alaskaseeker

Well said Fred, Mexico is a dangerous place, corruption is rampant, you couldn't drag me down there for anything.. Nice gold too. Well done Condor..

Well done Jim..

On our Chisana mining claims there are a few areas that the old timers hydrauliced and of course in the bedrock area the bits were blasted into the cracks and crevices. Steve H and I took many of these bits out of there, our weapon of choice was the hot GB2 with the six' coil.. I I have to admit after a few years it is finally getting a little lean.. Personally this area taught me much about hunting bits.. You can find other areas too that have been scraped to bedrock and I have been given permission many times to have at it, so to say. The Bug is a killer in these areas and it get a little boring. Lol.. I started looking at these bits a little more carefully and I began to understand why you wouldn't hear some of these pieces, but when you disturbed the ground it was zip zip all over again.. You won't find these bits at depth, but looking at the bits you will see they are not round but flat.. Sometimes you missed them because all the detector could see was the edges they couldn't pick up. When you moved the dirt the flats were exposed and presented just enuff mass for a nice little zip.. I met a miner in the 40 mile area years ago and I always chatted with him. One particular area he had mined with his Hoe and D8, bedrock was scraped pretty clean and as far as he was concerned the mineable gold was gone.. He was moving his operation a ways and when he saw me he said the area is yours good luck..... Damn ,damn I thought, A good spot for me , I went over the bedrock slowly and carefully soon I heard what I was listening for.. There was an amount of dirt over the spot and I brushed it away, what I exposed was a beautiful crack in the bedrock that was full of cemented gravel and gold.. I picked out a few small nug and finally when I got most of the gravel out I almost choked, In the bottom was a slug, yikes, when I dug it out, that beauty weighed 1.7 ozs... Boo ya, Not sure I have a photo if I can find one I will post it soon. Tough being in Thailand and posting I don't have many photos only a lot of memories... Ok here’s the slug at the bottom of the crack

The two prominent Trails into the Klondike interior were originated thru Skagway and Valdez Alaska, I guess I had been inadvertently studying these trails for many years, as I was very interested in this Gold Rush, the antics of some of the characters involved and of course the many waypoints they established...After some thought I decided the Chilcoot trail was to far away for me to ever spend much time looking, but the Valdez trail basically came thru my own back yard...I poured over books written by these characters and it was quite an interesting education....I'm not going to get into that part too much as it is a lot to talk about so I will confine this into the area that is close to my home in Copper Center.. The trail came up the Valdez Glacier then turned and followed the Klutina Glacier to the beginnings of the river it formed.. At the bottom of the Glacier was Boulder Camp not much left of that area because the Glacier had receded a lot but you could see why it was called that it truly is a boulder patch. The other camps leading to the main stopping point were pretty insignificant but Sawmill camp, the place where boats were constructed to float the Roiling Klutina River to the Copper was really a relic hunters paradise. However, it is a look and don't touch now as it is part of the massive Wrangel Park.. it took a Super Cub with large tires to fly myself and companions there but we explored took photos and really enjoyed looking at the piles of gear those old timers had packed over the Glacier and left Behind.. Whomwver is interested in knowing more can find a copy of Basil Austins "Diary of. 98er" this particular book has hand drawn maps of campsites etc all the way to the Klondike. I found Basil Austins personal copy in Powells bookstore in Portland Oregon in the 70s ..I almost choked when I picked this book up and started looking thru it..lol I couldn't get to the Check stand quickly enough... Very interesting reading, however keep in mind that most of these sites are off limits as they run smack dab thru this massive park system. I just wanted to point out a few important things about history. If you want to find Things of Old, choose something and research, research, research, it carefully...for myself I spent years doing just that and unexpectedly I found a treasure map in an old bookstore.....the one site I will talk about is very close to my home in Copper Center.. Stampeders walked all over my land, some paid the ultimate price and are resting in the cemetery constructed by their mates very close to the Copper River...Lots of relics I have found are in the little museum on the bypass road in Copper Center, it is a very nice place to visit if you are ever there.. I've spent hours scouring that area listening for a golden whisper that so far has eluded me, I did find 5 coins at one of the sites all dated before 98, I'm happy with that as the Quarter, dime, nickel, and Indian heads hold a special place for me.. Hope you enjoyed my true story.....

Interesting find for sure, not sure why they were holed that way but there was a reason...

Beautiful find....

Lol, I tried this once years ago, I cut a coin almost in half with my pick, interesting for sure but tough, the ground was frozen harder then a W..........s heart ......Good luck..

I have over 900+ books in my library.....

Yes the old timers are gone, I was privileged to meet many of them. Paul was a good friend also, dont know now how he is doing..

Great find Steve, this is a different book, but just as valuable for sure. One trip to Dawson I combined gold hunting and Roadhouse searching.. Dang history is interesting I really enjoyed reading about those stampeders in the winter when I did all of that research.. There was an old bookstore in Anchorage, but my favorite research place was an old bookstore in Portland Oregon.. This was called Powells. The first time I was there, in the Alaska section I found a book I had been looking for, for a long time.. The cost 3.00, bet you can't touch that book now for 100.00.

This is a cool book I stumbled across years ago while doing some research looking for old places to hunt. You cannot believe how many of these places existed all over the State. I managed to find a few that weren't to far from me and there are old coins there and a lot of trash, which led me to make a magnetic rake tool that was very helpful....Books are very important in your research and reading the bibliographies in them will lead you to additional material....

Yes the old timers are gone, I was privileged to meet many of them. Paul was a good friend also, dont know now how he is doing..

Research is a lot better now, because when you run across an interesting piece of info you can take a picture and you have that forever... Libraries and old old history books with maps in them are goldmines..Check them out, take photos and you can research areas that you find that pertain to your interests... Case in point I found a very interesting map with a lot of potential nugget hunting and possibly some coin shooting spots, I wrote this info down thinking I could find these places on modern maps I already had.. Well I discovered that new maps have new names and the old info doesn't exist.. Fortunately for me when I went back to the USGS they happened to have that particular item for sale so I was able to do some transposing with my own copy..You can do this anywhere in the US .In the 70s I used to go in May to this annual treasure meet in Nebraska.. During the winter I used maps and library loan books with maps to locate sites of old near the town where the meet was held.. Dang I thought I was in Silver heaven. OLD MAPS....

Yes for sure, we had a heck of a good time, over the years, hard work and some hard play... I truly would have liked to visit JP in Aust. I'm really glad you got to go. I think JP would have liked Moore Creek but I think they like hunting the wide open spaces ...

Dang there were some early soccer fans there, well done...

Well done, that is a beauty for sure...

JP was camped with Chris and Steve Ghoulson, lol preschool lol I'm 78 now...found a few pieces below the cemetery but don't think much is left that was hammered and hammered again...There was some nice gold found in that area Rich Hill and past was all over that with VLFs, another time another place..

My first pulse unit was a ML 3000, I had carried the unit to Az from Ak without opening the box. I was camped at Decision corners not to far from the old cemetery. Remembering events sometimes taxes you lol, but this was the year that Jonathan Porter came to the US and he was camped not too far away with his group. That evening I charged the big battery and laid everything out for assembly in the morning...After some food and detector assembly my friend and I drove over past the GPAA campground looking for a spot to try out our units. We parked near a metal building and I walked up the hillside towards a flat bench area I had spotted from the road...I made exactly two swings with my detector and I heard this signal sound I will never forget.. Weeee. Oooop lol that's gold for sure, and how could I be so lucky..

Strong, hardy, gold hungry dredgers, iremember a friend and I dug thru over 3' of snow to get a small dredge in the water, didn't have a large area to suck up but after 3 days of hard work we were there, unit in the water, we had even extended the exhaust so we wouldn't kill ourselves.. didn't take long to clean up that spot and I don't think we even had a flyspeck in the cons... Memories (grinning)...

I recently found this photo of myself and The Old Coinshooter, this was taken about 1985 or so. We were discussing some of the out of the way places he had hunted and I was determined to look at some of them myself.. I had my Tek Mk1 along and I did get a chance to do some searching. I still grin to myself thinking about this, I found some dimes that were on edge and some along concrete sidewalks where the multi target tone of this detector was a real killer. That high tone of non ferrous targets really stood out.. You know even now as I think back, as good of luck as I had in other places, where he had hunted I didn't really find a helluva lot (grinning) where he had been. The CM 4 really did a great job for him... RIP Dad I remember you well. ....

BEEP DIG......

The old coinshooter has been gone now for many years (1993) but I remember him very well..he used a CM 3 then, which he just wore out, it was replaced with a brand new Coinmaster 4...I got to hunt with him a few times and it was a pleasure to watch him slowly shuffle along he would stop scan back and forth and either dig or move on, I knew he was listening carefully.. We were hunting together in an old park, lots of targets old steel BCS mostly and other junk.. He called over to me and said what do you think about that? He used one of those old diggers that looked like it was made from conduit with a long narrow point, perfectly stuck on the end was a nice little gold ring..... This person had a ring collection that would choke you, in fact one ring he told me about that he had found was a gents gold piece with a large precious stone, he had taken it to a jeweler that cleaned it for him and I think later he sold it to the jeweler for enough to buy himself a new Ranchero...I tried to hunt with him as much as I could but we lived quite a distance apart and I was just starting to work on preliminary Trans Alaska pipe projects... By the time I could spend time with him he could no longer swing that heavy Whites unit but he liked tagging along with me.. The gold rings he had found were sold but the other pieces he had tied together on a string and there were many.. I haven't looked in the big canvas bank bag he gave me years ago that was almost full of dimes, quarters, halves and a few silver dollars he had found at the old Fairgrounds, parks and old closed country school yards.I .learned a lot by watching how carefully this person hunted, slowly, listening and moving around..He did his homework, a little research and talking to the old timers that stopped by watching him...Who was this person? This Old Coinshooter, I knew him very well, He was my Dad....

Rough emeralds from Columbia have been found after hurricanes on a certain Fla beach. Years ago I was looking thru one of Mel Fishers museums there and during a conversation with one of the employees he told me this story about a lady beachcomber that had brought one there trying to find out what the green stone was she had found... Guess it was a slug.

Beep, dig.....

Use the 3 stage box, and on the side boxes use a good carpet all the way, this will trap the fine gold that is redirected that way...A good book on dredging will discuss the use of undercurrents, etc you want to use every trick to recover the fine gold which will be most of the gold that you will suck up...