Condor

Part II

Wed we got up early and worked our way up our new trail, this time with marking paint to mark not only the route, but at times the exact location for wheel placement.  Off by a few inches in some spots would come a nasty and expensive surprise.  The RZR is slung pretty low and we bottomed out in a number of places, but the low center of gravity kept us gripped to the bedrock at some impressive angles.  We got to within a 1/4 mile of our intended start spot and clambered up the sidewall to an old Desert Bighorn Sheep trail.  We got over to a new wash that contained numerous old drywash zones.  Unfortunately, there was plenty of evidence that someone had been ahead of us by a couple months.  Lots of dig holes.  The Miramar Placers are no big secret among people that prospect Baja, but some of the locations are not obvious without exploration.  I went back to an exposed bedrock area that I had detected on our last trip in 2019.  I had previously spent about 3 hrs on this spot about the size of a basketball court in 2019.  I dug a number of nuggets, many in the half gram range back then with the GPZ.  The GPX6000 made the spot come alive again.  I dug 15 nuggets in about 2 hours, all micro nuggets, some right between my previous dig holes.  The 6000 made the alkali encrusted bedrock more tame, and the micro nuggets were clear and distinct with the absolute minimum Sens.  My detecting partner is still dragging the dinosaur 7000 and watched in wonder.   Total weight day 1 of detecting was 2.6 grams, as I said, all micro nuggets.  My partner managed to scare up one nugget .33 gram.

Thursday, day 2 of detecting my partner was discouraged by all the dig holes and decided not to make to long trek on the sheep trail.  I packed the 6000 into my hunting style fanny pack and made the hike up and over the ridge.  I decided to do what the 6000 does best, hunt the old shallow decomposed bedrock for the squeakers that everyone else had passed by.  I put in a pretty long day and burned a lot of shoe leather but I found gold in nearly every spot that showed bedrock.  Squeakers for sure, but it sure beats the skunk.  I ended up with 10 for the day, some with a little more weight, but certainly nothing up to half gram.  

On my way back to camp I came across this nice full curl ram on a small ridge next to our trail.   I was within 25 yards and he was obviously cautious but did not spook.  I watched for a while and found he was preoccupied with 2 coyotes harassing him.  The ram was using the bluff between him and me to protect his backside and facing the coyotes head on.  Anytime he turned away, one of the coyotes would creep up on him and the other make a faint charge.  The ram seemed healthy enough, but you never know, maybe it was his time.  Baja is a harsh environment, everything is fighting for survival.  

We decided to call it a trip on Fri morning and head back to AZ.  We got to the border at 11:30 am, and spent 2.5 hours in line to cross.  What an ordeal sitting in that endless line of cars, having to try and ignore a steady stream of infirmed, crippled and poor beggars on the street.  Baja is hard on all Gods creatures.  

Baja terrain can be tough to navigate.

Part 1

Spoiler Alert:  Not my personal misadventure this time.

The Covid kept us out of prospecting spots in Baja for over a year now, but we were finally able to give it a go this past week.  Drove down on Monday, smooth sailing through the port at Algodones, although we did have to buy a $35.00 tourist visa.  They stamped our passports and everything, so it's probably legit.  Baja 5 highway is in great shape especially down past San Felipe where is was always under construction from washouts.  We made it to Miramar and 4 wheeled it down the main wash out of sight from prying eyes.  This year we took my Polaris RZR for its maiden trip in rough Baja terrain.  All our trail building in the past was designed for 2 wheeled motor bikes, so we had to make some improvements for the RZR 60" width to get up the wash to the placer zone.  We toted rocks and built ramps to get up on some of the steeper sections and tested our improvements.  Scary, but passable.  In one section I had Dennis hanging off the passenger door frame to counter-balance the rig from sliding off into a deep hole.  Pictures will follow.

We got back to our camp and settled down for some cold ones when we noticed a hiker coming down the wash we had just driven.  A fellow prospector with true pioneer blood.  He had hiked a roundtrip of no less than 15 miles over a span of 4 days with only 2 gallons of water.   He carried an SDC 2300 and a Equinox 800 in a pack that weighed at least 65 lbs.   In desperation he had tried to filter water from a spring far up the canyon, but found it full of alkaline.  He pulled up a chair and downed his fill of fresh water and started in on a couple cold beers with us.  As we talked about his experience he asked "hey, is one of you the Condor", I read your posts, especially the ones about Baja.  We swapped prospector stories till after 8pm when he said he needed to get going.  His vehicle was parked another couple miles downstream in a hidden gulch.  I convinced him to let me drive him down in the RZR and got a chance to use the myriad LED light bars on my rig to light the way.  We found the road he had driven even though he had broomed off his tire tracks.  Well, we got to his parking spot to find nothing but emptiness.  We knew it was the right place because the thief had thrown out the hiker's trash and a gallon of water.  That made for a long night back at our camp, where we drank and cursed the dirty dogs until after midnight.

The next morning we drove back down for a view in the daylight.  The only track was a motorbike track, with one knobby front tire and a nearly slick rear tire.  No tracks or footwear impressions to speak of.  I think the sly dogs had used the hiker's own broom to brush out their own tracks where they would have broken into the car, reconnected the battery cables and hotwired the ignition.  We did a full circle around the area, there are no inhabitants for over 10 rough miles.  The road itself is not suitable for travel for anything but offroad capable vehicles and its just not a stretch of any interest expect for prospectors who know the placer history.  An unlucky day for sure.  

Anyway, the hiker did have a satellite phone and was able to call for a ride.  We futzed around with him most of the day till his ride could get there, so no detecting to speak of that day.  

Part II to follow with 2 full days of detecting.

Now that we're back online I'll share some info from my last adventure.  As with all my adventures it was not without its mishaps, all part of the journey.  

I had read about Zortman somewhere online, then saw a YouTube video from last year.  Then Beatup mentioned having been up there dredging some years back, so I thought I'd give it a go.  The attraction is that you can dredge on the local claims for a fee that runs from free to $20.00 a day.  There are no permits needed because the stream doesn't feed into any gamefish waters.  The stream has an intermittent flow that in places disappears underground.  There is barely enough water to dredge and you need to set up a dike and pond for any real success.   I assembled a small 2" dredge but never had a chance to test it before the trip.  As it turns out the carb on my dredge motor was fouled and I never got it to run.  I watched 2 groups dredging, one with a 4" and one with a 2.5".  They seemed to be averaging about a gram a day.  

Zortman is pretty remote with a population of about 100.  They are well set up with 2 RV campgrounds with full service.  There is a motel of sorts and a variety of cabins and trailers that can be rented.  The general store is well stocked with all the necessities and they have fuel at a reasonable price.  The proprietors/claim owners are super nice people and will go out of their way to make sure everyone has a good time.  Lots of wildlife, we saw deer and turkeys everyday.  There didn't seem to be a problem with bears, the RV campground I was in didn't even use bear proof trash cans.  

My only real success came from detecting.  Some highbankers had worked down to bedrock undercutting the old washed out road.  They were long gone so I detected the bedrock with my new GPX6000.  I first ran the 6k in Auto+ with the speaker on and pulled up 2 quick nuggets.  There really should be no EMI in a place as remote as Zortman, but that speaker setup would get sparky especially if I laid the machine down while digging.  Mosquitos drove me off the first day, forgot the bug spray.  

The next day I came back with bug spray and my in ear monitors instead of headphones.  I cranked the machine up in Auto+ and added the threshold function.  In quiet ground, that is the absolute best setting.  I went over the exact same ground and pulled up 4 more nuggets.  The deepest was probably down 5 inches in a bedrock crack.  The down side is the machine is so sensitive it will find the tiniest of tiny pieces of old ferrous trash.  

I explored around the rest of the claims but really couldn't find any ground not littered with old ferrous trash.  Not a detectors paradise for sure.  The grandkids drove over from Spokane for a few days and we spent some time digging and panning.  Everybody found a few flakes to take home and I salted as many pans as I could to keep the interest up.  

We had a good time, and will probably go back with a functioning dredge next time.  Coming home was when we had near disaster.  I had stopped right near the ID/NV border to let the dog out for a run.  As usual I did a walk around the truck and 5th wheel to check things.  I noticed the drivers side tires on the 5th wheel had some sudden and severe wear patterns, all the way down to the steel belts.  I limped it to the RV park in Jackpot NV and set about to find the problem.  I pulled the worst tire and saw that the brackets for the leaf springs were bent.  There is no repair facility in Jackpot so I thought I could put on the spare tire and limp 60 miles to Wells NV for repairs.  Nope, the spare tire was unusable, heat and age had damaged the sidewalls.  I took the damaged tire to Wells Chevron, the owner mounted a used tire for me to limp the rig in for repair.  The make a long story tolerable, the Wells NV Chevron is tourist RV repair trap.   After 3 trips back and forth from home to Wells in 9 days, the inflated invoice came to $6500.  I paid them $1800 and came away with my RV, we'll leave it at that.  I am a retired federal criminal investigator and my methods are not for the faint of heart.  

It's always an adventure.  I'll start another one soon.  

1 hour ago, Steve Herschbach said:

It was a crazy snowy cold week for sure, and equipment failures sure do not help. In other words, just a normal prospecting trip! It does seem like there are times when nothing goes well, and sorry you are the one that got hit this time Steve.

It's all part of the hobby.  Since I retired from criminal investigations, I need a few challenges and something to outwit.   A certain sense of satisfaction comes of getting through these hardships.  

Which reminds of the most annoying hardship of the whole endeavor.  I forgot to mind the effects of sun and wind and got a bugger of a chapped lip, which turned to a cold sore that seems to replicate itself every couple days.  The worst part is it breaks open and starts bleeding causing my cheapo box wine to taste like copper pennies.   Nothing worse than copper Dago Red wine.   "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome _______" (fill in the blank)

I thought I lost the gold in all the shuffle between vehicles, but here it is.  Just for scale I put 6 of the smallest to get a weight, otherwise individually they won't register.

I am fortunate enough to live close to Steve H when he was otherwise engaged in pressing business, so he loaned me the only existing US GPX 6000.  I loaded up the Toyhauler, RZR, girlfriend and doodle dog for a week or so of detecting at Sawtooth.  Lundy dropped by for a swing or two and we gave the 6000 a pretty good go on some heavily detected patch areas.

GPX 6000 - I won't repeat all the other information already shared by Steve H and Lundy on their views of the 6000.  I had the time to do a little more testing of the other features.

14"DD Coil- I spent most of one day running the DD in the saltiest, most reactive ground I could find.  I found 2 tiny nuggets, depth not more than a few inches.  One thing I noticed on these small targets is too much swing speed and you will flat out miss them.  I'm talking patch cleaning speed, not patch hunting speed.   I'm sure swing speed would not be as critical on bigger nuggets, but these are in the .1 or smaller pieces and a fast swing speed loses them entirely.  It handles the hot ground like a dream, especially if you use the Auto Modes.  There are only 2 DD modes, a cancel EMI mode and a cancel Salty ground mode.  It seems you still have a normal and a difficult setting as well, but I'm not sure of the effect.  I couldn't discern any difference in my short time.  

17"Mono Coil- I think most people are going to want a bungee and swing arm.  It's not the weight particularly, Its the repetitive motion on my feeble joints I felt the most.  The swing arm from my 7000 really takes the pressure of that shoulder joint.  The 17 should do great in normal soils and handled the salty ground remarkably well especially with the Auto features.  I spent another whole day patch hunting with the 17 and I think that back in the Yuma ground it would be the go to, assuming it can handle the EMI from the fighter jet traffic.  

The Speaker- For whatever reason, as has been discussed by JP, the external speaker loads up with EMI noise.  It seems to get better after 30 minutes of run time, but gets annoying initially.  I normally hunt with Ear Buds and the 1/8 connection fits perfect in the 6000 headphone port, but you lose that wireless feature.  I tried the Aventree wireless neckband, it connects and pairs nicely and works great, just not my comfort style especially in the heat.  

Auto+ plus Threshold- I was watching one of the Aussie videos and learned that in Auto+ you can press and hold the Difficult mode button and get a threshold tone in the otherwise silent (Bogenes setting) auto mode.  I'm not sure what if anything this accomplishes, hopefully JP can give us a little more insight.  

I found gold, nothing big and nothing deep.  I spent a great deal of time in areas that just don't have deep nuggets, and the GPZ's had already cleaned out the big stuff.  Then I spent a lot of time trying to find a new patch, always an iffy endeavor.  Despite having the machine for over a week, I probably didn't get more than 30 hrs of pure detecting time.  First was the weather.  I hit N NV desert just in time for a cold front.  One day I was wearing shorts, the next day it was snowing.  One day I saw the storm brewing and tried to outrun it back to camp only to get hit with sideways blowing hail.  I had taken the windshield off the RZR to keep the dust vortex to a minimum, and sure regretted it that day.  

Detecting time also gets consumed by domestic duties, handling the BBQ, entertaining the dog etc..  It's good the have the family along, but you have to make a few sacrifices and pure detecting time is one of them.  

When the weather forecasts looked unsettled for the upcoming week, it was time to take the girlfriend and dog home which precipitated the misadventures.  By then the dog was limping, having gotten a fair share of foxtails stuck between the pads of her front paws.  A quick look showed hot swollen patches where the foxtails had embedded themselves in her skin.  A trip to the vet and $200 later she's on the mend.  

I thought I would load up the whole works and try to beat the weather, nope!  My toyhauler is a 5th wheel and relies on 12 volt landing gear for leveling and hitching.  The internal gear started slipping so I added the manual crank and broke off the main drive shaft.  Internet research reveals this is a common problem, way undersized gears and drive mechanism for that much weight.  New dual motor landing gear ordered, that's more expense.  I left the trailer and brought girlfriend and dog home, then returned to Sawtooth the following day.  I arrived just in time for 2 days of cold wind and rain.  

I waited it out and got 2 more days of detecting for exactly zip, nada, nothing.  Ground was wet and sloppy in places, the 6000 handled it fine by the way.  I just couldn't get the coil over any yellow stuff.  

So, I surrendered and loaded up to come home.  I used some MacGyver tricks to load the trailer.  My hitch is an Anderson conversion and not a true 5th wheel hitch.  It has an adjustable ball height mechanism connected to a bed mounted Gooseneck hitch.  I dug out wheel trenches to get my truck under the trailer's hitch with the truck ball at it's lowest height, once centered I persuaded the ball up into the connector with a few hammer blows. Once the ball was pinned to it's highest level, I used an inflator to fill my truck's load leveling air bags to their highest point, about 2 inches.  That was just enough lift to take the weight off the landing gear and free the extensions up and out of the way.   I fear this kind of functional fixedness may be lost on the next generation whose skill seems to be finger dexterity and computer games.  

 I took the long way on Jungo Road to Winnemucca because it is really well maintained for all the HyCroft mining traffic.  I hit the freeway heading for Fernley and a couple times felt an odd vibration.  I was facing a stiff headwind and the trailer was making that diesel engine work just to maintain 55mph.  I got an error code for excessive engine boost and noticed the transmission temps heating up more than engine coolant temp.  Then stuff happened.  The truck started bucking and hard shifting as I tried to slow down.  The emergency lane is no place to be on Highway 80, when the speed limit is 80mph and triple trailer rigs are zooming by.  I limped it to Rye Patch road and limped down to Dan's Gold Digger Pizza place.  Dan had no trailer space with hookups,  but he let me park it in the back lot.  My girlfriend drove out from Fernley because she has the AAA card and I was going to need a ride home anyway.  

I had the truck towed to the only place in Winnemucca who could look at it within the next 2 weeks.  Car Care Clinic near the Walmart, great bunch of people in there.  Anyway, it seems I broke the right rear axle and it was hanging on by a thread.  The repair tally hasn't arrived yet, but it's sure to be further eroding my discretionary funds account earmarked for a GPX6000. 

I try to think positive.  It could have been much worse.  The weather is clear and warm, I'm still upright, the dog is good as new and I'll have a brand new axle.  That dinosaur GPZ 7000 is going to have to carry me through a bit longer.

My personal observations only, quick testing with no appreciable methodology.  Make no conclusions based on my limited time with the machine.

I had Steve's 6000 for a couple hours this morning.  At sunup I detected up a swale where Jason had found a couple nuggets yesterday.  I gridded a section 6 ft wide and about 25 yds long.  I marked 7 undug targets, 4 definite dig me signals and 3 iffy threshold warbles with the 6000 and 11" coil.  I then covered the same ground with my 7000 and 15x10 Xcoil.  The 7000 had no trouble with any of the 4 dig me targets and found no new targets.  Nothing but Ground and Salt noise over the questionable targets.  I dug the clear targets, first 2 were micro nuggets in the .2 gram range.  Third was a shallow hot rock and the 4th was surface trash.  I ran the 6000 back over the questionable targets and couldn't get anything repeatable.  

I wish I had known JP's thing about the speaker/EMI because I was noise cancelling often, especially if I set the machine down for any length of time.

Jason's summary from yesterday sums up our limited joint testing quite well.  My feeling after this limited time is that if I were 5 years younger, I would stick to the 7000 with the array of X-Coils to suit the conditions.  But, I'll turn 67 years young next month and my detecting shoulder has been nagging me for several years.  I have fashioned a hipstick that transfers the detector weight into the frame of an archery fanny pack with shoulder straps.  I thought it was great until I swung the 6000 with 11" coil.  Regrettably, I decided to run the 6000 with the 17" coil with no bungee this morning.  45 minutes and I was done, hence my abbreviated time on the 6000.  I'm  gonna want a bungee for the 14" DD or the 17" coils.  

N. Nevada at this time of year is tough to hunt.  The weather is great, but the ground has enough moisture to make the salt darn near unbearable in many places.  The 6000 with 11" coil tames it some, but there's no magic absent the DD coil.  Hot rocks are about the same as the 7000, although I found the Auto + with nearly silent threshold chops the tailing edge of a hotrock signal.  You'd still have to dig them, but without enthusiasm.  

Am I buying one, probably.  But I'm not rich and doubt I can justify $13k worth of detectors.  I'm going to need to make an either or decision.