1515Art

The spot farther up the canyon sounds like very interesting ground indeed, if you camp out up there for the night with the big cats roaming around don’t forget to bring the dog and gun for under your pillow😀.

Cool about seeing fresh cat tracks I was mountain biking in the Santa Cruz mountains in Northern California one afternoon I just finished a long climb and cresting the top of the hill found myself face to face with a big cat just standing in the middle of the trail. As soon as I spotted him I got off my bike a made myself look a big as possible as we stood there eyeing each other he was at a distance of roughly 50 feet from where I stopped my bike. Eventually after 15 - 20 seconds that seemed much longer he just slinked off into the brush, i on the other hand decided to end my ride and quickly turned my bike around for a hasty retreat downhill.

Thanks, you are absolutely right it’s all about the learning, I get a wealth of information from every little mystery I find. Being new learning the geology, reading maps... and I believe I’m in good company I read frequently similar questions and concerns, I can look through the pages and pictures in my mineral guide and some of it translates for me in the field, but like anything else the devil is in the details and years of practical hands and eyes on experience or good and patient teachers are essential to read and understand the story to the right ending when comparing what I find vs my books. Thankfully the help here plays a big roll in filling that gap in knowledge with access to so many great teachers making it possible for someone new like me to have a chance at finding some success in a reasonable amount of time. so, the last mystery didn’t need XRF the experts were right as always😀 this is metal trash from mining. Before taking it any further testing by cleaning off the rust revealed an earth like man made curve not found in debris from space at least none that I know of in Pahrump, NV. My guess is they were both little chunks from the same axle or shaft that exploded under the load of mining by the shape and curve.

Thanks Mitchel and Fred, it’s probably chunks of iron from some old mining equipment the last one I found out at rye patch tested as an alloy earth like and modern. There is a pawn shop in Santa Clara that will test things anywhere from free to $15 depending on who’s there doing it for you, I’ll be back for a couple weeks an take it in and have them solve the mystery. The only mystery really I’d expect to find a chunk of old iron in the tailing pile curious finding the other buried some distance away looking related, safe money bet is old chunks of iron equipment? Thanks for the feed back and help, see you out there soon. clark P.S. Second thought probably the real mystery is how long it’s going to take me to figure this all out, lol and quit bringing home leaverite.

Well one thing for sure looking at the pictures, I’m not taking very good care of my nails, lol. Grinding off a little edge on one shows nothing but metal and I’m surprised as they looked more mineral? They were found somewhere around 1/4 mile from each other and appear to be of identical material and unique from everything else recovered in the 8 hours detecting the 2 pieces one an inch or 2 down in the middle of nothing far above a wash and the other dug out of a tailing pile several inches down. They are to small to acid etch so guess I’ll XRF one and see what the percentage of Nickel is?

A big thanks, I’ll be joining them too. i probably need a new thread for these but my success ratio on meteor finds has been 0% so first I’ll post my latest mineral pocket hitch hikers from Pahrump area here, no quartz that I can see and they stick like glue to a magnet, not iron scrap but I have no idea...???

Thanks everyone, it feels good to get that first one out of the way after relocating and the drive is a lot closer now so I hope to get out more now. Good luck to all and see you out there!

The top row are all bullet fragments the piece on the second row made it to the pocket but I don’t know what it is. It seems light weight so I discounted it being from space, but being different earned pants pocket status for future testing and research, lol. at the rate I bring home rocks I probably should have bought a bigger yard, at least this one is tiny😀

{ Sounds like a plan I’ve yet to find any space rocks so far I’ve just found rocks that are taking up space. I sent in an application to GSSN last week and I’ll probably go to their meeting on the 6th to introduce myself and check thing out. I was doing a little research on GPAA but I’m seeing a mix of reviews so I think I need a little more research before buying in.

I was running the 7000 hot as I could maxed no filters normal hi yield semi auto SP1 enhancer, this was a soft sweet signal that finally sounded like something other than surface trash down about 4” on a hillside just above a wash in what i latter learned is a heavily pounded old patch with little left to give. It came out in one piece looking rusty and worthy of tossing aside except it was not magnetic so I began scraping, chewing and bending. Yellow began to emerge and that’s when I should have slowed down except it looked more like pyrite to me so I kept working at it and I was surprised it only bent a little before breaking, looking at it now it appears spongy and that may be why it broke the way it did. I’m not actually 100% convinced yet that it’s gold seems like it could be perhaps mixed with something else? This would be the first piece in a new area for me and I’m unfamiliar with hmmm the gold there and host rock and well everything. I was finding a lot of lead and bullet fragments so it seems there should still be more although today only the one (now it’s 4) for me, if in fact it really is gold and not mostly pyrite or something. my scale is in Santa Clara so I don’t know the weight?

I’ve looked at them closer and ground windows into them just for a better look at the structure and no doubt in my mind I’ve found a couple of very fine extremely common earth rocks. I’m learning ... slowly. Thanks for the help and tips and until my next great find may it be more of a challenge, really they should be getting closer with each try right, lol???

Yep, thanks... more rocks and probably won’t be the last undeserving mineral getting a free pocket ride from me, 😆.

I hoped you’d chime in on this and well I didn’t think they were but I kept trying to talk myself into it the two small ones have a lot of iron in them and attract a magnet like a piece of metal, but did streak lightly blackish brown, the large one initially left a light brown mark that could have been just from the surface then it was hard to leave a mark after a few passes on my tank lid, so I had to ask because obviously don’t know what I’m doing? Eventually I find one out there and the difference will be obvious, it’s hard to go by pictures cause there’s always one you can find to create doubt in my own mind if I look to long, lol.

And turn on the light, lol 😂 the lucky part is in a couple more days be just a memory. Something around the edge of each step would make them easier to see i could also change the soldier course to a different color stone that would help. I need a tile guy anyway for some other work I’ll do it then.

Been going back and forth to the new place in Las Vegas setting up all the little things that need to be done to move in and flying back and forth on frontier’s Special rates sometimes for as little as $15 one way the only catch is you can only take a little personal bag with you on the airplane. Got tired of renting a car and not having any prospecting gear so I loaded up the Jeep and drove it down for a longer stay and a planned first hunt. Friday had everything ready and my Jeep fully loaded for an early start in the morning, that evening I headed out the front door no shoes or shirt to check the mail box and in the dark missed the edge of the front step rolled my foot and did a summersault down the front steps praying I was going to be able to walk when this was over as I watched the world spin around me out of control. When I came to a stop laying there foot throbbing I summoned up the courage to raise up and put weight on the injured limb, painful but I could hobble, I downed a few Alive and met friends for dinner at an all you can eat seafood buffet my foot still hurting but slowly improving. Next morning after warming up and more Pills I’m limping but feeling like things are worth a try and head out the door for the little over 2 hour drive to gold basin, Arizona from my house. By the time I got there after a few stops and marking my claim borders on the gps my hunt started around 7:30AM navigating the wash with my hurt foot a challenge and my detector kept signaling on my metal free Keene boots? Turns out the pair I’d grabbed and threw in the Jeep I’d used pulling up carpet puttin in a new wood floor and both shoes had a dozen or more staples stuck in the bottom, without pliers I got all but one tiny piece out of the bottom of my shoes the little staple end stuck in the bottom of the shoe on my hurt foot interfering every time I forgot it was there. Learning a new place I learned where not to hunt but I felt good about my detector small targets were slamming and I’m sure I’d have heard the gold if I’d been over any by around 2 in the afternoon my left knee was hurting as much as my right foot from taking up the slack walking uneven terrain and standing up from digging that I decided to call it a day and I’d accomplished my goal of some exercise and finding the place to hunt. As I was directing the 7000 around the area I kept 3 rocks that hit hard on the gpz, the two smaller very magnetic the larger magnetic but less than the little ones. The smallest roughly 130g on a little analog food scale the larger around 230g and the large stone (?) somewhere between 5 and 10#’s I’d guess for both pieces found several feet apart from each other. looking at other examples on the web they seem to hit the correct marks, any thoughts? Just earth rock or did I get lucky?