Jack Wade Trip Report And Some Equinox Questions

[Sasquatch]

Last weekend I made the drive from Anchorage up to the Taylor Highway and past Chicken to the Jack Wade public gold panning area.  Look up Steve’s excellent posts on the area for more descriptions and pictures of nuggets, no gold on my trip.

It’s still pretty early so Chicken wasn’t even open yet and some ice shelfs were still along sections of the creek. Got great weather, just some passing downpours but in a T-shirt with no mosquitos most of the time.  I did take waders to cross the creek,as it was running a little high with snowmelt.

This was the first trip I dedicated a lot of time as a serious search for gold and was just as much about learning the detector.  Mostly I have worked beaches, campsites, a few roadsides, so I know it can find the tiniest bits of melted aluminum can, bullets and coins.

As expected I dug a lot of trash, but I did find some interesting nuggets that are definitely not gold.  Most are iron based, magnetic, but a couple look very noduly, and one is not magnetic. The others are probably just rusted bits of iron.  There were some sparkles I thought might be pyrite but I think is just dust from the surrounding shist as even the nails and bits of wire sparkle under the right light. Take a look at the pics and see what you think, maybe just welding or torch cutting remnants. They were all in the same area.

The area has been heavily worked by detectorists with lots of dig holes around.  Equally lots of unexplored tailings but many so overgrown that swinging a detector is impossible. I put in about 16 hours of exploring and detecting on the tailings. Covered a wide variety of terrain and tailings, new, old, tall, short, and along some bedrock sections.

On to the Equinox: I tried both Park 2 and the Gold 1 settings.  Obviously, my ear is not tuned to the Gold 1 program, it was providing way more chatter than I could process, even with sensitivity turned down to 15 or so.  I would have turned it down more but I could run in Park 2 at 20-22 sensitivity and thought I may miss more in Gold 1.  I was using the 11” stock coil.
Is it normal to have to run at a much lower sensitivity in the gold modes?

Most of the time I ended up running in Park 2 with -7,-8,-9 turned off, which may have been a mistake. With how worked the area is, the best chance is probably digging all the iron and hoping for a nugget that might be masked by the trash.

In one area I did have some trouble with hot rocks, they would sound as a fairly small but round 12 with iron nearby but after digging out would end up as a -6 hot rock.  Was curious why it read so high.

All in all a great trip.  No gold, and not much wildlife but got a nice shot of a Short-eared Owl on the drive out the Taylor Hwy.   Photos of finds, handful of magnetic nuggets, close up of the non magnetic nugget (maybe lead or silver?) 

[GotAU?]

Thats a great shot of the owl!  Your framing is professional as well, so much better than putting it dead center!

[Steve Herschbach]

Park 2 is a good alternate nugget mode.

Equinox Gold Nugget Tips

Other than that, looks like a typical day of nugget detecting. Sorry you did not get over a nugget, but looks like plenty of targets left to dig. Any one of those could have turned out to be a nugget, so never give up until nothing goes beep. The iron nodules may be just that, some kind of jig shot and other misc metal found in mining camps. The other item is probably copper?

[Sasquatch]

Thanks for the tips and previous reports Steve!  They were very helpful.  
 

The non magnetic nugget seems much harder than lead and definitely silver in color, not copper, also about as hard as steel.  Will clean it up more and see if I can identify it.

Thanks for the photo comment GotAU. Alaska is a great spot to do photography.  Was great to see an owl in good enough light to capture a photo, usually they are just a shadow passing in the night.

Besides the finds there is good rockhounding to be had along the Taylor Hwy.  Found garnets in schist, some medium quality labrodorite, and dendrites.

Here’s a couple pics of a piece of the labrodorite showing the bluish flash in the right light. Need to polish it up and tumble some other pieces I found.

 

[cudamark]

Other than the Gold modes, I find Field 2 is the most sensitive to tiny gold. It's also a bit better in iron and coke areas, but, you need to run it with the horseshoe on or you may miss some stuff that reads in the upper iron/lower non-ferrous area. In nasty ground, yes, you'll need to lower the sensitivity and/or use Gold 2 to deal with mineralization.

[Sasquatch]

Good to know, hopefully will make it up there to try again.

Still stumped on what the one nugget is.  It is a dark silver color, very hard to scratch with steel tools, I can polish it but not take much material away with a hard green stone on a dremel.  It consistently registers a 2 on the Equinox in air and is non-magnetic, not even slightly.  Weight seems slightly heavier than the iron nodules.

Any ideas? It’s too hard for silver or lead. Maybe just a beat up piece of non-magnetic stainless steel?  But not sure how that reads on the Equinox.

 

 

[Steve Herschbach]

On 5/20/2021 at 9:23 PM, Sasquatch said:

Good to know, hopefully will make it up there to try again.

Still stumped on what the one nugget is.  It is a dark silver color, very hard to scratch with steel tools, I can polish it but not take much material away with a hard green stone on a dremel.  It consistently registers a 2 on the Equinox in air and is non-magnetic, not even slightly.  Weight seems slightly heavier than the iron nodules.

Any ideas? It’s too hard for silver or lead. Maybe just a beat up piece of non-magnetic stainless steel?  But not sure how that reads on the Equinox.

 

 

Could be a welding remnant, not uncommon in mining areas.

[Sasquatch]

Thanks. Got a small scale and specific gravity is around 9 so probably nothing interesting.  Another piece actually had a void inside so assuming welding remains, especially since all were found close together.