of the claims, and agreed upon a set of rules governing the member's use of the claims. A written agreement of this sort is very important, so that minor (or major) misunderstandings can hopefully be avoided. Last summer some basic exploratory mining took place, and it was found that the ground contained good, reasonably coarse gold. Match head size nuggets are common, with nuggets up to several pennyweights found. I'll backtrack and add last years Mills Creek experiences to this Journal some time in the future. One of the agreements about our claims is that each dredger must mark a 300 foot stretch of creek as his current site of operations. These sites are first-come, first-serve, and are good as long as they are worked at least once each thirty days. I had let my old site lapse last fall, and decided it was time to pick a new dredging area for the year. My friend Darrell, who has recently arrived in Alaska, has never mined for gold before, so I invited him along for a little mining and camping. Camp at Mills Creek An old mining road leads several miles off the highway to our claims. This small road is normally designated as non-motorized access only, but our permits for the claims allow us to use vehicles on the road. This is very important, as the distance and elevation change would make bringing in equipment very difficult otherwise. It also provides a small measure of security, as non-miners are not allowed to access the claims with motorized equipment, somewhat reducing the problem of theft. The above photo is of my normal camp on the lower portion of our claims, where one branch of the road ends as it is pinched between the creek and a cliff. I marked off a 300 foot stretch of creek upstream, in a section where the water is forced through a small, vertical rockwall gorge. The water is fast and furious at this point, and it will not allow me to dredge until water levels drop in the next couple of months. This is fine, as it will allow me time to pack my equipment in, and do a little trail work. I'm hoping the bedrock gorge may have some nice pockets of gold. We sniped gold both above and below the section late last fall. The water in the gorge itself was deeper than we could check out with hand tools alone, so only a dredge will tell how good it is. Marshall & Lyle's worksite and Al & Kenny in the water Several of my partners were actively trying new ground in the lower, more open portion of the creek. All the work to date is being done with 4" and 5" dredges, with plans for a 6" dredge in the near future. I am currently planning on using a 4" subsurface dredge in the gorge. A few hours of panning bedrock exposures along the creek produced minimal results. Darrell and I then switched to metal detecting an area that had decent results last summer. Exposed bedrock along one side of the creek had produced numerous nuggets, but was fairly well picked over. A couple hours detecting located a dozen nuggets that were missed, however. This resulted in Darrell going home with a couple of pennyweight of nice nuggets, not bad for a first time mining trip. Gold putting a smile on Darrell's face! Everyone got gold, but no fantastic finds were made. Everyone was getting setup for the first time this summer, and getting the bugs worked out of the operations. I don't intend to do any real dredging myself until September, when water levels start to come down, but may get tempted to come up sooner. We'll just have to see what develops. ~ 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

Water conditions are now at peak spring melt levels, as warming temperatures melt snowfields and glaciers at higher elevations. There is certainly dredging to be had, but I prefer to just play around this time of year, and wait for the water to settle. It is a good time for moving equipment around, and to prospect and metal detect for gold. It is also a good time to do those household chores! The drive from Anchorage to Crow Creek Mine on the Seward Highway is a spectacular one. On one side of the road is Turnagain Arm, a glacial fjord. On the other side, cliffs rise into the Chugach Mountains. There area is rich in wildlife; beluga whales and even a rare orca (killer whale) are seen in the Arm. Eagles are common, and the mountains are dotted with Dall sheep, mountain goats, and bears. So it was that on this drive I had a chance to stop and take pictures of a Dall sheep next to the road, with a lamb perched on the cliff above. Dall sheep and lamb in Chugach Mountains I've been packing my 6" dredge out of Crow Creek Mine, where it has resided for the last couple of years. I've decided to sell the 6", and downsize to a 5" dredge. The 6" has been a very good unit for me, but recent regulatory changes in Alaska have made me decide to go to a smaller dredge. All dredges in Alaska must have an EPA permit. Dredges with a 4" nozzle opening and smaller require a free permit with a simple set of requirements. A more stringent permit, with reporting requirements, has been required of dredges with a nozzle opening larger than 4". Keep in mind that a typical 5" dredge, so designated by the manufacturers because of the hose size, usually has a nozzle opening of 4" to prevent clogs, and so would be designated a 4" dredge under these permits. As if it was not bad enough that larger dredges had a more stringent permit requirement, the EPA permit for dredges with a larger than 4" nozzle opening (the Medium Dredge permit) has expired as of June 30, 1999. This General Permit has not been replaced, and so now anyone wishing to use a dredge with a larger than 4" nozzle opening is in for a major permitting process. An Alaska Placer Mining Application (APMA) must be applied for. There is a $100 permit fee. This permit is reviewed by ALL applicable State and Federal agencies and is subject to public review and comment. It is advisable to file this permit no less than 6 months in advance. You must provide a detailed Plan of Operations, and you can expect the agencies to add additional requirements to whatever plan you submit. 2012 Update: Dredges with a less than a 6" nozzle opening are now considered "small dredges" and fall under a general permit with no special cost or reporting requirements. But as always, check for the latest rules as this page will no doubt be out of date when you read it. A process of this sort may be appropriate for a full-time, large scale dredging operation. It certainly is not for casual, weekend miners such as myself. The worst part of it is that if you wish to move to a new site, you must go through the whole process all over again. I've avoided the issue by restricting my nozzle on my 6" dredge to 4", which has made it a wonderfully non-clogging dredge, and allows me to operate under the EPA Small Dredge permit. Ultimately, however, I am carrying more equipment than I need, as a 5" dredge with a 4" nozzle will move nearly as much as a 6" dredge with a 4" nozzle, as long as care is taken to not clog the hose. I plan to use a 5" subsurface dredge. My dual 5.5HP engine 6" weighs about 400 pounds. A single 5.5HP powered 5" subsurface will only weigh about 150 pounds and will burn one-half the gas as the 6". I'll move about the same yardage, but at a higher percentage of gold loss per yard. In the areas I work, however, I feel the loss will be acceptable, when I consider packing 250 lbs. less equipment into remote sites. Add to that a reduction of 50% in fuel, and I'll save my back a lot of work! 5" Subsurface dredge on inflatable pontoons The pictures above are of a unit I built and used last fall on my claims on Mills Creek. It uses a 5.5HP Honda pump, running into a 5" suction nozzle that pushes the material back through 15' of 5" hose to the underwater sluice box. I liked the light weight of the inflatable pontoons floats, but I am worried about them abrading against rocks and sinking, so I plan to go to marlex floatation this year. The recovery system/sluice box on a subsurface dredge is underwater, with a riffle area about 8" wide by 24" long. The fact that you are not lifting the material above the surface of the water is what keeps the horsepower requirement small, which cuts the weight and expense of the dredge considerably. I have used these units often in the past, and am very happy with subsurface units in general. I plan to use the 5" subsurface on Crow Creek in the future. I have another, even smaller 4" subsurface that I plan on using at Mills Creek this year. Subsurface dredges have a higher gold loss than most surface units, but are MUCH lighter. A 5" subsurface dredge can be built that is as light as a 3" surface dredge and with the same pump. While it may have a higher percentage of gold loss per yard moved than the 3", the 5" will move 2-3 times as much material. The final result is that you will normally get more gold by the end of the day with a 5" subsurface than a 3" surface dredge. In areas with fine gold, and higher loss rates, the difference will not be as dramatic. In fact, in areas with extremely fine gold, the 5" may even get less gold even though more material is moved, as the loss rate can be very high on extremely fine, flaky gold. In areas with coarse gold, the 5" subsurface will get 2-3 times more gold as the 3" surface unit, as the loss rate on coarser gold is negligible. I frequent areas with coarser gold, and that tend to require a lot of backpacking, so the subsurface dredge is a great way to go for me. 19 Little gold nuggets! I spent part the day packing more equipment out of the canyon. I'm doing it a few loads at a time, and then spending the rest of the day playing. I wandered up the creek metal detecting and hit the area that I had found on my last trip up to the mine. No dramatic new results, just more small nuggets. A couple of hours metal detecting netted me 19 little nuggets, totaling exactly one pennyweight (1/20th troy ounce). At some point I will have to hit this area hard for a full days work to see what I can get. For now, however, it is simply a nice way to work in the morning packing equipment, and still get a little gold by the end of the day. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 1999 Herschbach Enterprises

The problem with packing dredging equipment into a canyon is that someday you must pack it out again. I spent a good deal of Saturday and Sunday doing just that. The dredge had to be packed piece by piece up the creek to a log footbridge. There is a 100 foot climb up a rope above the footbridge, and then a short walk to the base of another steep hill. The distance is not too far, it is just kind of vertical! The photo above was taken during one of the previous weekends, so the snow is now gone. This kind of access is the main reason why I prefer the twin 5.5HP pumps on my dredge. I'd rather make two relatively easy trips, than one heavier and more dangerous trip with a large motor. After retrieving most of the equipment, I wanted to get in some nugget detecting. I decided to try and find some new detecting sites, as the previous weekend proved the old sites are getting a bit lean on gold. I have had my best luck detecting at Crow Creek Mine by following the surface of the old hydraulic workings. The old miners used pipes to bring water from a considerable distance upstream. This water was directed through large nozzles (giants) which were used to wash vast amounts of material through the sluicing system. The mine is actually an artificial valley, about 250 feet deep, created by the old mining operations. Looking down into Crow Creek canyon As the water and material was washed into the sluice boxes, gold settled into the surface of the material below. Much of the old Crow Creek operation never reached bedrock; the gravels were washed in a v-shaped cut into the sluice boxes. When they stopped mining, much of the gold was left in depressions and pockets in the surface of the mining cuts. A lot of this remaining virgin material, with its enriched surface layer of gold, can be found today, but it usually requires a bit of work. Worthless material caved onto much of the virgin ground, and later mining covered much in tailings. Finally, the area has grown a thick layer of brush, which obscures the terrain during most of the summer. Early spring is the best time to prospect for new sites at Crow Creek, before the lush vegetation sprouts up. I chose to use a Fisher Gold Bug 2 on this trip. While this is an older manual tuning design I am familiar with it and in the hands of a person who knows how to tune it the Gold Bug 2 can hit some very small gold. I have no problem in low mineral ground finding tiny pieces weighing a tenth of a grain or less (480 grains per ounce). I spent some time prospecting the tops of some steep slopes, but only found a few buckshot. I proceeded upstream, when a small bank of brown gravel along a side gully caught my eye. The main gold-bearing material at Crow Creek is a clay-rich yellow-brown color that is easily distinguished from the washed gray tailings. The tailings material is also very loose, while the virgin material is very compact and can require a pick to loosen at times. The picture above shows the gray tailings on top of the brown virgin layer. The boundary, where the gray meets the brown, is most often a very productive layer. Gray tailings over brown virgin material & small nugget on layer The tailings tend to have a lot of iron and other trash, and not much gold, so I rake it away from the brown layer. The detector is used to carefully check the surface of the brown layer for nuggets. The nuggets are often found around rocks lodged in the surface of the brown material. A few more scrapes off the surface, and a double-check with the detector, and then more tailings must be removed. In some areas, the virgin material can be very rich, and so I always work into it a small distance to check. Many times it is unproductive compared to the rich boundary area, so I just follow the layer along. The ground at Crow Creek has very little iron mineralization, and high frequency detectors like the Fisher Gold Bug 2 and White's Goldmasters really shine here. They can be used at full sensitivity levels with no problem, and it will hit incredibly small gold, even with the standard 10" elliptical coil, although to really get the edge go to the smaller 6" elliptical coils. After several hours of scraping and detecting with the Gold Bug 2 I came up with 28 nuggets. The area looks good for more, and you can bet I'll be back in the future! Steve's nuggets for the day The largest nugget, in the lower right hand corner, weighs 6 grains. The smallest is about 1/10th grain. The total weight is 41.7 grains, or 1.7 pennyweight. The number of nuggets is encouraging, but the small size is keeping the weight down. Still, a vast improvement over the last couple of weekends. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2000 Herschbach Enterprises

People talk about how long it took to find their first nugget with a metal detector. Usually the discussion revolves around how much trash they had to dig before they found their first nugget. Well, I probably come close to setting some kind of record for the number of years involved. My problem was not finding lots of trash, it was not finding gold! My first nugget hunt in 1973 taught me one thing about detectors at the time... they were nearly worthless for finding gold. I had my first metal detector, a White's Coinmaster 4. These old units could not ground balance, and had very poor sensitivity to small gold, even with the so-called Gold Probe accessory coil. I was panning 1/2 pennyweight nuggets from the little gully pictured at Moore Creek, and found I could not get a reading from those nuggets when they were placed directly under the coil. My next detector was one of the early White's Goldmasters. I figured I needed a nugget detector instead of a coin detector. Imagine my surprise when I discovered all the Goldmaster was in those days was the Coinmaster circuit board in a larger box! If you are shopping for a used Goldmaster do not buy one of these old ones by mistake. They were blue and about the size of a mailbox. And about as useful for finding gold. I was getting into dredging at the time, and decided detectors were a waste of time for gold. I got into business in 1976 selling mining gear and as a White's dealer. But my stock answer for people coming in looking for a gold detector was "Don't waste your money, you'll find more gold with a $5 gold pan". That was good advice at the time. We concentrated on selling metal detectors for finding coins and relics. My bias caused me not to keep up with changes in the technology, however. Reports of a large nugget finds would appear every once in awhile. I chalked them up to "Yeah, sure you can find gold with a detector, if it's big enough"! And the nuggets found were usually pretty big, not something likely to be found in my immediate area. Steve's First Nugget Hunt 1973 White's Coinmaster 4 with 4" Gold Probe Moore Creek, Alaska The first commercially available detector with ground balancing capability was the White's Coinmaster 5 Supreme. I was seriously into coin hunting, and purchased one of these new units. It was a very low frequency detector, and I found to my dismay that it really liked nails. One nice thing about the very old detectors was that they pretty much ignored nails, They Coinmaster 5 loved them and I was finding so many nails I took a dislike to the detector. But the depth of detection was amazing for the detectors of that time. I sold it to a friend who was a heavy equipment type miner. He found a gold nugget weighing several ounces with it at his mine. This should have clued me in, but once again I chalked it up to being a lucky find of a very large nugget. I went on about my dredging, sluicing, and panning. Finally in the 1980's I was also selling Compass detectors, and I hauled a Compass X-80 up to my claims and gave it a try. It had the capability, as my tests on smaller gold nuggets revealed it was pretty good. We were selling them now as nugget detectors, and some finds were being made with them. Unfortunately, I was not lucky enough to find any gold with the unit the one time I gave it a try. And it just reinforced my feeling about detectors as being a waste of time. It was not until June 18, 1989 that I decided to give metal detecting for gold another try. Compass had repackaged the X-80 as a nugget detector called the Gold Scanner Pro. Here is my log entry for that day: "Went to Crow Creek and used Compass Gold Scanner Pro. Found my first gold nuggets ever with a metal detector! Two nuggets within 10 feet of each other between Area #1 and Area #2 below old tailing pile at lower end. One nugget at 9 grains and the other at 4 grains, total of 13 grains. Also found two bullets." I was hooked! I COULD find gold with a metal detector. It only took me 16 years to find my first nugget with one!! I planned my first real nugget hunt. The destination was high in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska on some bench deposits above a creek named Bonanza Creek. I had been visiting this area for years and had found lots of nice gold sniping the bedrock in the area. It seemed like a perfect spot to try my new detector skills. I used the Compass Gold Scanner Pro and I set my father up with a Fisher Gold Bug. I used the stock 8" round coil on the Compass, and outfitted my father with a 3-3/4" round coil that used to be available for the Gold Bug. We had a weekend to see what we could do, and so off we went on our first real nugget hunt. Bedrock Exposed by Oldtimers Bonanza Creek has several bench deposits high above the current creek level. These are remnants of stream deposits left high and dry as the stream eroded deeper into the valley bottom. They can often be spotted as flat areas on the valley sides above gold-bearing creeks. In some areas there is more gold in the bench deposits than in the creek itself. The problem for the oldtimers was in getting water up to these locations to work the gold deposits. Ditches many miles long were often dug to bring water along the valley walls from places father upstream to the deposits. They usually used "giants", a term for very large water nozzles fed by pipes with water from the ditch systems to wash the gold free of the hillside gravels. Large areas could be worked in this fashion, with the material being funneled into sluice boxes running down the hill. Much gold was lost in these sluicing systems due to the large volumes of material being washed through the boxes. However the best target for the metal detector operator is not the tailing piles, but the large areas of bedrock exposed by these operations. Nuggets lodged in cracks and crevices as the material was being washed down the hill, and original concentrations of gold in the bedrock were often missed. The only way for the old miners to get this gold would be to tear up all the bedrock and process it. The amount of gold to be had for this extreme extra effort was not much compared to what they would get just going on with their large scale washing operations. And so that gold is left to this day, waiting for someone to find it. Trying to scrape and pan crevices can produce some of this gold, but it is a needle in the haystack kind of search. Metal detectors are the perfect way to locate deposits of gold left in these old workings. The picture above shows a dark area of exposed bedrock we searched with our detectors. Bud Herschbach with Fisher Gold Bug & Steve with Compass Gold Scanner Pro We actually wasted quite a bit of time on bedrock along the creek before heading up to try the bench areas. We only found a few nuggets, and I now attribute this to the fact that most mining activity goes on near the water. People pan and sluice the material along the edge of the water, and dredgers work in the water. The area nearest the creek is the area receiving the most attention. One of the first things an experienced miner must do when getting into metal detecting is to lose this natural desire to stay near the water. What really makes detectors great is you need no water to find the gold, and so working away from the water actually will increase your odds of making finds overlooked by others. You have no choice in desert areas, but in stream valleys do not let the water distract you. Any exposed bedrock or material from the highest ridge on down has potential. We started finding gold, but it was one particular hump of a dark slate bedrock that really started producing gold. My years of coin hunting paid off as I have much better detecting habits that my father. I always keep my coil as close as possible to the ground, and do not raise it on the end of my swings. I am methodical and carefully overlap my sweeps if I feel I am in the gold. My father tends to have his coil off the ground a lot, and wander around with no set pattern. The number one thing he could do to improve his finds would be to slow down and develop better coil control. But as he has often noted, he does not have the patience I do with a metal detector. And he makes good finds nonetheless. Still, technique is important. My father was scanning along up a steep rise in the bedrock. He stepped up the rise with just a couple sweeps over the bedrock. I followed behind, carefully scanning every inch. The bedrock was nearly vertical at one point, and as I scanned the face I got a nice signal. My father was about 20 feet ahead of me when I yelled at him to look at the flat 4 pennyweight nugget I popped out of a crevice in the rock! It turned out to the largest nugget of the weekend, and in fact the largest nugget I had ever found up to that point prospecting for gold. Gold Found by Bud & Steve - from my notes: Large Flat Nugget - 4 dwt 2 grain Fat Pendant Nugget - 2 dwt 8 grain Dad's Big Nugget - 1 dwt 5 grain Sitting Bird Nugget - 16 grain Chunky Nugget - 16 grain Long Flat Nugget - 14 grain plus others total of 11 dwt 6 grain Grand Total 1 oz 4 dwt 12 grain "Great weather, great gold, GREAT TRIP!" Gold nuggets Steve found with Compass Gold Scanner Pro I had a fantastic time. Probably the most fun I'd ever had looking for gold. Metal detecting really appeals to my desire to just get out and walk around the hills. I went nugget hunting regularly after this trip. I tried new machines as they came out, and kept getting better results as the technology improved, allowing me to go back and rehunt old areas many times. My finds close to home really took off when the White's Goldmaster II was introduced, as the local creeks had lots of smaller gold on which the Goldmasters excelled. Still, gold dredging produced the bulk of my gold yearly. I dredged locally, and large nuggets suitable for detecting were rare, although I did finally dredge a 1 ounce nugget at Crow Creek in 1998. Then in 2000 a few things happened to make me really get serious about nugget hunting. First, I finally started getting bored with dredging. I had been doing it so many years it was becoming mechanical. It was mostly an equation. Run the 6" dredge for X hours at X location and get X gold. Dredging was also causing me to stay at the same locations for years at a stretch. I wanted to start moving around more and doing more pure prospecting. I was also finding my body was beginning to suffer from the years of cold water dredging. But the most important thing was those big nuggets. I decided that if I really wanted to see lots more really good-sized nuggets I'd better change my tactics. One 1 ounce nugget in 25 years of dredging meant I was going to die before I found a couple more! So I consciously set dredging aside and concentrated on metal detecting. I sold my 6" dredge and used the funds to buy a Minelab SD2200D. Paired with a White's Goldmaster I figured I could handle most anything. The Goldmasters are very hot on smaller gold, but suffer in highly mineralized ground. The SD2200D is not very good on small gold, but excels on larger gold in the worst of mineralized ground conditions. So the two make an excellent combination for varying gold and ground conditions. Finally, and most importantly, I started contacting miners I've met over the years looking for access to big gold creeks. The payoff was immediate. I found more pennyweight range nuggets in 2000 than I ever had in one year and found my largest ever with a detector at just over 8 dwt. Then in the summer of 2001 at Ganes Creek, Alaska I found a slug of 1/4 to 3/4 ounce nuggets and my largest nugget ever, a 4.95 ounce gold and quartz nugget. I was one of the happiest guys on the entire planet when that nugget came out of the ground! In 2002 I bettered it with a 6.85 ounce nugget and over 2 pounds of detected gold. So there you go. It took me the longest time to warm up to these 21st century prospecting methods. But I am ready now to let the past go and put my pan, sluice box, and gold dredge aside to concentrate on this exciting field of electronic prospecting. I'm more excited now about prospecting than I have ever been, and cannot wait for my next opportunity to test my skills in the field. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2002 Herschbach Enterprises Steve's Mining Journal Index