oldmancoyote1

There are things that can be said, but i must say that I have no specific knowledge of gold related to the paleo-lakes and the ensuing floods. It occurs to me that gold-bearing stream discharges from mountains ringing the lake would form deltas where they reached the shores. When the lake drained, much of this sediment would be eroded away. As these deltas would be at the edges of the lakes, they might escape catastrophic erosion and leave some gold behind. This is an exploration concept not a prediction. Sometimes exploration concepts are profitable. Often they are not. Without specific knowledge of discharge-related gold occurrences you'd probably do better ignoring the floods and seeking an exploration concept related to a known traditional gold occurrence.

Consider renting ground penetrating radar. You can get a simple system for about $100/day with a $100 prep fee (look on-line). Shipping and insurance are extra. There are useful videos on-line to help you understand and interpret it, but there would be a significant learning period before renting. You would also have to convince the rental agency that you are responsible. All in all this would require a significant effort to make this happen, but it is in the range of possibility for an amateur.

I have only seen about 1/2 square feet of gold film. I think the odds are way too low. There isn't enough sulfide to yield much gold.

Locally, it's pyrite that usually forms an iron stain or lumps of iron oxides, but the situation is very complicated. Example: Some of the local pyrite contains a little gold. When the pyrite oxidizes, it forms an acid. If there is some manganese present and some salt (often the case in black shales), any gold may go into solution. The gold can then precipitate as very thin films on shale or as valuable spongey pocket gold. I don't really know how to judge which is the case without digging up the shale. After digging up a lot of oxidized pyrite without any visible gold, I have given up metal detecting the local black shale.

Sulfides are very common in shales. Oxidized sulfides often resemble gold when viewed with a metal detector.

If your metal detector does not find anything up hill, consider panning looking for gold of any size including dust-size.

Do check the slope up hill for a pocket gold deposit. There's lots of info on this on the web.

Can't tell from the photos. I think I see some cubic forms. If so, it may be pyrite. Crush a small piece. If it crushes to a powder, pyrite is most likely. If it deforms like lead, it's likely gold.

One sometimes useful way to anticipate tech advances is to look at the extreme high-end hardware and software packages for big money uses like military, shallow ground investigations for engineering, and maybe archeology and geology. I haven't looked at this stuff for several years, but the thing that did impress me was graphics especially map views and 3-D representation of the sub-surface. As hardware become cheaper and the software more sophisticated, some of this will come our way.

Mary Hill wrote a booklet Hunting Diamonds in California. A geologist I met who specialized in conventional diamond geology said he searched the pit Hill mentioned and found no indication of diamonds. The diamonds found in California apparently are not from kimberlite pipes as found elsewhere. Looking for a pipe would not be a very promising approach. Your best chance would be exploring a pit using an ultraviolet light after dark. I should mention that rattlesnakes can fluoresce too.

Azurite(blue) and Malachite(green) are two rather soft copper minerals with stunningly pure bright colors. They are relatively common and not that expensive. You could moderate their intensity by mixing some white or black mineral powder. They tend to form acids when wet, so seal them well. Show a picture of your work as I do woodworking too.

Nice gold. Consider making one of Two Toe's hooked probes (see his youtube videos) made from a windshield wiper arm. I find it gives a lot more control than a screwdriver tool when extracting gold from cemented gravel adjacent to bedrock.

Thanks

You have had a lot of success over the years. I imagine you have found some wonderfully large masses of gold. Think about each of those for a few moments, especially those in the lower 48. Does anything appear as a common feature of their locations? Surely not everything would fit the same mold, but was there anything present frequent enough to indicate one location might be a little bit more likely to yield big gold than another? Thanks