Reno Chris

There is a lot of trash up there - plenty. SO I had no idea what the targets were beforehand. Only in the case of the few where I was down 5 or 6 inches did I expect it to be gold. However one of those pieces was right on the surface - I moved the surface pine needles away to start digging and the target moved. I recovered it anyway even though 99% of surface targets are trash - but it was gold!

I had a good summer this year and found a new patch a general area that I have worked for years. The gold is still out there to be found by those folks who know what they are doing.

I have no idea what is going on with the ICMJ - although several have asked me. The truth is that magazines and newspapers are not what they were in the culture of my youth. Lots of niche magazines which were highly profitable 30 and 40 years ago are gone. The internet has captured the attention of people and watching a video means you don't need to do the work of actually reading. I left the ICMJ about 2 years ago, about 9 months after Josh took over. I had penned over 300 articles in my time and was getting burned out. I have some good years left but I won't be able to prospect the hills and mountains forever and wanted to just enjoy my time more. There were plenty of times in the past that I wanted to go prospecting but to meet the deadlines, I stayed home to write. Leonard Melman left before I did but he was well into his 80s, so that was to be expected. He has since passed on. It is a shame that it appears the ICMJ is going to be allowed to die. I had strong doubts about Josh when he bought the magazine, but I wont say any more than that. I talked with some other folks I knew who knew Josh better than I did, and they were even more skeptical. Along with the decline of newspapers and magazines, there is a lack of youth coming into the area of prospecting interest. Young guys want to play video games and just not that many are interested in getting out and learning to find gold. The GPAA has cancelled their gold shows for lack of attendance and dealers - but even before they did, I could see the average age of the attendees was over 60, and the number of young guys was a trickle in comparison. The old guys already owned what prospecting equipment they wanted, and were not making a lot of purchases. This meant the dealers were not selling enough to make things worthwhile. The ICMJ has, in part, fallen victim to that problem too - old subscribers die and there are few new ones to replace them. I stayed in the prospecting game when the price of gold fell from $800 an ounce to $300 and languished in that range for years. I will continue to prospect as long as I am able. I am shocked that more interest is not being generated by gold at $2,700. What will it take? $3,000? Maybe $5,000? Who knows.

I am very aware and careful of what shows in the background. Millions of acres of the Sierra Nevada have been burned in the last 10 years and so there are a whole lot of places that look exactly like that.

Because I've detected in that general area before, I know that in a normal winter, it's good to around the end of October. So you are right, my time up there is limited. But if I keep it secret, I should be able to come back next spring and take up where I left off.

It would be tough to get a 4WD car in there. An ATV could get in with some work, and you can put a snow plow on them as well. However, at this point I am loathe to stir up the ground and make tracks into where I am detecting. I am hiking in and its a ways from the truck, so would be hard for someone to follow.

Thanks, and I'll be out there more in the coming month or two and I'm sure to find more.

Its maybe a couple acres - lots of work to hand scrape. Still I may hand scrape a couple small areas where I have found nuggets close together. I have used geology maps and other geology knowledge I have in my head. Plus experience prospecting the general area. This is a general area I have prospected for years, but a new spot within that greater area - so I do have some experience here.

Although If I could scrape 6 inches or a foot off this area I am sure I'd get a lot more gold, earth moving work in California requires an endless series of permits, so I wont be doing that.

Did some research and exploration earlier this year searching for new ground to detect. Struck out with a couple of possibilities, but the third guess yielded a new patch. The discovery first nugget was 6+ grams. This is a general area I have prospected for years, but a new spot within that greater area. I've got 40+ grams so far - but still lots of area that needs exploration.

As noted, John had a great sense of humor and would kid people with no mercy. But he had a thick hide and you could kid him back just as much and he would laugh. He had a lot of adventures, including spending a month under house arrest in Oman. He had permission to hunt meteorites there from the authorities, but apparently not from everyone who might object. He had to buy his way out - in countries like that you can purchase your freedom if you have the money. He hunted gold in Australia, and of course all over Arizona. He had found pounds of gold in Arizona and spent a lot of time detecting there. John loaned some of his gold to Arizona museums to display. This is a tiny, tiny part of the gold he found.

A lot of the Arizona prospectors and other western Prospectors will remember John "Goldmaster" Blennart, AKA "John B.". He passed away last Monday the 11th. I lost another old prospecting friend about a week ago. Enjoy the time you have as none of us are here forever.

Its an old channel and shoreline area that has weathered and much of the overlying gravel washed away. The general area is where some of the old tertiary channels emptied out into the basin lakes of the central valley in CA.

It just depends on the location. There is very little exposed bedrock at this location and what bedrock there is consists of very well weathered rock. There is no hard,outcropping bedrock as with many streams. I have found gold in the old workings that they just missed as well as along the workings but just outside them and in some place where there are no workings within a couple hundred feet. They tested this are and planned where they would work by panning samples of gravel.

I was out again in the same environment and same general area last weekend. The weather was beautiful - and it can be hot this time of year in the lower elevation country, but it was not hot last weekend. There was scattered gold here and there in and around the old workings of the miners. I dug a number of loud, non-ferrous targets, but they were all lead - got over 2 ounces of lead. I got 6.7 grams of gold in 17 pieces. All were dug with the GM 1000 and wireless headphones from Fossickers. The wireless headphones are nice, I should use them more often.