Thank you Steve that's super helpful.
Yes the area we're in is not claimed and wide open. I couldn't find any reports of gold being found on this creek. We were panning up there last weekend and found a decent amount of fines. I ended up leaving the gold cube at home this weekend, I figured better safe than sorry.
So I read this section:
(ii) Prospecting and sampling which will not cause significant surface resource disturbance and will not involve removal of more than a reasonable amount of mineral deposit for analysis and study which generally might include searching for and occasionally removing small mineral samples or specimens, gold panning, metal detecting, non-motorized hand sluicing, using battery operated dry washers, and collecting of mineral specimens using hand tools;
I read this as a "No" on the gold cube since it's a motorized battery sluice & I would assume pulling 5 gallon buckets from the river would be considered an "unreasonable" amount of dirt for analysis of mineral deposits?
Thanks again,
green