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  1. Just got home from an amazing day. I haven't been out since i found the big flake in my short hour hunt back on march 23rd. I've been dealing with my grandmother being on her death bed and kids sick with the flu. I have been needing a day like today to put a big smile on my face and a happy memory in my book of life. I covered allot of ground today. I started the morning early high on a ridge fallowing an old ground sluice to it up most workings. After digging a handful of nails and afew pieces of lead, and random pieces of wire and bits of old can and boot tacks I had covered the area thoroughly without finding a single piece of gold. The uppermost workings were originally fed by a series of small ponds stepping down from the saddle of the ridge, one feeding the other with the final one feeding the placer workings below. These were all sedimented in and dry but were very cool to look at. (On a typical year i'd have been under 10 ft of snow were i stood). Reaching these upper limits i headed higher to the saddle and spotted workings all along the ridge. The ridge saddle was all serpentine that was crisscrossed by rhiolite veins. The old timers hadnt left a single vein un-dug. Many were small holes afew feet wide and 6 to 10 feet long while others were good sized pits 10 to 15 feet deep and three times as long. Scanning the pits and tailings i dug afew more nails and five or six small fragments of lead. Then i got a strong signal in one of the piles next to a small pit working. Must be a piece of jack i thought not having found nails or trash thus far. 9 inches or so down i found an old tobacco tin. Cleaned up nice enough to ID. its an Edgeworth Extra High Grade "Ready-Rubbed" Smoking Tobacco produced by Larus and Brother Company, Inc. in Richmond, Virginia between 1910 and 1926. I rarely keep junk but liked this peace. After putting the tin in my pack i headed to the highest point on the ridge to eat some lunch and detect the last destroyed outcropping before circling back down hill to a different old placer workings in the very head waters of a nearby stream. I had taken three bites of my sandwich when my German Shepard/Bull Mastiff Mix dog Dragen (Dutch for Bear) began barking crazy like. Hmm not likely a person, maybe a bear by how shes barking i think. The ridge was very open with only a few old growth Jeffrey Pines an there young attempting to reclaim some ground. I took a few steps to my right while scanning ahead when a juvenile Cougar detached from the shade of a tree about 40 yards off and silently moved across the ridge and down the hill to my left in the direction i had just come. Keeping the dog close i quickly finished my sandwich and set off to see if i could get another view of the cat. Nope it was gone and my dog was hyped up and sniffing all around the tree the cat had been under. Awesome! The first Cougar id seen in a few years, I have been lucky enough to see many in my life and have never had any trouble. I rarely pack but nearly always have a dog or two with me. Very excited about seeing the cat and glad i had explored this new area i circled back around the ridge and headed down twords the placer workings in the headwaters of the stream below. I had found gold in the headwater workings last spring but by digging not detecting. That day i dug a few pickers while a buddy of mine detected a penny weight piece down stream from me. He later cleaned this area for a solid 6 dwt, while i dug around and found afew penny weight but was unable to detect a piece. The area was very hard on my GB Pro so i would usually detect awhile and then not finding anything pan awhile to bring home some color. Talking with a fellow local miners i know a 1/2 oz,1/3 oz and many penny weight pieces have been found in the area panning but not so many detecting. I have always believed more gold is waiting for a coil here but until today just couldnt hit on it. Little did i know it was going to be such a unique and beautiful piece. I headed down stream as to work my way upstream and out as the day proceeded to afternoon. I began detecting above the area my buddy had creamed and slowly worked up river. The stream even hear in its head waters is only a very small trickle. To pan youd need to build yourself a small damn. I reached a nice pinch with a steep hill slope on the right and high bed rock covered by tailings diving into the stream on the left. the trickle of water slowly snaked through the four feet of substrate that separated the bedrock and the hill slope. Just were the tailings on the bedrock dove into the trickle i got a faint whisper. Being directly on bed rock and not seeing anything i broke up the serpentine a little and scanned again. Not deaper but in the bank more, under the tightly pack tailing. After digging out a few softball sized cobbles that were very wedged i scanned again and got a screamer. Scooped the little bit of gravels from were the rocks had been and to my surprise a Beautiful Piece of White Gold? or Silver? I knew the historic placer claim records had reported placer silver nuggets in its finds but this piece was so heavy and very lightly yellow i wasn't sure. I cleaned the entire area with the remaining time i had but found only one other small flake of gold. Once home i hit it with my GB Pro and it hits at 60 - Gold for Sure in my opinion. The lightest colored piece i've ever found. A Find of My Life and just the type of day id been needn. The White Gold piece weighed in at 1.9 dwt. You'll notice the darker areas on the one side - they are very dark red to copper colored. Some of the other gold found here in the past has been red, green and black - and now white. SDC warbled along. Had to learn the look of some of the cold rocks but they were easy to see and hear once i got used to them. Thanks for sharing my Adventure Happy Hunting and Good Luck! AjR
  2. I spent a couple months in Alaska prospecting for gold in the summer of 2014. That adventure was chronicled as it happened here on the forum at Steve's 2014 Alaska Gold Adventure. It was a great trip and a great adventure, but when I told it I relayed the fact that it was actually part two of the story. Part one happened in 2013 and for reasons you will now discover I kept quiet about it until now. Those interested in the logistics of making the trip to Alaska and details on where I stayed, etc. will find all that covered in the 2014 story so I will not repeat that stuff here. 2013 was a momentous year for me. My business partner and I had sold the business we started together in 1976 to our employees in 2010. My partner immediately retired but I stayed on a few years to oversee the transition. Things seemed to be going well enough that I announced my retirement to take place in the spring of 2013. My wife and I had purchased a new home in Reno, Nevada and so plans were made to sell our home in Alaska and move south. At the same time, some partners and I had acquired some mining claims on Jack Wade Creek in the Fortymile country near Chicken. Alaska. My plan was to move my wife south then spend the summer gold dredging with my brother. The disaster struck. I screwed up the paperwork and the claims were lost. That mess was described online at Making Lemonade Out of Lemons and I even wrote an article for the ICMJ about it. I was not to be deterred however and made plans instead to go metal detecting for the summer. Unfortunately, my brother also had a change of plans and so was unable to make the trip with me. Just as well as I ended up having my hands full. The house sale was in progress and time running out so I boxed and palleted everything we wanted to keep and shipped it south. Then I loaded my wife and dogs up in the car and drove them to Reno. Next I flew back to Alaska and had a last big garage sale. I sold everything I could by the afternoon and out a FREE sign on what was left. Worked great - the house was empty, I cleaned it up, and pretty much left it to the realtors at that point. Finally, on June 16th I jumped in my fully loaded truck and headed for the Fortymile! On the way up just past the town of Palmer on the way to the town of Glenallen you pass Sheep Mountain in the Talkeetna Mountains. It is a very colorful, mineralized peak and it was a beautiful sunny day so I stopped and took this photo. Sheep Mountain, Alaska From the USGS ARDF file at http://mrdata.usgs.gov/ardf/show-ardf.php?ardf_num=AN080 Early Jurassic greenstone and minor interbedded sandstone and shale is intruded by numerous mafic dikes and at least one body of unmineralized Jurassic granite. Greenstone has been hydrothermally altered and contains at least 6 separate gypsiferous deposits in altered zones along joints and shear zones. Deposits composed of pods and stringers of gypsum, quartz, alunite, kaolin minerals, pyrite and serpentine minerals (Eckhart, 1953). The gypsum-bearing material averages 25 to 30 percent gypsum, with a maximum of 50 percent. In addition also reported from same general area are: (1) small irregular quartz-calcite-epidote veins in greenstone containing chalcopyrite, malachite, azurite and possibly bornite and chalcocite (Berg and Cobb, 1967); (2) disseminated chalcopyrite in greenstone over 5 ft thick zone subparallel to bedding (Martin and Mertie, 1914); (3) trace gold in samples of pyritic greenstone (Berg and Cobb, 1967); and (4) minor anomalous concentrations of copper and gold associated with some of the alteration zones and nearby veins (MacKevett and Holloway, 1977). Large area of south flank of Sheep Mountain is stained dark red from oxidation of pyrite in greenstone (Berg and Cobb, 1967). Oxidation of Cu minerals. The gypsiferous material averages 25 to 30 percent gypsum, with a maximum of 50 percent. The six deposits indicated and inferred reserves contain about 659,000 short tons of gypsum material, of which about 50 tons of this material had been mined (Eckhart, 1953). In addition, about 55 tons of clay was mined for the manufacture of fire brick and boiler lining. Samples of pyritic greenstone assayed trace gold (Berg and Cobb, 1967), and nearby veins in alteration zones show concentrations of copper and gold (MacKevett and Holloway, 1977). We did a talk radio show for many, many years at our company. The latest of several "radio personalities" to work with us on the show was Kurt Haider. He had expressed an interest in metal detecting so I invited him up to look for gold. I met him along the way just before we got to Glenallen and headed on to Tok for a bite to eat at Fast Eddie's. Then on to Chicken and finally Walker Fork Campground by evening. This is a very nice, well maintained BLM campground at the mouth of Jack Wade Creek where it dumps into the Walker Fork of the Fortymile River. The campground hosts this summer were a very nice couple named Pat and Sandy. Walker Fork Campground Steve's Camp at Walker Fork Campground The next morning Kurt and I ran up the creek to find Bernie and Chris Pendergast. They were spending the summer camped along Jack Wade Creek prospecting and I was anxious to see how they had been doing. Not bad, they already had over an ounce of gold found before we arrived, and that got Kurt and I all fired up to go look for gold. I had told Kurt, a total newbie, that I had a sure thing. We were going to hit a bedrock area I had detected the previous summer and where I had found a lot of nice fat little nuggets. There was rubble and little piles of dirt, and I thought all it would take is moving the rubble and dirt aside and we were sure to find gold I had missed. We got started after lunch on a steep slope where it was easy to just rake material off and then check with a detector. Kurt Looking For Gold With White's MXT Pro The location turned out to not be very good, but Kurt did manage to find one little nugget, his first ever. He was real happy about that! We did not work at it all that long though with the late start, and Chris and Bernie had invited us over for moose stew. Chris is a fantastic cook so we enjoyed both the stew and a DVD packed full of Ganes Creek photos from the couples adventures there. Finally we called it a night and headed back to our camp. Now time to get serious! Kurt and I grabbed the picks and rakes and spent the whole day tearing into some berms left behind by the miners bulldozers on the bedrock bench area. I just knew we were going to find gold for sure. We would both do hard labor for awhile, then I would put Kurt on the ground with my Gold Bug 2. Working Bedrock With the Gold Bug 2 We worked a couple hours. Nothing. No big deal, just need to move a little more. Nothing. More digging and scraping. Nothing! I would have bet $100 we were not only going to find gold there but do pretty well. The spot had produced quite a few nuggets before and I had refused to believe we couple possibly had cleaned it out. But by the end of the day it was a total bust. We finally just wandered around a bit detecting and I lucked into a little 3 grain nugget. What a letdown. No big deal for me but I was really wanting Kurt to do well and this was not working out anything like I had thought it would. The next and last day for Kurt we decided to hook up with Bernie and just give it a go like we normally do. And that means hitting the bushes and tailing piles wandering around looking for gold. Kurt had his MXT Pro and Bernie and I our GPX 5000 detectors, so we had a horsepower advantage for sure. Still, I was hopeful as we put Kurt on the best spot that Bernie knew of from his extra time before us. Bernie Pendergast and His Trusty Minelab GPX 5000 Very first beep, Bernie digs up a 3 pennyweight nugget! Yeehaw, we are going to find gold!! We all hunt away, with Bernie and I checking in with Kurt periodically. Kurt, it seems, just was not destined to have any beginners luck at all; Bernie and I each found a couple 1-2 gram nuggets by the end of the day but Kurt came up dry. I was feeling kind of bummed out but Kurt insisted he was having a huge adventure, and come to find out he rarely ever got out of town at all, so this really was a big adventure for him. I just wish he could have found more gold, but he was up early and headed back to town the next morning. I was on my own now, so I rigged my GPX 5000 up with my Nugget Finder 16" mono coil and hit the tailing piles. All day. For no gold. However, just by myself that is really no big deal at all. It happens all the time and I do not think anything of it. If anything, the pressure was off trying to help a friend find gold, so it was a relaxing day wandering around. Saturday, June 22 started out sunny with a few clouds. There were some tailing piles across the creek I had been wanting to detect. I had hit them a bit the year before and just dug trash, but had not put in more than a couple hours at it. Still, they looked real good and I had been thinking about them all winter and decided it was time to give them a go. I started out with my GPX 5000 but immediately got into some old rusted metal, like decomposed and shredded can fragments. I just was not in the mood for it that morning, so went back to the truck and got out my Fisher F75. The F75 had done well for me in the past hunting trashy tailing piles and was along on the trip for that reason. I got near the top of the pile with the F75 and on getting a signal looked down and saw a dig hole full of leaves. I try to recover all my trash and get frustrated when I find holes with junk in them. The signal though was flaky, not a distinct trash signal, so I figured I may as well see what the other person left in the hole. I gave a quick scoop with my pick, and gold pops out of the hole! I am not sure if the person was using a VLF and the specimen gave a trash signal, so they left it after half digging it, or maybe they were using a Minelab, and the signal just sounded "too big" so they left it for trash. Too big indeed, they walked away from a 2.37 ounce gold specimen! To say I was stunned would be a vast understatement. The trip had only just begun. The best part of all was that my expectations for the trip were very low. I had been hoping that a month of camping and detecting would get me a couple ounces of gold. That would be more than enough to cover my expenses and make a few bucks. Yet here I was on the sixth day of my trip, and I had already exceeded that amount. This was just great on several different levels, not least in pretty much taking every bit of pressure off going forward. Here is that specimen from a more detailed account of the find I told previously at Fisher F75 Strikes Gold Twice in a Row! 2.37 Ounce Gold Specimen Found With Fisher F75 Metal Detector on Jack Wade Creek, Alaska I had to take a break and go show Chris and Bernie my good fortune. Then I switched back to the GPX 5000 and got with digging everything, including all those bits of rusted cans. Funny how a nice chunk of gold changes your perspective. That, and seeing what somebody else had left behind as trash. I finished out the day finding three more nuggets, a 2.5 gram "cornflake" nugget, a 3.4 gram piece and and fat round 6.1 gram marble. First week, 2-3/4 ounce of gold, This was shaping up to be a really great adventure! To be continued...... Steve's Gold From Jack Wade Creek, First Week 2013 This post has been promoted to an article
  3. Hello all, I finally got a chance to get out for a day of detecting and met up with a few friends. We had a large area to detect so we all split up and went our own ways. One of the guys told me about a digging that followed the large gully we were hunting on. He mentioned that the digging was up the hill and paralleled the gully. I found the area and it was what I had hoped for, a pocket digging. The old timers had opened up a seam of rotten shale that was about fifty yards long, ten feet across and about eight feet deep. I detected the digging itself first and did not get any gold. The guys had told me that they detected some gold out of it earlier. It still looked too good so I went over the berm to the hillside between the digging and the gully. You could see where material had been thrown over and down and I figured that I might get a small scrap somewhere along that zone to at least keep the skunk away. As I moved across the face of the hill I came to an area that had more brush and less dig holes. I went into my regular routine and dropped to my knees and started detecting into the brush. About ten feet in I got a really nice mellow signal and scraped the leaves out of the way. The target was still there. I moved the topsoil off my small clearing down to the red and orange clay that was mixed in with the rotten shale. The shale began to get hard and about six inches deeper as I was pulling the soil out of the v-groove when I thought I saw something yellow glint in the late afternoon sun. I reached down and grabbed a hand full of dirt. As I switched the dirt from hand to hand I felt the weight of something as it dropped onto my palm. I pulled my hand out into the sunlight and right away I could see my nugget peeking out of the clay and dirt. Wow, I said to myself, that's a nice one. When the nugget was put on the scales it came out to 14.88 pennyweights. After washing the loose dirt off of it I put it on the scales again and it came in at 14.83 pennyweight. I was using the 3000 with the Sadie coil. I have been very busy the last month or so getting my book "Detecting for Gold, Adventures, Trips and Tips" off to the printer. I have also been working on my website "TRINITYAU.COM". The book will be available at the end of January. Thanks all, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS
  4. Picture of my new 1992 4X4 suburban deep in the "Rub al Khali" - the Empty Quarter - South West Saudi Arabia - world's biggest sand desert. It was a long hot spring day - 30 miles from a one lane blacktop - all ended well, but still. Driving in rough dune country at midday (check the shadows) is highly not recommended. You can't see the contours.
  5. Hi Folks I have posted a few messages on here. And it is one of my favorite forums to visit. So allow me to introduce myself. My name is Trevor Alty and I live on the West Coast off the South Island of New Zealand. My county is called " Buller". And yes it is a gold bearing region. But we are covered with very green lush forest, As we have a very high rainfall. I am 66 years old. But have kinda done gold since I was five. Did the learning curve, Pans first, then sluices, then got into underwater dredging. And also ran a beach claim, Its called black sanding down here. Really micro fine gold, smaller than a fly poo. But I learn't how to catch it. Some of you may know of the " Gold Cube" well my old mate Mike Pung and Red didn't invent it.. And neither did I. But when I decided to put a claim on a beach where I lived right by. I needed to find a method of catching that fly poo. So I used what the black-sanders were using over a hundred years ago. Down here we call that the boil box system. Believe it or not it was developed by people from the Shetland Islands, up Britain way. They came down here in the early gold-rush days and somehow worked that system out. Its basically a column of water that rises up, and the sorts out the relative gravity of the different minerals. Now days its got a flasher name. Anyway it worked for me. I love taking the old guys idea's and using them. After all they were the masters. Siphons, Perfect water races with just the right amount of fall, and many run for miles. Damn they were smart. An engineer those days was indeed an engineer. Anyway Mike Pung had some trouble catching fine gold up at I think it was Lake Mitchagin. He ended up on a forum I run, that had a lot about how to catch real fine gold.. He followed my instructions, built a wooden one, went back and yep it worked. So then he did a lot a research and development. And at the end of it all, "The Cube was Born" and now they are shipped all over the world. And very popular they are indeed. Why even Lip CA has one. And believe it or not his son Arlie came down to NZ stayed with me for most of our summer, a few years back and we did very well dredging on my claim. Eh Harry. And yes I have been to the great ole US of A. Washington State. But wait there is more. And yep to Alaska. A mate of mine Bruce Strandburg, that was one my forum came down to NZ. I took him out and yep he panned some nice gold.. He got the bug and wanted to get a claim in Alaska. In the Circle/Central district. He flew me up to help him look. Great State, but to much glacial muck and overburden in that area. Hey Steve, yep " Fast Eddies" is a great place, Good tucker my man. And yep its in Tok. Damm we should have turned off there and went inland to the Chicken Place. After scouting out Central and Circle we headed back to Fairbanks. Then went up the oil line road, to the hidden valley. Think it was the Elliot Highway. Ended up staying on the runway at Les Cobbs place, and had our evening meals with him. He was a great man, didn't suffer fools, bit like me there I guess. We got on like a house on fire. Why he had even been down to NZ on a hunting trip. So sad to hear he fell out of a tree when setting a bear bait drum and got paralyzed, then died not long after. He was a man amongst men. I must get his wife's book one day. Sadly didn't get to Anchorage, bugga. But damm I sure loved Alaska. (In the Summer) fire weed, blue berry's and its remoteness. Anyway I am rambling a bit here, but it sure is fun. Cause this kinda feels like home. My latest project is resurrecting the hydraulic elevator. And I am sure it will resurface in the near future. Once again old technology but it works, and it efficiency is 100 per cent. Down here in NZ they had ones lifting 12 inch rocks eighty feet. Straight up. Now beat that. Our suction nozzles and power jets utilize the same principle . But sadly are only at 50 to 60 per cent off effiency . I am developing two at the moment, one for sucking rocks, sand and gravel, and one purely for sand. I will add a pic of a bit of the sand one. Doesn't look much as it needs the throat attached. Now as we all know there are no free lunches when it comes to suction and lift. The higher you lift, the less suction you get. But so far I have had very favorable results. And I continue my research and development, The main denominator is Jet size to throat size. But I do know the ratio's. Thats what R and D is all about.. Maybe you will see the sand one at Nome in a year or two. Hopefully sooner.. Cheers Trev From Down Under
  6. Edit: I chronicled this trip to Alaska first, and then told the story of my earlier 2013 Alaska Trip after the fact. I did well enough in 2013 I did not want to tip anyone off to what I was up to until I had a chance to return in 2014. Therefore this story got told first, as if the other had not happened. And then the 2013 story was told at the link above. My history with the Fortymile Mining District of Alaska began in the 1970's and has continued off and on ever since. Last summer I spent considerable time in the area and have decided to return again this summer. Here is the basic plan. I leave Monday to drive from Reno to Alaska. I am stopping a day to visit family in Olympia then will continue to Anchorage, where I will pick up my brother Tom who is flying up from the Lower 48. Then we will backtrack to Chicken, Alaska and pitch a tent site at the Buzby's Chicken Gold Camp http://www.chickengold.com Main building at Chicken Creek Gold Camp Last year I mostly camped around but did spend a period of time at the Buzby's operation. When I was out and about I had to activate my satellite phone to stay in touch because there is no cell phone service in the Chicken area. The nearest cell phone access is a couple hours back along the road at Tok. There is WiFi access at several locations in Chicken however, one of them being at Chicken Gold Camp. The WiFi access is included in the price of staying there. I am getting a dry camp site for $14 a day (6 days get seventh day free) but it saves me $300 activating my satellite phone, and WiFi allows me to keep on the forum and stay in better touch with my wife than the sat phone. Bottom line not activating the sat phone ends up paying for nearly a month of staying at Chicken Gold Camp. Right now I am booked from June 15 until July 20 but may extend. Since I will have pretty much daily Internet access for the entire trip I am inviting you along via this thread to see how we are doing plus to perhaps answer questions for anyone planning to visit Alaska. The Internet access in Chicken is not the greatest even at its best, as the satellite dishes point straight at the horizon just trying to get a signal. That being the case plus I will be busy I will not be posting on other forums for the duration. If you know anyone who might be interested in following this point them this way. I will report in at least a couple times a week and probably more often as time allows or something interesting happens. My brother and I will be commuting to various locations from our base camp in Chicken, with a lot of attention paid to Jack Wade Creek about 20 minutes drive up the road. I have access to mining claims on this and other creeks in the area, but we will also spend considerable time on the public access area on the lower 2.5 miles of Jack Wade Creek. Visit this link for more information. This area is open to non-motorized mining and we will of course be metal detecting. I have detected on Jack Wade a lot, and I can tell you it is an exercise in hard work and patience. It is all tailing piles full of nails and bullets. The nuggets are very few and far between, with even a single nugget in a day a good days work. However, the nuggets are solid and can be large so can add up if you put in a lot of time. Or not as luck does have a bit to do with it. You could easily spend a week detecting Wade Creek and find nothing. So do not be surprised when I make lots of reports indicating nothing found on a given day. We fully expect that to be the case but hope we hope a month of detecting here and at other locations will pay off. I plan on relying mostly on my GPX 5000 but will also be using a Gold Bug Pro for trashy locations or for when I am tired from running the big gun and want to take it easy. I usually run my 18" mono coil on the GPX unless in steep terrain or brushy locations and dig everything. And that means a lot of digging! The Gold Bug Pro eliminates digging a lot of trash and is easy to handle in thick brush. My brother will mostly use my old GP 3000 he bought from me years ago. I am also bringing along the Garrett ATX kind of for backup and also to experiment around with. It also will be easier to use in brushy locations than the GPX. Finally, I hope to possibly have a new Minelab SDC 2300 get shipped to me somewhere along the way to use on some bedrock locations I know of that have been pretty well pounded to death. Chris Ralph will be arriving in Fairbanks on July 8th so I will drive in and pick him up. He will be staying with Tom and I until I return him to Fairbanks on July 21. High on the list is to visit with Dick Hammond (chickenminer) and other friends in the area. The road to Alaska is just another highway these days, with the only real issue being the lack of gas in northern Canada in the middle of the night. The pumps there still do not take credit cards so when the gas station closes you are stuck there until it opens in the morning. Do not try to get gas at Dot Lake at 2AM! I will drive to Olympia to spend a night and day with my mom (12 hours) then on to Dawson Creek/Fort St. John (16 hours), then to Whitehorse (15 hours), and then to Anchorage (12 hours). Four days driving, about $500 in gas for my Toyota 4-Runner. Pick up Tom and some supplies and then back to Chicken (about 8 hours). Anyway, you are all invited along at least via the internet to share in the adventure. You have any questions about Alaska in the process then fire away.
  7. I met up with forum member Condor on Thursday and as promised he took me for a heck of a hike in steep terrain. We got in and pitched camp and that was it for the day. Friday through Monday we shinnied up bedrock chutes and bushwacked through the hills trying to get to old mine workings. This high Sierra 1800's stuff is well grown over and I am learning just how impenetrable the vegetation can get here. Alaska it can get slow going but there is nothing that will actually stop you dead in your tracks. Looks like I need to get a mini chainsaw. We basically detected in the morning and evening with a little siesta in the main heat of the day. Those old pits can be like big dry, dusty ovens. Only real issue was that Condor had a new SDC 2300 and a new charger system and batteries and there seemed to be issues with the batteries. I had my three pre-charged sets of rechargeables and a couple sets of alkalines. Between what I had in extras plus what he could get charged off his solar panel we did just fine and had power to spare but he needs to sort out what is going on with his batteries. I found a set of my batteries easily got me through a day and maybe a little more so I see no need for me to deal with solar charging unless I am out for more than five days, which honestly I doubt I will be doing. The gold was sparse and scattered but I did finally hit a mini patch of a few chunky nuggets on the edge of a small pit where material looks to have sluiced over a small bedrock outcrop. My largest was a couple pennyweight and I ended up with 11.2 grams or 7.1 dwt for four days of detecting. I'm happy with a couple grams a day average so I am pleased with the result. Condor got a bit less due to my hitting that little patch. Main thing was hooking back up with old friends, seeing new terrain, and getting my gear sorted out. My boots, sufficient for normal terrain, let me down in hours of near vertical. My toes kept cramming into the ends and I will not be surprised if I loose both big toenails. I have good Alaska mountain boots but they are probably too hot for most of this stuff so a new pair of boots may be in order. Other than that I was fairly happy with my setup. The SDCs once again proved their worth. Man, this ground was hot!! Serpentine bedrock, with patches of red soil on it that must have been at least 50% magnetite by content. The SDC would want to groan if moved too fast but that was easily remedied by simply doing what we are supposed to and going slow. Worse was when getting what appeared to be a faint signal, and then after scratching off the surface the ground would light up with many faint signals in the disturbed magnetite. It was like it was magnetically aligned resting undisturbed in place but once disturbed the ground responses became mixed. A VLF would be totally dead in this stuff. It actually was a bit like what Chris Ralph and I ran into in a couple very small places and in this case it was more widespread. That all said, I generally was able to easily hunt in sensitivity level "3" very effectively and smoothly, with only small foot or two square areas making me slow way down and see what was up. Tons of bullets, piles of nails, and basically no sign of prior detecting to speak of. I can see why between the terrain and the ground conditions. It really was a kind of textbook case for having the SDC 2300. Thanks Condor!! Great little trip, great hanging out with you and catching up on our lives. See you again soon! My Minelab SDC 2300 takes a break A look at the ground My mini gold patch 11.2 grams or 7.1 pennyweight This post has been promoted to an article
  8. I recently did an arduous prospecting hike on the N. Fork of the American River near Iowa Hill. I was upriver about about 3 hrs from my truck. I found a nice little sand spit in a steep canyon and set up my campsite. The canyon was narrow and the afternoon breeze was picking up my little tent, so I thought to put a flat rock on the corner to anchor it. I walked 10 ft to a rubble pile and reached down for a decent looking rock when I spotted movement out of my right eye (fortunately that's my good eye) about a foot and a half from my hand. While my frontal cortex was trying to figure out what it was, my "lizard brain" assumed all executive function and commanded me to "get away from THAT"! I was compelled to execute a difficult triple reverse crow hop. Now I expect I would have garnered high marks owing to the degree of difficulty and a bonus for the colorful invective issued mid-flight, though the landing was a bit awkward, given the uneven ground and such. In the outside world an "excited utterance" is quite prized. It is one of the few exceptions to the "hearsay" rule in court. It is thought that a statement made in the heat of the moment is more credible than one made after thoughtful deliberation. With that in mind I can't be certain that this particular serpent was engaged in unseemly carnal knowledge with someone's mother, or that it had a fondness for oral sex with males, but I accused it of all this and more. That little monster had allowed me to step over his little shelter and had lain there all the while I was setting up my little camp. He never rattled until I was mid-flight. I probably run into half a dozen rattlers a year and I don't normally kill them, but this was an exception. I just couldn't afford to share my little spit of land with a venomous serpent. Just too risky given the distance to civilization and help. He wedged himself into a crevice and wouldn't come out. I decided to smoke him out with some dried brush. Imagine trying to get that little pile lit without getting my hand near the crevice. Got it lit and he made quite a fuss, but just wouldn't come out, so I added more wood and barbequed him place, I think. He quieted down and I never saw a sign of him afterwards. The next day as I was hiking up a steep ravine, I ran into his cousin. I saw this one in plenty of time to avoid it, but it sure made a racket as I went past. Naturally, I was all goosey about where I was putting my hands and feet for the rest of the trip. Saw one more dead one a few days later.
  9. Hello all, I met up with Chris and Shasta Gold Hunter for day of playing around. We headed out to a location we wanted to check out but it just was not to be. After meeting up together again we decided to go to another site. It was a pretty warm day so this location turned out to be just what we needed. After parking we headed down the trail and into the canyon where we found the creek full of water, more water than last year at this time. We split up and went different directions. All three of us were using GB Pro's and searching crevices for targets, then panning out the impacted gravels. We then used straws to blow away the remaining dry dirt. I think we all spent more time just enjoying the weather and relaxing. None of us got rich today, but no one got the skunk either. Thanks, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS
  10. Hello all, I met up with fellow hunter Chris and we headed out to a spot of private property where I have found come nice gold in the past. Chris was using the GB Pro/10 inch coil and I was using my 3000/Sadie. After parking we headed down the trail onto BLM land and walked to the fence that is the line for the private property. I called the owner up and let her know that we were going to be detecting today. Chris wandered down the creek to work the bedrock while I went up and over a ridge to a small flat that had some bedrock popping up through the red and yellow soil. I dug a few pieces of lead and moved up the flat and got a nice signal right near the edge of some bedrock. I dug down several inches and the signal was screaming. It turned out to be an old piece of lead that had turned white over the years. I waved the coil over the hole again and heard another more mellow signal. A few inches more and I saw the glint of yellow in the dark iron rich soil. I reached down and picked up a small piece of gold that turned out to .65 of a gram. I thought to myself that I better check the hole again. There was still another signal in the now almost ten inch deep hole. I was on solid rock now and could not see anything resembling a target, the signal was coming from under the bedrock. I chipped away with the pick point and eventually broke off a few slices of the bedrock taking me down a few more inches. I repeated this step a few more times and finally went over the target and it was not in the hole anymore. After about seventeen inches the target was in the pile of broken bedrock and clay. I pinpointed and pinched some soil up between finger tips and waved it over the coil, I had it. Rather than drop it on the coil I set my detector down and dropped the soil into my other hand and stirred it around with a finger tip until I saw yellow. It turned out to be a nice melon seed piece of gold that was about two grams. I hunted a while more with no other good signals so I headed back towards where I had left Chris. After finding him he showed me the three pieces he had found in the bedrock along the edge of the creek. We both took off different directions to hunt some more. An hour later I met up with Chris again and while I had not found anything else he had found two more. We left within an hour after not finding any more gold. It was another pretty day in the north state, clear and maybe 75 degrees. Thanks, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS
  11. Hello all, just got back from a relaxing trip in the Mother Lode country. George and I invited a friend Chris to come with us to an old pit located high on a ridge above the American River. We met up with a few friends at the site and began to set up camp. An hour later and we were off and running. At the end of the afternoon a few of us met up to see was what was found. One fellow, Robert, had found two pieces. One piece was a bit below a gram while the other was a tad smaller. A friend, Wes, got a small earring piece right before time for him to head out. Chris had found three small crumbs and was ready for the next day to come. The rest of us had blanked. For me it was just one of those trips where I had more time laying against a boulder and watching the sky. It was relaxing. The next morning there were just five of us.The temperature was in the high forties overnight so we did not have a freeze like I had expected. After eating we all headed out our own direction. I was still in the same frame of mind so I really did not detect much. It was a beautiful day in the high sixties to low seventies with a clear sky. I had just gotten up from another short snooze and Chris came running up the hill to show us the piece he had just found. It was a really neat piece about the size of a dime and covered with manganese oxide. After looking at it later with a loop you could see bubbles on the black. A bit later I ran into George and he had found a small earring piece. I was still chasing the skunk. We all met up at camp later in the afternoon and decided to eat a bit and then go out again before calling it quits for the day. Chris and I went down to little stretch of flat bedrock and began hunting with our GB Pro's. In a few minutes Chris had another small one. I finally got lucky and broke the skunk with a whopping size piece that came in at four tenths of a grain. Oh well, that's the way it goes. Another friend Doug had found one decent piece that was about six or seven grains and a few smaller ones. All in all it was a great trip with friends and a bit of gold was found and I got quite a bit of rest...
  12. I really would like to say that I have not been out because it has been raining and snowing however it was almost eighty degrees today with bright sunny skies. Expected to be dry for awhile. I have started to buy up bottled water and stack it to the ceilings. We are not done yet but I like to be prepared. Being raised in this part of the country I have seen winter come late many times so I am not too worried. We have had a few years where you get all the rain and snow in about five weeks and then it is over and you are wishing you never heard the word, " winter". I got out today with some friends for a hunt. We went to an old spot that has been hunted out, or so I have been told. I went through the normal rounds of showing the areas where I had found gold in the past and then we all split up and started detecting. Two friends, Mark and Chris went down into a draw to try their luck. I stayed up on the flat top with two new friends, David and Wyatt, who I had taken out yesterday for a day of prospecting classes. David was using a 5000 and Wyatt, his son, was doing the digging. I had my 3000/Sadie Mono and walked out to the end of the ridge through the young but dense manzanita bushes. I had been hunting for just a few minutes when I got a nice mellow signal right in the thick brush. I had to stay standing while I dug the target out because of the brush.The signal turned out to be a nice little starter nugget about 4.4 grains. I began to detect back towards David and in just a few feet I got another real weak but soft signal, it turned out to be a 4.1 grainer. I detected for another hour and picked up several .22 rounds and an old fifty cal ball at about twenty inches, but no more gold. I met up with David and Wyatt to find out that he had found his very first piece of gold. He was a happy camper. Being it was his first nugget I immediately took his cap off and slapped him on the head with it. After a short break we went back to hunting and in a few minutes David had his second nugget. About that time my son in-law, George, was wandering up the hill towards me. He had not found anything yet. George was using my GB Pro/five inch coil. I sent him a few yards away from my position and told him to stay close to the brush with his sweeps. In a few minutes he had his very first piece of detected gold, it was about a 15 grainer. A half an hour later I got a screamer that was an 11.6 grain piece of gold that was stuck in a dirt clod when I dropped the target on the coil. It looked like a piece of rusted tin at first. I was close to the other guys so walked over to show it off. About that time my son in-law found another little nugget that was about twelve grains just a few feet from our location. A few more sips of tea and I was off again into the manzanita where I found two more pieces in just a few minutes. One was a 7.6 grainer and the other was another 4.4 grainer. As I was detecting I heard my close friend George talking to the other George behind me. He had his GB Pro and hunted with us for about an hour but was unable to get a piece. George was getting ready to leave when I got call and I hollered to the son in-law that we had to head out. The three of us headed towards David and his son to let them know we were leaving. They had found two more small nuggets for a total of four, not bad for the day. He had gotten his first nugget ever and three more to really give him and his son the fever. Mark and Chris were still off somewhere down a draw and I did not hear from them till they got home. Chris had found two small pieces and Mark drew the skunk card. All in all it was good day and I was very happy to see George and David both get their first nuggets ever with a detector. Thanks all, TRINITYAU/RAYMILLS
  13. I have not been out much lately. So,getting the itch and with a couple hours of daylight left, I hit the creek near my house. I took the gb pro,but left the headphones at home. I detected till sunset,only finding trash. My last target was a 22 bullet. For whatever reason,I sat there for about 30 seconds rubbing the taget against the bottom of the coil, screwing around trying to make that scratching noise the rappers make on s turntable...wierd,I know.As I stand up,I see something grey running across the bedrock outcrop 30 yards away..A Bobcat!! Guess I sounded like a wounded rabbit,lol. Glad I didnt call in a lion! Happy New Year everyone!!!
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