Lanny
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Chris, thanks for that great story of discovery, and thanks for the pictures too.
What an incredible find; what a great year.
Nicely done, and all the best,
Lanny
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Phase Tech, I still have my old Minelab 2100 as well. It was the first detector I could take to an area that had super hot bedrock , bedrock that simply shut down other detectors, and it allowed me to find the nuggets trapped in that bedrock. Admittedly, the bedrock was so hot that at times I could only run it on one side/set one balance, but man, did it find the nuggets.
Enjoyed your post.
All the best,
Lanny
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Clay and Detecting For Gold
Well, here's the follow-up story to the last nugget find, the one found in the hydraulic wash, but this hunt presented a different challenge.
After finding the two gram nugget, and pumped by it, I decided to head for the level ground of the abandoned placer pit below the bedrock rise.
It was the late afternoon of a beautiful day. A cobalt bowl of blue sky roofed the mountains to my right and left. The air was still warm, and tiny butterflies sipped water from a fresh-water seep where vibrant green moss clung to life.
For those that have hunted abandoned placer operations, the challenges are familiar. Abandoned placer mines are mines indeed, mines that produce metal shavings, and each and every one of them sound off in the headphones.
For those that don’t know about placer cuts, they’re often large excavations into old, buried channels. To open a placer operation, where I hunt, the miners excavate down from ten to eighty feet into boulder clay or glacial castoff. For the uniformed, boulder clay was left behind by glaciers during the last ice age, all of it peppered with beefy boulders.
So, to mine the buried placer, the boulder clay/glacial castoff must be stripped. But while working with clay, it’s obnoxious, sticky, and it gets everywhere. It clings to everything, smears on everything, and if its wet, it will pull your boots off!
Nonetheless, the pit I’d chosen to hunt had been hammered hard by nugget shooters, yet a department store full of metal bits remained on its bedrock. As mute witness to this fact, my super-magnet looked like a hedgehog on steroids from checking my dig holes.
Nevertheless, I worked my way to a brownish-yellow formation of clay. Nothing but trash.
Detecting the small, clay area, I swung over a screamer of a signal. This in spite of the area having been heavily detected. The recovery however was a buts; it was a deep, square nail.
Pounding the area some more, I heard a slight break, a tiny bump in the threshold. I just about didn’t investigate, as the EMI in that area generated a lot of false signals (the newer detectors now are better at silencing EMI, but not back then). However, I carved off several inches of clay and swung once more. A sweet, repeatable signal, soft, yet distinct.
Scraping off several more inches of clay, the signal definitely grew. I dug around the signal and popped out a chunk of clay that held a signal. Checking the hole, there was still a signal there as well. I placed the chunk aside and kept digging. The sound got louder, but turned harsh, and I recovered a bent, rusted square nail.
Returning to the lump of clay, I scanned across the coil then started breaking off pieces, passing them under the coil until I isolated the signal. Sifting and sorting, I dropped bits onto the coil, and, "Whap!", the same happy sound for the second time that day.
It was nonferrous; the magnet had proven that in the early sorting. So, probing the dirt on the coil, one object finally growled back. I cleaned the clay off and had myself a sassy gram-and-a-half piece of gold, almost square in shape. I rattled it around in the bottle with its two-gram partner, and they gave off a lovely, golden rumble.
Clay is nasty stuff to work, but sometimes it holds the gold for that reason.
All the best,
Lanny -
Don’t Give Up; Chase Those Signals
T'was the summer of '05. The day was cloudy. The gold had been elusive.
To provide some background, we make our summer camp in the Boreal Forests of British Columbia, Canada's most western province. Its mountains dive steeply into the Pacific Ocean, and a chain of outer islands continue the province's seaward extension. B.C. is a magnificent province (we have provinces instead of states here in Canada), with all kinds of mountains, rivers, lakes and breath-taking, endless forests. Moreover, vast tracts of genuine wilderness remain. Nevertheless, while chasing the gold, I've seen lots of wilderness in the United States and in my home province of Alberta too. To elaborate, Alberta’s eastern neighbor is British Columbia, and the two provinces share the Rocky Mountains. Yet, the province that dips its toes in the ocean has the lion's share of the gold.
Now, onward with my gold tale.
I headed off to hunt a challenging spot, one pocked with dig marks. My chosen place had a bedrock base which was the foundation of an old hydraulic operation, and nugget shooters had recently worked over the bedrock. However, there were still crevices filled with rock-hard gumbo clay, and stones.
So, taking this as a good sign of some undisturbed material, I fired up the detector and worked the exposed bedrock only to find of bits of steel, lead bullets from the 1800's, as well as modern shotgun pellets, old square nails, etc.
I went and worked the previously mentioned crevices but found only more of the same, until I found a door hinge wedged into the bedrock under 15 feet of boulder clay! How it got there remains a puzzle I couldn’t decode. Perhaps it was driven into the bedrock by the Old-timers for some reason, only to be buried by the later hydraulic operation.
I continued detecting lower down in the strata and got into some very interesting bedrock formations, but no gold. (That happens quite frequently.) I even pounded the ground with my detector where my buddy found a nice nugget in some sharply rising bedrock, but, no luck.
Hours passed. The sun was out, beating a relentless tattoo on my head and shoulders. I was hot, tired, and getting jaded! However, I saw some broken bedrock where someone had raked down and up-welling of bedrock with the teeth of an excavator bucket. I detected it only to be rewarded with the usual trash. I reached above the excavation cut far over the bedrock to a place where some over-wash from the hydraulic operation merged with the bedrock.
I got a signal.
Nevertheless, it sounded like the end of a square nail (for those that don't know, square nail tips sound sweet, like nuggets). Moreover, as it was high and hard to reach, and as I had to overstretch to get my arm to the target, I almost didn't dig it. Not the best plan sometimes.
Clearly, not digging a target is nugget hunting blasphemy, but still, I’m guilty at times. To clarify, while depressed by digging nothing but trash all day, new targets simply seem to be more of the same. So, why bother, right? This is especially true when I’m hot, tired, or have overexerted myself.
Nevertheless, I resisted the urge to quit and dug the target. I dislodged it. It moved down the hill, yet I was in a sketchy fix as I barely clung to the wall by the tips of my toes. Ignoring my predicament, I reached up with my super-magnet and pushed that dirt around, fully expecting to see the tip of a square nail on the magnet.
No nail.
Ruling out ferrous always makes things interesting, but I didn't allow myself to get too pumped, having dug a lot of lead that day as well. Yet, somewhat juiced, I reached up with my plastic scoop, but missed the target. Next, I skidded down the broken bedrock, barking one of my already tender shins, prompting a tapestry of curses that must still be woven in that vast, blue northern sky.
Remaining determined, I climbed yet again, and this time captured the signal. I worked my way down to a level spot to sift and sort the signal in the scoop. I then trickled material onto the coil and, WHAP! I heard that electronic, metallic growl.
Everyone knows lead makes the same sound, but some sixth sense prompted me this was not lead. (Ever had that sensation?) I trickled material onto the coil and poked the bits and pieces around until an agitated growl responded.
I picked the target up. The weight was sure right. Yet, it was clay-covered, looking unremarkable. I used the only liquid I had, a shot of saliva, to remove the stubborn clay. There it was, a sassy nugget. Long, in the shape of the sole of a shoe, quite flattened, but almost two grams of golden goodness. Not the biggest nugget I've found, but one I found because I didn’t give up.
All the best,
Lanny -
The Golden Rooster and His Corn
This is an unlikely sounding title for a gold tale; however, it really is a gold story, even with its puzzling name.
To back up some, twenty-four hours before any gold trip begins, the first eight hours are the usual tasks: organizing grub, bedding, tools, fuel, equipment, firearms, and other essentials to sustain life for several weeks in the unforgiving, deep northern woods.
After our supplies were packed, we loaded the mechanized equipment on the flat-deck trailer: a small wash plant, a variety of pumps, various lengths of hoses, and a small home-built backhoe.
As with any remote mining expedition, we'd packed a white canvas wall tent for living quarters. Furthermore, we packed the wood-burning stove with its lengths of stove pipe. For, even in summer, there’s ice on the water in the fire bucket some mornings.
In the back of the ¾-ton diesel, we stowed the pack boxes of food, the duffel bags of bedding and clothes, and the chainsaw and axe. All items were snugly arranged around the four-wheeler in the truck bed.
A bit more about our transportation, I have always loved the sound of that Cummins engine; its throaty song was comforting and reassuring; its performance and reliability, uncompromising; its very sound a symbol of summer gold hunts in the immense wilderness.
To elaborate, there are places where topping a mountain, there is nothing to see but deep-green soldiered ranks of pine, fir, and cedar in undulating waves of forest that march ever onward to rugged peak after endless ridge, until the distance melts all and blurs it into one surreal horizon.
This endless view contains no sign, no hint of human disturbance or occupation. No power-lines, no cat-trails or cut-lines, no excavation scars, nothing but the vastness of untamed nature. The sight always leaves me feeling insignificant, yet equally awed by its savage beauty and unspoiled majesty.
All packed, and after a sixteen-hour drive through the night and continuing well into the next day, we arrived at the gold fields of North Central British Columbia. The black flies, the No-Seeums, and the mosquitoes were having a banner year. So, before stepping from the 4X4, I grabbed the bug dope, ready to hose myself down as soon as I hit the ground.
I also tucked the bottom of my pant legs into my socks, then sprayed dope on my shirt cuffs, collar, and the hair on the back and top of my head. Next I sprayed my hat brim and put on a pair of gloves. It’s the only way to keep the bugs at bay.
After protecting myself, I grabbed the Minelab and fired it up. It gave a reassuring hum, telling me it had survived the brutal last leg of the trip. (The last leg takes five hours, all over unforgiving logging routes: roads wash-boarded, pocked with holes, and mined with obstacles. Said obstacles include moose, elk, deer, black bear, grizzly bear, wolverine, bits and pieces of lost freight, and of course, logging trucks.)
My detector was outfitted with the standard eleven-inch DD coil, and my headphones did nothing but annoy the bugs by denying them a taste of my tender ears! Furthermore, on an earlier trip, I’d learned to keep my mouth shut to avoid a meal of flying protein.
Making my way to an abandoned site, I discovered exposed bedrock. There was a small shelf that stepped down from a larger formation above. This was a minor site, one deliberately worked where the bedrock had faulted. Black graphite-schist met a harder iron-red formation, and the wall behind it was a combination of piles of slump, along with sheets of broken, black slate all tumbled from the canyon-wall above.
The sentinel pines topping the wall were oblivious to our efforts. The songbirds among the pines filled the air with their ageless melodies. Mountain flowers gently tossed their heads in the slight breeze at the foot of the pines as they scented the air. An iridescent humming bird zipped past my head to feed on the blossoms.
What a glorious place to look for gold.
I was eager to detect where the two bedrocks met. There was folding and faulting to create gold traps. This site, abandoned but a day earlier, was a small piece of a Tertiary channel, one composed of virgin bedrock from dim eons past. With slim hopes, due to its small size, I slid down some slump to start detecting the bedrock. The lower portion of it was already covered with water, seepage from an unseen spring slowly drowning the site.
I scrubbed the coil over the bedrock, and after only two sweeps, I had a signal. However, I've learned over the years that detecting old workings may promote madness, the madness from dealing with unwanted signals: bits of blade and track; the head, tip or entire body of a square nail; rusted bits of can, chunks of wire, brass from bushings, bits of lead, etc.
Regardless of past disappointment, I scanned again, still had a solid response. I scraped the bedrock, scanned again, and got a sweeter signal. I couldn’t see anything exciting, so I drug a super-magnet over the bedrock to check for ferrous, no friends. Swinging the coil again produced a nice, low-high-low sound. My pulse increased.
With sniping tools, I chipped carefully around the signal. I broke out a piece of cemented bedrock, baseball-sized. The signal was in the chunk of rock! Tapping it carefully with the flat side of a hammer, a golf-ball-sized piece broke free. A nice, steady signal hummed from it. By hammering carefully, out popped a nice nugget that looked like a rooster's head, complete with a comb and beak! It was a five-gram piece of Mother Nature's finest craft.
I scanned the area again while expanding my search. About a meter away, another nice signal, this one longer in its length. An old square nail? I scraped but found no such thing. Then a slightly stronger signal on the next scan, though not as strong as the Rooster nugget. This tone was softer, yet still mellow. I chipped along the bedrock and discovered a crevice. The compacted material was not cemented, but it was the exact colour of the black bedrock. I took out a bent sniping tool and drug it the length of the crevice to where that crevice connected with a drop in the bedrock. Out popped four quadruplets: four identical kernels of corn. They weighed in at almost a half a gram apiece, making two grams of corn for my Rooster nugget.
With not much bedrock left, I scanned on, but no response. I put on the 18-inch mono and slid it around the entire area. It was considerably noisier than the DD, and I had trouble balancing the detector. Yet, through all the noise, I heard a faint something, yet with no idea what I was hearing. I'd never heard such a whisper, nothing but a tiny break, a mere bump in the threshold amidst the clatter, and all because that big 18-inch mono was seriously hammering that graphite schist into submission to give up its secrets.
Intrigued, I took out the chisel and carved off about an inch of rock. I scanned again, but now a faint, repeatable signal. I worked off more rock, scanned again—this time a louder signal. Breaking out a piece of bedrock, I gently crushed it, and out slid a smooth golden slug—four grams of hammered gold, no character, no definition.
The take for the day? A golden rooster with four kernels of corn, and a lonely orphan of a slug.
All the best,
Lanny -
Nice pictures of the OZ trip, thanks.
All the best,
Lanny
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Small Bedrock Bonanza
I was on a prospecting walkabout one midsummer day. The sky, a perfect cobalt blue was accompanied by the deep warmth of a blazing sun. Happy to get a break from several days of either cold drizzle or pounding rain, I checked out some old workings near a creek almost strangled by thick stands of Alder, deep green ranks of horse-tails, clumps of butter-cups, and tall meadow grasses.
The heat from the sun made it humid by the little creek, with no breeze to lift it. However, this combination made things perfect for an attack by a living wall of black flies, mosquitoes, and no-seeums. The air was so thick with them that I was forced to breathe through my nose and keep my mouth closed or I got a mouthful of flying protein! So, I whipped out my can of nuclear grade Deet and gave myself a solid spray. That done, the flies backed off and spun angrily about four inches out.
With enough bug paste in my mouth to last a lifetime, I cut up the creek bank into the much cooler darkness of a stand of hundred-year-old pine, the floor carpeted with freshly dewed ferns. I wound along through the timber, then turned parallel to the creek, heading about thirty feet upslope. At this elevation, there was a gentle breeze blowing that sent the bugs back to the creek.
The signs of old 1800’s workings were everywhere, with more modern excavations from the 1930’s. Exploring the old diggings, I found some exposed bedrock. It appeared that a small operation had stripped off about ten feet of yellowish boulder clay (stubborn clay and boulders dumped by glaciers) to expose an old channel tight on bedrock, one that cut back under the steeply rising boulder clay.
The cut was about twenty feet wide and about sixty feet long. It ended where the shoulder of the mountain thrust through at a place where the old channel took a sharp turn to dive back under about fifty feet of boulder clay. Clearly, it was far too much overburden for a small 1930’s operation to work.
I headed back to the exposed bedrock, dropped my pack, and pulled out my sniping tools and my gold pan.
I scraped around for any low spots that still held accumulations of original channel, containing small tightly packed river stones and dark-gray clay. I found some spots, cleaned them out, then headed to the creek to pan: almost no black sand, and no gold. I went back up to the workings and sat on a flat boulder. I took a long look at the topography. I noticed a spot where the bedrock rose sharply from the exposed sheet, then levelled off as it ran back under the boulder clay. I also noticed the bedrock located there was covered with two feet or so of clay slump.
Personally, I'd rather not dig if there's good exposed bedrock to work, but as the bedrock was unproductive, I surrendered and took my shovel and cleared a spot about four feet square. The bedrock here was all uneven, with lots of irregular little pockets. I cleaned a few out but got no satisfying results. Ready to leave, I hesitated, then dug under the boulder clay where the bedrock started to dip beneath it. I was surprised to see a cumulative drop of about a foot, but then it levelled off again. However, what interested me most was the composition of the material between the boulder clay and the bedrock in the pocket I’d uncovered. It was a gray coloured sand atop a packed clay and rock mixture that contained small pebbles. That material really lit me up! In that area, it’s the kind of stuff anyone hopes to find. It's a sure sign of virgin ground.
What I had opened up to find the pocket was the bottom edge of the face, the portion exposed in the 1930’s. As a result, I was working intact ancient channel, possible placer countless years in the waiting. The series of irregular holes I'd cleaned right before hitting the drop-off were encouraging. However, this was a bigger pocket, about a foot across, a great looking trap. Pumped now, I cleared several pans of material to bedrock, then lugged them to the creek. No gold! What was going on here? Everything was so perfect. I pulled out some lunch and took time to reflect.
After eating, I went back to examine the hole. The air had dried the moisture from the bedrock, and I was staring at some reddish bedrock, not black-colored slate like the other bedrock behind me. Regardless, that was not what caught my attention. The bottom of the hole was laced with what looked like a network of blood vessels, twisting purple veins sharply contrasted against the red rock. Never before had I seen such a geological result. Nevertheless, I took a screwdriver and scraped at the veins. Shockingly, they were nowhere near as hard as the rock. In fact, they were more like a purple clay, and I soon discerned they were sealing cracks in the bedrock! On fire, I dug and scraped and soon had about a tablespoon of material.
I hurriedly took it to the creek and sunk the pan. The bugs were back, but I didn't care. The blood I’d donate to get a look at something so interesting was insignificant. As I mashed the material under the water against the bottom of the pan, the water turned an ugly purple colour. The panning water had been crystal clear, but I couldn't see the bottom of my green pan. I sunk the pan flat in the creek and continued to let the creek carry off the discoloured water. The water was now clear, and in the crease were very dark, heavily stained BB-sized stones. This was something new. I tipped the pan back to pick out some of the stones and saw the yellow flash of sassy gold emerge. There among the black BB’s were three chunky pickers, no fine gold whatsoever.
I flew back to the hole. I gouged as far as I could into the cracks, but very little material remained. I took out an awl and probed the crevices and was rewarded with a soft resistance at the junction of two veins. I pushed harder and the awl dropped three inches. I twisted the probe in the opening, and it spun in an ever-widening circle. Having found a bedrock pocket that was fed by those gold-bearing crevices, I worked with a chisel and opened a hole to get the bent handle of a spoon inside. In this manner, I gouged around and drug out about three tablespoons of wet, purplish clay packed and mixed with sand, and small stones. With no material left in the hole, I don't think my feet ever touched the ground on the way back to the creek.
I got the same result as earlier, a cloud of heavily dyed material from ancient, oxidized sediments. The stones were slightly larger than BB's when I could finally see them in the crease, but this time the gold poked through nicely! A clutch of pickers in the quarter to half gram range, and every piece was rugged with character.
I never found any more gold at that place as the bedrock dipped again, stopping me from chasing it under the boulder clay. But I did walk away with over ten grams of beautiful gold from my small, bedrock bonanza.
All the best,
Lanny -
Great little videos of some sweet finds. Thanks for posting them. A whole lot of hole digging going on there, but it all ended with very happy results.
All the best,
Lanny
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Nice finds indeed! Thanks for posting the picture of that rough-edged gold.
All the best,
Lanny
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Good to hear about the successful event Jim, and nice to know you're still having fun.
All the best,
Lanny
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JP, good to hear some specifics backed by your experience and countless hours of hands-on.
Nicely done, and all the best,
Lanny
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Always exciting when gold is on a run, and thanks for the heads-up Steve.
All the best,
Lanny
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On 6/26/2019 at 4:59 AM, kiwijw said:
Yes....it is gold in the bottle that matters. Especially when the ML 14" stops doing it. Who cares what coil as long as the yellow material keeps dribbling in off old flogged grounds & new patches discovered. Keep it up boys ?
Good luck out there
JW ?
Sounds like a winning philosophy to me.
All the best,
Lanny
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3 hours ago, fredmason said:
Lanny,
excellent lesson,
I am curious, do you write these stories in the moment or have them standing by waiting for them to ripen?
thank youMost of the stories I write right after I get back from an outing, and I have lots of stories tucked away. These last few are stories that I'm revisiting, ones that I wrote a while back and am now revising.
As well, I still have other stories yet to write, stories of my gold hunting, plus stories passed on to me by others gold hunters, some of whom (the prospectors that is) are no longer with us, but great stories nonetheless.
All the best Fred, and thanks for being a friend,
Lanny
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Invisible Gold in Plain Sight
In the past, I’ve talked about finding difficult gold: gold that is wedged deep in crevices; gold that is cemented in a matrix the exact color of the bedrock, hiding any cracks or crevices that were once there; also, I’ve commented on gold that is held fast in naturally occurring cement, looking like innocent concrete.
Therefore, the focus of today’s story is on some hidden gold I chased while nugget shooting in the far northern gold fields, a place where thick forests blanket the mountain slopes, where wildlife is plentiful, where apex predators like grizzlies and cougars still rule the kingdom. As well, eagles and ospreys haul thrashing trout and grayling from crystalline lakes, and moose, elk or black bear can be seen lazily crossing open, green spaces.
One cool morning, I crawled out of my outfitters tent to a clear, blue sky; the rain from the previous day had left a crisp freshness in the air, the scent of pine and fir sharp. Grabbing my things, I headed off up the canyon to a place I had permission to hunt.
I was off to detect the exit ramp of a deep placer pit/cut where the miners had removed a lot of overburden to get down to the ancient channel beneath. However, I wouldn’t be detecting in the pit itself as the face was a wet, unstable wall that kept sluffing sections of itself into the pit below. Clearly, water seepage was a serious problem at this location and likely had been for the 1870’s old-timers that had worked the area back then.
The placer cut itself sliced through the remains of at least seven ancient stream-beds, all crisscrossed one on top of the other at an ancient junction. The deposits were the result of long-dead glacial streams, left where two mountain canyons met. To clarify, these canyons were special. The high, black slate rims had protected the gold in those channels from being scoured out and carried away by what the locals called “robber glaciers”.
There was evidence everywhere of the workings from the 1800's where the overlapping channels were probed by vertical shafts, then horizontal tunnels probed onward until the gold ran out. Then, deeper shafts were dug, more channels explored, and so on, with the work heading all the way to bedrock.
The modern diggings were where they were because the miners had discovered a roomed-out section of bedrock on their claim, one worked by hand in the 1800’s. This is why they opened a cut and extended the area of that room. (After all, who tunnels and clears a large section of bedrock with pick and shovel unless the gold is good?) Moreover, the original room was excavated on what turned out to be a large, continuing shelf of bedrock. But, as the modern miners worked off to one side of the original room, the shelf ended (perhaps a fault), with the channel material dropping into a deep sump filled with large boulders. Furthermore, the exposed wall of that sump is what I’ve already described above.
So, there I was detecting the top of the exit ramp to avoid being crushed by a collapsing wall. As for the detecting conditions, the bedrock was red-hot electronically. So, I used a PI detector, with a double-D coil, but back then it was only sensitive to nuggets of one gram or larger. While swinging the coil, I was getting lots of chatter from the ground. But, between the pops and snaps, I heard the faint cresting sounds of possible goodness in the threshold.
Hitting a broad, repeatable signal, I scraped off the overburden of gumbo that covered the black and purplish bedrock, the bedrock itself laced with quartz stringers. Yet, however hard I looked, I couldn’t see a crack or fissure in any of it. I went back to scrubbing that severe bedrock with the DD and was rewarded with a strong series of sharper tones that rose above the background chatter.
Tracking the electronic path indicated by the coil, the targets trended diagonally across the ramp, and then continued downward with the dip of the bedrock. It dawned on me I was likely following invisible crevices, ones once connected with the long-gone bedrock of the drowned placer cut. Therefore, knowing that the detector wouldn't lie, I got out my crevicing tools and carefully chipped the signals from the bedrock, exposing the hidden crevices. However, unlike an earlier find at another location, this material was not solidly concreted. It was more of a crumbly composition; nevertheless, its colour imitated the bedrock material perfectly by hiding those long-lost crevices.
Next, I drug the material upslope from one of the diagonal cracks into a plastic scoop. I passed the scoop under the coil and got a cracking tone. I shook the scoop, settled the heavies, and sorted the material in the scoop.
There were five nuggets in the scoop. None were over a gram and a half. But later on, I found two more hidden crevices using the detector, catching more of those small, sassy nuggets of gold.
Personal confession, after catching nuggets, nothing lights me up like the rumble of chunks of gold as I roll them around in my gold bottle. I really don't know why, but I really get a kick out of that sound.
But, at this point in my story, you can brand me just plain dumb, as the mistake I’m about to reveal is one I've made before. It seems I always get preoccupied with the nuggets and then forget to check the surrounding material from the crevices. (A bit slow sometimes, I guess.) Anyway, my partner, bless his soul, did not forget the importance of that surrounding material. He gathered it all in a pan and took the works to the creek (under some murky premise that other, smaller gold will often travel with nuggets).
Man did my eyes pop when I saw how many smaller bits of good grams of gold there were in that pan!
I learned that day the value of having a detector that could find gold hidden in plain sight as well as the value of listening to my detecting buddy.
All the best,
Lanny -
3 hours ago, Gerry in Idaho said:
To me it is all about Adventure to new sites. It's much more rewarding and educational for me to see how people live in the area, what terrain and landscape is all about. I enjoy seeing with my own eyes what makes up a site and why people would go visit or even live there. Finding the gold is just an added bonus. My list of "Just go do it" places is longer than most, but at the same time I feel I have been able to do more than the average Joe. Maybe it is because I never had kids, maybe the wife enjoys me being away for a while, maybe just how I am wired, but I like to travel, absorb new things and dream. Having the detector in hand also allows for a great many business write offs.
I have pretty good gold areas in ID, MT, OR, NV. that will always give a little. Heck, If I spent the same amount of time at one of these sites, as I did in MX, I most certainly would have recovered more gold, but those sites I know well and in the back of my mind, new fresh ground in another region could be golden? We've learned most of the time, those dreams really don't have loads more of gold, but just seeing new country is rewarding.
Now I do plan on heading back to Australia this fall and hopefully someone will invite me along for a couple or few days swinging. I'd like to do a little nugget hunting as well as dip into the water for some beach/water detecting with an Equinox (one of my other passions - water hunting). I figure someone over there might want to get some free tips/tricks and detector knowledge. Heck, I might even sell my detectors after the trip to them for a really good price.
I've spent time around the Leonora/Kalgoorlie area with some GP's years back, so somewhere new would be most ideal.
Thanks for the comments.
Yes, agreed. It's always been more about the adventure for me as well, but it was nice to have the low-down on Mexico too.
I've travelled widely chasing the gold, and I still do simply for the adventure, and many times, I haven't paid for my trips with the gold I found, nor is it a concern to me as the memories are the true value of the gold that lasts, as well as getting to meet the wonderful people I do along the way.
All the best,
Lanny
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On 2/16/2020 at 2:32 AM, Gold Hound said:
😂😂😂 just the sort of scripted b.s. I was talking about.
And the mess... I bet they wouldn't of filmed you coming up and telling them to clean up their mess before they go?
The aussie gold diggers is just as bad they approached us every year to be on their show, but the pay is shizenhouzen and they would own your soul if you were stupid enough to sign up! Last offer was a pitiful $2000 a week... jezze I find 2oz a week easy why would I sell myself for less than I make anyway¿ And the production company makes millions.
They seem to pray on peoples desire to be famous, but what people don't realize is how fame changes your life.
I've been approached by reality TV as well for them to follow me around while detecting. You and I came to the same sound conclusion. . . .
All the best,
Lanny
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14 hours ago, Lunk said:
Thanks for calling me out, Mike; I haven't made the time to post my experiences during the trip with Gerry yet. No better time than the present, as they say! I was able to stay a bit longer in Mexico than Gerry, and my Zed located 50 grams of the good stuff.
Our foray south of the border was filled with many memorable experiences, and we were most fortunate to be given the opportunity to chase the elusive yellow metal in the beautiful wilderness of Mexico. Muchas gracias por nuestro anfitrión y al propietario de la tierra para extendar su generosa invitación.
Lunk, truly enjoyed your story and photo-essay. Great finds!
All the best,
Lanny
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Gerry, indeed a great adventure, and it's a great update on the legends of "easy" gold in Mexico. Nice to know the true story of how it is today, always seems to be a gold mine in someone else's backyard, but often our own backyards are just as good or better. . . .
Loved the story and the pictures.
All the best,
Lanny
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Nice bits Andyy.
Enjoyed your write-up as well.
All the best,
Lanny
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Detecting For Nuggets The Hard Way
Armed with my detector one balmy, late-summer weekend, I set off to find a nugget or two.
As a nugget shooter, I sometimes stupidly fail to appreciate the difficulties associated with hunting nuggets or the low level of compensation that might be the reward.
So, I set off to work a spot where a tiny creek intersected a famous, gold-producing river.
The Oldtimers had worked the area heavily; their hand-stacks of cobbles and boulders lay piled on a bench of highly fractured, black slate bedrock. However, I realized that moving all of those boulders would require far too much work. Therefore, I chose to hike instead along the river banks to detect the low-water levels of exposed bedrock.
Square nails, blasting caps, a coin, lead fishing weights, .17 cal. lead pellets, pieces of disfigured iron junk were my only rewards. However, during my excursion I noticed two rookies panning across the river. Staggering and stumbling among the cobbles and boulders beside the stream, they entered the stream and flailed the water to a white foam in their steel pans. (Carefully concentrating heavy material, specific gravity? What’s that?) Regardless, it appeared they found no gold, as nothing was put in a bottle. (At the time, I wondered if they had even put dirt and rocks in their pans, giving them a better chance at finding the gold—just kidding. Regardless, their technique was awful, almost exactly like mine when I first started out.)
Forgetting about the rookies, I looked up the bank and stared with no eagerness at the washtub-sized boulders and melon-sized cobbles stacked on the bedrock above. I knew the hard work ahead to detect any gold missed by those Oldtimers, ones who often worked swiftly, and sometimes sloppily, before sprinting off to the next gold rush farther north.
Using a massive steel pry bar, buckets of elbow grease, and convoluted body positions any contortionist would avoid, I finally uncovered the bedrock after sending the rocks into the river.
This was accomplished while simultaneously terrifying the aforementioned rookies across the stream. (Maybe chucking all of those cobbles in every direction, while generating colourful, explosive expressions had an impact?) Those rookies were somewhat shaken as well by the thunder produced by those rolling boulders, and the fountains of water generated as everything plunged into the twenty feet of fast flowing water that separated us.
To calm the rookies’ fears, I stopped tossing and rolling rocks, and detected the bedrock instead. Nine targets were quickly identified. All turned out to be tiny bits of rusted tin can . . ..
Quite demoralized, I sat down to think up a new strategy. Meanwhile, across the river, the rookies abandoned their pans, and they now attacked the bedrock on their side of the river. Cobbles filled the air, and boulders were rolled into the river—colourful expressions filled the air. Afterward, they scooped newly uncovered material into their pans, then foamed the water yet again, but still, they captured no gold. (At least, I don’t think they found any gold, because they kept throwing everything from their pans back into the river! However, perhaps they were members of that new, environmentally conscious breed of "catch and release" panners.)
Knowing I wasn’t getting anywhere, I abandoned my diggings, waved a quick goodbye to the rookies across the river and fled the scene.
As nuggets prefer clever hiding spots, I had a giant brainwave to drive a short distance to a veritable abyss. At its bottom were a series of exposed bedrock outcroppings. Being not so foolish as to hunt such easy pickings of bare bedrock at the bottom (although the next day, a wiser nugget shooter took an eight gram nugget out of said bedrock outcrops, #@$!*!), I chose instead bedrock covered with cobbles and boulders.
After a leisurely two hours of hot sweat and ragged pain, the area was cleared to hunt. After numerous passes with the detector, a tiny whisper emerged as the coil gently scrubbed the sharp, steeply angled slate bedrock. After chipping and chiseling, the signal was slightly louder. Next, I turned the mono coil on its side and pinpointed the signal. Working with hammer and chisel around the signal, I popped out a quarter-gram nugget. (Well, back then pride [whose slave I sometimes am] demanded I call it a nugget! I mean, after all of that work, what else could I call it?)
With a calm, yet horrifying recognition, my dim brain was forced to admit that never, with the exception of a near-death trip down some slick boulder clay, had I ever worked so hard for far, far less than minimum wage!
Nevertheless, to lift my spirits and put me in a playful mood, I now had to plan how to pack sixty pounds of equipment up a mostly vertical, scree covered slope . . ..
All the best,
Lanny -
3 hours ago, Randy Lunn said:
Hi Lanny,
I am just catching up on your stories, wonderful entertainment, and I am learning a lot.
Thank You,
Randy
Randy, thanks for the compliment. I really appreciate it.
All the best,
Lanny
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14 hours ago, 2Valen said:
Great story Lanny, glad to see the gold that you found, and wish you luck on your next adventure.
Thanks a lot for leaving your kind words. I wish you the best of luck as well.
All the best,
Lanny
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45 minutes ago, kiwijw said:
Hi there Lanny, Same goes for detecting too. I have found many a piece by flipping rocks over.
Always enjoy your yarns my friend & always packed with hints & tips. Take care & all the very best of luck to you out there.
JW 🤠
Great to hear from you again, and I hope you're still out there chasing the gold when you get a chance.
Always great to read of your adventures as well.
All the best my friend,
Lanny
2019
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