Steve Herschbach

Alaskans love Hawaii. At least, my wife and I sure do. Winters in Alaska can be long, and my wife gets to missing sunny weather. I miss metal detecting for half the year! So a mid-winter break in the beautiful islands of Hawaii is a much welcome respite from the cold weather. I’ve been to Hawaii before and done well there with my metal detectors. I usually focus on detecting in the water, and my machine of choice after using many brands and models is the White’s Surf PI Pro. Hawaii has some of the worst conditions you can throw at a metal detector, with extremely mineralized volcanic rocks and salt water combining to make water detecting there tough indeed. Most any machine works well on the white sands, but when you get into sand mixed with volcanic rock every detector I’ve ever tried wants to generate false signals. The Surf PI is not immune to this false signaling on volcanic rocks, but it has so far offered me the best combination of power and ease of operation (and price!) of all the detectors I have tried for saltwater detecting in Hawaii. And so it was the machine I planned on using the most on this trip. Then White’s introduced the new Matrix M6 model, and I received one just before my departure to Hawaii. I like having two detectors for trips like this since a detector failure of any sort can be disappointing without a backup. It just so happened I wanted to try looking for small jewelry items like chains and earrings in the drier beach sands and it seemed the Matrix M6 would fit the bill nicely. I already have an extensive background with the closest relative of the M6 – the White’s MXT. The MXT has very good sensitivity to small gold items, and I own lots of accessory coils for the MXT. I was certain the 14 kHz M6 would share in the small gold capabilities of the MXT, and so it seemed a perfect opportunity to try out the new model. I packed the machine up, along with the 6” Shooter DD and 10” elliptical DD Eclipse coils made by White’s. I have commented before on the features of the M6 and so will stick to how it worked in the field for this report. I decided to use the M6 initially with the 10” elliptical DD coil, which I felt would provide good depth and smooth operation on a saltwater beach. My hunting grounds were the drier sands above the active wave zone. The sand is wet below the surface, but not literally running with saltwater. I am a big believer in pulse induction machines like the Surf PI Pro for wet salt sands and so did not bother doing any detecting in the water with the Matrix M6. Playing in the surf is a lot safer with a totally waterproof detector anyway. Steve with White's Surf PI Pro ready to jump in the water The first thing I did was experiment with the sensitivity settings and ground tracking. I was pleased to find that the M6 ran just fine in the normal track or fixed modes at high sensitivity levels, and that I did not have to resort to using the “Beach” mode unless I went down onto the wet sand below the surf line. The Beach setting is designed to allow a single frequency machine like the M6 to operate in wet salt sand without false signaling, but it usually comes at a cost of sensitivity on small gold targets. The Beach setting did allow the M6 to run quiet as can be in the wet salt sand, but when I got up above the surf line it was not needed. I was able to run as high as a sensitivity of “10” with the DD coil and the M6 ran quiet as can be. Only when I set the sensitivity up into the cross-hatched “redline” area above a setting of 10 did I start getting a bit of low level falsing from the sand. Even then the machine worked just fine, and it was a decision between running “maxed out” and a bit noisy or at a still very high sensitivity level but with quiet operation. I did spend hours doing both and ultimately came to the decision that the whole point of the M6 was to have a nice, quiet operating detector. One of the selling points of the M6 is quiet operation and so I think turning that sensitivity control up to where the machine just starts to generate a bit of noise and then backing off is in line with its intended design goals and operation. I have always been a fan of leaving my detectors at a fixed ground balance setting, as opposed to running them in track mode all the time. Automatic ground balancing is a great thing, and those that want to be on the safe side should just leave a detector in automatic at all times. But I think I get better response with less fading on small or very deep targets with a fixed ground balance setting, and less shifting of VDI numbers on found targets. So I like to let the tracking run a minute or two and then switch to the “Fixed” or “Off” position. This is what I did on the M6, and so ended up at a sensitivity of 10 and in the “Lock Off” position on the Auto Trac control. For beach detecting setting the discrimination control was easy. I set it to the far left so that all targets would respond. I generally dig it all on beaches, only passing on iron targets at some beaches if there is enough junk to warrant it. But with a new detector digging it all is a good idea anyway to learn the machine and its responses. Besides, I really wanted to see how the new seven tone audio worked on the M6, and so going by tones only seemed like a good idea. This left the final setting. The trigger switch on the Matrix M6 causes the detector to operate as a standard single tone detector in the default center position, or in a seven tone audio mode in the forward locked position. You can run in either mode and toggle to the other to check found targets both ways. Squeezing the trigger activates the pinpoint/depth reading mode. For dig it all beach hunting I might as well have just set the M6 for a single tone, but I wanted to learn the tones and see how the machine responded in the multi-tone mode and so set the trigger switch forward. So to sum up, sensitivity at 10, discriminate at far left (off), and trigger forward for seven tone audio. Set the tracking on for about a minute of operation over clean ground and then switch to off. In reality it only takes a few seconds for the tracking to find the proper ground balance level. If you are unsure of ground balancing and what it does, leave the tracking on. It does not get much easier than this! I could make this long story even longer and go on at length about my detecting. The fact is I spent most of my detecting time with the Surf PI Pro, as I have learned the best finds will usually be made in the water. But I did use the Matrix M6 a lot and I dug hundreds of targets over many hours of detecting. I like to dig everything initially to learn about how a detector reacts to different targets, so I dug the good along with the bad. I was focusing on small signals, and so dug countless little bits of foil and other small pieces of aluminum. I dug pull tabs and bottle caps. I dug a bunch of junk, and I dug up over a hundred coins. And I finally dug a diamond earring and a diamond ring! The only problem is the diamond earring turned out not to be real. The 14K white gold diamond ring was the real thing and a nice find indeed. Even the earring was a great find however, a testament to the ability of the White’s Matrix M6 to find small items on a beach or elsewhere. White's M6 and Surf PI Pro along with beach detecting finds And so here are my observations gleaned from all this detecting and digging. First, the M6 is an excellent beach detector. It worked well and at high sensitivity levels with no need to resort to the beach setting unless the sand was actually dripping wet. I was hitting coins at 8” or more with ease. I was unable to do direct comparisons but I will not be surprised if the M6 turns out to be one of the better single frequency beach detectors. It will no doubt be bettered by some multi-frequency or pulse induction detectors, but it did an excellent job in my opinion. The sensitivity to small items is superb, as my digging of small aluminum proved, along with the backings off a couple of earring posts, which are very small items. The signal on my little fake diamond earring post was strong and loud at a couple inches. Do expect to give up some of this sensitivity if using the beach mode in wet salt sand, however. Compared to my trusty MXT it is my feeling that the Matrix M6 gets the same depth you get from the MXT in target id modes. I also think the MXT gets extra depth and sensitivity in the threshold based all-metal modes, like the Prospecting Mode, or the mixed mode Relic Mode if you are listening for the less obvious all-metal signals. But the fact is that most people do not dig everything using threshold based all-metal modes. I think many hunters will like the silent operation of the Matrix M6 and the performance it offers for most types of coin and jewelry detecting. I also think extreme performance people like nugget hunters or relic hunters will be advised to spend the extra $100 for the MXT and its extra versatility. Target VDI numbers on the Matrix M6 were very jumpy at high sensitivity levels on the beach sands. This is where I found a real advantage to the seven tone system. Each tone takes in a wide range of VDI numbers, and so listening to the audio was much better than watching the meter when it came to target identification. There would be either a single tone, or maybe some mixing of adjacent tones for borderline targets. In simplest terms high tones means coins except nickels, medium tones mean nickels, aluminum, and hopefully gold, and low tones iron or hot rocks. There are two low tones, three medium tones, and two high tones as follows: -95 = 57 Hz (Very Low) Hot Rock -94 to -6 = 128 Hz (Low) Iron Junk -5 to 7 = 145 Hz (Med Low) Gold Earrings, Chains - Foil 8 to 26 = 182 Hz (Medium) Women's Gold Rings/Nickel - Small Pull Tabs 27 to 49 = 259 Hz (Med Hi) Men's Gold Rings - Large Pull Tabs 50 to 70 = 411 Hz (High) Zinc Penny/Indian Head Penny - Screw Caps 71 to 95 = 900 Hz (Very High) Copper Penny/Dime/Quarter/Dollar White's M6 meter and where tone breaks occur (added red lines) In practice it tends to boil down to high, medium, and low, but the extra tones add extra ability to discern what you are likely digging without referring to the meter. The tones work better than the meter, or at least they did under these tough detecting conditions. I used both the 10” elliptical DD Eclipse and 6” elliptical DD Eclipse “Shooter” coil. The 6” coil hit tiny items a bit better than the 10” DD coil, but overall the 10” coil seemed the better coil for me. It covered ground better and still had more than enough sensitivity to small items. The fake diamond earring post was found with the 10” coil. The 6” Shooter was able to run all the way up into the cross-hatched max sensitivity area and still run dead quiet, however. If you want the best sensitivity possible to small items and clean running in bad ground, use the Shooter coil. The M6 may be one of the more powerful yet easy to operate detectors ever designed. I think a person might be well advised to simply go with the “listen-to-it-all” concept behind multi-tone detecting when using the White’s Matrix M6. The idea is to hear all targets, and hunt strictly by ear. Targets are never “masked” or ignored due to discrimination settings, and a decision to dig is made based on how the target sounds. A meter is almost extraneous to this kind of hunting, and in fact a good way to learn how to hunt this way is to tape over the meter and force yourself to hunt by the sounds alone. If you go with this theory of detecting, then tuning the M6 becomes the simplest task you can imagine on a detector. The discriminate control stays at the far left. Only in extreme iron conditions might you turn it up, and many would advise even then it be left off. If the machine seems noisy from too many signals lower the volume level on your headphones so that the sounds become a threshold of sort. Then just listen to the sounds and dig items until you begin to have a feel for what sounds “good” and what does not. Moving slow and a small coil will help in trashy locations. The M6 is very forgiving on sweep speeds. Earring and diamond ring on pinky finger found with Matrix M6, rest of finds in water with Surf PI Pro For those who do not like the tones, there is the single tone mode. Using this mode is extremely simple. Just set the discrimination control to the level you wish, and dig whatever beeps. If you want more ability to discern targets in the single tone mode you will have to rely on the meter. One thing I did note is that small targets gave a more solid hit in single tone mode than multi-tone mode, and so it a person was trying to use the M6 for nugget detecting or any other “push it to the edge” detecting of small items I think the single tone mode may offer a slight advantage. But this may be more a perception thing than reality as the same items signal in both modes. They just sound a tad better in single tone mode to my ear. I use lots of different detecting strategies depending on what I am looking for, the amount of time available, and yes, my mood at the time. I do think that for the best performance “listen to it all” tone detecting offers the best ability to discern good targets from bad with the least chance of targets being masked by discrimination settings. A gutsy move would be for someone to make a machine like the M6 without a discrimination control or meter. My suggestion is that the Matrix M6 be used as if this were the case. Key switch forward (seven tone), discrimination to zero, and forget the meter. Just listen to the tones and dig what sounds good. But you can use other strategies with the M6, like cranking the discrimination control all the way to max. This is a good setting for those times when my patience with digging trash is at a minimum, as about the only things that will signal at this setting is a coin. Let's wrap this up. In summary I think the White’s Matrix M6 offers top end performance in about the simplest to operate form possible. The detector will not outperform detectors costing hundreds of dollars more, nor do I think it was intended to. I do think White’s has succeeded in offering MXT level discrimination performance but with more tones and quiet operation to those who were wishing for it. Considering the price, the performance, and the incredible coil selection, the White’s Matrix M6 is worth serious consideration. It offers solid performance and simple operation at a very reasonable price. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2006 Herschbach Enterprises

I thought I'd point out a link to the Minelab GP 3500 review I wrote for the September issue of Lost Treasure magazine. They have it on their website (edit Dec 2018 - Lost Treasure magazine is out of business and link is gone) for those of you that may have missed it. One thing I made a point of doing in the article is trying to get people to consider the Minelab GP 3500 as much more than just a "nugget detector". The fact is that it is one of the most powerful metal detectors available today, and can hit coins, jewelry, relics, and yes, nuggets, deeper than most metal detectors. Since it is a pulse induction (PI) detector, it has a relatively limited ability to discriminate targets. That said, by learning the tones the machine puts out and using the iron discrimination circuit you get more ability to read targets than is the case with most PI detectors. I've been experimenting with my GP 3500 as a coin and jewelry detector. The short story is it easily hits targets deeper than the best VLF detectors. Yes, you dig more junk, but the biggest limiting factor may be that the unit is TOO powerful. You can only dig holes so deep in public places, and so many parks and other groomed areas are in effect off-limits to the GP 3500 as digging holes over a foot deep in not an option in many parks. But for beach use and relic or coin detecting in areas where digging extra deep is allowable, the GP 3500 is certain to pull up finds people with VLF machines are leaving behind. The GP 3500 control box is protected with a Coiltek neoprene cover. I have a half-size Minelab battery tied to the side of the unit in its own Minelab battery belt pouch. Another option are the new Pocket Rocket Lithium Ion batteries. The battery is connected to the control box with a Coiltek short power cable, the one Coiltek sells for use as a charging cable instead of using the 3 foot Minelab cable. 6.8 pennyweight gold nugget found with Minelab GP 3500 This setup allows me to set the detector down and dig without being attached to the machine by a normal backpack mounted battery and cable setup. The half-size battery is fine for more hours of coin detecting than I'd normally ever undertake in a day. And the whole setup is not so heavy that I cannot handle it for long hours. I plan to use it for nugget detecting in brushy areas next summer or for some "dig and detect" sessions where the machine spends more time on the ground than on my arm. I'm using the Coiltek 14" mono coil which seems to work well for the coin detecting. The stock 11" coil is ok but is a bit too sensitive to tiny surface trash the larger coil tends to ignore. Being a mono coil the 14" has terrific depth for its size, but I have given up the ability to use the GP iron discrimination circuit. I'm going by the tones only (the review describes this in detail), but I'm looking at a mid-sized DD coil for this use to get back that extra discrimination ability. This would help eliminate a few of the iron targets I'm currently digging. The headphones are the DetectorPro Uniprobe combination headphone/PI pinpointer setup that is a must for this type of detecting. The Uniprobe pinpointers are easily the most powerful I have used, in that they are a full-fledged pulse induction metal detector with a probe attached instead of a coil. In fact, there is an optional 11" coil and handle assembly available to convert the Uniprobe into a great little PI detector. Normally with a GP 3500 you just dig a huge hole while nugget detecting. But for coin and jewelry detecting better pinpointing skills must be developed, and the use of a good pinpointer is a real requirement. I highly recommend the Uniprobe pinpointers. The headphone model is mounted in a set of Gray Ghost headphones, which works great for me as I am a headphone addict. DetectorPro makes a Pocket Uniprobe that has a speaker but I cannot hear it very well with headphones on. Plus, it is just another gadget to carry. I tried the Pocket Uniprobe and decided having it all in one unit works better for me. Minelab GP 3500 rigged up to hunt without using harness and bungee setup The final item in the picture is my digging pick. I do not like the short handles that are standard on most picks. I got a 36" hickory sledge hammer handle and replaced the stock handle, although I can switch it back as both handles mount with a single bolt to the head. I like these long-handle picks as I use them as a walking stick (great for side-hilling at Moore Creek!), and I have to bend over less when I dig. There is, of course, a super magnet attached to the head of the pick for sucking up small iron trash. The only other items I am using that are not in the picture are my nylon belt and large trash/treasure pouch and plastic scoop. The scoop is great for getting deeper into the bottom of the holes I dig, and for locating some small items as would be done in nugget detecting. All trash goes in the pouch for later disposal. I know these detectors are expensive, but if you have a serious need to get some REAL extra depth, you need to look hard at the Minelab GP 3500. These things would be awesome for hunting Civil War relics in a "worked out" location. Goose lake, Alaska plus gold nugget and old coins found with GP 3500 Two last hints. Carry a VLF detector along, and check the targets the GP 3500 finds for you. In some cases the target will be shallow enough you can save a little digging. But better yet, if you get no signal at all from your VLF unit, you'll know you have a deep target. You will be surprised how many of these there are that a VLF unit just will not hit. I'm afraid once you experience this for awhile you will tend to lose a certain amount of faith in your VLF detector. Yes, you are missing targets. LOTS of them. But the second hint is the best. Take the GP 3500 to a once good place, but one that has been hunted so much that there are no targets left using a VLF detector. I am sure that you will end up like me, simply amazed at how all of the sudden the place seems like it has never had a detector over it, there are so many targets. Better yet, all the shallow stuff should be gone, with only the deepest finds, and therefore some of the best, remaining for you! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2005 Herschbach Enterprises

After returning from Moore Creek in July I put the word out that I was looking for Honda 200 three-wheelers. I was offered one in good condition and bought it, plus another one not running that I purchased for parts. My father came up with a Honda 110 that a friend gave him. Our little fleet was growing. I wanted to make sure that for our assault on the old bulldozer we had plenty of ability to transport people and tools the three miles over the mountain to where the unit was stuck in a bog. When we acquired Moore Creek some of the equipment we got was actually over the mountain at another creek named Deadwood Creek. In fact, that other location was where the bulldozer was coming from when it got stuck three miles out from our camp. There was another Honda 200 ATV over at that far camp, and so my father and I decided to fly up to Moore Creek, drop off one of our just purchased Hondas, and then fly over the hill and get that three-wheeler. This proved to be a true Alaska Bush pilot adventure. I’ve flown around Alaska with my father for 40 years now and we have seen some pretty exciting moments in that time. But in recent years usually the flying is uneventful and even downright boring. Every once in awhile though you tackle some new airstrip in a remote location and things can get very interesting, to say the least. This proved to be one of those times. We crammed a Honda 200 3-wheeler into the Cessna 206 and flew it into Moore Creek. No big deal there. My father had checked out the Deadwood Creek airstrip previously when we had a friend up to Moore Creek with a Super Cub. He figured he could put the 206 in and so we went for it. The strip is dozed over the curve of a hill and grown up with brush. It is always something to be making a landing for the first time on a strip like that, and this was no exception. We hit the ground going uphill, and then had to skid to the left to stay on what appeared to be the best route. You roll up over the crest and down the other side, so forward visibility is limited. We made it but it was one of the more exciting landings I've made with him in some time. Airstrip at Deadwood Creek, Alaska over the hill from Moore Creek We explored a bit, and then loaded up the Honda 200 three-wheeler to take over to Moore Creek. The unit appeared to have real low hours but had been sitting in the weather for years. Two tires were flat, and although it would turn over the fuel tank was full of rust and it would not start. Then came the fun part... takeoff. A Cessna 206 with two guys and gear is iffy on this strip. We ran flagging over the hill so we would know which way to go since we could not see over the crest of the hill. Not only does the strip run over the hill but it is not straight. We had to spend an hour breaking brush and even tall grass as it slows you down plowing through it. We rolled the plane on down to the lower end of the strip, which meant a takeoff run up a pretty good slope, leveling at the top, then hopefully getting off the ground as we rolled down the other side. We had a preference for one direction as there are ridges to clear both ways, but the one way the ridge is farther away. Plus, if we had to abort the crash zone was smoother that way. We would run into downhill sloping brush as opposed to falling into a small valley the other way. No, I'm not kidding, you plan your crash... just in case. Only problem was a tacking tailwind going that way. So we parked and waited a half hour watching a piece of flagging tied in a tree. It finally hung down straight indicating a lull in the breeze, and we went for it. After all the suspense, we got off with no problem. That, my friends, is what it is like flying small planes in Bush strips in Alaska. This scenario may sound insane to some but it is what you have to do to be able to see and operate in the vast 99% of Alaska that nobody else ever sees. You have to be willing to land on beaches and ridges and marginal airstrips just barely carved out of the wilderness. The secret to success is an old Alaska Bush pilot saying - “There are old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold pilots”. You have to know when to go for it, and when to just give it up and go back home. And dear old Dad has proven he knows how and when to make those calls. The stage was set for the next attempt to get the old bulldozer back into camp. However, before I would return to Moore Creek I planned on making one last nugget hunt at Ganes Creek. This trip was prompted by Steve Burris finding an incredible 33.85 oz nugget at Ganes in June 2004, right on top of the ground in an area heavily hunted by others in the past, including myself. It was the largest nugget found at Ganes with a detector up until that point, and highlighted just how easy it is to miss nuggets when dealing with an area the size of Ganes Creek. Seeing a picture of the nugget gave me a case of gold fever, and the desire to give Ganes just one more try. I put the word out I was planning a trip to Ganes Creek, and in short order a group of people signed up to go the same week. Half were local people I know, and the other half were visitors from down south, mostly from Arizona and Nevada. Some of these I knew by reputation and the internet to be knowledgeable nugget hunters and so it had the makings of an interesting week. I planned on meeting my father in McGrath as the group left Ganes Creek and going straight over to Moore Creek rather than returning to Anchorage. The stuck D9 bulldozer The Ganes Creek trip is a long story in itself, but one I’ll leave for another time. The short story is that we had delays getting both into Ganes Creek and out due to the smoke from the many forest fires in Alaska that summer. It also became apparent that the years and number of hunters at Ganes Creek have had an effect on the chances of finding nuggets at Ganes Creek. I actually was very pleased with the nuggets I found, but the fact is that most of the visitors from the Lower 48 had pretty poor luck finding gold. In the early days most anyone swinging a detector at Ganes Creek could find a nugget, but at this point I think only the very experienced or very lucky will be finding nuggets in the future at Ganes Creek. It also was obvious that nugget detecting experience elsewhere does not prepare people for nugget hunting tailing piles in Alaska. It is a different game, and requires a different set of skills. Some of the guys from down south were not too happy with their finds… or lack thereof… for the week. While I found some nice nuggets and had a good week at Ganes Creek, it was with a certain amount of relief that I found myself watching the rest of the group get on the plane in McGrath and head back to civilization. I count among some of the very best times of my life those times when I have been totally on my own in remote locations of Alaska. There is something enlivening about being totally dependent on ones self and the knowledge that there is nobody to bail you out if something goes wrong. So now what? The smoke from the forest fires prevented my father from making it over the Alaska Range to McGrath to pick me up for the trip to Moore Creek. It was morning still, and I faced the prospect of checking into a hotel and waiting it out. By the time I got supper and breakfast I’d be looking at a $100 bill. The smoke was thick in the area but had lifted since early morning, and it looked flyable to me. So I wandered over to Magnuson Air and asked Lucky if he thought he could get me to Moore Creek. It costs $250 one way to the mine from McGrath but I figured I’d be getting a $100 discount by not staying in McGrath. Plus, I’d be able to get to work at the mine instead of just killing time. Lucky figured we could make it to Moore Creek, and so I loaded my gear up into the Magnuson 206 and we headed for the mine. It was actually a nice, sunny day despite the smoke, and the smoke thinned as we got to Moore Creek. We landed at the mine, and then Lucky took off to head back to McGrath. I opened up the camp and did odds and ends work waiting for my father and cousin Bob to arrive. I hung around camp a bit the next morning half expecting them to show up, and was just getting ready to go up and clear trail when they did finally arrive. They had a tale of wandering mountain passes in thick smoke trying to find a way over the Alaska Range that sounded not a bit fun, so I was glad they had made it to the mine safe and sound. We cleared the last bit of trail to the top of the mountain and so were finally able to drive our three-wheelers all the way to the bulldozer. The trail is actually an existing bulldozer route that has grown up over the years and so along some portions is actually like an old road in the lower elevations but fades to a bare trail above tree line. Once you get above tree line the ridges are rounded and smooth and so it is pretty easy to get around on an ATV. Using Honda 3-wheelers to run supplies over hill to stuck D9 bulldozer We took a dual approach to getting the bulldozer unstuck. A combination of trying to dig it out and trying to get the old beast started up. The D9 is a 1950’s era model that uses a small gasoline motor referred to as a “pony motor” for a starter. So first step was to try and get the pony motor started. It uses a 6V car type battery and so we used the ATVs to haul up a battery plus some fresh gas. The first thing we discovered was that the small exhaust pipe sticking straight up out of the top of the dozer had not been covered, and when we cranked the pony motor over water puked up out of the exhaust pipe! We drained what we could, and then ran the battery dead trying to clear water out of the system. The battery did not last any time at all, actually. The old starter motor seemed to just suck it dead in very little time. We spent the rest of the day digging away at the lower rear track where it was sunk in the mud. If we could get the motor running, we could hopefully use the rear ripper hydraulics to push down and lift the rear of the dozer up, so that logs could be stuffed under the tracks. But since we had more people than we really needed digging seemed to be another approach to take while also keeping busy. The old bulldozer has a cable lift blade in front, which unfortunately cannot be used to do the same thing up front. It can only lift, not push down. We headed back to camp eventually and put the battery on a charger overnight. Dad and Bob decided to fly over to one of the nearby mines to borrow a jack and returned with a loaned 40 ton jack. Then back up to the dozer for more digging and work. We got the rear corner of the dozer dug out far enough to get the jack under it and this started an effort of putting rocks and timbers under the jack and driving them down into the muck until a solid base was created. It took a lot of work to finally get the rear of the dozer to lift a couple inches. And with that accomplished, we stuck timbers under the rear of the track, which when the jack was let down just sunk into the muck. Over and over we jacked the unit up, stuffed timbers and rocks under the track, and let it down to all sink right back to where we started. We got the pony motor clear of water but it still would not start before the battery ran dead. And finally after a couple days we ran out of time and had to return to Anchorage. Lots of digging, lots of work with hydraulic jacks and log sections This time I returned with my other partner John, along with more batteries as the single battery was not giving us any life before it ran dead, and having to return to camp to charge it overnight was taking too much time. Plus a new jack. I found there was no spark on the pony motor, and so I pulled off the magneto, cleaned up the points, and put it back together. And Pow, Pop, Pop, Pow! Smoke came out and more water came from somewhere and got the plugs wet but at least we had fire! But we ran the batteries dead without the motor actually starting. We spent more time digging, and more time pulling every part of the pony motor apart we could trying to get it to start. It would pop and backfire and do everything but actually run. Finally we gave up and once again we had to return to Anchorage, frustrated by our inability to get the motor running. The dozer was now so dug out that it would most likely drive out of the hole, if only we could get it running. The fall colors were out in full, and winter was coming fast. We needed to do something soon or winter would put things off for another season. I got a hold of my old friend Tom, who has worked with heavy equipment for many years. He is a very busy person, but he agreed to come up and try and figure out what was up with the pony motor. I was stymied at this point, and was worried about the delay. Overland permits for bulldozer travel off claim blocks can generally only be had in the winter months. The ground is softer in the warmer months and so travel when the ground is frozen protects the ground. If we could not get the dozer running before winter set in, we would most likely lose an entire season. The main limitation in the permits is the requirement that the ground have snow cover. We needed to get the bulldozer onto the claims while the ground was still frozen. Tom, my father, and I returned to the mine for one last try in early October. The snow could fly at any moment, and we not only wanted to try and get the bulldozer running, but also wanted to stake some more mining claims. We had our hands full, and this was likely to be the last chance with the bulldozer for the season. We made it to the mine, and settled in for the evening. And awoke the next morning to snow and thick fog. It was only a dusting of snow, but it covered the ground just enough to hide the trail to the bulldozer. Add in the heavy fog, and we were soon basically lost up on top of the mountain trying to find our way to the bulldozer. Luckily I had used my GPS on the previous visit to trace the trail. Even so, what the GPS said argued heavily with what our eyes were seeing. Were it not for the GPS I have doubts we would ever have found the bulldozer that day. Winter is coming - fresh snow at Moore camp But find it we did, and Tom proceeded to try and figure out why the pony motor would not start. We had over time eliminated almost every possibility, and when you get right down to it these old motors really are not very complicated. You need fuel, compression, and spark. The only thing that seemed weird was all the backfiring and that the carb would want to blow out backwards instead of pulling air. There simply seemed to be no options left, when I thought back on my previous work on the motor. Early on I had pulled the magneto apart to clean the points. Did I maybe not put it back together correctly? It is a simple thing to disassemble, but if you are not careful you can put it back together 180 degrees out of where it came apart. I wondered about this for awhile, and finally piped up with “you know, maybe I put the magneto back together backwards”. So we pulled the magneto off, rotated it 180 degrees, and put it back together. Tom got on the dozer, turned the pony motor over… and it fired right up! I felt a very strange combination of embarrassment at having been the cause of a lot of extra work, and happiness at having finally figured out what the problem was. Tom let the pony motor run a bit, and after a rough start it smoothed out and sounded just great, albeit loud as heck. Kind of like listening to a shotgun firing 3600 times per minute. Then he engaged the clutch to the main motor, and smoke puffed out the big stack. And puffed, and puffed, and then all the sudden our bulldozer was running! Smoke coming out of the stack - the D9 starts!! What an incredible moment! The main engine really sounded good, and Tom let it warm up for some time. Then he gave a pull on a lever, and the blade lifted. We have a ripper unit on the back of the dozer, and had filled the tank with fresh hydraulic fluid. Tom pulled another lever, and the ripper blade lifted up. Dad and I got all the remaining timbers we had and laid out a parking pad just ahead of the dozer on level ground. We had just enough logs to cover two track lengths. Then the moment of truth arrived, Tom pulled more levers and the bulldozer drove out of the hole. Whoops and yells and handshakes all around ensued. Tom parked the bulldozer on our logs, and powered her down. We drained and covered everything to the best of our ability for the winter ahead, and left the dozer for the next spring. It was amazing how everything finally happened in so short a period of time, but it was all the hours of preparatory work that made it all seem so easy at the end. Dozer up and out of the hole, ready to drive to Moore Creek next spring We did our claim staking, and closed up the camp for winter. The year 2004 at Moore Creek came to an end, and the snows of winter came shortly after we left the mine. Success could not have come any later that year. Events slowed, but I did get an Overland Permit lined up in anticipation of moving the bulldozer into camp in the spring of 2005. Travel within a claim block is covered under our mining permits, but since the bulldozer was off the claims we needed a permit to bring it into camp. The main limitation was that overland movement had to be while the ground was frozen and covered with snow, and so we were aiming for an early spring operation. We were planning for April, but the winter of 2004-2005 proved to be one of the heaviest snow years on record. Dad and I flew up to the mine in April, but the dozer had snow drifted over the seat. It was still too early, and so we took advantage of the snow, and asked our friend Mike to fly a load of gear up to the dozer with his Super Cub, which was on skies for the winter. He landed on the hill by the dozer, and left a battery, propane tanks, a heater, and tarps plus some miscellaneous gear. Dad and I planned on flying into Moore Creek just before the snow melted, and so getting that gear to the dozer would have meant lots of snowshoeing. Now we were set. We monitored the snow situation, and finally flew up in early May in my brother-in-laws Citabria. Our original permit expired the end of April but I was able to get a two week extension due to the extreme snow conditions. There was still a few feet of snow on the ground in places but in most areas there was less than a couple feet. We made some passes over the bulldozer, and I launched sleeping bags and some basic camping supplies out of the plane. I’ve done some of these “bombing runs” before and they are actually kind of fun. Dad does all the work, however. I just hold stuff out the door until he yells “Go”! and I let go of it. With any luck it lands halfway close to the target. Aerial view from Citabria of snow in the hills in early 2005 We landed at Moore Creek, and hiked up to the dozer on snowshoes. We planned on camping the night, and heating the motor overnight, but it was rather warm (relatively speaking) when we got to the dozer so we went ahead and tried to start her. And amazingly, it fired right up! I had been studying my D9 bulldozer manuals, but the fact is I have never driven anything even close to one of these monsters. I really had no true idea what I was doing, but just followed the manuals. That worked well enough in getting the unit started, but finally after warming her up I had to make the big move. We loaded up all the tools, batteries and other gear. I held my breath, put it in gear, and engaged the clutch. The next thing I knew I was driving a D9 bulldozer up a mountainside. I had been warned that no matter how big these things seem, driving into too deep of snow conditions could get you high-centered in short order. The snow was only a foot or two deep, but I could not tell really how deep it was, except for my what seemed like endless trips over the trail on the three-wheelers the previous fall. I just kept her going slow and forged ahead, and after a bit it actually seemed pretty easy. Dad and I both had grins on our faces as well drove along, with all the overnight gear we had pre-staged loaded on the bulldozer unused. Up the hill I went, and down the other side. Basically just a drive over the hill, and I got to being lulled into how easy it all was. Finally we were on our claims, and camp was only minutes away. I was on cruise control, just enjoying the ride. And then the dozer broke through the crust and muck started churning! Only a heartbeat seemed to pass, but next thing I knew we had come to a stop in the middle of the trail. Apparently the low flat bog areas which we were passing through just before arriving at camp had thawed under the snow. The only good news was that it was still frozen a short distance below, but the dozer was spinning on the frozen muck and could gain no traction to get up and out of the hole we were in. Still, we had made it 99% of the way into camp, and so could not feel all that bad about the situation. It was only a 10-15 minute hike to camp, and we got a good nights sleep. Then up and back to the dozer the next morning, to get out of our little situation. We took chains, cables, and clamps for camp with us, and a chainsaw. We cleared a bunch of alders ahead of the dozer and laid them down in front of it to make an exit pad. The we cut a big dead spruce and levered it over in front of the tracks with a long pry bar. We took cables and ran then through the tracks and around the log. I fired up the dozer, and when I engaged the clutch the front end climbed up on the log and what seemed an incredible angle. I half closed my eyes, and the front end came up out of the hole, and fell over out and onto the alder pile ahead of the log. We were unstuck and on the first try. Project a year in the making - D9 finally back at Moore Creek and Steve clearing airstrip I now was much more cautious heading into camp, as my inattention the day before had got us stuck. If it even threatened to get soft ahead, I drove over the alders next to the trail, which created a natural pad. The next thing I knew I was driving the bulldozer into camp, and when I finally parked it and got off it was one of the happiest days of my life. I literally wanted to kiss the ground! Dad and I hugged and shook hands and slapped each other on the back. In all our years I do not think we have tackled a project that took so long and so much effort as moving this D9 bulldozer into Moore Creek camp. And like all things difficult to achieve, the final success was all that much more satisfying. In all the excitement I forget to take any pictures, but here is a shot of the old girl back in camp later in the year, with me working on clearing and extending the runway. I have to finish this tale by thanking Bob, John, Tom, Doug, Mike, and most of all my father, Bud Herschbach, for all their hard work and contributions towards getting our bulldozer back to camp. There is no way I could have done it without them. Thanks guys! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2005 Herschbach Enterprises Steve's Mining Journal Index

I've been metal detecting in Hawaii several times over the years, and have used several makes and models there. They include the White's Surf PI, Minelab Excalibur, and Garrett Infinium. My wife and I have obviously taken a liking to the south shore of Kauai, as we keep going back there. It is like a second home to us, and certainly a nice place to be when it is the middle of winter in Alaska. See the links here and here for stories about previous visits. I have more details in those previous stories that I am not going to repeat here so you'll want to check them out if you have not seen them before. This trip I decided I wanted to try out the White's Surf PI Pro, the latest version of the White's Surf PI that I used previously in Hawaii. The PI Pro has improved sensitivity to small gold items and a redesigned, more reliable control box design. The Surf PI Pro has only two controls and so is very easy to operate, and better yet it is a real bargain for an underwater detector with a list price of only $699.95. Many diving detectors run well over $1000.00. This is the beach fronting the resort area where we stay on Kauai. I've done very well here before and every time I leave I'm sure there is plenty left to be found. The sands runs out onto a coral bottom, and right about where the waves are breaking there is about a foot of sand on top of the coral. I find the rings in nooks and crannies in the coral basement and so I try to work in that zone where I feel the coral bottom is not too deep. I've detected out in the bare coral and find lots of coins but have had less luck with jewelry out beyond the surf. The results are similar up out of the water, with lots of coins but an even poorer chance of jewelry finds. The surf break has been the hot spot for me. Poipu Beach, Kauai, Hawaii Since it is mid-winter the surf is about all I can handle when it comes to staying in one place. I use a neoprene suit to keep from getting beat up if the waves toss me on the bottom. I have a 40 lb. weight belt that keeps me in place, and allows me to instantly duck to the bottom to retrieve the finds. Frankly, using too much weight is dangerous and should not be attempted by anyone not very comfortable in the water. I have numerous SCUBA certifications plus thousands of hours of hookah diving time so I'm more comfortable than most people in the water. I have an excellent US Divers snorkel that sheds most of the water taken in as waves pound over me. After awhile you develop a sixth-sense about when and when not to take a big breath of air! Gear used for metal detecting in heavy surf I've found a scoop to be just one more thing to be hanging on to, and since the rings are down in coral depressions a scoop would miss them most times any way. When I get a signal I duck down and with my left gloved hand I quickly fan away the sand. I usually blast it hard for the first breath hold dive, then come up for air, and go down a second time to retrieve the target. The glove protects my hand when I dig around as I sometimes scoop out a hole. I keep my right hand bare, as sometimes stuff gets into such little holes I can't get my gloved fingers on it. Everything goes in a little goodie bag I keep attached to the armrest of the detector. Seven morning finds - aluminum trash, coins, lead weights, rings, and ferrous junk I hit the beach at daybreak, because once the boogie boarders and novice surfers get going it is too dangerous to be ducking down and popping up. If I was to get hit in the head and knocked out I would immediately sink to the bottom from being over-weighted. Since this is pretty hardcore detecting 2-3 hours a day is just fine with me anyway. The picture above shows most of the finds except the oversized junk which I toss in the trash cans down near the beach. The Surf PI Pro did just fine. It falsed on basalt rocks buried in the sand and falsed when picked up off the bottom but I generally had no problems discerning good target signals. Overall the machine was quieter than the Garrett Infinium I'd used previously at this location. I've decided that this is because the two-tone signal used by the Infinium inherently generates more noise when the machine is falsing than a single tone unit like the Surf PI Pro. It is not so much that the Garrett falses any more than other units but that it makes more noise when it does. Steve's gold and platinum ring finds with White's Surf PI Pro I got four platinum and three gold rings. One of the gold rings is white gold so it looks like only two gold. All fairly plain men's bands reflecting the rough surf area I was hunting. Once again that big diamond ring eluded me, but the number of platinum rings really pleased me. I guess I'll just have to keep going back and trying until I find that big diamond! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

Our first trip of 2004 to Moore Creek got a lot accomplished, but the big jobs remained ahead. I was contacted by my friend George, better known on the internet forums as seeker. He has a background with heavy equipment and offered to help out with the generator and bulldozer. George is a very accomplished and well traveled detectorist and this trip would give him a chance to try out his brand new Minelab GP 3000. And so we scheduled a another trip up to the mine. Our first attempt was aborted at Rainy Pass due to bad weather. It was some of the poorest flying conditions I have experienced in some time. We sat and drank coffee in Skwentna hoping for the weather to lift, but it never did. This is one of the frustrations of flying in Alaska that one faces from time to time. There is nothing much to be done about it but try again in the future. But the false starts are disappointing and you never get back the lost time. Yet another trip was scheduled for a couple weeks later, and this time we made it. My brother Tom was able to break away from work for this short weekend trip, and so it was my father, George, Tom, and I. This time the weather was better and so we made it into the mine with no problem. Then came the usual task of hauling our gear to camp and opening the place up. Every time we leave we have to try and “bear-proof” the place by covering all the doors and windows with steel. Every time we return we have to open everything back up. I want to make some heavy-duty hinged steel doors for covers to speed this process up. For now it is lots of work with hammer and nails. George took a look at the generator and after a bit of work with the fuel system got it going. The previous owners had rigged it to auto feed with a fuel pump out of a barrel. George hooked the original fuel tank back up and bled the fuel system and it finally fired up. We now had electricity to add to our propane stove and propane refrigerator/freezer amenities. Suddenly Moore Creek was starting to feel civilized; the microwave even worked! Aerial view of Alaska Range on way from Anchorage to Moore Creek Arrival days are always short days. We decided to look for a little gold. I gave Tom my Minelab GP 3000 and I tried the White’s MXT I had brought along just to see how it worked in the hot rocks. George had his new GP 3000 and my father his Tesoro Lobo. It was a bit of fun at the end of the day, but only Tom came up with gold, a nice 0.55 oz specimen. Tom has always had a knack for detecting although he has done relatively little detecting over the years. It must run in the family. The next day we got more serious. George wanted to try and start the old D9-18A bulldozer that we have sitting in camp. This unit had been sitting next to the trail going from the airstrip to the cabins during all those early years when we had made visits to Moore Creek. It apparently was abandoned as dead but in the last couple years the previous owner had finally got it running. A piston was replaced and they got a little trail work done before the unit started shaking badly again. They thought it might have a bent crankshaft, which would be bad news. Still, it was running when it was parked, so we figured we might as well try and get it started to see how bad it was. The fact that it is parked in camp makes it easier to work on than the one located over four miles by trail out of camp. These old bulldozers have a small gasoline engine referred to as a “pony motor” that acts as a starter for the main diesel engine. The first thing to be done is to get the pony motor running. They use a six volt battery instead of a twelve volt to run their own little electric starter motor. We hooked up a battery with a charge and determined the starter worked. We then checked for fuel… and there was none to the carburetor. It turned out the fuel line from the little gas tank to the pony motor was plugged up with rust particles. The line was so well plugged it was hard to believe they had used the pony motor to start the dozer. Nothing all that hard to fix but time consuming taking all the lines apart, cleaning them out, and reassembling everything, especially since many of the fittings were stripped or otherwise in poor condition. D9-18A bulldozer in camp The throttle controls were disconnected from the pony motor, so George sat up top and ran the starter while I worked the choke and throttle manually. The pony motor started and I immediately wished I had hearing protection on. That little motor was loud. It also became immediately apparent we had a coolant leak in the head. But it did not look too bad for a short try, and so George kicked in the clutch and turned over the big diesel. It cranked and my brother shot some starter fluid in the air intakes while I kept working the pony motor throttle. The big motor turned and we got some smoke puffing. It looked ready to start. So we backed off. We wanted to let the pony motor cool down as the short effort had it pretty hot. We also looked the big motor over and checked for coolant and found none. Off to the creek with buckets we went. We dumped the water into the system, and it promptly ran right back out of the bottom of the radiator. Well, we looked but the radiator is fairly well enclosed. We think there is a drain open or hose pulled. We sure hope so, and that the radiator is not cracked. I have to believe they drained it before walking away. We were tired of fighting with the unit, and decided a set of manuals would be very helpful at this point. The dozer seemed like we could start it, but I had no desire to hurt things more by running the unit without better information about the recommended oils, coolants, etc. We decided to round up manuals before making another try at starting the dozer so we could run the unit through a full pre-start checklist. And find out where that drain is. My father and I figured to start trail work up to the other bulldozer outside of camp and it was decided that George and Tom should go hunt for gold. It was hard to say when Tom would get a chance to visit again, and George had already done well in getting the generator going and a start on the dozer in camp. Dad and I figured we would go off and do some work and let them have a little fun. Prospecting can actually be pretty tough work, but looking for gold always beats working on equipment or clearing trails since you just might find gold. There is an old bulldozer trail up to the unit that the operators were following when they got the dozer stuck about three miles from camp. It is about 4.25 miles by trail to the dozer along the trail itself. It starts out in the woodlands at camp, rises above tree line into that nasty alder and willow zone one runs into in Alaska, and then up onto the clear areas above. The small mountains around Moore Creek rise a couple thousand feet above camp, to total elevations of around 3000 feet for the tallest. Once you get above the alders it is very open terrain and very easy travel whether by foot or ATV. Old dozer trail in wooded area above Moore Creek camp The old dozer trail was in pretty good shape but alders had grown into some lower stretches and willows choked off some upper stretches. These two plants are like giant weeds in Alaska, and the alders in particular grow at amazing rates in the long daylight hours. They are the bane of the Alaska hiker due to their propensity to grow outward horizontally from a slope before curving upward. Along trails they curve in from both sides and crisscross in the middle. You don’t hike through alders; you climb over and under them, and so they really slow travel. It is impossible to drive an ATV through them, and they rapidly grow into and shut trails off to ATV access unless a trail is constantly maintained. One secret of locating old trails in Alaska is to look where the alders are thickest. They love disturbed ground, and old trails and ditches are easily spotted by looking for lines of alders and willows on hillsides. My father and I headed up the trail with chainsaws. He walked on up ahead and I followed with the Honda 200 three-wheeler. He was pretty much just scouting ahead, while I followed up at a slower rate, making sure the trail was clear enough to easily get through on the three-wheeler. With the dozer over four miles away by trail and over a couple 2000 foot hills, we wanted to be able to drive there with fresh batteries, tools, oil, etc. We could have just bushwhacked on up and got to work, but it would be a case where something would be needed, and then you would be looking at a long hike to camp and back. The trail needed to be cleared for ATV access to the dozer. This proved to be a very wise decision. My father disappeared up the trail while I worked along. I would park the ATV, then clear on up ahead with the chainsaw. Then set the saw down, walk back tossing brush aside, and get the ATV to drive it up to the chainsaw. There was lots of back and forth but I was making pretty good time. There were long stretches that needed no clearing, and so after slowly getting though a thicket a sudden advance would be made for some distance. I was bringing the three-wheeler forward at one point, when the unit made a loud squeak and stopped like the brakes were on. A long period of rolling back and forth and cutting logs to get the rear off the ground and I determined a rear axle bearing was seizing up. I decided to hike down and get George to seek advice as I had no tools on me anyway sufficient to tackle an axle. I was about a mile out of camp but it was all downhill and therefore a short hike. I found George by the ponds above the cabins with his new Minelab GP 3000 metal detector. I told him what had happened. Then I finally asked him if he was having any luck. He said he thought so and dropped a heavy rock in my hand. I could tell by the heft this was more than one of our regular gold/quartz specimens. Amazingly, George has not washed it off yet. Gold was glinting thought the yellow mud caked on the nugget. I headed over to the pond and washed it off. I think I was almost more excited than George. It was a fantastic gold nugget about the size of a golf ball! Not just any nugget, but one with small fingers of gold creating a delicate pattern over the entire surface of the nugget. George's amazing museum quality gold nugget from Moore Creek Moore Creek has lots of smaller nuggets that are predominately just gold, but the gold here is very close to the original source. Even the smallest gold is not worn or rounded, but just as it appeared as the rock that enclosed it rotted away. This also means that much of the gold has quartz attached, and the larger multi-ounce pieces have generally been about half gold and half quartz. I had come to expect this, and was surprised and very happy to see such a large relatively solid chunk of gold come from Moore Creek. The fact that George found one means that more are out there to be found in the future, and that made me very excited indeed. We went back to the cabin, and the nugget weighed in at 3.74 ounces. This surprised George somewhat as it was heavier than he thought and so he was thrilled. Not a bad find for his very first nugget with his new Minelab GP 3000 and his first at Moore Creek! Bottom view of George's Nugget Another very good sign for the mine is that the nugget was found in virgin soil on the edge of what we suspect is a large chunk of virgin ground. The fact is that I and others had missed the nugget by the smallest of margins. We had all hunted the area getting just smaller gold. I’m sure I’d been within a couple feet of the nugget, and it was only a few inches down. Anyone could have found it, but George was the first to get right over it. In any case, that virgin area is looking pretty good right now. I figured George would be hot to go look for more gold after a find like that. But on hearing the problem with the three-wheeler he put his detector aside and we hiked up to the Honda. After a brief consultation we decided I should just get on it and ride it back to camp. It needed more work then we wanted to tackle there in the woods. So I got on and went. It squeaked, and would seize up but I would roll it backward to free it up and go on again. Then it seemed like it decided to work again and I cruised into camp without pause. We drained the oil out of the motor and got the Honda turned upside down. We got it apart enough to determine there was really not much we could do without a new rear axle assembly. One wheel had actually been welded onto the axle and the rest was in poor shape. We drilled a hole in the bearing carrier and pumped it full of grease. Then got it back together and I drove it around camp a bit. It seemed better, but it was obvious we had not repaired it. The bearing could totally give out at any time. Honda 200 ATV with trailer at old cabin in Moore camp Tom finally showed up and he had quite a pile of gold to show. He actually had not been doing very well, but got into a hot spot and found several specimens in a fairly small area. He had 0.19, 0.43, 0.53, 1.06, and 1.78 ounce pieces and so was feeling pretty good about it, but his eyes about popped when he saw George’s nugget. George was playing it all kinds of humble and stuff but we assured him we’d trade twice the normal type of gold finds at Moore for a fantastic museum quality piece like he had found. It is truly a find to be proud of. It was late and we all were tired so we cooked up some food and waited. It was starting to get darker, which tells you how late it was, and still no sign of dear old Dad. I learned a long time ago not to worry about Bud Herschbach in the wilds of Alaska, but still as it got even darker I started to wonder at what point we should go out looking. But then he finally showed up, and just as well as it was getting dark enough to be hard walking. My father can out-hike most people half his age, and had decided to go all the way up to the stuck bulldozer to check it out. He reported that a half mile up the trail from where I had stopped there was a very thick patch of willows where he lost the trail. He calmly described literally crawling through these willows and having “something very large” jump up a few feet in front of him and make a huge amount of noise moving off in the brush, but he never did figure out if it was a bear or a moose the brush was so thick. It was probably a moose. He is telling this and I’m thinking I would have had a heart attack right about that time but he refused to make much of it. He has run into a lot of animals in the woods in his years as one of Alaska’s pioneer surveyors. He finally made it up to the bulldozer and reported it looked in a lot better shape then he had expected and certainly better than the one in camp. It was buried to the top of the track on one side and to about half a track on the other side. On his return trip he found looking downhill that he had gone through far more willows then need be, and had picked out what he thought was the shortest route possible through the thicket and marked it with flagging on both ends. There was one day left to go on our three day weekend trip. After a good night of sleep Dad and I hiked up to do more trail work. We decided to save the Honda for now for the critical task of hauling heavy loads to and from the airport, like the big empty bottles of propane we planned on backhauling out this trip. I had decided to go on a hunt for more three-wheelers to fly into the mine. Honda three-wheelers are still pretty common in Alaska and can be had for very little money. Most importantly, we can fly them in easily in the Cessna 206. Being dependent on a single three-wheeler that could break down any moment did not seem like a good idea. I wanted some redundancy and more spare parts. We could also use more ATVs for the upcoming bulldozer project to make it easier to get multiple people with loads up to the site. This trip wound down with little excitement to report. We got the trail cleared all the way up to where the willow thicket started, and once through that it would be clear sailing. My father and I had had enough clearing for the day and so we figured we’d leave that last small but tough stretch for later. Tom and George had prospected most of the day, but the luck had run thin and only Tom had found a 0.35 ounce piece. Funny how quick you get spoiled finding gold that I now say things like that. Not long ago a third ounce nugget would have really seemed like a big nugget. Just over 8 ounces gold nuggets and gold specimens found at Moore Creek, Alaska Overall the nugget detecting was quite productive. Tom and George did most of the detecting and found over 8 ounces of specimens between them. George's 3.74 ounce nugget is his largest ever, and Tom's 1.78 ounce piece surpassed his previous largest of 1.64 ounce, found at Moore Creek on his last visit. While this nugget detecting is fun it serves a very serious purpose at Moore Creek. First, 50% of detected nuggets go to the LLC to help fund operations. Or, as in George's case, the finder has the option of purchasing back the LLC percentage which achieves the same goal. More importantly, every nugget find is plotted on maps. As of this trip almost 70 specimens and nuggets have been located totaling over 50 ounces of finds. The map is revealing certain "hot" areas on the creek. Certain zones are producing more nuggets than others. Some tailing piles have produced multiple finds, some none at all, and some just a single piece. Any finds at all increase the probability of a particular pile containing more gold from mere speculation to almost total certainty. Some areas that look very good have turned out to be not so good and vice versa. At Moore Creek it can truly be said that metal detectors are a vital part of our initial exploration program. Our short but really productive trip wrapped up and we flew back to town. Our generator is running, old dozer puffing, trail nearly cleared to the stuck dozer, and more. But this particular trip will always be remembered as the one when George found that beautiful 3.74 ounce gold nugget. It truly is a find of a lifetime and the nicest at Moore Creek so far. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises Steve's Mining Journal Index

This entry in Steve's Mining Journal is a bit different. It is a copy of a couple posts I made on some forums regarding the Garrett Infinium as a coin detector. It is part of the Detectorprospector.com goal of collecting all my scattered internet posts into one location. I have found gold nuggets with the Infinium and done well with jewelry using it as an underwater detector. Since the Infinium has a dual tone id system it has some interesting potential as a coin detector. To test this and to simply get in more use with the machine I went out to a local playground to test the unit. There is loose pea-gravel around the playground equipment, and I wanted easy digging material as I wanted to dig all items in this test. The group of coins on the right, plus two pieces of wire and a nail all came up lo-hi tone. Quarters, dimes, and copper pennies. Basically, if I only dug lo-hi tones I would dig nothing but coins and a small amount of trash! The results on the left are from the hi-lo "gold range" tones. This equates to the jewelry range on VLF detectors and as any jewelry hunter knows this is also the foil, pull tab, aluminum range. The Infinium also reveals it's love for wire in this range, in particular bobby pins and paper clips. I found quite a few broken zipper parts. The stuff by the battery that looks like large wire is actually string and other items with small metal connectors. The bent shallow "V" shaped item is a plastic ink tube from a pen, and several of the smallest targets were pen tips. Also a few pencil eraser ends, a common school yard find. There are also a couple very rusted nuts. Most large iron items normally read lo-hi but if they rust enough they sometimes come in as hi-lo, as these did. This is also where you get the nickels and zinc pennies. And jewelry. I found an earring, a couple pieces of broken chains, a couple pins, and a pendant. Coin detecting with the Garrett Infinium It looks to me that if you are in the right area and willing to forgo the nickels (and nobody cares about zinc pennies) then the Infinium might actually work very well as a coin detector. Just dig lo-hi tones only. No surprise on the hi-lo tones. If you go for the jewelry range you are going to dig lots of junk. Not bad on a beach or in the pea-gravel, but it would wear you out in an average park setting. In a nutshell the hi-lo tone equates to the zinc penny and lower range on a VLF detector, and the lo-hi tones equates to copper penny and higher. The wild-card is iron items which can id in either range depending on shape and amount of decomposition (rust). I can't comment too much on the depths as I did not dig anything that was in the hard packed ground under the pea gravel. My main goal was to just dig lots of targets to see which tone I got. Everything was less than 6" deep. However, I did have my Fisher CZ-5 and White's MXT along, and the Infinium easily detected a dime I buried beyond the discrimination range of both detectors while correctly giving the lo-hi id. The only way the VLF machines could hit it was to go to all-metal mode. Needless to say I plan on trying this in a couple heavily worked "old coin" sites later to see what might turn up. One thing I did find is that the Infinium has what is referred to as a "modulated audio" In other words, smaller or deeper targets sound fainter. I did find that I could reliably predict many of the nickels and could have dug less small trash as the nickels really bang out on the Infinium. It hits nickels harder than any other coin due to the machine being tuned for gold range targets. If I did not think jewelry finds were a possibility I think I could get many nickels and dig less trash by paying attention to the intensity of the audio. The wire items also seem to "move" as you walk around the target. The coins stay centered. Steve Herschbach Garrett Infinium Pulse Induction metal detector I went coin detecting with my Infinium... Posted by Steve Herschbach on 5/1/2004 Hi, I finally got my hands on the 14" mono coil for my Infinium. I've been wanting one for some time, as in theory it should get better depth on target in mild ground than the DD coil that comes stock with the unit. I have a ten day prospecting trip coming up the first week of June and so was desperate to get the coil before the trip. I'll have to weigh the mono coil as compared to the stock coil but I immediately liked its lighter weight. The stock coil is just plain heavy. The mono is epoxy-filled so not as light as it could be, but it is big improvement over the DD in this regard. I took the unit to a nearby freshwater beach that has been heavily detected for many years. It dates back to the 1920's. Like most beaches it replenishes with new stuff constantly but the older coins have been detected out of it for the most part. Those that can be reached, anyway. A friend with an Explorer has been trying to get the last few and declared to me a few days ago that he figured he had about cleaned it out. He even went so far as to use the big Coiltek WOT coil on the Explorer. Nice thing about beaches... you can dig big holes! The Infinium has a dual tone system. You get a hi-lo tone on low conductive items and a lo-hi tone on high conductive items and large iron or steel. I've found in the past that smaller nails and other elongated steel items like hair pins read hi-lo as if they are low conductive items. Excepting iron and steel, which can go either way, the hi-lo tone is where you get jewelry, aluminum, zinc pennies, and nickels. Lo-hi tones are copper pennies, clad coins, and silver. What makes the Infinium different from other PI units is the tone system. Most pulse induction detectors are single tone "dig it all" machines. So the Infinium tone system, while far from perfect, allows for some uses that are not practical with other PI detectors. The beach I was at is littered with aluminum trash of all sorts, and deeper down there are lots of nails and other iron trash. And some jewelry. Basically, every swing gets at least one or more hi-lo tones. Lots of noise, but I've found if I keep my headphone volume low its no big deal. What I've found to be rare on the beach is the lo-hi tones. Lots of detecting keeps the beach fairly clean of newer coins. And the larger nails are rarer than the smaller ones. So I set out this morning to only dig lo-hi tones. I headed right for the middle of the beach, one of the most detected places in my town. After only ten minutes I got a nice mellow, lo-hi tone. The sand on this beach is of varying depth, and is on top of a clay-like base. At about ten inches I hit the clay, and there embedded in the clay was a 1953 silver dime! Now, this may not be a very old coin by most standards, but to find it where I did pretty much blew me away. Countless detectors have been over this dime. The signal I got was not weak. It did have a more mellow response than a shallower coin would, but it was a solid signal. So I used the dime as center base and started spiraling around it. Lots and lots of hi-lo tones which I'll go dig some other day. Probably deep aluminum but I'm sure I passed over some deep jewelry today. But I stuck with the program. After a couple hours I had dug 16 targets, four of which were coins. The other three were all wheatbacks from the 1940's. All were in the clay layer below the sand. The pennies were shallower than the dime, which might lead some to wonder why they were still there. All I can tell you is the ground runs about 78 on a White's MXT, so pretty mineralized, and there are hi-tension power lines nearby. So while the depths I'm talking about here my not seem impressive, all I can swear to is that these coins were missed by hordes of detectors over the last 30 years. I was very impressed. The mono coil, while I did not compare it directly, seemed to me to have a clear edge over the stock DD coil for depth. I could pinpoint MUCH easier with it, as the signal were right in the middle where they should be. The mono coil has a traditional cone-shaped detection pattern with best depth and signal dead center. Add the fact that it is light and I have a new favorite coil for the Infinium. I can't wait to get it out nugget detecting next month. But tomorrow morning it is back to the beach to tackle some of those hi-lo tones and see if I can find a gold ring. And look for more lo-hi coins after I get tired of digging aluminum trash! In any case, to use a PI on a trashy beach and be able to come up with one in four targets good as opposed to just digging everything is what the Infinium is all about. It has some real power in dry land areas where other detectors may be having issues due to mineralization, and once you get used to its dual-tone id system you can do things with it that you cannot do with a normal "dig-it-all" PI detector. I really have to caution that the discrimination is not perfect, and in some areas it may be useless, but depending on the mix of targets it can work well, as I think this day showed. Pulse induction is not for everyone, but I have to tell you I'm really having fun with this thing. I can't wait to see the look on the face of my Explorer buddy. He is not going to be happy that a Garrett got coins he missed. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

Winter in Alaska. The days are short and the ground covered in snow. What is a miner to do? It is time to work on the permits. Since we just acquired the Moore Creek property in 2003, the first order of business for 2004 was permitting. We have quite a few things to do before mining can commence, and so I decided to put in for a five year Annual Placer Miners Application for general exploration and facilities work. There are several things we need to accomplish. First, the previous owner left one of our D9 bulldozers stuck about four miles out of camp in a mud hole. We need to get the bulldozer started up and get it unstuck. Since it is outside our claim block, we need a Miscellaneous Land Use Permit for Cross Country Travel to move it to the claims. Once we get the bulldozer into camp, we want to use it to lengthen our airstrip. This needs a plan and permitting. We also want to clear existing trails that have grown over with brush. One thing some people do not understand is that structures on mining claims also need permitting, even if they already exist. We have several cabins on our claims. In these days of lawsuits, abandoned structures represent a liability to the government. Part of the permitting process includes getting a permit to have permanent structures. Things like fuel storage and outhouses must be covered. Then there are the mining and prospecting activities. Our initial operations will be of a small-scale nature, but still they must be described in detail in the plan. The main thing on state land is that activities that disturb less than 5 acres do not require bonding. Any disturbance over 5 acres requires that bonding via the State Wide Bond Pool be obtained. Yearly reclamation reports must be filed for all work performed, even that under 5 acres. Suction dredges need an EPA permit, Corps of Engineers permitting, and possibly a fish habitat permit. Other agencies, like the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology must be notified to review your plan. If this all sounds like a lot, you are right. Moreover, because there are so many agencies to notify, it would be easy to miss something and get in trouble. Luckily, in Alaska the state has a master permit in the form of the Annual Placer Miners Applications (APMA). This one master application is filled out and the state farms it out to most of the various state and federal agencies for approval. Various applications can be made for periods of up to ten years. Aerial view of tailing piles and ponds at Moore Creek, Alaska I filed for a “Multi-Year” Miscellaneous Land Use Permit and Reclamation Plan Approval for five years. There is a $100 fee for the first year, and $50 for the other four years, so the filing fees came to $300. This is a bargain considering all that is done for you in one application. You can find all the paperwork online at the Alaska State Division of Natural Resources (DNR) website. If you examine the forms you will note that they are designed to cover many different scenarios. Just fill out the applicable sections, and draw lines through areas that do not apply. Overall, it is not terribly difficult, and the process has the virtue of making you think through the entire process by asking some questions you may not have thought of. Anyone thinking miners can just go out and tear up the earth without a second thought should read these things. You have to have a plan for filling every hole and ditch and a need a permit for just about everything except breathing the air. Our main permitting covered moving the bulldozer into camp, getting the facilities and fuel storage covered, the use of suction dredges and highbankers for placer sampling, and possible pitting or trenching on the hardrock prospect. We also applied for the ability to upgrade the existing airstrip to make it safer, as it currently is a bit too short for continual safe access. It also is limiting the amount and size of equipment that can be flown in, as it is dangerous to attempt to fly in with anything larger than a Cessna 206. Safety is the main concern over time. You might expect all these permits to take forever to be approved, and for operations that are more complicated, they can. However, our low level of initial activity made permitting easy, and the state of Alaska is doing a fantastic job of getting these things processed. I got the approved permitting back in less than 30 days. Huge kudos to the people at the Division of Mining, Land, and Water. Do remember, however, that it can take longer if you want to do something more complicated, so file well in advance.Overflight of D9 bulldozer stuck on hill The only real surprise I received was from the Alaska Office of History and Archaeology. I had proposed that as part of continuing operations that old pre-existing ditches and other remnants of mining be reclaimed and derelict old structures removed. I thought this would be a benefit in that we would in effect be "cleaning up" after the old miners. You can imagine my surprise when I got a letter notifying me that these old ditches might be historic, and that we should not disturb them. Funny how the ditch I dig today must be filled back in, but if the ditch is old enough, it now must be left alone! The first order of business to consider was the bulldozer move. The overland permit stipulated that the move had to be made by May to take advantage of frozen ground conditions and snow cover. This meant that we must get to the bulldozer in the winter, which presented difficulties of its own. The bulldozer was stuck up to the top of the track on one side, and so would be frozen in and hard to get out. Combine that with the size of the unit, a D9, its age, mid-sixties, and our general lack of operating knowledge, and I came up with what I thought was a good solution. We offered to trade the dozer itself to a local miner on the condition he got it unstuck and did what runway and trail work we needed done before taking the unit off-site back to his own mine. In this way, I figured we avoided the difficulty of not only getting the unit into camp from its current location but got our work done by a more experienced operator. So we made just such a deal. Old D9 bulldozer stuck in soft spot over the hill from Moore Creek Our plan was to acquire a smaller, newer bulldozer that would be more reliable and more fuel efficient for the smaller scale operations we anticipated. But as we researched the situation it became obvious that this was going to get real expensive. Even a used bulldozer was going to run a good chunk of change, not to mention the cost of getting it to McGrath. Then would come the difficult task of getting it from McGrath to the mine, a distance of over 60 miles. That old bulldozer began to look better all the time. But the deal had been made, and so we waited for spring to come. As has often happened in this Moore Creek story, things worked out for the better. The miner was unable to retrieve the bulldozer for us. On one hand I was unhappy to see the opportunity missed for the season, as we would now have to wait until the next winter to move the bulldozer overland. But that was more than offset by the fact that I now realized what a valuable thing a bulldozer is that is already on-site in remote Alaska. We were far ahead to work with what we had. Now it was left to us to get the bulldozer running and out of the hole it was stuck in, and then move it into camp in the spring of 2005. Our runway improvements would have to wait another year Memorial Day finally approached and our first trip to the mine for the season. A new 6” suction dredge was purchased to take the mine for some bulk sampling work, as well as a little 2.5” dredge and small highbanker for more portable sampling efforts. I wanted in particular to sample some of the old tailing piles to get an idea how much smaller gold there was in them. We already knew they contained scattered large nuggets, but if it is to pay to re-mine the old tailings it will be the smaller gold that really makes it pay. The inefficient old recovery methods used at Moore Creek, combined with the large amount of heavy magnetite and chromite in the concentrates, and the clay content of the material, all indicated to me that the gold losses would have been substantial. High of the list was getting the old existing bulldozer trail up to where the dozer was stuck cleared out of brush enough so we could get our Honda 3-wheeler up to it. Four miles over small mountains toting tools, batteries, and whatever else we might need on our backs was not an option we liked. We needed something cheap and small that would fit in the 206, so I shopped around and found a used Honda 3-wheeler. If you ever buy one of these be sure and check the tires because even if the unit is free three new tires is going to set you back a few dollars. Once we got the trail cleared for the 3-wheeler we could then begin the task of getting the bulldozer started and out of the hole. Honda 3-wheeler stuffed in back of Cessna 206 My father and I planned on heading up with a full load of gear in the Cessna 206, and my brother Tom wanted to make his first trip up to the mine. I was excited to have Tom along as his job as a surveyor usually kept him busy summers so we rarely get out together. This made for a full load so I had the 6” dredge shipped to McGrath prior to our departure. We would fly to the mine, open up the camp and deliver our equipment. Tom had to go back to town the third day, so the idea was to fly him to town and then go into McGrath to bring the dredge in the same day. A 6” dredge is more than a single load for the 206 but by staging half the unit in McGrath we saved an extra trip to Anchorage. My cousin Bob planned to come up from Missouri a few days after we left for the mine. He would hook up with a friend of ours, Mike Graves, who would fly them up in Mike’s Super Cub. And so, with plans all made and dredge waiting in McGrath, we finally headed out for Moore Creek. The flight was rather uneventful. When we arrived at Moore Creek, it was obvious that spring was early this year. There were more leaves on the trees than there normally would be on Memorial Day weekend. Usually things are still pretty bare this early, and patches of snow and ice would not be unusual. But as you will see in the pictures the trees are were pretty much leafed out when we arrived. I had been waiting all winter to do some prospecting, and since Tom had a limited amount of time we decided to go prospect the tailing piles. Metal detectors have been effective in determining which tailing piles have larger pieces of gold in them, and presumably smaller gold also. We have been mapping all nuggets found and so a picture of where the hot areas are on the claims has been slowly building up over time. Since I wanted Tom to have the best shot at finding some gold, I loaned him my Minelab GP 3000, while I used the Garrett Infinium. The Minelab has a significant edge in that I have it outfitted with a 24" x 12" Coiltek UFO coil. This larger coil not only gets some extra depth, but probably more importantly allows the operator to cover more ground while detecting. In some ways I think the amount of ground one covers with a detector is more important than an extra inch or two of detection depth. If my detector covers twice as much ground as your detector, I am going to be electronically processing more material than you, even if your detector gets a couple more inches of depth than my detector. Just like when running other mining equipment, it is often about how much yardage you are processing more than recovery efficiency. By the time we got the camp opened up and equipment put away we did not have too much time left. We headed down to some tailing piles next to the runway where a couple nuggets had been found the summer before. It seemed like a good area, but all we dug was small steel trash and bullets. Tom finally found a little 0.13 oz piece but that seemed about it for the spot this time so we headed back to camp. We decided to do a little more hunting near camp and just at the end of the day Tom found a 1.21 ounce nugget, by far the largest he had ever found in his life. Not bad for the first day on the ground, and a short day at that! I, on the other hand, had no gold to show for the day. Tom with Moore Creek gold specimen excavated from tailing pile The next day we decided to head way down the creek to check areas we had not hunted before. In theory the chance for larger gold should diminish as we head downstream, but you never know until you try. We hoofed it on down and did quite a bit of work getting through thick brush in low lying areas. But try as we might we had no luck down the creek. After some time with no success you get the feeling maybe you should wander back to areas where gold has been found before. We did just that, and Tom found a 0.15 ounce piece near Nevada Gulch below the airstrip. Then back to the cabins and he goes and finds a 0.25 and 0.10 ounce pieces near to where he had found the 1.21 ounce chunk the day before. And here I am again on the second day without a nugget to show. It appeared I was on one of my rare cold streaks. Not much you can do about them except persevere. Given the choice I'd rather Tom was finding the gold anyway but it is even better to both be finding gold. My father was not much into detecting this trip and so was doing general camp work and scouting out the trail over to the bulldozer. Tom and I headed off the third day down the the area below the airstrip where Nevada Gulch comes in, and I finally got a couple small pieces, 0.09 and 0.07 ounces respectively. Not very big, but lots better than my time on this trip so far. My father and I got involved in more camp work, but Tom wanted to do some more detecting. I pointed out an area between the cabins and Moore Creek I thought really should have some gold. I had hunted there so far with no results, but the area just felt right. There was some bedrock outcropping there and that seemed like a good sign. And so right at the end of the day Tom goes and finds a 1.64 ounce nugget with my detector exactly where I pointed with my finger when I pointed the spot out! Tom's time was up, and so he and my father flew off to Anchorage the next morning. This also offered the opportunity to fly in another load of equipment and fuel from Anchorage. I on the other hand finally had my GP 3000 back in my possession, and so I headed down and across Moore Creek to try some areas on the far outer edge of the paystreak. In theory the northern side of the creek is where the gold occurs and so by heading over to the south side I was heading in the wrong direction. But gold is where you find it, and I figure any disturbed material at all in an old mine is worth running a detector over. You just never know. And sure enough, I came up with four nuggets weighing 0.08, 0.14, 0.27, and 0.68 ounces, for a total of just over an ounce. This was more like it and it showed gold at the far extreme edge of the old operations. Tom's 1.64 oz and 1.21 oz nuggets showing iron staining common at Moore Creek My father returned, and we made the flight into McGrath to pick up the 6" dredge. This is the Keene model with twin 5.5HP Honda pumps. I like the twins as they are easier to handle than one big pump, and also have the advantage of allowing a person to use one or the other or both pumps for other things. One of the pumps works great on a 4" dredge or as a highbanker pump. So the twin pumps add some versatility to the operation. A 6" dredge is a pretty bulky unit, but we had flown the floats and hose in on the previous two loads. We were able to get all the remaining parts of the dredge into the plane and then on into Moore Creek in a single load. The main reason for the 6" is for use as a sampling device on the many large tailing piles left by the old mining operations. There are several factors that combined to put what I guessed was a substantial amount of gold into the tailings. First, the nature of the gold itself. Even a lot of the smaller stuff has quartz attached, making it lighter and harder to catch. Then Moore Creek has an exceptionally high chromite (chrome ore) content in the concentrates, with some concentrate containing over 35% chromite. Chromite is a lot like magnetite (black sand) in appearance, but is not nearly as magnetic. It is likely the old-timers experienced quite a bit of riffle packing from the heavy concentrates. Another factor is that the decomposed material near bedrock has a fairly high clay content, and much of the material would have clumped and run completely through the box without completely breaking up and releasing the gold. However, years of sitting exposed to rainfall percolating though the tailing piles should have broken down a lot of the clay in the tailing piles by now. Most of the loss was due to the nature of the recovery systems employed. The old operations used long straight sluice boxes with angle iron riffles. They fed everything a one yard at a time into the sluice, including all the larger rocks. They did not screen off the rocks but instead just pitched the larger ones that stuck in the box out by hand. These large rocks created turbulence as the water flowed around them which could blow the gold out of the riffles. And the dumping of full bucket loads caused surges in the flow of material instead of the steady even flow that is desired. All these factors combined meant we have good reason to suspect the 1.5 million yards of tailings at Moore Creek contain substantial amounts of smaller gold in addition to the obvious loss of the larger pieces we are finding with the metal detectors. Since nearly all the tailing piles have large ponds of water adjoining them, a 6" dredge makes for a relatively inexpensive and portable device for testing the tailing piles. Newly assembled 6" suction dredge ready to go to work We used a Honda 3-wheeler and trailer to haul the dredge up to the tailing pond at the upper end of the mine and got it assembled. While we put the unit together I heard a "woofing" noise on the hill behind us. There sat a nice little black bear, watching us and no doubt wondering what we were doing. We watched him and he watched us, and finally he lost interest and wandered of around the edge of the pond. We floated the dredge over to the pile where we had first found a number of nuggets with detectors in 2003. We measured the section of the pile we wanted to dredge to calculate out the yardage so we could come up with a per yard figure of the gold content of the material. The dredging itself was the easiest I have ever done. This particular tailing pile was mostly decomposed bedrock with a few larger cobbles scattered through the material. The pile looks almost sandy on the surface and has little vegetation growing on it, indicating that it came from on or in the decomposed bedrock layer and has little of the organic surface material in it. These types of piles have almost always proven to be a good place to metal detect. I placed the suction nozzle for the dredge just below water level on one end of the pile, and fired the dredge up. A hole was created just below the water line, and then we used picks and hoes to rake the material down into the water where the nozzle just sucked it up. The occasional oversize cobble that appeared was grabbed and tossed before it could get to the nozzle. We ate into the pile, creating an underwater shelf a little over a foot underwater as we moved forward. There is an incredible amount of dredging that can be done at Moore Creek with a pair of knee-high boots and little need to bend over. Basically you just stand there and rake material down to the nozzle. All the material being dredged is actually being dumped back into the bottom of the excavation from which it originally came years ago, so we are in a way we are returning the place to it's original condition by mining it a second time. The old timers dug a hole and put it in a pile; we are taking the pile and putting it back in the hole. About this time Mike Graves and my cousin Bob show up in Mike's Super Cub. The tailing pile we were dredging on is actually an island in the middle of a pond created when the excavation the miners created filled with water. We were using a little inflatable boat to travel back and forth to the island. It was a one person raft, so a person would paddle over while a string was tied to the shore. Once you get to the far shore, someone back where you started pulls the raft back for their use. Well, Bob paddles over with no problem. The trick with these little rafts is to sit or kneel in the middle. But Mike tried sitting on one end, a thing my father had tried previously, and got similar results. Backwards and over into the ice cold water! I really felt sorry for Mike but luckily it was a nice day and the cabins near at hand so he could get out of his wet clothes in short order. We wrapped up our little test dredging operation. A half day of dredging moved approximately 9 yards of material and produced 0.21 ounce of smaller gold or 0.023 ounce per yard. Not counting the larger nugget that might be found now and then it looks like this pile might deliver 1/4 to 1/2 ounce a day of gold if worked with the 6" dredge. This pile had produced nuggets weighing over an ounce while detecting the surface and so it is likely that the diligent dredger would have the occasional day running over one or even two ounces of gold due to this "nugget factor". Normally I would not consider a 1/4 ounce of gold in a day with a 6" dredge to be something I'd get excited about back in my old dredging haunts on the Kenai Peninsula. But there I dredged along with the knowledge that it would be the rarest of things to ever dredge nuggets weighing more than 1/4 ounce in size. That average daily take of smaller gold is all a person can really count on. Here, I'd be a much more motivated dredger knowing that it is almost inevitable that nuggets weighing one to three ounces will be found from time to time. We will never really know just what this will really average out to until somebody goes ahead and works a tailing pile for a couple weeks in this fashion. Suction dredge sampling tailing pile at Moore Creek One thing I know for sure is that in my over 30 years of dredging the largest nugget I've ever found with a suction dredge was a one ounce nugget at Crow Creek Mine in 1998. I have no doubt I could easily break that personal dredging size record at Moore Creek, and so I think in some ways the dredging opportunities here are almost better than the metal detecting. Many people, like my father, prefer to see some kind of reliable, steady gold production. Metal detecting is for the select few who can go for days finding nothing and not get anything and still not get demoralized. But from what I've seen more people are happy getting at least some gold every day as long as they know they still have that shot at a really good day now and then. As the surface areas get detected out this type of steady production work will be more and more important. The main goal for me is to prove enough yardage by this type of testing to justify setting up a small excavator and trommel operation to reprocess the tailing piles. I have had a gut feeling it will pay but I do not buy excavators based on gut feelings. The next morning I got Bob set up with my GP 3000, and Mike had his own Minelab Eureka Gold. I told them about the area below the airstrip where I had found my largest nugget the summer before, a 3.5 ounce section of a rich gold bearing vein. The area had produced a good number of nuggets so far and the area was regarded as the "hot spot" on the creek by the previous owner. I had good reason to believe the area still held good promise, and Mike and Bob headed down to check it out. My father and I moved the dredge over to the next closest tailing pile. This one looked distinctly different from the other pile. It had more cobbles and rocks and more vegetation growing on the surface, indicating that it contained more overburden than the other pile. Yet it had produced some nice nuggets with the detectors also so I was curious how it would prove out with the dredge. We worked away at this new tailing pile. This one was much taller, and so the face of the excavation got to be over 10 feet tall. It is important not to undercut the material adding to the risk of falling rocks or a complete collapse of the material, and so we found ourselves standing high above the water raking material down to the nozzle below. Careful raking and the tossing out large rocks before they could fall to the nozzle made this work remarkably well. We threw all the rocks into a zone between the island and the edge of the pond with the idea of eventually creating a causeway that would allow us to walk over instead of using the little raft. The pond is deeper than it looks and so it will take some time but I've always found it to be beneficial to direct rocks to a certain area than just tossing them randomly in every direction. Bob and Mike showed up halfway through the day, and as Bob stood on the bank of the pond he held up something big to show us. We paddled over to check it out, and it turned out Bob had gone right to the area I had sent him with my detector and found the largest specimen we've located at Moore Creek to date. A 5.13 ounce chunk of what appears to be a perfect cross section of a rich gold-bearing vein. Just like the type of vein I'm dreaming of finding on the hill above our claims. It is exciting to find this kind of large gold specimen, but more exciting for me is what they keep telling me could exist elsewhere on our claims. These specimens have not traveled far at all from their source. Bob was of course ecstatic at having set the Moore Creek record for our group, but since nuggets up to 20 ounces have been found in recent years and up to 100 ounces in the early days his glory may be short-lived. I have since performed a specific-gravity test on the specimen, and it consists of 2.94 ounces of quartz and 2.19 ounces of gold. Some exceptionally rich gold ore indeed. Bob Herschbach and his 5.13 ounce specimen Close up of 5.13 ounce gold specimen seen on edge 2011 Update: I purchased the specimen from Bob. The gold was only visible around the edges and so I tried an experiment. I ground the specimen down on all sides until gold was visible, and then put a partial polish on it. The quartz is partially translucent so you can actually see below the surface and see gold enclosed in the quartz. The price of gold increased enough that I finally sold the specimen. 5 ounce gold specimen ground down and polished to better show gold We wrapped up the dredging for the day as soon as we moved about the same 9 yards of material as we had from the other tailing pile. This time there was only 0.11 ounce of gold to show for the work, and so it was obvious this pile did contain more of the worthless overburden material than the other tailing pile. This calculates out to about 0.012 ounce per yard. Nothing to get too excited about with a dredge but an excavator with a one yard bucket it would add up. Since this material is already sized and stacked and next to an existing tailing pond/settling system the cost to process it is much lower than it would be to process virgin material. A good trommel system should also get better small gold recovery than a 6" dredge. More sampling is needed but the initial results so far look very promising with at least some small gold to be found, without consideration of larger nuggets. A couple days of dredging left me feeling like doing some detecting. Even that easiest of dredging operations was a lot more work than swinging a detector. We got in a coupe hours before turning in for the evening, and I found a 0.09 oz nugget and my father found a 0.29 oz nugget. The real chance would come the next day, our last for the mine on this trip. We loaded up the next morning and headed down to where Bob had found his piece. It was one of those chunks myself and others had walked within feet of. And like most nuggets, this one, although found with a Minelab GP 3000, was shallow enough that any detector at all would have found it. Bob just got his coil over it first. We all started hunting, but results at first were pretty slim, with me finding a few smaller pieces. It got very hot, and everyone started running out of energy as the temperatures climbed. I finally wandered off down the creek on my own and back into an isolated little area back in the brush. And boom, up comes a 1.93 ounce specimen! I got really excited, of course, and in short order I found another piece weighing 0.28 ounce. It was time to call in the troops so I climbed a nearby tall tailing pile and yelled away for the other guys to come over, but could not hear anyone reply. I hiked on over and rounded up Mike and my father, but Bob had already returned to camp. Unfortunately I had broken the spell, and try as we might my new area dried up. I ended up with the gold of the day, with the 1.93 oz and 0.28 oz pieces, plus 0.18, 0.09, 0.07, 0.08, and 0.05 ounce pieces for a total of 2.68 ounces . That put me over 4 ounces for the trip, but Bob beat me for total weight, most gold, and largest specimen so far, all in one find! 4 ounces gold specimens found by Steve at Moore Creek The pictures above show my finds for the week, plus the 0.35 ounce of gold dredged from the tailing pile shown below. The pictures are not to scale; my specimens that are shown too small as the dredged gold is closer to life-size as seen in this picture. Those larger pieces found dredging would brighten most people's dredging days. As you can see even the smaller gold is very rough and has quartz attached. This gold has not so much rolled down the creeks as it has just rotted out of the rock and so there are going to be lots of pieces with quite a bit of character to them. The only real downside to this gold is the quartz content does not make it very amenable for jewelry work, as the quartz tends to pop out when heated. Gold found while suction dredge sampling the tailing piles All in all a very good start for the year. We got our propane refrigerator working but were frustrated by the 3 kw diesel generator. The darn thing has a hand crank starter and although it would pop and cough we could not get it running. It appeared to be some sort of fuel supply problem, but take apart what we may it just would not run before we all got so tired of cranking we gave up. The dozer problem remains to be tackled. Getting the dredge on site was a big plus, as getting good volume samples is critical in deciding just where and how to set up larger scale mining operations. I'm a very cautious miner in that regard. I do not believe in proceeding with any kind of serious mining without sufficient yardage blocked out and proven in advance. Too many people think that is time wasted and just jump in and start mining, but that is why the vast majority of mines go broke. We will block out enough pay to make whatever operation we go with have a high probability of turning a good profit. Part of that will be determined by exactly what equipment gets used in the actual mining operation, which also gets determined by the sampling program. Final lesson for this trip - if I ever loan you my detector and point you in a certain direction, you'd better head there! Both my brother and cousin got their best finds ever on this trip and I was glad to see it. The next best thing to finding a nugget or me is seeing other people find them. The happiness is contagious whenever gold is being found in our camp, no matter who is doing the finding. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

I walked a little ahead of my detecting buddy Jeff as we searched along the bulldozer trail for gold nuggets. The bulldozer had pushed little berms of material along each side of the trail as it made its way through the old tailing piles. I swung off the trail to one side where the tailing pile sloped down into the brush. Sweeping my White's MXT over a moss covered cobble pile resulted in a loud beep. I peeled the moss and cobbles back with my pick and looked down at the largest gold nugget I have ever found! This story actually starts in 1972. That is when I purchased my first metal detector, a White's Coinmaster 4. I put in lots of hours with that detector, finding thousands of coins in Anchorage, Alaska, in the days before metal detectors became more common. I was already doing a little gold prospecting and so I just had to try my new detector out for finding gold nuggets. I purchased a little 4 inch coil touted by White's as being the hot ticket for finding gold. They actually called it the "Gold Probe". However, after a couple outings I discovered that the detectors of the day were just not up to the task. The inability of the early units to compensate for ground mineralization made it impossible to find all but the largest nuggets. I am sorry to say that these large nuggets were very uncommon in my area, and so the chances of my finding gold with the early model detectors were slim to none. Steve in 1973 on very first nugget hunt - Moore Creek, Alaska & White's Coinmaster 4 This early experience caused me to overlook metal detectors as a practical mining tool for many years. In fact, when my partner Dudley Benesch and I got into business in 1976 we sold metal detectors from the start but strongly downplayed their usefulness for prospecting. My standard line was "you can probably find more gold with a $5.00 gold pan than a $500.00 metal detector". During the 1980's, I was heavily involved in gold dredging, so much so that I did if full-time for a couple of years. The amount of gold I thought I might find with a metal detector seemed trivial compared what I was producing with my suction dredges. I continued coin detecting from time to time but did not spend as much time at it as I had previously. It was at this time that stories of fabulous gold finds in Australia started to appear. My attention returned to using metal detectors to find gold nuggets, and I finally found my first nuggets with a Compass Gold Scanner Pro in 1989. I was still selling metal detectors as a dealer and it was about 1990 that White's introduced its breakthrough Goldmaster II. At an operating frequency of 50 kHz, it was by far the most sensitive detector available for smaller gold nuggets. The Anchorage area has lots of gold but it is mostly in match head size and smaller nuggets. Nuggets weighing up to one-quarter ounce are very rare and nuggets weighing an ounce or more are almost unheard of. The Goldmaster II opened up the local area to nugget detecting with its small gold sensitivity and ease of operation. Put all this together with its bargain retail price of $499.95 and the Goldmaster II quickly became one of the fastest selling metal detectors ever. It is one of the only detectors I ever sold that quite literally could not be produced fast enough to meet demand. I contributed to this electronic gold rush by taking my new Goldmaster II to local gold mining sites and finding thousands of gold nuggets with it. One popular site, Crow Creek Mine, had produced only small numbers of nuggets with other metal detectors. However, the Goldmaster II and its successor, the Goldmaster V/SAT, appeared be the perfect detectors for Crow Creek. The creek has only moderate mineralization and tremendous amounts of the smaller gold the White's units could find so easily. All of a sudden it seemed like gold was pouring out of the mine, all due to the introduction of the Goldmaster models. Steve with White's Goldmaster II in 1992 Jeff was managing our Mining Department at that time, and if anything, he was even hotter than I with the Goldmaster. We were both having a great time finding gold and posting photos of our finds at the store. The Goldmaster models got so popular at Crow Creek that problems started occurring with so many people running the same frequency unit in the same area. Detectors running at the same frequency interfere with each other electronically, and it got to where people would have to take turns running the detectors at some of the more popular locations at Crow Creek. This problem was finally solved with the introduction of the Goldmaster 3 and its frequency shift control. Despite these successes, gold dredging still occupied the majority of my free time in the 1990's. I was using a 6-inch dredge as my production unit, and the consistency with which I produced gold with it could not be matched by the more sporadic success one has with a metal detector. That, and the finds at Crow Creek and other local sites were depleting and so more and more time and effort was required to be successful detecting gold in these areas. A couple things about my dredging bothered me however. One was that I was finding good quantities of gold but I was finding very few large nuggets. It was not until 1998 that I finally found a 1 ounce gold nugget while gold dredging. My use of larger dredging equipment was tying me down to local areas where large nuggets are very rare. I really wanted to be able to find a monster nugget like I would read about other people finding. Second, I was spending all my time going to the same nearby areas, over and over again. Days, if not weeks, were spent working in the same stretch of creek. I wanted to get out and spend more time exploring remote areas of Alaska. I became convinced that if I wanted to get serious about gold and prospecting I needed to get away from the local area. Therefore, I made a conscious decision in 2000 to focus on metal detecting as a prospecting method instead of suction dredging. I sold my mining claims near Anchorage and my 6 inch gold dredge and invested the money in new metal detectors. I have used all the various brands over the years and found each one has strengths and weaknesses. In my opinion one key to successful nugget detecting is to have a variety of machines with differing capabilities. I invested in several makes and models of metal detectors that I use depending on particular nugget detecting tasks. I was amazed with the results of my new strategy. Not only did I see no real decline in the amount of gold I was finding each year, but my nugget finds blew away decades of dredging results. I was finding more gold nuggets weighing over an ounce than I had thought possible. My previous record of a 1 ounce gold nugget from Crow Creek Mine was totally eclipsed by 4.95-ounce nugget from Ganes Creek in 2001. Finding that nugget was one of the biggest thrills of my life! The real secret proved to be the freedom afforded by my metal detectors. With only a few pounds of gear to pack, it became far easier to go to remote Alaskan sites where large gold nuggets are found. It helped tremendously that I have developed many contacts with miners in my years of business and as a member of the Alaska Miners Association. These contacts are helpful when it comes to getting access to nugget producing mining claims. The fact is that most of the good locations for nugget detecting Alaska are on mining claims and so getting permission from the claim owners is critical. Ganes Creek is in west central Alaska near the town of McGrath. Ganes Creek has produced some of the largest gold nuggets ever found in Alaska, including a 122 oz monster. The creek has a long mining history and so has many miles of tailing piles from old bucket line dredge operations, and from more recent heavy equipment operations. It was at Ganes Creek that I found my 4.95-ounce nugget and numerous other gold nuggets in the 1 to 2 ounce range in 2001. Fall colors and old tailing piles at Ganes Creek, Alaska With some prodding on my part the owners of Ganes Creek decided to give a "pay to detect" operation a try. Opportunities to metal detect at places like Ganes Creek are rare, especially for people from outside Alaska. As part of the effort to get the word out about the operation, I received permission to bring a couple "key players" in the detecting industry up to Ganes Creek for a short visit. The idea was that once they saw the potential firsthand they would no doubt spread the word to others. In the spring of 2002 I decided to organize a Gold Show at Crow Creek Mine near Anchorage. We had never done this type of show in Alaska before and I thought it would be fun for all involved. Little did I know the work that goes into making a show like this come together. It proved to be a massive undertaking, but a rewarding one. One key to a successful gold show is to try to convince manufacturer representatives into making the expensive trip to Alaska. We received a lot of support from various suppliers but that shown by White's Electronics and its Alaskan distributor Renton Coin Shop was truly exceptional. Many accessory items and gold coins were donated as prizes to be given out for various activities of the gold show. Most impressive was the latest version of the White's Goldmaster, the new GMT, which was donated as grand prize in the detector hunt held during the show. This was very fitting, as there have probably been more Goldmasters at Crow Creek over the years than any other single model of metal detector. The generous donations were greatly appreciated by everyone attending the show. I would like to offer particular thanks to Mary Gladding of Renton Coin Shop for her enthusiastic support. Steve Houston of White's Electronics had come up for the gold show, and so I took the opportunity to arrange a trip up to Ganes Creek. Steve is an avid nugget hunter and so he jumped at the opportunity. I arranged for a visit immediately after the Gold Show ended. Steve had never been in a small airplane before, and so the bush plane flight into Ganes Creek from McGrath was an adventure in itself for him! Having flown in small planes my whole life, I underestimate the effect swooping low over the terrain and landing on small runways has on the inexperienced flyer. After we arrived at Ganes Creek, we did a bit of metal detecting in the immediate camp area, as quite a few gold nuggets had previously been found right around the cabins. The whole camp is built on old tailing piles that have been flattened out. After a little time spent with no results, we decided to head upstream. The first group of 10 visitors was already at the mine, and two nuggets weighing over 5 ounces each had been found the day before. The nuggets were found just upstream of a large drainage ditch that had drawn my attention the last time I had visited the mine. The ditch is piled high on both sides with excavated material. I reasoned that the piles might contain some nuggets, since the material from the bottom of the ditch was from deep below the surface. We started detecting the area, and in an amazingly short time, I heard Steve yell that he had found one. Sure enough, scanning the sides of one of the piles with his GMT produced a chunky 3.2 oz gold nugget! Well, that was so easy we figured there must be a bunch of nuggets along the ditch. However, as much as I tried I could not find a nugget myself, and Steve's initial find remained his only find. As if he really cared! I finally wandered away and found a small gold nugget on a large tailing pile nearby but that was it for the day. Steve Houston with 3.2 ounce gold nugget found at Ganes Creek with White's GMT This was a very short trip and so we only had the following day to try and find more gold. I found a few more small nuggets and Steve found none. Searching tailing piles for gold nuggets is literally like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. Entire days go by with no finds, but when gold is found it tends to be worth the wait. I was grateful Steve Houston found a nugget as large as he had in our limited amount of time. It was the largest nugget he had ever found, and better yet, larger than anything his regular hunting buddies had found. More than 30 people visited Ganes Creek in the summer of 2002. Over 10 pounds of gold was found, with many nuggets weighing over an ounce and several in the 5-ounce range. The success rate was amazing; with a large majority of the visitors able to say they found the largest gold nugget of their lives at Ganes Creek. Still, people started to wonder if the creek was "worked out" and that all the nuggets had been found. I scoffed at this idea, as I have seen even small parks produce old coins missed by decades of diligent metal detecting. The idea that a few dozen people could find all the nuggets to be found in many square miles of tailing piles is not something experienced detectorists would worry about. To prove the point, I put the word out that I would make a visit to Ganes Creek after all the visitors had been there that summer and go find some gold. OK, I have to admit there was a certain amount of bravado in this. The fact is that detecting tailing piles is very much a hit and miss proposition. In general, sheer hours of diligence will pay off, providing the nuggets are there to be found at all. However, there also is a bit of luck involved, and sometimes even the most dedicated person will get skunked. If it was easy we would all be out swinging a detector looking for gold nuggets for a living, but that is not the case. So, although I was talking big I certainly had my doubts about how much gold I would find. It was late in the season when Jeff, Brian, and I made that final 2002 visit to Ganes Creek. Brian is an avid gold dredger and so his focus for the trip was to do some exploratory gold dredging. Jeff and I were both hot to go detecting for gold, however. As I noted before, Jeff is a very accomplished detectorist, and we usually have a cheerful competition going while nugget detecting. We brought along several different detectors to try. I had my GMT but also White's new MXT model. I was intrigued with this machine that combined the basic Goldmaster circuitry with the features normally found on high-end coin detectors. I figured its exceptional target ID features might prove useful in the trashy tailing piles, and especially around the camp area. Jeff and I traded machines back-and-forth to get a feel for how the different detectors worked at Ganes Creek. Jeff in particular was in the market for new unit, and so was most interested in trying them out comparatively. Jeff with White's MXT at Ganes Creek, Alaska We first headed back up to that ditch area where many of the large nuggets were found, including Steve Houston's. The area had been hammered hard all summer, but we figured there might be some gold left to be found. I located a 13.8 dwt (dwt = pennyweight) nugget, and then a 3.8 dwt nugget (20 pennyweight per ounce) the first day. Jeff, although he tried in earnest, came up with no nuggets. We also tried some old tailings upstream farther, but found no more gold that day. The second day dawned under rainy skies. We decided to stay near camp, and see if there were more nuggets waiting to be found around the cabins. I grabbed the new White's MXT, while Jeff used the GMT. The rain poured, but we stuck with it. Lots of bullets and shell casings were dug, which I consider a good sign. You cannot get all the nuggets and leave bullets in the ground. However, by the end of the day we had no nuggets. We headed up to the bench deposits above camp and found some small nuggets, just so we could say we did not get skunked. Jeff found a nice little pennyweight nugget, and I got a few smaller bits. Nothing to brag about, but at least we could say we found gold. I have to note that I was very impressed with the MXT around camp. I used the 6" elliptical coil, and ran the unit in the relic mode. This mode, when set up a certain way, gives a high tone on non-ferrous targets, and low tone on iron targets. It was easy and efficient around camp, and all the targets I dug were non-ferrous items. It has very good trash separation with the small coil, and easy target ID with the dual tone system. The machine was great for places where trash is literally inches apart. The weather cleared the third day. Jeff again ran the White's GMT, and I the MXT with the small coil. We started in camp, and I found a small nugget just behind the cabins. We then tried some of the dragline piles above camp near where I found my 4.95-ounce nugget in 2001. I switched the MXT to the 950 9.5" coil. Both Jeff and I found nuggets weighing several pennyweights each. So far we were not exactly knocking down the nuggets. Frankly, we were both a bit puzzled, as our constant digging of bullets indicated nuggets were still to be found. If an area were thoroughly detected we would be digging nothing at all. Nevertheless, our nugget results were lean, and so our enthusiasm was flagging. I am a big fan of aerial photos, and had some new ones showing an area downstream opposite the old bucketline dredge machine shop. Long rows of old bucketline tailings ran far back away from the road, and so I suggested we run down and check them for a change of pace. Jeff was running the White's GMT with the Sierra Max 14" coil, and I ran the MXT with stock 950 coil. The more I used the MXT the more I liked it. On the cobble piles I ran in prospect mode, with full gain, minimum V/SAT setting, and in automatic ground balance. The 14.7 kHz frequency ran smoother on the mixed rocks of the cobble piles than the higher frequency GMT. High frequency detectors tend to get weak signals from mineralized rocks because of their extreme sensitivity. The MXT seems well suited for searching areas of mixed mineralization due to its lower frequency and fast automatic ground balance. We followed an old bulldozer trail back towards the area I had spotted in the aerial photos. I concentrated on the edges of the main trail near to and in the brush. My goal was to cover obscure areas others may have missed. I finally got a good clean signal and gave a couple digs with my pick. The moss and rocks flipped back, and there lay a large gold nugget. I did not get as excited over this one as with my 4.95 ounce nugget of the previous year, as I was not sure exactly how much the nugget weighed. Jeff, however, knew immediately it was something to jump up and down over. And he was right, as upon weighing it came in at 6.85 ounces! My largest nugget ever, and the largest found at Ganes Creek that summer. I also had the satisfaction of proving that finds always remain for those willing to look. This particular nugget is strange, with very dark, lustrous quartz encasing a solid gold core. The quartz is almost like agate. Fingers of dendritic (leaf) gold reach up from the gold core into the quartz shell. It is a unique nugget, unlike any I have seen before. And at 6.85 ounces it gives me entry into a very exclusive club. Few people can say they have found a gold nugget weighing over one-half Troy pound without heavy machinery. Steve with 6.85 ounce gold specimen from Ganes Creek found with White's MXT My White's MXT had paid for itself rather spectacularly. It is hard not to like a detector that finds a big gold nugget. However, while it bench tests well on small gold, frankly it does not hold a candle to the White's GMT when it comes to very small gold under actual field conditions. If small gold is your bread and butter, the GMT is still the way to go. Not only do higher frequency detectors have an innate edge on tiny gold nuggets, but also the manual ground balance on the GMT offers better control for small gold. The MXT must be auto ground balanced, then "locked". The GB point is then fixed, but it cannot be manually adjusted from there. The GMT has both automatic and manual ground balance. The MXT does do very well on nuggets weighing a few grains or more, and the bigger the gold gets; the less difference there is between the MXT and GMT. Frankly, for nuggets weighing in pennyweights or more, I actually prefer the MXT. It operates smoother than the GMT in mineralized ground, and has depth as good as, and maybe under some circumstances better than, the GMT. It is a great machine for large nugget hunting. Combine that with the fact that it has a superior target ID system, with both iron readout and conductivity measurement, and you can actually do things like tell most gold nuggets from a .22 shell casing. I used the relic mode with the small coil on the MXT to work extreme trash areas to good effect. This machine has lots of potential to explore, and yet is very easy to use. Add in the fact that it has a 6.5" x 4" elliptical DD, 5.3" round concentric, and 10" x 5.5" elliptical DD coils available as options, and I think the MXT is now the machine to beat for all-around use. Coin, nuggets, relics, and jewelry... it does it all. Moreover, despite its wealth of features, the list price is only $799.95. This article may seem like a White's ad, as I have purposely made the brand a centerpiece of the story. The fact is that I have owned and used all the major brands of detectors and continue to do so. I think all the major manufacturers make good units; Nevertheless, White's will always hold a special place in my heart as being the first brand I ever owned. It was that White's Coinmaster 4 that got me started metal detecting all those years ago. To come full circle 30 years later and find the largest nugget of my life (so far) with a White's detector is particularly fitting. You may contact me online at the DetectorProspector Forum if you have questions regarding this article. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2004 Herschbach Enterprises

It's now the middle of winter as I write these words. It has been one of the busiest years of my life, and so I've fallen off on keeping up with my Journal entries. Time to do some catch-up. My father Bud Herschbach and partner John Pulling and I took the time to make a few final visits to Moore Creek in September and October before the snow set in. We spent quite a bit of our time on claims work, staking additional ground and readying the property for winter. We now have a total of ten 160 acre claims and three forty acre claims covering what we believe to be the ground with the best potential. Although there is gold on all these claims, only more testing will determine which claims will be worth further development and possible mining. The weather ranged from cold, dreary, rainy fall days to beautiful, clear blue days. Freezing temperatures at night have a bonus in that the mosquito population drops of to levels that are actually bearable in the late fall. Some of the best times to be in Interior Alaska are early spring and late fall because of this. I've always enjoyed fall, with all the colors, and that cool air in the morning seems to add a little extra zest to the days. It's just too bad that falls are usually so short in Alaska, although this year it did extend out later than normal. We really did not get winter weather until November. John was particularly anxious to do some sampling with his highbanker that we flew in to use for test work. We set it up at the edge of the large tailing pond just above camp where we have previously found gold metal detecting and panning. The area has been mining, but the miners did not excavate far enough into the decomposed bedrock, and so digging the rotten bedrock up with shovels was showing some nice gold with pans. We decided running a little more volume through a highbanker would be instructive. There is a fairly large unmined bench deposit at this location that has good potential. Moore Creek claim marker We ran a couple yards of material through the highbanker, with good results. Since the cream of the crop has already been skimmed off here, however, more work remains to be done to determine the potential of the site. A larger volume of virgin material from the bench needs to be tested, but that will have to wait for 2004 after we get all our permits in order. For now, it was certainly encouraging to see some gold. More sampling in the immediate area of the cabin at camp returned similar results where the old miners did not excavate enough bedrock to get all the gold. We also made time to do some metal detecting, of course. My father used his Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ, plus tried my Minelab GP 3000 and Garrett Infinium. John experimented with the Troy Shadow X5, Fisher Impulse, and Fisher Gold Bug 2. This trip I favored my Garrett Infinium. I did use my Minelab GP 3000 also but I wanted to give the Infinium a good try at Moore Creek. Although I believe the GP 3000 with its large coils has superior depth on large nuggets, I like the Garrett for working in the rain (it's totally waterproof) and in thick brush. It does not get the depth of the Minelab but is better than the VLFs so it falls in the middle performance wise. In any case, while I knew I would do well using the Minelab, I decided to just stick with the Infinium the majority of the time just to see what it could do. Testing the bench deposits with a highbanker As you can see I usually hip mount the unit so there is less weight on my arm. About the only time I would use the unit in one piece would be if I were doing some sort of work where I was constantly picking the detector up and setting it back down again. Sometimes I'll work a likely location by spending quite a bit of time removing rubble or scraping off surface material with a rake, then taking a few minutes to scan the area with the detector. Then back to digging or scraping. In situations like this it is nice to have a unit you can pick up, use a few minutes, and set back down again, without having to strap on a control box or battery pack. But for normal use the hip mount is the way to go, as the waterproof control box with it's included batteries is a bit heavy for long hours of use. Garrett has released a coil cover for the 14" coil which came in handy, as the open coil design would normally like to hang up on low lying brush. I also used the new 10" x 5" DD elliptical coil which is very light in weight, and more pleasant to use than the epoxy filled stock coil. The 14" coil balances well with the unit assembled in one piece, but it is "nose heavy" when the control box is hip mounted as you no longer have the control box to balance out the weight of the coil. I really wish Garrett or a third party would produce a large coil for the Infinium that is not epoxy filled. A coil like the Coiltek UFO 24" x 12" open-spoke design I use with my GP 3000 would be ideal. Steve with Garrett Infinium at Moore Creek The smaller coil worked great around the base of bushes and around rocks. In general I favored the larger coil though as it covers more ground and I'm certain it hits larger nuggets a bit deeper than the smaller coil. The smaller coil is a little "hotter" than the stock coil but this means it also tends to give a weak signal on some hot rocks that the larger coil ignores. Still, it is a great little coil, and is the one to use for tight areas and for slightly smaller nuggets than the 14" coil may be good for. The Infinium ran quiet in the mixed hot rocks at Moore Creek, with only a couple that gave a signal with the 14" coil. Hi-lo tones were either gold or slivers of steel. Larger pieces of steel and iron, including nails, gave a lo-hi tone. Theoretically a large enough nugget might give a lo-hi tone but all mine have been steel so far or aluminum cans. I pretty much dug everything but as I do so I'm finding my faith in the dual tone id is growing. If trash was thick I'd ignore lo-hi tones and be pretty confident of not missing gold. But always remember, that no discrimination system is 100% accurate, and so if the amount of trash is acceptable, digging it all is the only sure way not to leave a nugget behind. The results with the Infinium were seven nuggets totaling 4.11 ounces of gold. The largest nugget is 1.5 oz and the second largest 1 oz. I did find one nugget with the GP 3000 that weighed 1.26 oz. By the way, although I'm calling these nuggets, they are really more properly termed gold quartz specimens (in my opinion). These have been cleaned to remove the rust staining they pick up from sitting in the soil for ????? years and so reflect the actual color of the quartz better than my previous pictures. The enclosing rock is grayish quartz and sometimes bits of the quartz monzonite that the quartz veins are eroding out of. Quartz monzonite is a "salt & pepper" looking type of igneous rock, much like granite in appearance. I did better than I expected, as looking for gold was secondary to claim staking and winterizing the camp. But my hot streak from my previous visit continued, and I ended up with some nice nuggets. One nice thing about larger nuggets is that I actually only found eight nuggets total... but they added up to 5.37 ounces. 5.37 ounce gold specimens found at Moore Creek with Garrett Infinium Results with the other detectors helped confirm this is an area for ground balancing pulse induction (PI) detectors like the Minelab SD/GP detectors or the Infinium. The Troy X5 was not happy at all with the hot rocks. I was most interested in Johns use of the Fisher Impulse. The Impulse is similar to the many PI detectors on the market for diving use. In theory they can be used for prospecting, and many people ask about them for just that reason. But the lack of ground balance means they actually do not do well for prospecting mineralized areas, and the Impulse hit the rocks at Moore Creek nearly as much as the VLF detectors. The Lobo and Gold Bug 2 were useable primarily due to their iron discrimination modes. In all-metal they were extremely noisy, but set with iron rejection cranked in they worked fairly well, although with lots of pops and snaps of hot rocks breaking through the discrimination. Luckily the noises are discernable from the clean sound of a gold nugget. The biggest problem is that any nuggets near or under hot rocks are just plain going to get missed with VLF detectors at Moore Creek. My father scored a couple nuggets totaling 0.65 oz with his Tesoro Lobo and John got about 2.5 oz with his Fisher Gold Bug 2. Both are now looking to get the Infinium for next year. The Minelab is a fine machine, but they are more comfortable with the price/performance ratio of the Infinium. Lots of bang for under $1000 and simple to operate. So it looks like there will be lots of Infinium gold to report from Moore Creek next summer. I'm sure I'll be using my GP 3000 as my primary unit, with the Infinium filling in the niches. It's the machine for sure for rainy days, and I think I'll even jump in some tailing ponds with mask and snorkel and nugget hunt underwater. For me the GP 3000 and Infinium are a great match for Moore Creek, each excelling where the other is weak. We finally had to give up on detecting in September and get all our final claim staking done. It is a lot of work but compared to the old days it is easy due to the ability to use GPS while staking state mining claims. Our final days in early October were really nice. I like those crisp fall mornings, color on all the leaves, and the bugs basically all gone. We staked up new claims plus re-filed on the original prospecting sites that we purchased to convert them to mining claims. These prospecting sites constitute the core property at Moore Creek and since prospecting sites are only valid for a short time it was time to get them converted to claim status. Then it finally came time to wrap up the camp for winter and go home one last time. As I noted at the start of this entry, it's now the middle of winter. All I can do now is work on permits and wait for spring to come to Alaska... and dream about the gold yet to be found! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

Well, I'm back from 8 days at Moore Creek. It was a great trip, and one from which I have returned with a certain feeling of relief. The fact is that I got myself and my partners into this property based on my knowledge of the ground from old reports and previous visits. But until now all the gold I've ever found at Moore Creek amounts to about an ounce. Everything in the old records told me the gold should be there, but we had just not had much luck finding anything significant. But I've also not spent much time trying. My father flew out with my cousin Bob and I flew out with our friend Mike. We had lots of other stuff to do while out there this week. We staked some more claims, cleared brush... even put up a real windsock on the runway! We also did some test work panning, highbanking, and a little dredging. But I finally did make time to do plenty of detecting this trip. The result was more gold than I've ever found in a week before. Just over 23 ounces of chunky nuggets - almost two Troy pounds of gold! My fear that just maybe the old-timers had done a better job than I thought have now been relieved. I can attribute the success in no small part to my Minelab GP 3000. I've used the Minelabs for a few years, but had never found the spot to really clean up with one. Either the gold would be too small, like around Anchorage, or way too much trash, like at Ganes Creek. I did have some success in the Fortymile but did not get into those multi-ounce nuggets that really add up. Old mine tailings and pond at Moore Creek, Alaska At Moore Creek I've finally found a place where my Minelab really sings. Good sized gold, minimal trash (except a few areas), and ground VLF detectors do poorly on. The bedrock and ground matrix is a fairly neutral shale rock. But mixed with the shale are both very positive and very negative hot rocks. A combination that generates a tremendous amount of noise from a VLF detector. The only way machines like the my Fisher Gold Bug 2 or my father's Tesoro Lobo would work quietly would be to use the iron id modes. This would more or less eliminate the false signals from the rocks. But any gold under or very near the rocks would be lost and performance is not what it could be. I ran my GP 3000 with the Coiltek 12"x24" mono coil, giving me a double edge. Not only does the Minelab ignore and see through the various hot rocks, the big coil covers more ground and gets better depth on large nuggets than smaller coils. The GP 3000 is not an inexpensive machine, but I paid for it several times over last week. It will be getting a lot more use at Moore Creek in the future. 3.47 ounce gold specimen found with Minelab GP 3000 - fresh out of the ground with rinse in nearby pond A closer view of 3.47 oz gold specimen from Moore Creek - my first chunk over an ounce at Moore Creek As you can see from photos below the nuggets are very coarse and many contain lots of quartz. Quite a few are sections of quartz vein shot through the centers with cores of nearly solid gold. The largest nugget, the white piece in the upper right hand corner, pretty much looks like a quartz rock seen from either side. But seen on edge it has a 1/2" thick layer of gold running through it. I'll be doing specific gravity tests on many of these nuggets to find out the gold to quartz ratios and will report them here later. The total weight of that particular piece is 3.47 Troy ounces. My favorite nugget is probably the 3.15 ounce piece pictured below. It has darker quartz that runs from deep reddish brown to almost black. Between the color and the pitting it looks a lot like a gold meteorite. It's thicker and rounder than the other gold and appears to come from a different source. The 3.5 ounce specimen above is more typical of Moore Creek - a thick layer of gold with a skin of white quartz on two sides. These are chunks of extremely rich gold veins that have broken out of the source nearby and are now scattered down the creek. 3.15 ounce gold specimen found at Moore Creek with GP 3000 The weather was great, the mosquitoes not bad, and the gold fantastic. It's certainly enhanced our feelings about the claims, as at least some of the tailing piles obviously have some significant gold in them. Some of them may be worth reprocessing. Here is the Coiltek 12"x24" UFO coil along with a 0.55 ounce nugget I just excavated. It really puts a smile on my face digging these things up! The UFO coil is very nice. Very light for it's size due to the open spoke design. In brush you need the coil cover (comes with) to avoid hanging up on sticks. My favorite thing about it is that it pinpoints like a dream. Just drag the tip of the coil pointed straight down over the target and you get a sharp signal off the tip. The narrow design works better in the excavated holes than the round coils. 24" x 12" Coiltek "UFO" mono coil for Minelab detectors I actually found almost all iron gave a low tone with the unit as opposed to a high tone for the gold, but a large enough nugget will also give a low tone, so I just dig it all. Luckily, this is not too much of a burden at Moore Creek. I only abandoned one target giving me a low tone since the last few were all iron, but I'll go back and get it someday when I'm not as tired. The combo ignored 99% of the hot rocks, but some were so hot compared to the ground I got a faint signal with the mono coil. Luckily these were always shallow isolated rocks that needed no more than a kick to eliminate them. I can't overemphasize enough how this really is a dream of a lifetime for me... and I know it is for many. I've been involved in various mining claims since the 1970's, but it was on local creeks like Stetson Creek, Cooper Creek, Canyon Creek, and then Mills Creek. They were all "working man's claims" suitable for dredging but just not the kinds of places that are destined to knock your socks off with gold. Good stuff, but you really have to work for it. And the chances of finding "the big one" are nil. In all my years on the Kenai Peninsula I have found only one nugget that is just shy of an ounce. No, what I've always wanted was someplace that I might find larger gold, and someplace I might really be able to mine. I've come close a couple times, and in fact nearly ended up with Moore Creek back in 1998. It would have involved taking advantage of a paperwork snafu by the legitimate owners, and so I backed off. It has paid off as it was my actions at that time that has finally put the property in my hands now. On good terms with all involved. After over 30 years of searching and dreaming it looks like I've found that magic place. I have to tell you that last week, as I sat on top of a tailing pile in the sun with a pocket full of nuggets... well, the feeling was truly indescribable. Anyway, hopefully some of you that do not have the opportunity that I have had can at least live a bit of the dream as I keep the story going. Or maybe it will motivate a few to keep pursuing the dream! Are there mining claims for sale? Well, there always are claims for sale. Most people, including myself, would probably prefer to stake our own claims. The problem is finding good ground open to staking. It's easy to find "OK" ground to stake, but to find real serious mining ground, like a Moore Creek, just sitting open waiting to be claimed is very difficult. Difficult as in time consuming. You basically have to make a job of claims research and constantly looking for a prime piece of ground to lapse for some weird reason, like the owner dying with no heir. But most really good ground stays under claim and in many cases stays within families for generations. Long story short is that buying good ground will get you there quicker. The problem there is of course money. Good ground does not come cheap. In mining claims you often do not get what you pay for. Many poor and worthless claims are sold for way too much money on a regular basis. On the other hand you will have to pay well to get good ground. In that sense you do get what you pay for. Frankly, that has been part of my problem. If I had been offered Moore Creek even just a few years ago I would not have had the money, although I still could have found others to invest to make it happen. Despite being a business owner I really am just a working stiff making a living, and running two daughters through college had me totally broke until very recently. I've just been getting my head above water, so the offer to sell came at the right time for me. Even so I needed others as this kind of stuff just costs way more than I have to spend by myself. I'm not willing to disclose what we paid for the property, but all I will say is that you'd better be prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for decent claims with equipment. And if you are looking at patented ground, do not be surprised to be looking at millions of dollars. Detecting tailing piles - note parallel paths walked on piles from top to bottom - "corkscrewing" You can find mining claims listed for sale online at Mining Claims For Sale to get an idea of price ranges. In general, claims in the Anchorage area that are suitable for small scale dredging and such, the kind of ground where you might get an ounce of gold in a day once in a while with a 4" or 5" dredge, run from about $5000 to $15,000 per 20 acre claim. I've bought into a couple of these type claims in the past and was happy with the results. As soon as you start talking larger properties with real potential for heavy equipment mining the sky is the limit. It varies wildly due to things like how rich the ground is, access issues, potential restrictions on mining, amount of equipment included, etc. Patented ground, which is in fact private property, carries the biggest premium, as you can use it for more than just mining. One big thing to really watch these days is the "mining restrictions" issue. The Mills Creek claims where good ole Bob(AK) is getting all the beautiful gold have real potential for heavy equipment mining. I think a little hoe and trommel operation in there could make a good go of it. The problem is a rabid anti-mining attitude in the Chugach National Forest. In theory those folks are supposed to support mining under the multi-use concept of our National Forests. That is the way it was as recently as 20 years ago. But it seems they have decided National Forest means National Park, and I've heard lots of stories of small miners being bullied and lied to in the last few years. A guy that knows the law and is willing to stand his ground could mine in the Forest, but they would be waiting to pounce on the smallest error. The feeling today is that State mining claims are the way to go, because Alaska still looks to mining for revenue and jobs. The attitude varies somewhat depending on who is governor, but in general at its worst it is still better than the Feds. The only place Federal claims may be ok are those way out in the middle of unrestricted BLM administered land. I do have to note on partnerships - they can work. In fact, I've always had partners on all the claims I've been involved with. It helps to know the people, but do not rely on that. A good set of written rules, agreed on in advance by all, can go a long way towards avoiding problems. Do not avoid discussing hard issues, like what to do about a disagreeable partner. If these things are not clearly spelled out in advance you can expect trouble. Even then you may have trouble, but with a formal set of rules that is agreed upon, signed, notarized, etc. you have a legally binding contract to handle disputes. The good news is that the process of developing such a set of rules will bring all involved to a common understanding and avoid the problems. Most issues simply develop due to a lack of understanding between partners about certain issues. Here is a simple example. I have three partners. I have by far the most experience nugget detecting. It can be expected I will find more gold detecting. I actually worried about being too successful, and so a guideline I came up with is: 1. 50% of all gold found with a detector goes into the "group claims fund". Division is by weight as decided by the finder. 2. 25% of all gold found by motorized equipment such as dredges or highbankers goes into the group fund. 3. All gold found hand mining, such as in panning or sluicing, may be kept by the finder. The rules apply to everyone, including visitors like my cousin. Although in his case (he found a 1/2 ounce nugget) I'm covering his percentage out of my finds. Now why would I come up with a deal like this when I know I'm likely to find the most gold detecting? Fairness. Be fair with your partners. We all have invested equal sums, but we all have varying abilities and time. If partner A looks on while partner B is finding a bunch of gold on "his" claims and partner A is getting nothing... well, let's just say that smells like potential trouble to me. So I find about two pounds of gold. One pound of my choosing will go in the claims fund. As a group we decide what to do with the fund. We could split it later four ways, in which case I get 25% back. More likely we will sell out of it to raise funds for claim and permit fees and other expenses. This system in a way costs me potential gold finds I may make. But I simply feel better knowing everyone is seeing benefits from their investment. It makes people happy to see the other guy succeed, rather than laying the groundwork for possible resentment. And let's face it, the tables could turn, I could be busy on other projects, and still seeing some gold come my way from a partner who scores at the claims. In the other claim partnerships I've been in it's been keep all you find, and that can work well also. Or all gold can go in the pot, expenses covered, profits split. You just have to look at the particular situation and really do your best to be fair to all involved. Look out for partners that are totally in it for themselves... they will be trouble. Everyone in a partnership needs to be looking out for the group. You want team players, and as miners are rugged individualists this is the root of most problems. Just over 23 ounces gold specimens found by Steve with GP 3000 at Moore Creek, Alaska One other stipulation is that since we are truly and seriously doing exploration and evaluation, all finds must be noted as to location, nature of deposit, amount found, etc. I'm collecting and mapping this info, and already know of several particular tailing piles that I believe have literally hundreds of ounces of gold in them. Information collected like this is of immense value and should not be overlooked. If you get a group of partners that get competitive and secretive about their finds this kind of information will be difficult to develop. Testing is what it is all about. I'm amazed at how many people just get ground and start mining. And then are surprised when they go broke. Real mining should never commence until proper testing has proven it will pay. Too many miners figure the expense of testing is throwing money away they could just use for mining. But to commence mining without proper testing is not mining... it's gambling. Here is another guideline regarding buying mining claims. Never invest a single dollar that you cannot afford to just walk away from. Especially in partnerships. Failure is a lot less painful if you are not hocked to the hilt. Partnerships are easier to handle if you always know you can just walk away from a bad situation. But enough of that talk. We are off and running on our new claims at Moore Creek. Everything looks great so far, what with a pile of chunky gold specimens recovered already. There is a lot of work to do yet, and a lot more test work remains before we really know just how much potential the ground holds. I cannot help be be optimistic at this point that we are really onto something at Moore Creek. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

Well, I've been kind of quiet lately about a trip I took last week. But the papers have been filed and so now I can spill the beans. This is a long story, so bear with me. There is a creek in the McGrath area that I have been aware of for 30 years. I first visited Moore Creek in 1973, actually as a detour from Flat, Alaska. I had researched out the Flat area as being a likely place to look for gold, and talked my father into flying me there. But when we got over the area there was all kinds of obvious activity below and so we turned back towards Anchorage in disappointment. On the way back we flew over some old mine tailings that looked inactive. We landed and poked around a bit. My father and I panned nice quantities of coarse, quartzy gold... and the place has had my attention ever since. I actually refer to it in another story I have online but the reference passed unnoticed by most. Moore Creek is the first place I ever tried to use a metal detector to find a gold nugget! An old-timer named Don Harris held the ground for decades. We got to know Don and visited the mine several times over the years. I let it be known that I was interested if he ever decided to sell the place. I was dismayed when he sold the ground a couple years ago to someone else but understood as it was someone he knew well in the McGrath area. But a few weeks ago I got a call from the new owner. Family issues demanded he leave the area and so he wanted to sell, and he had been advised by Don to give me a call. I jumped at it. The price was out of my range, so a limited liability company was formed by myself and three partners to buy the claims. Large gold specimen found by previous mine owner at Moore Creek We got the core 480 acres but some of the surrounding ground had lapsed over the years. I went in last week with my father (one of my partners), and we spent 95% of the time on claims work, including staking 4 more claims comprising 520 acres of ground. So the total property is now 1000 acres. I did find time to prospect a bit, and found a 1/4 oz nugget with my detector and some other gold, but I had little time to devote to metal detecting this trip. Enough time for that down the road. Anyway, we got the additional ground staked, and paperwork fired off to Fairbanks via Express Mail as soon as we returned to Anchorage. So the new claims are now recorded and I can relax a bit. Aerial view of old mine workings at Moore Creek, Alaska Why have I been interested in this ground so long? Well, it has produced over 60,000 ounces of gold by rather conservative estimates. The creek has a long history, and the information on the early years is sparse. A nugget over 100 ounces was found in the old days, but recent times have seen nuggets of up to 20 ounces. The kicker for me is that the gold is extremely rough, much rougher than even Ganes Creek gold. Lots of quartzy nuggets, and many that are just sections out of thin, super rich gold veins. I can just smell the hardrock gold! This was driven home by the chunk of quartz vein shown below which the previous owner found metal detecting on the claims. But unlike Ganes the hardrock source has a been narrowed down to a very small target area. The source lies uphill of the creek, and a couple small veins have been uncovered. Battle Mountain moved in to do drilling work in the 1980's, but claims disputes kept them from the actual work and then the price of gold collapsed. The ground never was drilled So while the hardrock is there it has seen minimal exploration. Until the hardrock prospect is drilled it will never be known how much gold remains in the hill. The big question is whether there is substantial hardrock gold still in place, or has most of it eroded to form the creek placers? Nobody knows the answer to that... yet. I've got the whole hillside staked and hope to find some of the answers eventually. My main goal was to just get the ground for now. We have already started cleaning up the camp from years of neglect and clearing the inevitable alders that have grown over trails and such. But we will stay low key and simply develop and explore for some time, doing lots of sampling and getting a feel for the potential of the ground. I'm curious how much of the quartzy gold was lost by the old miners into the tailings, and if their old workings are worth re-mining. There is some potential for virgin ground that needs to be nailed down. And the big question is the hardrock. All good questions that will take lots of sampling to get answers. So there you are. I ditched my last claims as they were tying me down and I wanted to be more free to bounce around the state. Now I'm tied down again, and the future will no doubt see me spending most of my free time at Moore Creek. Now you know why I was not back at Ganes Creek this summer. Though Ganes Creek is just 40 miles away. If you draw a line from Ganes Creek to Donlin Creek, another big new strike in Alaska, Moore Creek is midway between on the same mineral trend. Good neighbors to have! If you are interested a Geologic Report on Moore Creek is available in pdf format at http://www.dggs.alaska.gov/webpubs/dggs/pr/text/pr096.PDF So I'm a very excited guy right now. But also mourning the fact that my trips to Nome and the Coldfoot area have once again been shelved. Just not enough time... For now we are just doing claims improvements and exploration. We need to get established and get a better feel for the potential. There is a lot of work to be done upgrading the facilities. Item #1 is the airstrip. It's about 1400 feet, just enough for a 206 but scary for a 207. Even the 206 is pushing it somewhat if the wind is unfavorable. I just got back from a meeting with some miner friends and they have talked me into getting a permit to lengthen the runway. Did I mention I have a couple of old D9 cats? So I'm rounding up the paperwork and getting the application in for that. I'll probably just go an APMA for five years for low-level exploration activities. Luckily the current state political environment is quite favorable compared to previous years and this should be no major problem, aside from those normally associated with filing for permits. View looking up old overgrown airstrip at Moore Creek Mine, Alaska There are existing cabins in place that I need to get approval to use in the APMA. We own them and their contents, but existing cabins are a sticky issue on state land. Technically the state wants them removed at the end of mining activities. But as operations are ongoing and open-ended at the moment it's mostly just a matter of getting proper permits to use the cabins for now. The theory is we own the cabins and contents but do not have permission to have them on State land yet! So I'm getting up to speed on all the ins and outs of state claim ownership. In general, it's considered far better than owning federal claims nowadays, as the state looks at claims and mining as a revenue source to be more or less encouraged. The feds seem more inclined to just make mining claims go away. Setting up the LLC (Limited Liability Company) was really easy. Every state has it's own process, but it's basically the same. In Alaska you go the the Alaska Banking, Securities, and Corporations website and download the application. It is all of two pages. Fill it out, and file with a $250 filing fee. It's somewhat like a business license as you have to renew every couple years. An LLC is a cross between a partnership and a corporation. You manage it like a partnership but it affords you most of the legal protections against liability of a corporation. You also need an operating agreement to really cover yourself against things like partners dying, etc. Generic agreements can be had and modified to suit. Your liability is essentially limited to what you have invested in the LLC, in this case our claims. If it turned out we had an EPA toxic waste site on our hands we could walk away. We would lose what we invested in the claims, but they could not come after my house or my business. At least, that's the theory! Getting the LLC set up was a key first step. With this done a business checking account was the next step. Monies were deposited by the LLC members, and the claims purchased using a Quit Claim Deed for Mining Claims Form found at the DNR website. This form must be filled out and notarized, then filed with the Recorder's Office. We executed a second Quit Claim Deed on all rights to structures, tools, equipment on the claims. Exclusions were noted on some items the old owners want to retrieve. That done, the ground was examined for potential claims on surrounding land. These claims were staked using Alaska's new MTRSC forms located at the DNR website. A factsheet on the process is found at is also found there. A copy of the form is put on the NE #1 corner of each claim while staking. Our claims are located in the Mt. McKinley Recording District, and that means documents are recorded in Fairbanks. Kind of silly in this day and age. But that's the way it is. A copy of the claims form is filed with the Recorder's Office, in this case via Registered Express Mail. You actually have 45 days to file the paperwork but why delay? I always fear paper stakers mucking up the process and so I want to get on record ASAP. Old cabins at Moore Creek Mine, Alaska The only part of the whole process I found confusing was the filing fees. Since all the paperwork for four claims was being filed at once, was it $15 for the first page, and $3 for each additional page? Each claim form had a plat copy attached with existing and new claims plotted, so each claim had two pages - eight total. I finally called the Recorders Office and the very nice lady that answered told me $15 for each claim form of one page, plus $3 for each attached page. So it was $15x4=$60 plus $3x4=$12 for a total of $72. I also paid $2 per filing, another $8, to have copies returned immediately. I was told I did not need to pay for postage for this but I enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope anyway. Rental fees are also due on new claims. You can pay at a later date but have the option of paying at the time of filing if the calculation form with the MTRSC Form is filled out. I elected to pay the fees at time of filing. The initial Alaska rental fee is $25 per 40 acres. We filed three 160 acre claims and one 40 acre claim so the initial fee was $325. The fun part about that is the fees expire in September and must be repaid by the end on November for next year. The only way to avoid this was to wait until after September 1st to file the new claims, but we did not want to wait that long. Besides the risk of someone else staking the ground weather gets very dicey in September in Alaska and we might have access problems. The MTRSC system is sweet. You basically stake claims by the quarter section (160 acres) or quarter-quarter section (40 acres). The old claim system can still be used for claims where section corners do not fit the actual deposit well, but in this case it was fine. The advantage is that it is easy to pre-map the claims, and calculate Latitude/Longitude coordinates for the corners. This is all done in advance, claim forms filled out, etc. I had all the claim corners input as waypoints in my GPS. So once you get on the ground you use your GPS to get to each corner. I also had little metal tags prefilled out with corner identification info for each corner. Doing this all in advance at home saves a lot of frustration in the rain and the brush! GPS is fine for claim staking... you are not doing an actual survey. My Garmin would get me close but when you get to the spot a GPS gets flakey and you find you can't quite get a fix within the last 40 feet. It does not matter. Just get on location and if you are in the right terrain find the best close tree to use as a corner post. I had to actually dig posts in at a couple spots but most of my corners ended up being trees. The marked corner on the ground is the actual legal corner, not the GPS coordinate, so keep this in mind when placing the actual corner. So the hardest part was just doing it. I scoped the corners by aerial photos, but reality on the ground is harder than when you are looking at aerial photos. It all looks so easy when looking at the photo, but get on the ground and thick brush and wet areas make it more fun. Still, we are not talking a vast number of claims and distances here, and since I had plenty of time I took one day to do two claims and another day to do the other two. So that's it up to this point. I'm now looking over the Annual Placer Miners Application found at the DNR website to proceed to the next step. I did do some detecting, almost as much to find out where the old trails were as much as to go find gold. Here are the few nuggets I found. The largest, at 4.7 pennyweight (20 pennyweight per Troy ounce) was off the top of a large tailing pile well below camp. Just like at Ganes Creek. It's fairly quartzy but thick with gold. The next is about a pennyweight and solid gold and came off bedrock just above camp. The smaller ones all came off bedrock at the uppermost workings above camp. A few nuggets found on claim staking trip The ground is exactly the opposite of Ganes for detecting. The bedrock is fairly neutral, but the cobbles are strongly negative and positive. So when ground balanced to the background you get both big "boings" off negative rocks and strong positive gold-like signals off positive rocks. I had a Fisher Gold Bug 2 and my father was using his Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ, both of which we have used with great success at Ganes Creek just a few miles away. But here at Moore Creek the ground noise was such that we had to use the detectors in their iron rejection modes just to operate. The iron id systems rejected the rock signals, but the signals were so powerful that the machines clicked and blipped constantly. Still, you can tell a good signal from these hot rock overloads with no problem Anyway, there was little time for detecting this last trip. I'll be headed back the first week of August to give it a more serious workout, so I'll have a better idea after that as to the detecting potential of the ground. There are old detector holes scattered about, but other than a couple nuggets I have no idea what they were finding. All the holes were very shallow indicating older, less powerful detectors were used. I'll be using my Minelab GP 3000 here in the future as it is obvious the hot rocks are a real issue at Moore Creek, and the GP 3000 deals with difficult ground better than any other detector made. I've been inundated with inquiries and rumors regarding our intent for these claims. Everyone assumes it is intended as a Ganes Creek style operation. It actually was not the intent in acquiring the claims. The real thing that happened here was a great opportunity arising and being taken advantage of. While we have discussed the possibility of a Ganes style operation there are issues with the State on doing a non-mining business on mining claims. As in... you can't. So to just advertise out as a tourist operation is a no-no. State mining claims are for mining. That is not to say that metal detecting is not a legitimate form of mineral extraction. Obviously I can use a metal detector to efficiently recover nuggets from tailings that would prove uneconomic if mined by traditional methods. I could hire a guy to look for gold with a metal detector if I thought it would pay (and I could trust him!). Mining also has a long history of work being done for a share of the final cleanup, and so percentage deals are a legitimate form of mining. I am a professional detectorist and have made quite a few miners happy splitting my finds with them 50/50 and locating potential mineable ground at the same time. It's not recreational, it's mining and prospecting. It's all in the intent. Old Northwest dragline parked on Moore Creek property But I digress. The Moore property has tremendous mining potential. The Iditarod-Nixon fork Fault is one of the most important mineralized gold structures in Alaska. The Iditarod Mining District is the fourth largest gold producer in Alaska at 1.5 million ounces. There is a high potential on the remaining placer resources at Moore Creek and good potential for the hardrock. In fact, the hardrock is what has my main interest. The placers may simply serve as a way to keep the property active while exploring for hardrock. I have one located vein on the property, but it takes more than that to prove a mineable deposit. Basically, it takes drilling, not an inexpensive thing to do in Alaska. The immediate goal is to clean up the access and start sampling of the placers interspersed with hardrock prospecting. The vein has been traced for about 300 feet but both ends are covered by topsoil and brush, so trying to establish it's overall length is an obvious early step. It needs more assay work to determine it's tenor. I really do not think this vein is THE source I'm after, however. What you need these days is lots and lots of veins in a fairly large area to make it mineable by open pit methods. So people need not hold their breath waiting for some big announcement about a Ganes style operation at Moore Creek. It's not impossible something like that may be worked out someday, but for now we have other plans for Moore Creek. The more we talk about it the more excited we get. My partner Dudley is already shopping for dozers and excavators and getting shipping costs. This guy is getting gold fever! My father called today all excited about using simple seismic or ground penetrating radar to search for deep channels in the main streambed and then firing up the churn drill to sample. Big picture factors are playing into this also. The economic structure of the U.S. is getting shaky (big deficits soon to be followed by the printing of more money) and so the future of gold is looking brighter. Inflationary times are always good for commodity prices. The Donlin deposit is looking more like a go all the time, and if so we could just find ourselves with a road system and a world class mill nearby. The Kuskokwim region could explode development-wise over the next few years. These are good times to be sitting on a gold mine, and the Iditarod area is a good place for that mine to be. Anyway, I'm working on my Annual Placer Miners Application (APMA) now, and hope to file it soon. The APMA is a single application that is then sent to all the appropriate agencies for approval (and no doubt additional requirements) and it is a real nice system. You do not have to chase down separate forms and make separate applications with a bunch of different agencies. They can cover you for up to 5 years, which is what I'll be shooting for. They can also be amended as needed. Once I get it filed I'll keep everyone up-to-date as to how long it takes and what problems crop up. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

This ended up being one real busy trip. I blew out of here about 7PM last Friday night and got to Mentasta by midnight. I sacked out in the front seat of my truck, and was back on the road by 5:30AM. Had breakfast in Tok, then on to Chicken to deliver gold pans to Sue Wiren in "downtown Chicken". Then off to Boundary at the Canadian border. I spent several hours chasing down miners to get permission to hunt land. Permission had been lined up in advance from a couple but one in particular I was trying to find. He was around, but I kept missing him. It was worthwhile as I got to talk to a couple other guys in the area. The area looks interesting so once I get permission I will have to head back up for another try. I finally headed to one of the fallback locations I had lined up, and by 10PM had found just over an ounce of gold with my new Minelab GP 3000. The largest nugget was just shy of 1/4 oz and the rest were nice chunky pieces. The area was pretty brushy and so I ran the 11" DD coil instead of something larger. I like the GP 3000... it ran smooth as silk and lacks the faint "warble" of earlier Minelab units. Steve with Minelab GP 3000 hunting gold in Fortymile area, Alaska I camped out in the truck again, and was up early again the next morning. By afternoon I had just under an ounce of gold with the GP. I wanted to hit the magic one ounce mark and so grabbed my White's MXT with 10" elliptical DD coil and headed back to the spots where I had found gold with the GP. I found another pennyweight of smaller nuggets that put me over the ounce mark. I had to meet my father and brother at the Chicken airstrip by 5PM and so I hightailed it back to town. They were there when I arrived. My father had flown up while my brother and sister-in-law had driven up. We loaded up the plane and flew over the hill to Napoleon Creek to visit Judd and his son David. "Downtown" Chicken, Alaska My brother had never detected gold before so I hooked him up with the MXT to start with. But as usual his beginners ear interpreted the threshold ground noises as signals. Nugget detecting requires more expertise in interpreting signals than most other types of detecting, especially when using VLF detectors. So I set him up with the GP 3000 instead. The Minelab SD/GP detectors are Pulse Induction (PI) detectors and by virtue of their design essentially ignore ground mineral and mineralized rock signals. What this means is they generally do not have a variation in the faint threshold sound unless an actual target is under the coil. This can be much easier for a beginner than learning the sounds a VLF detector puts out in highly mineralized ground. The GP 3000 does have a lot of control settings that can overwhelm a beginner, but using the suggested stock settings works just fine. I made a few extra adjustments for Tom (my brother) and sent him detecting. And he started finding nuggets! I always get a kick out of helping someone detect their first nuggets, and it was just that much better in that it was my brother. He decided he really liked the Minelab. Still, to prove a point I grabbed the White's MXT, and started finding about two nuggets for every one he found. Expertise does count, and in trained hands the MXT is a very capable detector. I thought it did quite well indeed in the admittedly mineralized soil conditions. Steve with White's MXT metal detecting for nuggets on bedrock exposure My father was having no luck at all. He has fairly poor detector technique, and I just can't convince him to slow down and keep the coil close to the ground. I have no doubt he walks right over many nuggets as his coil is often several inches off the ground. Coil control is one of the real secrets of nugget detecting. If you only have a few inches to play with, giving them up by running the coil high over the ground really makes it hard to find gold. But he insists on doing it his way, as he eventually always finds some gold. But he could find more. Judd put us up for the evening. We got some more time in the next morning, and Tom and I found some more gold. I ended up with about 3/4 oz with the MXT while Tom got just over 1/2 oz with the GP 3000. Dad still came up dry. Our real reason for being in the Chicken area was that we had volunteered to survey a lot for the 40 Mile Miners District. We had to meet a State survey team in Chicken in the afternoon, and so flew back to Chicken. We hooked up with them and planned the lot survey. It is amazing how something that years ago would have been very simple can turn into a major project these days. We got the planning done and then my bother and sister-in-law drove back to Anchorage. I had planned on heading back to Anchorage that night also, but the time was late, and my father still had no gold. So he talked me into going back to the border to my earlier digs to score a few nuggets. A good decision, as I came up with four fat nuggets that totaled over an ounce in weight. One round chunk weighed over 3/4 oz plus three other nice pieces. I had set my father up with the Troy Shadow X5. It was getting quite a lot of ground noise in the all-metal mode, so I set it up in the silent search discriminate mode with the discrimination set at 3. Dad ended up finding two round nuggets weighing in at over 8 pennyweight (20 pennyweight per ounce). So he was happy... he had his gold for the trip. Over 4 ounces of chunky Fortymile gold found with metal detectors I ended up with the gold above for the trip. 4.27 ounces of nice, solid nuggets. The larger ones on the left were found with the Minelab GP 3000, and the smaller nuggets grouped to the right were found with the White's MXT. I had a 9 hour drive ahead and so took Dad back to the airport and sent him on his way. A 2-1/2 hour flight for him, and an 8-1/2 hour drive for me. But well worth the drive, with gold in the poke and lots of visits with friends and miners in the Fortymile! 2011 Update: As great as this gold and outing were it turned out to be the end of this stretch of Fortymile gold adventures. In 2003 something else came along that diverted my attention for years to come - Moore Creek, Alaska. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

I'm one of the luckiest people in the world to have been born where I was and to be doing what I am. This last weekend was truly fantastic. Great country, great people...great gold! I decided to take advantage of the long weekend and my new Bombardier Traxter ATV to make a run up to the Fortymile country in search of gold. The plan was to head up Friday, get in a couple days of detecting, and get back to town on Monday. The drive up was uneventful though long at 400 miles. I saw a few moose along the way and stopped in Chicken to visit a bit. There were still patches of snow in the high country between Tok and Chicken but the snow was gone in the Chicken area. My travel rig is a Toyota 4-Runner with Bombardier Traxter behind on single place trailer. The trailer is neat because I can also pull it behind the ATV on good trails. The second picture is the Traxter off the trailer ready to go. I have an oversized suitcase that believe it or not has my GP Extreme with 18" and 14" coils, Infinium with three coils, Shadow X5, and all sorts of detecting accessories, plus extra clothes all in it. I just strap it on back and everything is protected. The Traxter has a large storage box up front and all my food/canned goods are there. A couple picks and my 12 gauge shotgun are strapped on front. I carry a rucksack with things like GPS, camera, binoculars, first aid kit, etc. One reason I chose the Traxter was that I have heard too many tales of people losing ATV's crossing streams, and as a larger, heavier unit it is better than most in that regard. I had a winch installed for this trip as visions of having this rig stuck in a mud hole miles from help and by myself haunted me before I left. Toyota 4Runner towing new Bombardier Traxter ATV As I got ready to head out I turned around and there was a black bear watching me. For all the bears I see I have yet to get a decent photo of one since they always run off too soon. I managed to get a picture of this one at least before he took off. Then off I went down the trail to the river crossing. Despite the snow melt the water was low so no problem at all driving the Traxter across. I got to the claims where I had permission to hunt a bench deposit high above the creek itself. The owner was curious as to what was there, so the plan was for me to flag the locations where I found any nuggets. If it looked good enough he was considering doing some mining on the site. Black bear watching, and Fortymile River crossing I played around with the Shadow X5 and Infinium a bit, but really there was no point in having brought them along. I had the Minelab GP Extreme outfitted with an 18" coil and I knew it was the machine to use to get the gold. And get the gold it did. Despite having detected this location in the past I immediately started popping nice, fat nuggets out of the ground. While I am at it, a fierce little snow squall blew in and plastered me with sloppy wet snowflakes for awhile. Luckily it did not last long. I dug a bit of junk but mostly gold. The picture below has a half dozen locations flagged where I pulled up nuggets. The size of the gold and the fairly small area I found them in made it look like this spot might be worth mining. 2011 Update: The miner later did just that and the location paid off fairly well. Steve hunts with Minelab GP Extreme The weekend went too quickly and soon it was time to head back out. The weather had taken a turn for the worse and when I got back to the river crossing the water was so high I just stopped and stared for a very long time. I could not bring myself to attempt the crossing and turned back. Luckily there was an alternative trail out to the road, although much longer, which allowed me to avoid the river crossing. Better safe than sorry and so after a much longer ATV ride than I had planned I made it back to my truck. A bit of time to load up and make the long drive back to town. 2.32 ounces of Fortymile gold! It was all worth it of course. Not only was it a great adventure, but I did very well on the gold. Not so many nuggets but they are all solid slugs which add up fast. The results above are 2.32 ounces of nice, solid Fortymile gold, the largest nugget weighing in at 8.7 pennyweight. Hard to beat that for a couple days of detecting! ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright 2003 Herschbach Enterprises

I became aware of a new detector that was going to be introduced awhile back. The Shadow X5 by Troy Custom Detectors. The X5 is not intended as a nugget detector per se, but as a general purpose high performance metal detector. What caught my eye was the operating frequency, which at 19 kHz is much higher than the 6-10 kHz commonly used in many coin detectors. That, and the fact that it has a manual ground balance. This led me to believe the detector might make a very good all-around detector for someone wanting to both coinshoot and nugget hunt. I received an initial unit, and my bench tests confirmed this was the case. The Shadow X5 is much more sensitive to small gold than most coin detectors, and in fact I will go so far as to say that it will pick up gold the vast majority cannot. Its gold performance is right up there with the best of the dedicated nugget detecting units, and is better than a lot of them. Still, what was needed was a field test. I planned on getting out to Crow Creek over the weekend to test the X5 on small gold. Troy Galloway was kind enough to send up his new 7" concentric coil for me to use, so I was raring to go. Well, my weekend did not go quite as planned. I ended up working Saturday, got tied up Sunday, and so took Monday off to go to Crow Creek Mine to test the Troy Shadow X5. Then I made the mistake of stopping by work Monday morning, and got caught. We were short handed, and so I worked again. By Tuesday the good weather was gone, and a light rain was falling. Plus, I found I had picked up a cold. But I was anxious to give the X5 a spin, and so headed off to Crow Creek under gloomy skies and with a runny nose. The place was empty when I arrived... nobody but Sean around. I set the X5 up with the 7" concentric coil I had been sent, and headed up the creek. Troy Shadow X5 metal detector at Crow Creek Mine, Alaska I stopped at a knoll not too far up the creek, and tuned up the X5. In all-metal mode there are few controls to play with. I turned it on, and set the sensitivity at max. Set the threshold for a bare sound, then pumped the coil and ground balanced. Although the ground balance control is a ten-turn knob, I found it took short adjustments to get the machine tuned for a slightly positive response as the coil approached the ground. I started scanning, and the X5 was very smooth, even though I had it set at full sensitivity. It only took a few minutes, and I got a nice little signal. A bit of work with my plastic scoop, and there was a small flake that later weighed in at 0.6 grain (480 grains per Troy ounce). The coil is very resistant to false signals, as I rubbed it in the soil and knocked it against rocks with no problem. In short order I found two more small nuggets, weighing 0.6 grain and 1.0 grain. I then wandered up the creek to a clay layer that usually give a bit of trouble with high-frequency detectors, and located another small nugget, weighing 0.7 grain. Also a small piece of lead shot weighing 2 grains. At this point, my cold and the rain were wearing on me, and I had found out what I had come for, so called it a day. Without splitting hairs I'd say I can easily find gold down to about 0.5 grains at up to a couple inches with the X5 and 7" concentric coil. Very impressive! The machine should do even better with smaller coils. Those unfamiliar with nugget detecting may wonder why finding these tiny gold pieces is important. After all, it's the big nuggets we are after, right? The fact is that in some areas all there is to find is smaller gold. Even in areas with larger nuggets, the ability to find small gold can help prevent boredom from setting in. But the bottom line is that most any detector can find a very large gold nugget. It's the ability to detect small gold in mineralized ground that really sets the gold machines apart from the more common coin type detectors. Anyone familiar with the Fisher Gold Bug or Gold Bug 2 will feel immediately at home with the X5 in all-metal mode. The machine is more sensitive than the 19 kHz Gold Bug, and actually reacts more like the Gold Bug 2. Small hot rocks and the clay layer were giving some responses that most lower frequency detectors would not. The response on small gold is more mellow than the somewhat harsh, loud response you get with the Gold Bug 2. A very pleasant audio tone, actually, but one that requires a bit more attention than with the Gold Bug 2. When run at max sensitivity, the detector acts more like a higher frequency detector than a 19 kHz machine. This is good when we are talking sub-grain gold. I also noted that I was getting faint responses on rocks that normally only my Gold Bug 2 or GMT with small coil will respond to. I suspect that in more mineralized ground, or in areas with hot rocks, the X5 will get more ground response than one would expect of a 19 kHz detector. I'm sure the sensitivity will have to be backed off in places like that. I'll be curious to hear what detectorists in more mineralized areas think of the X5. It's a rare area where you can run detectors maxed out like I do at Crow Creek. Lead shot and small gold from Crow Creek - found with Shadow X5 and 7" concentric coil The 7" concentric coil only seemed marginally more sensitive than the stock 9" coil to small gold. I would pass on it and wait for the 5" concentric due soon if small gold is the goal. There is also a 10" elliptical DD coil in the works, which may help address some of the ground response issues at higher sensitivity levels. I did find a couple nails, and when I switched to the discrimination mode I found it took a minimum setting of about 2.5 on the disc knob to get them to audibly "break-up" and read bad. Unfortunately, the gold weighing under a grain also wanted to be ignored. This is not surprising, however, as sub-grain gold is smaller than most detectors can find at all. The X5 is very hot in its disc mode, and for larger gold running more than a few grains should see good use in iron infested areas. I'll have to explore this more in the future. But for the tiniest pieces of gold, I'd stick with the all-metal mode. Again, I must mention the X5 is not really a nugget detector, but an all-around unit. It has many features intended for coin, jewelry, and relic hunting. I have not touched on these features here, and will leave it to the coinshooting crowd to decide how the X5 works for them. The machine should really excel on gold jewelry for freshwater hunters, as the features that make it great on small gold nuggets should prove valuable for earring studs, small rings, and thin gold chains. To sum up, my initial reaction to the Troy Shadow X5 is very positive. It was a pleasure to swing a detector that only weighs 2.5 lbs. total, and the weatherproof design made for worry-free detecting in the rain. The nugget hunting features are very basic by today's standards, however. I don't want anyone to think I'm pushing the X5 as the latest thing in nugget detectors. But it really is one of the few units I've used that can really claim to "do-it-all". The Shadow X5 packs real power into a small package, and serious detectorists would do well to keep an eye on this detector. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

Well, here is a report on my last visit to Ganes Creek, Alaska for the year. I set myself up for this visit this spring by saying I would go to the mine after everyone had been there this year and find gold, just to prove there was still some left to detect. To show that it just can't all be found... no matter how thorough the hunters. I also wanted an opportunity to work with some new machines, and so in addition to my White's GMT I brought along a new White's MXT and Garrett Infinium LS. Brian, Jeff, and I left Thursday morning for a five day visit. We got to Ganes and settled in, then decided what to do. Brian was set on doing some prospecting with the 5" dredge Doug had purchased for visitors to use, so he was off in search of places to use it. I grabbed my new Garrett Infinium LS detector to try out, and Jeff used my White's GMT. Jeff and I headed upstream to where most of the large nuggets have been found this summer, on the theory that more were waiting to be found in the area. We scanned an area that has been heavily hunted. Three nuggets over 5 ounces were detected in the area this year, and I found out it is the same area where the 122 ounce nugget and a 62 ounce nugget were found. Definitely the center of big gold on the creek. The Infinium ran smooth and clear, so much so that I found myself waving my ring over the coil to make sure it was really working. Absolutely no signals from rocks in the tailing piles. Very odd when you are used to constant background sounds back from a VLF detector. The Infinium is a ground balancing pulse induction (PI) detector and as such it excels at canceling out ground mineralization. I got a signal now and then, and dug either a shell casing, or an iron trash target. The discrimination on PI detectors is crude at best, and so iron targets that might be rejected with a VLF (Very Low Frequency) will often be signaled as "good" on a PI detector like the Infinium LS. The basic idea with PI detectors is to go ahead and dig everything, although this can be problematic at a place with so much junk as Ganes Creek. I found the shell casings encouraging however, as that meant that not everything had been detected. I figure if non-ferrous items like bullets and shell casings are being missed, then some gold has also been left behind. Still, the area had been well searched, and the finds were few. I finally located a 13.8 dwt (dwt = pennyweight) nugget, and then a 3.8 dwt nugget (20 pennyweight per ounce). Two very nice, relatively solid gold nuggets. The Infinium had done its job. Jeff, although he tried his darndest, came up with no nuggets. The area has been hammered pretty good. We also tried some old tailings upstream farther, but found no more gold that day. Gold nuggets found with Garrett Infinium at Ganes Creek Day Two dawned under rainy skies. We decided to stay near camp, and see if there were more nuggets waiting to found around the cabins. I grabbed the new White's MXT, while Jeff stuck with the GMT. The rain got going pretty good, but we stuck with it. Lots of bullets and shell casings were dug, again, a good sign. But by the end of the day we had no nuggets. We headed up to the bench deposits above camp and found some small nuggets, just so we could say we did not get skunked. Jeff found a nice little nugget over a pennyweight with the GMT, and I got a few tiny bits. The MXT is a brand new detector from White's Electronics. Steve Houston from White's had a prototype MXT along on his visit to Ganes Creek in the spring and I had a chance to use it then. We both agreed then it had all the right stuff for finding gold at Ganes Creek. We did not use it much, however, as time was limited and we stuck with more familiar detectors. I have to note that I was very impressed with the MXT around camp. I used the 6" elliptical coil, and ran the unit in the relic mode. This mode, when set up a certain way, gives a high tone on non-ferrous targets, and low tone on iron targets. A setting right at "2" seemed to be the point where ferrous and non-ferrous sorted out with low and high tones. It was easy and efficient around camp, and all I dug were non-ferrous items. It has very good trash separation with the small coil, and easy id with the dual tone system. Great for places where trash is literally inches apart. Brian had set up in the ditch near the big nugget area, but was plagued with start-up problems with the gear, especially a leaky pump intake hose. He spent most of his day just getting set up and getting the dredge operating. Brian running suction dredge at Ganes Creek The weather cleared up the third day. Jeff again ran the White's GMT, and I the MXT with small coil as I had been impressed with it the day before. We started in camp, and I found a small nugget just behind the cabins. Then we tried some of the dragline piles above camp near where I found my 4.95 ounce nugget last year. I switched the MXT to the 950 9.5" coil. Both Jeff and I came up with nuggets weighing several pennyweights each. So far we were not exactly knocking down the nuggets. Frankly, we were both both a bit puzzled, as our constant digging of bullets indicated nuggets were still to be found. You simply can't dig all the gold while leaving the bullets in the ground. But results were lean, and our enthusiasm was flagging. I'm a big fan of aerial photos, and had some new ones showing an area downstream opposite the old bucket line dredge machine shop. Long rows of old bucketline tailings ran far back away from the road, and so I suggested we go down and check them for a change of pace. Jeff was running the White's GMT with the Sierra Max 14" coil, and I ran the MXT with stock 950 coil. The more I used the MXT the more I liked it. On the cobble piles I ran in prospect mode, with full gain, minimum V/SAT setting, and in automatic ground balance. The 14 kHz frequency ran smoother on the mixed rocks of the the cobble piles than a higher frequency detector like the White's GMT or Fisher Gold Bug 2. They tend to get weak signals of rocks because of their higher operating frequencies. The MXT was definitely smoother in the cobble piles than the GMT. We followed an old trail we had followed last year. I concentrated on the edges, off the main trail in the edges of the cobble piles near and in the brush. I got a good, clean signal, and gave a couple digs with my pick. The moss and rocks flipped back, and there lay a large gold nugget! I did not get as excited over this one as my 4.95 ounce nugget last year, as I was not sure exactly how large it was. Jeff, however, knew immediately it was something to jump up and down over. And he was right, as upon weighing it came in at 6.85 ounces. My largest nugget ever, and the largest found at Ganes Creek by visitors with metal detectors this summer. Sorry guys, but you left a big one for me to find! 6.85 ounce "Ugly Nugget" gold specimen from Ganes Creek - found by Steve H with White's MXT The nugget is strange, with very dark, lustrous quartz encasing a solid gold core. The quartz is almost like agate. Fingers of dendritic (leaf) gold reach up from the gold core into the quartz shell. It's a very unique nugget, but I'm hard-pressed to say if I like the looks of it. It has more quartz showing than gold. Some people say it really looks good, others say it's ugly. Oh well, all I know is it weighs more than any other found this summer. And that's remarkable considering the number of people over the ground, proving you just can't get them all. Side view of "Ugly Nugget" showing wispy dendritic gold Brian's initial dredge hole in the ditch near the big nugget area did not get him excited. A bit of small gold, but no bedrock, and no large nuggets. So he decided to move to a point of bedrock sticking out into the current location of Ganes Creek. The creek has been moved to the north side of the valley, which is reputed to have poor gold, but Brian wanted to check it out. At least there was bedrock showing he could get at. The next day (Day Four) Jeff took the MXT, and I went back to the Garrett Infinium LS. I wanted to put its ground canceling capabilities to use on the cobble piles, and Jeff wanted to see why I had grown so infatuated with the MXT. What's not to like about a machine that had found me my largest nugget ever? We searched far into the edges of the cobble piles along the creek. Our search led us way out on the dredge cobbles as far from the road as we could get, opposite the old dredge machine shop. There were no signals for some time, as many of these old cobble piles are relatively trash free. I was ahead of Jeff a bit, and so sat down to wait while he scanned up to me. Then he gets a signal in the middle of the cobble piles. The MXT said only 10% chance it was iron. VDI number of 55, exactly what it called my large nugget. No signal for some time, in big cobble pile... man, this looked good. He dug and dug. Got to over a foot. All indications were still good. I was getting excited, and came up to take pictures of the big find. And literally cheer him on, as he was getting a bit grumpy about the depth of the hole. The cobbles kept caving in, which can be very frustrating. And I'd exclaim "But Jeff, this is just how digging the two-pounder will be"! Jeff excavating large "gold nugget" that turned out to be a rusty can So at two feet, there is the quart paint can. Oh well, such is nugget detecting. Those large steel targets at depth really baffle discrimination systems. What is interesting, however, is I tried the Infinium out on the can, and it did call it an iron target! It seems the PI discrimination system does work well on some items that have problems on the VLF systems. The thing about VLF discrimination is it will sometimes call ferrous items non-ferrous so you dig some junk. With PI discrimination the problem is more serious - a gold nugget can easily be identified as iron, especially the large nuggets, so it is dangerous to use PI discrimination where large nuggets lurk. In any case, I sure like to see other people find gold. I always get excited when anyone finds gold, because it tells me there is more for me to find also. It's when nobody is finding gold that I get worried, and today was turning into one of those days. One the other hand, if I go out with Jeff one more time and find a big nugget, I'd best not turn my back on him. I'm likely to get hit over the head with a detector! Since we were having no luck for the day so far we decided to switch gears. Back to the old reliable airstrip to find nuggets. I've found if I'm just patient, dig lots of bullets, I can always find gold on the airstrip or around camp. But since the Infinium has minimal discrimination, and digging the compacted airstrip material is a lot of work, I switched to the GMT. Jeff stuck with the MXT. Before an hour was up Jeff found a 12.2 dwt nugget. Shortly after I found a 2.7 dwt nugget with the GMT. We both had nuggets for the day. Jeff's was a very nice, nearly solid gold piece. Mine was a broken, very quartzy nugget. Still, that seemed to be it, although we dug a small pile of bullets and shell casings. We headed up to the bench deposits above camp once again to look for smaller gold. The MXT is a great detector, but the difference in operating frequencies was obvious. We scraped areas free of overburden over the bedrock, and checked them with the detectors. The White's GMT with it's 48 kHz operating frequency had an obvious edge over the 14 kHz White's MXT, even considering the fact that the MXT was using the more sensitive 6" elliptical coil versus the 10" elliptical coil on the GMT. We dug a couple pennyweight of small nuggets, but the GMT clearly got better signals on the small gold. Small gold nuggets found with White's GMT Brian again found little gold with the dredge, and decided to wrap it up for this trip. He had his work cut out for him pulling the dredge out of the creek and getting all the gear put away. Day Five dawned a bit cloudy and cool. The only real good thing about this time of then year is the lack of mosquitoes. The cool nights have driven them off, and so our days were relatively mosquito free. A few biting flies replaced them, but not so many that I ever had to use a head net this trip. Cold weather has it's advantages. Since we were leaving that afternoon, we made a short day of it. I had pulled my left arm out of joint, and so was down to digging only targets that gave perfect id. We did a little detecting in the pile of material near the ditch in front of camp. This pile has produced several nice nuggets, and been heavily detected. But Brian is short order found a nice weighing several pennyweight with the White's GMT. It ended up weighing more than all the gold he got dredging on the trip. The weather cleared as the day went on, and I decided to spend my last few hours up in the big nugget area near the ditch. I ran the GMT again while Jeff used the MXT. I hit the road itself real hard, as I saw no signs that it had been detected much. But Ganes had given us all the gold it was going to this trip, and we went in early to pack and clean up our cabins. It may be I missed out this last day simply because I passed up lots of targets I normally would have dug. Well, it was a fun trip, with over 9 ounces of gold found. Even discounting the big nugget I found over an ounce of nuggets, with the largest being 13.8 dwt. Jeff found about an ounce with his largest at 12.2 dwt. Good-sized nuggets remain to be found, and even a few clunkers. Still, the easy pickings are gone, and it will take patient detecting to get results at Ganes Creek now. There are actually many miles of undetected tailings running upstream above the more recent workings. The areas are generally lightly brushed over, with some large open areas. A few brief exploratory runs into these upper areas have produced no real finds, but the area is vast in extent, and worth attention in the future. A talk with Doug revealed that next season there will be a lot more work done with bulldozers to make areas "fresh" again. The good news is many worked areas will be rejuvenated in this way. The bad news is you guys that did not dispose of your trash properly... well, it's just going to be there to dig up again. The future at Ganes creek is more likely to be a mixture of working material freshly turned over, and then wandering off searching for those missed areas. Finally, the detectors themselves. I like the Garrett Infinium LS. It has great bang-for-the-buck in the PI department. Its current lack of accessory coils is the only thing really holding it back at the moment. I see the Infinium as being the machine I will turn to when my normal VLF detectors won't do the trick. Ganes Creek is really not the best area for PI detectors, as the low mineralization and lack of hot rocks means the PI units have no real edge over VLF detectors. The White's GMT is slowly becoming my primary nugget detector. I've favored the Fisher Gold Bug 2 the last few years, but the extra versatility of the GMT is causing me to use it more and more. The extra depth on large gold versus the Gold Bug 2 is the big plus at Ganes Creek. The machine that really wowed both Jeff and I was the White's MXT. It's the first detector I've ever used that I really think "does it all". Now, while it bench tests well on small gold, frankly it does not hold a candle to the GMT when it comes to very small gold under actual field conditions. If small gold is your bread and butter, the GMT or Gold Bug 2 are still the way to go. Not only do the higher frequency detectors have an innate edge, but the manual ground balance offers better control for small gold. The MXT must be auto ground balanced, then "locked". The GB point is then fixed, but it cannot be manually adjusted. The GMT has automatic and manual ground balance, while the Gold Bug 2 is manual only. Steve's Gold - 8.15 Ounces Total But the MXT does do very well on nuggets weighing a few grains or more, and the bigger the gold gets, the less difference there is between the MXT and GMT. Frankly, for nuggets weighing in pennyweights or more, I actually prefer the MXT. It operates smoother than the GMT in mineralized ground, and has depth as good as, and maybe under some circumstances better than, the GMT. It's a great machine for large nugget hunting. Combine that with the fact that it has a vastly superior id system, with both iron readout and conductivity measurement, and you can actually do things like tell most gold nuggets from a .22 shell casing. I actually used the relic mode with the small coil on the MXT to work extreme trash areas to good effect. This machine has lots of potential to explore, and yet is very easy to use. Add in the the fact that it has a 6.5" x 4" elliptical DD, 5.3" round concentric, and 10" x 5.5" elliptical DD coils available as options, and I think the MXT is now the machine to beat for all-around use. And despite it's wealth of features, it's list price is only $799.95. I think we will be hearing a lot more about the MXT in coming years. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

A large placer mining operation that has produced many large gold nuggets has been made available to the public for a fee, and this week saw the first group of ten people visiting the claims. Steve Houston with White's Electronics, Fred Brust with Fisher Research, Fred's grandson Brian, John Pulling, the local Fisher representative, and myself flew into Ganes Creek Tuesday morning. I had convinced the owners of the mine that it would be a good public relations move to have to factory representatives visit the mine. The big news on arriving was that Bob(AK), who had not found any nuggets the first two days, has just scored a 5.81 ounce and 5.62 ounce nuggets in the same day! So there goes my record of a 4.95 ounce nugget, and my single day record of 8.41 ounces. Bob blew them both away at the same time. His White's Goldmaster V/SAT paid for itself many times over. Most everyone had gold, but a few people did not. Everyone seemed happy, however, as large nuggets were being found. And when our little plane load of "celebrities" showed up everyone was out hunting gold. So much for our celebrity status. More gold had been found right in camp, so we gave it a quick try, but soon we decided to head upstream to a spot I had in mind from my last visit. My big goal was for my guys to find some gold before we left, as we only had the two days. A large ditch had been dug at one location, and I thought the material piled up next to the ditch looked interesting. We hit the material along the ditch, except for John, who got right down in the bottom, since the water had dried up. It was not long before John yells up "I've got one"! That always helps raise spirits, and everyone got even busier. Fred got a target and proceeded to dig it, while Steve and I worked nearby. It was deep, and Fred was cussing the junk he was probably digging. Steve later remarked that Fred was down to his elbow in the hole. Then I heard a whoop and Fred got up with a big smile. He had a real nice nugget that looked about 3 ounces, but later weighed in at 1.48 ounces due to the quartz in it. It was about the size and shape of a walnut, and is the largest nugget he has ever found. Fred Brust and Brian with 1.48 ounce nugget found with Fisher Gold Strike detector And less than 15 minutes later Steve lets out a yell. A big 3.25 ounce nugget, pretty solid gold, and lots of character. It was also the largest nugget Steve has found, and better yet, larger than the nuggets his regular hunting buddies have found. Steve Houston with 3.25 ounce gold nugget John found a couple more nuggets, including a 1/2 ounce nugget, his largest to date, and then the nuggets stopped. We all wandered off in different directions, and I finally found a 0.23 ounce nugget wandering up the ridge of a large tailing pile. And that was it for the day. We continued after lunch at other locations, and late into the evening after dinner at other spots, and came up dry. The others were having luck that day though and the nugget count climbed. We slept in a bit, but got a decent start. We were all rooting for Brian to find a nugget. Everyone else was happy, including myself. Fred, John, and Steve had already found their largest nuggets ever, and I was just along for the ride. We went downstream, and covered lots of ground. My record hot streak had sure come to an abrupt end... now I could not find any gold at all. Just goes to show how in tailing piles where the nuggets are randomly scattered that luck is a big factor, and on my last visit I was exceptionally lucky. Finally John came up with a really solid 2.21 ounce nugget; a real beauty. I decided I could not go a day with no gold, so went up to the top of the Windsock Pile where we had found numerous nuggets Memorial Day weekend, and put my detector in all-metal mode. Up came several nuggets, the largest 1.2 pennyweight. I had gold for the day. John Pulling with 2.21 ounce gold nugget And that ended up being that. We hunted until late, but found no more gold. Brian was a bit disappointed, but still had lots of fun, and a smile on his face. He was happy to see his uncle find a nugget, which is nice to see. Our little visit was deemed a resounding success. Just the visit itself is an adventure for people from out-of-state, and Steve commented repeatedly about the small plane ride. Bush flying is an adventure in itself! More nuggets came in from the main group, and when we left only two people had no gold, and of those one was not putting in many hours. Large nuggets when I left were: 5.81 oz Bob(AK) 5.62 oz Bob(AK) 3.01 oz Harold(FL) 2.98 oz Todd(AK) 1.85 oz Stephen 1.22 oz Todd(AK) 1.16 oz Bill(AK) 1.12 oz Bill(AK) 1.11 oz Todd(AK) .89 oz Bob(GA) .79 oz Zooka plus 3.25 oz Steve Houston 2.21 oz John Pulling 1.48 oz Fred Brust Bob(AK) 5.81 oz "Goldfinger" nugget and 5.62 oz "Heart Throb" gold specimen And me? My largest nugget the two days was .23 ounce. My lucky streak finally petered out. But then again it was not long ago I would have considered a .23 oz nugget to be a monster. I guess I'm getting spoiled. Numerous smaller nuggets were found by the visitors. Everyone seemed happy, even the guy with no gold. He always had a smile on his face. One interesting fact is that not one person in the first group has any real prior nugget hunting experience. I was surprised to find most had never done it or considered themselves novices. You'd think some pros would have jumped at this first. Maybe the pros have places they can go already for less money. What makes Ganes exceptional is anyone who can come up with the money can visit. So what are my current thoughts on the chances of finding gold at Ganes Creek? Well, the chances of finding large nuggets is great... most everyone is scoring in that regard. But it is pretty much a crapshoot, with large spells of patient scanning and trash digging punctuated by large nugget finds. All involved agree good iron discrimination is a must, but do not overdo it. The only guy without gold so far is using an Explorer, and has it really tuned to reject iron. In theory, he has it set up ok, but no gold so far. Bob(GA) had no gold, and when I checked he had his disc cranked way too high. He'd probably walked over nuggets. After setting it lower, he scored several nuggets in one day. But the biggest factors are patience, persistence, and perseverance. It is needle in a haystack work, and you can go for two days, like Bob, then get two 5 oz nuggets in one day, like he did. You may get lucky right off the bat, like my group, or go days without a big nugget. You have to put the coil over a big nugget, and the more ground you cover, the greater your chances are. Next week the troops return and we will finally get other thoughts than mine on Ganes Creek. The real proof of Ganes Creek will lie in the second group. I still must assure everyone that the area involved is vast, and all the detecting going on is random wandering - "hit and run" detecting. The nuggets are still out there. Obviously some of the easier pickings are being covered, so a little more effort will have to go into it. That, and Doug will push dirt around if the results seem to be thinning out. I've asked him to hold off until that happens, however, as we will only get one chance to see the tailings undisturbed. After they get flattened out a certain magic will be lost. And for what it is worth, Fred Brust and Steve Houston, who have both been around, promptly declared Ganes a "once in a lifetime opportunity" The term came up repeatedly. Steve was already figuring out which friends to get together for a return visit. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

There is a prelude to this story. In mid-May my wife and I flew down to Reno for our youngest daughter's college graduation. Her older sister was also there, and the last night of our visit we went out for dinner. The place had Asian food, and we all got fortune cookies. My fortune: ''You will have gold pieces by the bushel.'' I put it in my wallet. My friends Jeff, Brian and I made a spur of the moment trip to Ganes Creek near McGrath, Alaska to metal detect for gold over the three day Memorial Day weekend. We made a similar trip last year in July, and had good luck finding gold nuggets, including the largest I've ever found, a 4.95 ounce nugget. As you may imagine, we have been anxious to make a return trip. Brian is new to detecting, so I loaned him my chest mount converted White's GMT with 14" coil for the trip. Jeff and I used Fisher Gold Bug 2 detectors, both with 14" coils. It was spring at Ganes Creek, but the weather had been hot in Alaska, and so the only ice was left on some ponds and along the creek. Daytime temps were hitting the 70's and 80's, but it was into the 40's at night. There were many fires in Alaska due to our abnormally hot, dry spring making for hazy air, and at times you could smell the smoke. The mosquitoes were not yet out in force, and head nets were not needed. Unfortunately, this is not normally the case later in the summer. Jeff went up Friday morning, and Brian and I met him Saturday morning. Brian was feeling a bit competitive and worried Jeff would get a big jump on him, but my hopes were to see a lot of gold on our arrival. I was a bit worried that perhaps our visit last year was a fluke, and that gold might be harder to find than we thought. So I was not happy when Jeff reported only one nugget for a long days hunt just upstream from where I had found the 4.95 ounce nugget last year. And only a pennyweight nugget at that. Not very promising. I had my heart set on hunting some old dragline piles next to the airstrip. We had hit them a bit last year, with no results but some trash. But I felt there had to be gold there. We had found several nuggets in the airstrip itself, including a 3.5 ounce nugget my father found. The airstrip was topped with material from this tailing pile, and so we figured the gold had come from there. We loaded up our detectors and headed off to give it a try. Tailing piles along airstrip at Ganes Creek (Brian standing in top center pile for scales) I walked up onto the pile and in ten minutes had a 1.11 ounce nugget! Jeff was amazed. He had spent a long day before looking for gold, and I score a big nugget right off the bat. That set the tone for the three days. I had numerous areas I wanted to try, pinpointed from my aerial photos. At most we hit I had the first nugget, in about ten minutes. Sometimes the other guys found gold, sometimes not. I on the other hand was unusually lucky this trip. I just kept putting my coil over the gold. Still, Jeff found his largest nugget ever this trip, a one ounce nugget not 50 feet from my first in the ''Airstrip Pile''. Brian also found his largest nugget ever, a 1.33 ounce nugget from a pile within a couple hundred feet of the camp, christened the ''Cabins Pile''. I found a 1.89 ounce nugget in this same pile. Brian with his 1.33 oz "Bear Nugget" The next day I got off to a slower start, but caught up at the very end of the day with a 2.45 ounce nugget off the ''Airstrip Pile'' down in the brush. I like hitting oddball spots, and my willingness to work in the brush paid off big time. The last day, Memorial Day, I went clear off the scales. We went over a mile upstream above the camp, and I found a .97 ounce nugget. Another tall tailing pile by the runway with the windsock stuck in it, the ''Windsock Pile'', gave me 9 nuggets, five a 1/4 ounce or better. Everywhere we went I found gold. I wanted to try the old bucketline tailings way downstream, and within ten minutes found the largest nugget of the trip, a 3.22 ounce gold/quartz specimen. Finally, trying above the cabins upstream on the tributary, Potosi Creek, got three more nuggets; 4.2 dwt., 6.0 dwt, and 11.3 dwt. Steve with 3.22 ounce gold/quartz specimen The bottom line is I could do no wrong with a detector this on this trip. Brian got 2.5 ounces, Jeff 2.8 ounces, and I ended up with an incredible 14.4 ounces! The last day alone I found 8.14 ounces of nuggets. Grand total for three people in three LONG days - 19.72 ounces. So is it all gone? Did we get it all? No way. We did not scratch the surface. Ganes Creek is vastly larger in area than you can imagine. The tailings run for miles. There are a couple areas we have given pretty good attention, but none I would not hunt again. All hunting was with the Fisher Gold Bug 2 or White's GMT with 14'' coils, with full rejection of any iron targets. Only solid good signals were dug, and all scanning was ''speed scanning''. All the areas that produced gold should produce more with careful work. All I can say now is there is plenty of gold to be found, and after everyone gets through hammering the creek this summer I will go up again this fall, and find more gold to prove it. But really, what do I think of the odds for finding gold at Ganes Creek now? Brian is relatively inexperienced compared to Jeff and I, and was learning a new detector. I'd say his finds were about on par with what I expected of him. Jeff was way off... a real cold streak. He should have found twice as much. And I was hot as could be. I found about twice what I would expect. All this is based on bare gut feelings, but I'm thinking 1 ounce a day is a sort of average. But any number of nuggets will blow that away... and bad luck could shoot anyone down. Steve shows off gold found at Ganes Creek over Memorial Day weekend Close up of the gold nuggets and specimens from Ganes Creek The big thing here is the ''nugget factor''. You can find nothing all day, then end up with a couple ounces in one nugget. I was just plain lucky in that regard. I simply happened to place my coil over more large nuggets. They add up fast, and so really get you ahead fast. So the biggest advice I have is never quit, never give up, never slow down. We put in about 15 hour days, and used them well. But if you are easily discouraged, you'll have a tough time at Ganes Creek. Persistence is the name of the game. And a good fortune cookie might help. The newer dragline/bulldozer tailings are vast in extent, and seem to have more nuggets, but more trash, than the old bucketline tailings. But I can't help but feel that really big nugget is in the bucketline tailings. They are relatively trash free, and so require real patience. You can hunt for a couple hours with hardly a signal, and those are usually large steel. It's easy to get the feeling there is not much gold in the cobble piles. But in all those cobbles I just have to believe there is a fist-sized cobble of gold/quartz lurking. Just like my 3.22 ounce piece... but larger! 2011 Update: I was right - many nuggets weighing over a pound have come from the cobble piles since. But if you do not mind more trash targets, the dragline/bulldozer piles seem to have more nuggets in general, and would be worth the most attention for most people. Steve's five largest "chunks" of gold from Ganes Creek weekend Ganes Creek is being opened to the public for the first time this year, with one week stays at the mine running $3000 per person, room and board provided. You keep all the gold you find. The largest nugget found at Ganes Creek weighed 122 ounces. For more information and photos see the Ganes Creek page here. 2011 Update: Those early days of easy pickings at Ganes Creek are gone forever. Now, ten years later the pay-to-mine operation continues. I was at Ganes for two weeks in 2011 and will be there again for two weeks in 2012. These days bulldozers are run every day to turn material over and expose new nuggets. Every nugget found is one less to be found, however, and it is getting harder to find gold at Ganes these days. In 2010 I found 6 ounces of gold in one week at Ganes Creek. My spring 2011 trip of two weeks also got me 6 ounces. A half ounce to an ounce a day average may still sound pretty good, but the fact is only a few very experienced detector operators like myself pull it off. The majority of people who visit Ganes would do better to set their sights on perhaps an ounce of gold in a week of detecting. Though big finds still happen now and then - the largest nugget found at Ganes Creek by a visitor in 2011 was a solid 10.5 ounce beauty. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

My wife and I finally took a long-awaited vacation to Hawaii. We returned to the same location we had visited previously on the island of Kauai as it was really our kind of place. My wife mainly likes to lay in the sun and read. I like metal detecting the beaches and surf. So it works out well... she parks herself on the beach and I wander around nearby with my detector. My last trip to Hawaii three years ago produced only one gold ring in two weeks. See the story here for details on that trip. I was determined to do better this time. I took two detectors, my Garrett Infinium LS, and a new Minelab Excalibur 1000. I have a Fisher CZ-20 that I have been very fond of for freshwater hunting, but many have advised me they thought the Excalibur might do better in saltwater than the CZ-20, although the two machines are very close in performance. My main goal was to use the Infinium, but I wanted a back up unit. In particular, I had discovered some beaches off Kauai have lots of iron trash due to the two hurricanes that hit the island in the last twenty years. PI detectors like the Infinium tend to find iron items while VLF detectors are good at tuning it out, and the Excalibur is particularly good in this regard. I was most anxious to use the Infinium after my success with it nugget hunting in Alaska, but the first time in the water with the Infinium it binged and bonged and made all sorts of noise. I thought, "This is a heck of a note" and went and got the Excalibur. I had no patience at that point; I wanted to find stuff now. I found lots of coins with the Excalibur and finally a gold ring. The Excalibur was very quiet and handled the salt water environment about as well as I think a VLF detector can. But the fact is that a salt water/volcanic soil environment like Hawaii severely impacts the performance of VLF units, and so the depth of detection I was seeing with the Excalibur was not what I would be expecting with a PI detector. Detecting heaven - Poipu Beach, Kauai, Hawaii I gave the Infinium a try on the beach to see what the story was there. I found I was getting noise off the salt sand at the end of my swings, and remembered the note in the owner’s manual about this very thing. It is instructed that the discriminate control be advanced to reduce these signals. I was about to say "false signals" but they are nothing of the sort. The Infinium is a particularly sensitive pulse induction detector. If you tune PI detectors up for their best sensitivity to small gold items you run into the area where saltwater, being a low conductive item, also starts to be detected. The Infinium at its zero discriminate setting picks up wet salt sand and saltwater. It is not a false signal, just a response to a low conductive target a less sensitive unit would not detect at all. This effect is enhanced by the 14" coil, which "sees" a large volume of material. By advancing the discriminate control to the point at which the salt effect is tuned out you will get stable operation. In theory this also means that some depth of detection or target strength will be lost on smaller low conductive targets like gold earrings. One thing I need to do in the future is test the Infinium at various disc levels to ascertain the effect on target responses. As a practical matter it does not matter. Just as the sensitivity of a hot VLF detector like the Fisher Gold Bug 2 must be backed off to compensate for high mineral ground, so to the disc control on the Infinium must be set to compensate for the conditions encountered. Hot VLF units cannot be used on wet salt sand at all since they see the salt water as a target and no amount of tuning will get a high frequency VLF to work properly on wet salt sand. Steve with Garrett Infinium on the beach trying 10" x 5" elliptical DD coil I did much like I would with the sensitivity control on a VLF detector. I adjusted the disc control to where I was on the edge of stable operation. In other words, I was running with a bit of background noise. Some people might prefer to go farther to eliminate such noises entirely, but I am used to running "on the edge" so to speak. I found the Infinium with 14" coil set at 3-4 disc level gave not quiet but acceptable background sounds on the beach. I proceeded to dig coins and a small toe ring. As I have found in the past the Infinium really likes nickels. I seem to always find a higher percentage of nickels than I would normally find with a VLF detector when I use the Infinium. This is because it is optimized for targets that fall in the nickel range, like most gold items. Armed with my newfound knowledge I gave the Infinium another try in the surf. And I do mean surf. I had on 40 pounds of weights to help me stay put as the waves crashed into and over me. When I get a target the weights allow me to duck to the bottom and stay put while excavating the target. I use the “fanning” method of blowing sand away with my hand. I’ve tried scoops for this but frankly I’ve got my hands full just hanging on to the detector while working. In high-energy surf the scoops just seem to get in my way. One thing I have heard speculation on is that the 14” coil might be a problem in the water due to its size. That did not prove to be the case for me. The Infinium is weightless underwater and the feel was good. I had no problem using it in very rough surf and in fact often was forced to brace myself on the bottom with the detector. We are talking adverse conditions at their worst, and the Infinium did fine. I found a disc setting of 5-6 was required underwater, and even then the coil needed to be kept parallel to the bottom. When I ducked to the bottom to get a target, the coil would turn up and point off into the water. It could then “see” more salt water, and start to signal. But I was so busy holding on and digging targets I really did not notice this much after a while. Steve suited up for metal detecting in heavy surf But lo and behold, the deep targets started coming… and the rings! First real surf dive of about three hours with the Infinium produced three beauties. An 18K gold and platinum ring was first, followed shortly by a 14K gold ring. Then a lull while I dug a few coins and nails (the Infinium does pick up large elongated iron objects the Excalibur ignores) and then a GREAT BIG GOLD RING! I was over a foot down, and expecting a big chunk of trash, when up pops a large class ring - 1963 U.S. Air Force Academy. It is a 14K gold ring with a large synthetic blue star sapphire. It looked incredibly large underwater, and is the most massive ring I have found to date. I'm working on finding the owner of this one. I was really stoked, but this was Sunday morning, the day before I was to leave. Some beach work with the Infinium and water work with the Excalibur had up until this point produced about 100 coins and one gold ring. But now that I had the Infinium figured out I had three great rings in less than three hours! The surf really beats me up, so I took a break and spent time with my wife. But that afternoon I hit the water again, and up comes an 18K gold ring with a deep blue faceted sapphire and a platinum band. The depths were all in excess of what I feel I was attaining with the Excalibur. I do not want to give the impression I’m knocking the Excalibur. It is a well proven and well thought of detector, and may in fact have the best performance in salt water of any VLF on the market today. But I just do not think a VLF detector with a 10” coil has much chance versus a PI detector with a 14” coil in saltwater environments. We had to check out at noon the next day, but I got up early and gave it one last go. A few more nails, some coins, and on last extra wide 14K gold band. I was ecstatic… it just seemed like I could not miss with the Infinium. In two days I found more nice rings than I've found in any other water detecting I've undertaken. My only regret is I did not try harder with the Infinium right off the bat. I found the Infinium to be a very good saltwater unit, but not having run any pulse units other than the White’s Surfmaster PI in salt water I certainly cannot say how it compares to other PI water detectors. Even the Surf PI I used three years ago has been upgraded to the Surf PI Pro model for enhanced sensitivity to gold items. That fits with what I experienced with the original Surf PI. It got the coins but left me with little gold to show. I would like to try the PI Pro as it is lighter and more streamlined than the Infinium. At $699 list it is also quite the bargain for someone wanting to try a PI detector for water detecting. But the Surf PI Pro also lacks the ground balancing capability and interchangeable coils that make the Infinium so versatile. The key for anyone using the Infinium around salt water will be to get the disc control set properly. I cannot overemphasize this point. It is the single most important adjustment for making the Infinium work in salt water, and my initial lack of knowledge in that regard cost me precious hunting time. I really think the Infinium disc control can be more properly thought of as a sensitivity control, and the key is to back the sensitivity down to a level that gives stable operation. Do not be concerned about lost sensitivity. I think I proved the machine retains plenty of power. But if you are picking up the saltwater itself you certainly will have little luck in detecting anything else. Still, I should add a cautionary note here. The Infinium WAS noisy! That means different things to different people. For me, as a long-time detectorist, it is just a thing to be dealt with, and I am used to running detectors "on edge". In other words, I often tune detectors to their limits, which many times results in noisy and erratic performance. The difference is that I can tell the difference between "good sounds" and "bad sounds". But someone else listening to what I am doing might not hear the difference, just lots of noise. So lest this story sound like a glowing reason to run out and get an Infinium do take note of its noisy performance here. I obviously made it work for me, but some people may not like either the noise, or the amount of discrimination required to reduce the noise to normal levels. For dry land use, especially while nugget detecting, I feel the Infinium is a very good detector. In salt water the results are mixed, and will depend a great deal more on the expertise of the detectorist. The White's Surf PI was a much smoother and easier to operate detector by comparison, and may suit the casual operator more than the Infinium if salt water is the sole intended use. The Excalibur is the only VLF detector I have ever used in salt water. It was much quieter in operation than the Infinium, although it constantly gave multiple tones on each target instead of locking on a single tone. It did a superb job of ignoring iron targets, and if there were enough iron targets it would certainly be the way to go. But the amount of iron I dug with the Infinium was nowhere near the level it would take to discourage me, and the bit of extra depth I feel I was getting with a PI made me feel more than happy to dig the few iron targets. The ratio was no worse than one iron target for every two or three non-iron targets. I think that unless iron trash is a problem PI is the way to go. I'm surprised that Minelab, manufacturer of what many believe are the most powerful PI units in the world, does not build an underwater PI unit. On the other hand, I have some fresh water lakes I hunt in Alaska that are full of iron trash, and I am anxious to use the Excalibur in those lakes. Iron junk, rings, coins, aluminum trash, and lead weights found metal detecting The picture above shows a typical mix of finds, although some of the oversized trash items have already been discarded. The first place I usually head after getting out of the water is the nearest trash can. In fact, I try to make a spectacle of myself disposing of the trash, especially the sharp glass I retrieve. It helps promote the image of detectorists as public servants. Hey, we are just getting this dangerous junk out of here. The iron items were all found with the Infinium. The Excalibur ignores iron better than any detector I have used. The majority of the coins were found with the Excalibur, although the Infinium got its share, especially nickels. Almost all the pull tabs were found with the Infinium, again confirming its power in the gold range. Many rings are identified by metal detectors as pull tabs because of their similarity electronically, and so the Infinium likes them also. Notice also the large fishing sinkers found by both detectors. I gave these to the dive shop I rented my dive gear from. If you are planning on doing some surf detecting in Hawaii, here is how I outfit myself. Obviously you need some kind of underwater detector. I prefer two, as I have had two different underwater detectors leak on me over the years. The chances are slim, but vacations like this are few and far between. It's cheap insurance. I use a neoprene shorty suit while in the water. The water in Hawaii is warm, but it can get chilly if you are fully submerged for some time. I also find the suit helps cushion the weight belts to prevent chafing. I used two weight belts totaling about 40 pounds. The weight belts and suit were rented locally. Each item was $18 for the week, for a total rental of $54.00. Next time I plan to have a suit with long legs to protect my knees while down on the bottom. I wore an old pair of tennis shoes and socks while in the water. There are lots of rocks and coral that can chew your feet up, not to mention spiny animals like sea urchins. This seemed to work very well and I would do the same thing again. I have a mesh bag that I attach to the arm of the detector for targets I retrieve that also has worked very well. It has a hooped metal opening that makes it easy to drop items in the bag, and yet I have never had a problem with anything getting out of the bag. I have a mask and snorkel that I have used for dredging and diving for many years that continues to give good service. The snorkel is a U.S. Divers model that features a water catch and drain system near the top that sheds water caught by waves going over the top. A good idea for surf work. Finally, a good pair of neoprene gloves to protect my hands while digging holes or holding on to coral. The only item I wished I had was a small rock pick. Every once in awhile I would find items that worked down into deep holes in the dead coral bottom. I had to abandon some of these as the items were too far down in the small cavities. A small rock pick would have allowed me to open the holes up to find those items... whatever they were. Time for a safety warning. Surf conditions can be dangerous and working over weighted can be particularly hazardous. It is important to be completely comfortable in the water and to have a realistic knowledge of your limitations. I have made hundreds of SCUBA dives and have thousands of hours on hookah diving systems. I am extremely comfortable in the water and there is little that could happen that would cause me to panic. Do not attempt rough surf conditions without being sure of yourself and your equipment. All found with Garrett Infinium except small gold ring on pinky finger Index Finger - Two 14K gold bands Middle Finger - Platinum band and 18K gold w/faceted sapphire Ring Finger - 14K Class Ring w/synthetic star sapphire and 18K gold & platinum band Pinky Finger - Stainless steel toe ring and 22K gold band (Excalibur) As far as where to hunt? Well, on the beach itself there is a zone up above where everyone sits. Lots of coins there. But if jewelry is the goal you need to get into the body-surf/boogie board zone. And that is pretty much where the waves are breaking. A rock or coral base with no more than about a foot of sand on it would be preferred. You do want some sand to hide items when dropped, but too much and items sink beyond detector range. The sand gets stirred a lot in this zone, and so stuff gets deep pretty fast. Areas where lots of tourists are in the water will generally be more productive than areas the locals frequent. It's a more affluent crowd and one that is more ignorant of the effects of water on jewelry. Just make sure you take time to watch people a lot. Just sit on the beach and watch people at play and where they are doing it. Any of those areas have potential, and the more vigorous the play, the better the potential. It was a great trip, albeit too short. I’m chomping at the bit for another go. I have often gone on nugget hunting trips where it seems like I spend 3/4 of my time getting my bearings, and then really start to score just before I run out of time. This was one of those trips, and between my trip three years ago and this one I think I’m getting a handle on surf detecting now. I can guarantee it won’t be three years before I next hit the surf in search of gold. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright 2003 Herschbach Enterprises Postscript 3/25/03 - A happy ending to the 1963 U.S. Air Force Academy Class Ring story. The class is celebrating their 40th reunion in 2003, and by contacting the reunion organizer I was able to find the owner of the ring. He lost it 17 years ago while body surfing in Hawaii and sure was surprised to hear his ring had been found. I hope he gets it refinished and wears it to that 40th reunion!

The snow has finally melted enough to let me try out my new White's Electronics Goldmaster GMT and several coils. The GMT is my newest nugget detector. I really like the GMT's fast automatic ground balance and advanced iron id capabilities. But most of all it has much better depth of detection on larger gold than my old Fisher Gold Bug 2, and so I'm hoping to eke some deeper nuggets out of some areas, especially some of those places that also have lots of iron trash. I went to Crow Creek Mine near Anchorage, Alaska. A good local site, but hammered by detectors over the years. It's getting to where you have to dig to find nuggets with a detector rather then just scan the surface. Excavating slowly into an area and checking the material with the detector as you go pays off more often now. I wanted to try several things. My first plan was to use the Sierra Gold Max coil to carefully scan areas that have been detected before, hoping to find a larger nugget down just a bit deeper than others may have detected. A real long-shot at Crow Creek, but I try it now and then. The reason I say it is a long-shot is that pennyweight plus nuggets are pretty rare at Crow Creek anyway, and betting someone missed them in the heavily searched areas is a poor bet indeed. But you never know unless you try. There was still a lot of snow at the mine, so I spent the first half of the day with the big coil hitting south facing slopes. The going was as steep as I could handle, and my chest mount setup was welcome. It was steep enough I would find decent footing, then scan in all directions as far as I could reach. Keeping the weight off my arm was a big plus. But a half day of this mountain goat detecting revealed not a single nugget. Area #1 at Crow Creek Mine, early spring My arm got tired, and so I put the stock DD coil back on and headed for a little flatter ground. There are lots of brushy areas at Crow Creek that are relatively open right after the snow melts off, but which will be jungle-thick after the new brush grows up in a few weeks. I worked in among the alders hoping for a nugget. The whole area was stripped with hydraulic giants, but the brush has dropped a couple inches decomposed organic cover over the old tailings. Trying to detect through this couple inches of cover means little chance of hitting small gold, but again I was hoping for a larger nugget. But except for a few bullets and some foil, again no gold. There is still too much snow in the underbrush, however, so I'll try some more in a couple weeks. The GMT worked extremely well with the large coils, and the automatic ground balance worked well at maintaining smooth performance, especially in the organic material and roots in the underbrush area. Extra large coils often have more problems with ground mineralization, and the automatic ground balance looks like the best way to go with the largest coils. Here is a picture of my tools for the day. My GMT is modified for chest mount use, and so it looks a bit different than the unit most are used to. Since the GMT is not normally convertible to a chest mount I did the conversion myself - details here. I almost always use headphones. My favorite pick for rough terrain is the Hodan walking pick, as its extra long handle is great on hills and for crossing streams. I have a super magnet clamped on the digging head to suck nails out of the ground while I dig. And for finding those little nuggets quickly I always have a nugget scoop stuck in my back pocket. The spare coils go in my rucksack with the camera, bug dope, first aid kit, and snacks. I usually have at least one spare coil along when detecting. Don't forget those coil covers. Steve's White's GMT, converted to chestmount By now it was 3:30 PM and I still had no gold to show. My answer for this in the past has been to use my Gold Bug 2 with small coil and scrape into some pay layers. I saw some likely areas in all my prospecting throughout the day, and so I figured it was time to really give the little 6" prototype coil a workout. I've long wanted a small coil for the Goldmasters, and my getting my hands on this experimental small coil was instrumental in my purchasing the new detector. The first couple spots I tried did not reveal any gold, but the third had a nice little clay layer, and after a few minutes I found my first nugget with my new GMT. In less than two hours I excavated 10 nuggets from the layer, the largest just under a pennyweight, and the smallest a half grain. The ground is very moderate at Crow Creek, and I had no problem running the gain maxed out. I ran the SAT at minimum, and audio boost on. The coil was smooth and quiet, in fact surprisingly so, considering how high I had the sensitivity set. The big thing about the GMT is the auto ground balance. It works very well, but it really tunes out small nuggets fast when trying to pinpoint them. As long as I scanned it would hit the nuggets just fine on the first pass, but they would tend to fade when trying to zero in on them. I played with both manual balance and automatic quite a bit. It proved easier to just use manual while working a small area like I was, rather than switching back and forth. Switching is very easy, however. Just squeeze the trigger switch and the ground balance "locks" at it's current setting. It would all depend on the ground as to what might be the best method. Close up of White's GMT converted to chest mount I found earlier in the day that the automatic would tend to tune out hot rocks and iron targets to varying degrees. As long as the sweeps are wide and the system is getting an average ground reading it signals well on targets. Then when zeroing in on them they tend to fade in distinct ways depending on what the items are. I still need more time with the detector, but I felt like I could sense differences in the way hot rocks, iron trash, and gold responded with the automatic ground balance engaged. It is an extremely fast automatic ground balance, much faster than others I have used, and so it seems to have some interesting properties of its own. I'm looking forward to working with it more. All in all I ended up feeling the automatic ground balance is well worth having on the GMT, and there are times when I would really like it, particularly when hunting larger gold with the large coils. But at the same time it is very nice to be able to run the GMT in manual balance mode if desired. In moderate ground manual tuning works just fine, and for the tiniest gold I think it is mandatory to be able to manually tweak the ground balance. This is especially handy if you want to run with a slightly positive balance, which is impossible to do with most automatic units. The bottom line is you get the best of both worlds with the GMT. Thanks, White's! In any case, I found the small coil to be extremely effective, and very much on par with what I've learned to expect from my Gold Bug 2 with small coil. The most remarkable thing about the little coil was how stable it was. I rubbed it and knocked it with nary a false signal. I can see that this little coil is going to get a lot of use in the future, as it's ideal for the normal Crow Creek "dig and detect" method. I hope White's produces a coil like this for the Goldmasters, and am just thrilled that I have one to play with. Steve's first gold found with White's GMT So here is the gold. The smallest nuggets are .5 grain, .9 grain, 1.6 grain, and two at 2.1 grains. The largest is 23.4 grains and the next 18.2 grains. Total weight 64 grains, or about 2.5 pennyweight. Not bad for my first outing with a new detector, and a good start to a new detecting season. And now that I've located some new areas to detect at Crow Creek I can't wait to get back and find some more gold! Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2002 Herschbach Enterprises

It sure is nice to know gold miners who own bulldozers! My nugget detecting buddy Jeff and I made a very successful and enjoyable trip to the Fortymile country of Eastcentral Alaska last year. Check out the story here. Judd and Gail had invited us to come back and now with summer waning I figured we had better get with the program. I had mentioned to the miners that my father is a pilot with a Cessna 206. But imagine my surprise when I contacted the Judd and was told "I built you an airstrip"! It seems Judd had been thinking about it for some time, and so all of the sudden we had the ability to pop up for a short weekend visit rather than having to travel overland like before. Judd's brother actually made the first landing on the airstrip with a Super Cub so we were to be the second plane into the new strip. I contacted my father and set the trip up. Luckily he is always game for adventures to new places, and I was surprised to find he had never been in the Fortymile over the years. So he was raring to go, and Jeff was certainly in for another try! So finally the day came and I picked Jeff up and drove out to meet my father out at Big Lake. We left under cloudy skies, and the weather through the passes was questionable. But we decided to just go and see. Our route pretty much followed the Glenn Highway east out of Anchorage heading up past Matanuska Glacier. Sure enough, as we approached the top of the pass at Gunsight Mountain the clouds were down on the ground. But there is an airstrip at Gunsight Mountain Lodge next to the highway, so we set down and walked over to the Lodge to wait. Finally the clouds lifted enough to let us through and we were on our way. Fortymile River near mouth of Napoleon Creek The weather cleared on the other side of the pass, and by the time we got to the town of Chicken, Alaska on the Taylor Highway it was sunny, blue skies. Chicken is an old mining town and is still surrounded by active mining claims. The first thing you see driving into Chicken is the Goldpanner Gift Shop & RV Park that forms the hub of the basic supply center for the area. It is the only place you can get gas, diesel, and propane in Chicken. There is plenty of RV parking at this site. George is still actively mining the area, and is a large-scale heavy equipment operator. There is a big pile of paydirt stacked up next to the store where you can pan for gold free of charge. Make sure you stop by and visit if you are in the area. Another place to visit is the Chicken Gold Camp which features the old Pedro gold dredge along with gold panning, RV Park, cafe, gift shop, and more. Also nearby is "downtown Chicken" which is Greg and Sue Wiren's bar, gift shop, cafe, and salmon bake. We landed at the Chicken airstrip to redistribute our load before heading into the mine. As we came in to land we circled over the Chicken Creek mining operation, and I was able to get a photo of the operations. The ground is opened up and overburden piled to the sides. This will be used later to cover over the mined area as part of the recovery process. The ground is mined in a very methodical fashion. A strip of ground is being excavated moving to the right in the photo, and the recovery system is set up to dump tailings into the previous strip of mined ground. All the water is recirculated so there is no discharge into the creek. The gold at Chicken is quite small, but it is relatively consistent and so production is fairly reliable. A very professional operation. Commercial gold mining on Chicken Creek, Alaska We departed Chicken and made the short hop over to the mine. The approach up the river and then up into the short side valley left little room for error. I did not like the looks of it in that if we missed our approach there was barely enough room to power back up out of the little valley. Dear ole' Dad seemed unconcerned, however. His main worry was the actual condition of the strip itself. Since it was so new there might be soft spots or large rocks to cause trouble as we touched down. But the landing was rather anticlimactic. We just glided on in and landed with plenty of room to spare. We taxied over to park and got out and met Judd and Gail. These are some of the nicest folks in the world. Judd and Gail have mined in the Fortymile for many years, and have what is truly a family mining operation. Judd operates the equipment but is also a mechanic par excellence and keeps the equipment in prime running condition. All his equipment looked in fine condition compared to some of the worn out stuff I've seen some miners using. Gail is truly a "miner Mom" who keeps the whole operation running by tending the books and very often by also running the backhoe. Sons Derek and David also help out, and so the family truly represent what small Alaskan mining operations are all about. Hard working families earning a living from the land in the middle of Alaska's wild country. They have found many large nuggets, including a 17 ounce whopper that Judd located with a Fisher Gold Bug detector in the course of mining. Judd keeps a detector on his bulldozer to help decide where and how much farther to excavate. The gold they find is like much of the gold in the Fortymile. It is in very smooth, well-worn nuggets yet they are thick and generally weigh much more than one would guess. Most of the gold has little or no quartz in it. The gold makes great jewelry because it is so clean. Plane on the strip and From left: Derek , yours truly, Gail, David, and Judd We visited awhile, but as we only had a couple days we were chomping at the bit to go find a little gold. Both my father and Jeff were sporting the Tesoro Lobo SuperTRAQ and I had my Minelab SD2200D. From my experience the year before I had settled on the Coiltek 14" mono coil as my favorite search coil. It seems to hit pretty small nuggets and yet have very good depth of detection. Many people consider this to be one of the better coils for the Minelab detectors. Jeff and my father were both initially running the round 11" DD accessory coil on the Lobos. We headed up the hill to the old bench deposit workings. A bench deposit is a remnant of old stream channel materials deposited in an earlier era when the stream has not eroded down as far into the underlying rock. So bench deposits are above the current stream level, sometimes hundreds of feet higher. They can also be deposits laid down by other streams that ran in different directions than the current stream channel, and so they can be very unpredictable. When in gold country, any gravels exposed at any elevation above the current stream should be examined with a metal detector. These areas hold great potential, as their distance from water means they were difficult to work, and were often overlooked. Only the richest bench deposits could be worked in the early days. We were all pretty excited to hit the bench as we knew there was gold there from the summer before. But this time I guess I was not playing fair. The ground there is fairly mineralized, and although the Lobo is a good detector, it simply was no match for my Minelab SD2200D with 14" coil. PI (pulse induction) detectors are at their best in mineralized ground as they are less affected than standard nugget detectors by the ground conditions. PI detectors are also able to effectively employ much larger search coils, which gives an added advantage on larger gold. Now, Jeff is a very competent detectorist and he has at many times in the past found more gold than I on our trips together. But in this case I had him hopelessly outclassed equipment-wise. The gold on the bench seemed to be just barely out of reach of the Lobos 11" coils yet readily within reach of the 14" coil I was sporting. Jeff reported that the nuggets he was finding were barely discernible, while the ones I found rang loud and clear. But what really demoralized Jeff was that after he had carefully detected a chunk of ground I could just walk over and find nuggets deeper down he had missed. While he and my father both found a few nuggets, I was getting the lions share. Jeff actually finally just sat down and watched me, which I have never seen him ever do. I felt kind of guilty and tried to cheer him into keeping at it, but he just gave up! I ended up with about a dozen nuggets weighing around an ounce total. The largest nugget was 7.3 pennyweight or just over 1/3 ounce (20 pennyweight per troy ounce). Jeff searching the bench, and 7.3 dwt nugget found with SD2200D The next day started out a bit foggy but the fog soon burned off to reveal a beautiful fall day. We spent the day wandering all over the place exploring and detecting. We had to stop and visit the current mining cut, but Judd reported they were not into very good gold at the moment. We detected around in the immediate area looking for nuggets that had been missed. I did come up with one in particular that was buried dead center under a rather good-sized rock. I was quite impressed with that one... the SD2200D just saw right through the mineralized cobble to see the nugget below. A very amazing metal detector indeed. Judd was running the dozer while Gail used the backhoe to feed their new recovery system. Judd built it himself and it is quite the little unit. All self-contained and easy to move around, with a cute little monitor mounted over the tail end of the sluice to help blast tailings away as they build up. Quite the efficient setup and Judd seemed quite justifiably proud of it. I got a kick out of watching Gail run the equipment as she is simply not what people envision when they imagine an Alaskan gold miner running heavy equipment! We gave the few nuggets we found to Judd and Gail as anything in the current mining area is their paycheck. Gail with the equipment, and portion of creek recovered from previous mining operations Like most mining in Alaska today the operation recycles it's water and the ground is recontoured and planted after mining is completed. The lower portion of the creek is very much like a park, with open grassy fields interspersed with small ponds. Alaska's fast growing brush has begun to pop up everywhere and in a few years this will all be very grown over. I kind of like it the way it is right now... very open and pretty. It's perfect moose pasture, and they are often seen wading in the ponds, probably enjoying the respite from the mosquitoes afforded by the open areas. Of course, being the nutty detectorist I am, all I can think of when I see an area like this is the many nuggets that were probably reburied and are now beyond the reach of my metal detector. In fact the detecting here is very limited by the fact that so much of the ground has been recovered. There are some very old bench workings along one side of the creek, where many rocks have been laboriously stacked by hand. We had found a few nuggets here before, and so we switched to small coils to search to exposed bedrock. My father had wandered off down the creek to the Fortymile River in search of some fishing. I was having no success at all but it was very nice out, in fact, it was almost too hot in the direct sun. Derek was with Jeff and they were working up the hill way above me up near the brush line. All of the sudden I hear some whooping from Derek. Jeff had come up with a good-sized nugget! I wandered up into their immediate area and tried around the bushes, and finally found a small nugget. Nothing to brag about, but I certainly was in no position to complain. I like to see everybody finding gold so that we are all having a share of the action. At this point I was as happy to see my father and Jeff finding the gold. And so the day continued, with a nugget here and a nugget there, but no real bonanzas. We tried some more old workings up near the cabin as the light finally began to fade. I finally tired of the mosquitoes which tend to really come out after the sun set. So I wandered back into the cabin. Jeff and my father had worked up an old side channel behind the cabin, where the mosquitoes were particularly ferocious. I figured they could just go have their fun without me! Dad finally wanders in and I ask him how he did. He holds out his hand and drops a 1/2 ounce nugget into my hand! I could not believe it. He had been running the Tesoro Lobo with the small 7" elliptical coil as he decided he really did not like the 11" coil. The small coil gives sharper signals and works in nooks and crannies better. This was fortunate as when he worked up into the gully he found a little pocket in the bedrock. Getting the coil down in there produced the signal, and out popped the nugget. It is a very nice elongated piece that he has since had made up into a pendant for one of our relatives down south. I had taken a picture of it for this story, but have been unable to locate the photo so far. I hope to add it here in the future. In any case, it turned out to be the big nugget of the trip, as we had to leave the next morning. My father ended up with big nugget bragging rights literally at the very last minute. He ended up having this nugget made into a pendant for my cousin Rosie. Bud's half ounce nugget on chain, and Steve's nuggets from trip While Jeff did well, I had found the bulk of the weight for the trip. I ended up with 31 pennyweight or just over 1.5 ounces of nice chunky nuggets. The largest was the 7.3 pennyweight piece. Together with my gold from the previous summer I have 3.5 ounces of Fortymile gold. It really is pretty stuff, and remarkably heavy compared to the gold I am used to finding over the years. The 31 pennyweight is all in just 21 nuggets. Their thickness and lack of quartz makes them add up faster than gold from many other sites in Alaska. I'd like to say it was because I'm such a hot detectorist that I found the most nuggets, but this was truly a case of my "cheating" by having superior equipment for the particular conditions. If the goal is big gold nuggets in heavily mineralized ground, nothing beats the Minelab SD/GP series of detectors. But as my father proved once again, any detector can find the gold, and nothing pays off like perseverance! Steve's nuggets from last two trips (about 3.5 oz total), all found with Minelab SD2200D detector We said our goodbyes the next morning, once again thankful for the warm Alaskan hospitality shown us by this remarkable Alaskan family. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2001 Herschbach Enterprises For more information on the Fortymile Mining District, get Gold Placers of the Historical Fortymile River Region by Warren Yeend.

August is the month when I think about prospecting in the high country. The snow has usually melted out of the upper elevations about as far as it is going to. The days will be getting cooler by September, and by the end of September fresh snow will be falling. I've always dreamed of finding my own vein of gold. You know, that big quartz vein with the seams of gold laced through it! I've spent almost no time actually looking for that dreamed of vein, however. Genuine prospecting takes extreme amounts of time and real dedication on the part of the prospector. It's also a real long-shot. I've known several old prospectors who spent their entire lives looking for the big strike without finding it. So I've always concentrated on mining gold as opposed to prospecting for it. Prospecting is looking for something that has not been found yet. Mining is getting it out of the ground once it's been found. I've concentrated on known producing locations because I've always had limited amounts of time to spend. The thought of genuine prospecting is never far from my mind, however, and I have been working towards several projects. The secret of successful prospecting is to put the odds as much in your favor as possible. Simply wandering around in the hills is a true waste of time for all but the most lucky of prospectors. Luck is great, but helping it along with knowledge is a very good idea. First, you need a goal, one that is realistically possible. One particular interest of mine has been the application of metal detectors in prospecting for lode (hardrock) gold and other conductive metals. There is plenty of gold in Alaska, so the thought of finding it is realistic. The old timers were quite good at what they did, but Alaska is large and there remain many areas that need further prospecting. And since the old-timers did not have electronic prospecting at their disposal, new methods might reveal deposits that might otherwise have been overlooked. Views in Hatcher Pass, Alaska (Willow Creek Mining District) Spending time getting proficient with metal detectors and other tools of the trade is high on the list of things a person needs to do to be successful. I've been doing just that for many years, and learning about the latest technology keeps me busy. It's a bad idea to get too comfortable with a particular way of doing things when it comes to technology. Advances are constantly made that make old ways of doing things obsolete. Keeping up with the latest detectors and how they work seems like a full-time job. Second, lots of reading. The books about detecting are important to my particular requirements, but of more general use are books about lode deposits and how they are formed. Certain rock types are associated with gold lodes, and learning what these rocks are and how to identify them is very important. Narrowing down the search by studying up on known mining districts will help the most. If you are going to look for gold or other minerals, putting yourself in a region where they have found before raises your odds tremendously. You already know the area has the right geology, so the goal is to find deposits that have been overlooked so far. And third, the subject of this story. I believe making exploratory trips to examine known deposits to be one of the best learning tools available. Actually getting in the area of new or old mines, looking at the ground, and looking at the deposits themselves really helps translate all the book knowledge into reality. I like to look at a mine and try and figure out ''why did they decide to dig here''? It also gives me a chance to try out my detectors to find how they will work with real ore samples, and what kind of problems I might face. I called my friend Ben and asked if he was interested in going up to Hatcher Pass north of Anchorage to detect for lode gold. He was all for it, and had an old White's Goldmaster II, so we met up and headed for the hills. The skies were overcast but the clouds were high, so it looked like weather would be no problem. And in fact, the weather improved later in the day. Old mine portal (caved in) and rail system for dumping waste material We hiked up to the vicinity of some old mines, keeping our eyes open for quartz. The gold at Hatcher Pass is pretty classic stuff, with slightly rusty quartz being what you are looking for. We found some small test pits, and I showed Ben my method for checking quartz samples. I tend to cheat while scanning quartz float for gold. Float is quartz that has traveled, or ''floated'' away from the original vein. In many cases you may be dealing with sub-grain particles of gold scattered through the quartz. The ground conditions around hardrock mines are usually not the best for working the detectors at high gain/sensitivity settings. So I run the smallest coil for the detector, then jack all the settings full up. I pick up the quartz samples and rotate them around on the bottom of the upside down coil. This takes a bit of practice with the Fisher Gold Bug 2 or White's Goldmasters as you must keep your hand away from the coil. But I've found I can extend my fingers and roll the suspect quartz around on the coil. Some of the gold enclosed is so small that if the quartz chunk is more than a couple inches thick you cannot detect it. So rotating it around to expose all sides is important. Now the trick here is that most any nugget detector will work. But the more sensitive the unit is to small gold, the better the chances on less rich ore. From my personal use I give the Fisher Gold Bug 2 with small 6.5'' coil the nod. The Goldmasters follow-up, mainly because you are stuck with the 10'' coil. I have not tried the Sierra Hot Foot out for this use, but it may be the ticket for the Goldmaster for scanning quartz samples. The Tesoro Lobo ST with small coil is surprisingly hot when used like this, since you can run the sensitivity up into the red zone on the dial. The 3x7 concentric is quite sensitive for a machine running at 17.5 kHz. So it might also be a detector to try for this purpose. Like everything in gold it all depends on what you have for potential targets. For Hatcher Pass, the quartz is relatively pure with enclosed gold. There are some conductive sulphides, but they tend to be with gold also, so no problem detecting them. The gold tends to be small, although rich pieces exist. But the more sensitive the detector is to small gold, the better luck you will have. Rich ore with larger gold will be no problem for most detectors. I recommend anyone considering this method air test their detector with 1 grain or smaller pieces of gold. If you cannot get significant depth on a 1 grain piece of gold then weaker ore will be hard to find. Air testing is valid as I am suggesting you hand manipulate the samples. Now notice I'm not saying any model of detector will not work. I really am not a brand name guy... I'm just reporting what has worked for me. The smart thing to do is test your machine and see if it will do the job. If it works, great! Bench testing will save a lot of field time in this particular area. A side note here. Yes, I have a Falcon Gold Probe. And yes, it is hot as can be on tiny gold. But it really only scans a 1'' wide area at best, and so is not very practical for examining volumes of rock. I use it once I get my or samples home to pinpoint the gold so precisely that I can run my little rock saw through the right spot to get good cross sections showing gold. Ben detecting hillside below old mine We started finding and scanning quartz as we wandered up the hill towards the old mines. I finally found some quartz that gave a signal, and saw a bit of gold in the piece. In the pack it went. More patient work revealed more pieces of ore for my backpack. Ben seemed to be having a hard time with his detector. It appeared to have a short in the wiring somewhere. But beyond that, much of the gold I was detecting was just slightly too small for him to get a good signal with the Goldmaster. The Gold Bug 2 has a definite edge with it's small coil. This did not surprise me, as I have used the Goldmaster units for this before, and had migrated to the Gold Bug 2 to get that extra edge. We finally got up to some old mine shafts and wandered around checking out the old portals and various remnants of the old mining operations. One thing that impressed me was the amount of rock that had rolled down off the mountain in the years since the mining took place. The upper slopes are obviously not very stable, and large rocks littered the old mining sites. We looked in a few old tunnels, but stayed out of them. It's never a good idea to go into these old mines. The safety standards of the day were minimal, and the supports, if any, have weakened over the years. It's not worth your life to chase a few ore samples inside these old mines. We did find a few more pieces of gold bearing quartz around the old portals. The day was getting late and so we finally decided to head back to my truck. I had a dozen good ore samples to show, and once again was very happy with my Gold Bug 2 for this kind of work. Ben also liked what he saw, and decided he would have to have one also. Steve's gold ore samples from trip Going down is much easier than going up, and we were back at the truck in no time. The weather had cleared considerably, and we enjoyed a nice drive back to town under sunny skis. Please 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. See my previous story on Detecting for Lode Gold at Hatcher Pass for more information. ~ Steve Herschbach Copyright © 2001 Herschbach Enterprises

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