Cold Gold - GPX 6000

[alaska detector]

It’s been a year of not doing what I want to do when I wanted to do it due to delays on work and home projects, i.e. little time for prospecting. So when I had an unexpected free day yesterday that coincided with a weather window I jumped at the chance to get in one more day in before things freeze up solid for the year.

I went back to a spot in a canyon where I had detected a picker a month ago, and started swinging. I got a loud signal right away and started chopping into the frozen ground with a rock hammer. Thinking it was another chunk of rusted iron I wasn’t working too enthusiastically, but to my shock there appeared flat 1 gram nugget buried in the tiniest crack in the bedrock. I’ve never found anything bigger than .25 of a gram in this area so I let out a choice expletive did a happy dance. 
 

Not far from where I found the nugget, I got another good sounding signal in the slate bedrock on top of quartz seam and started hacking away. I was having a hard time pinpointing where the signal was and kept digging deeper and wider into the bedrock, fortunately it was decomposing, but it being frozen made it harder. After spending a half an hour working on this new slate quarry of mine I was surprised when our popped another 1 gram nugget. Omg, best day ever.
 

It was getting below freezing so I was considering packing up but checked the hole before moving on and was surprised with another clear signal. I expanded the hole and after another 15-20 minutes of chipping away bedrock I had finally moved it. I couldn’t pinpoint it by waving handfuls of broken up rock over the coil so I kept dumping the rock into the pan till I got the signal in the pan. Of course I’d forgotten my rubber gloves so I panned it out in the icy water with my bare hands. When I panned back to hr concentrates there was another 1 gram nugget. What?!

I was starting to lose daylight so I had to pack it up as hiking out of the canyon on ice and snow in the dark isn’t high on my fun list. Now I have to wait 7-8 months to see else is there!

 

[Dan Smith]

Great write up and great gold!! Thanks

[Bishop]

i was out yesterday morning. its a strange thing here, when the temperature drops and you are used to 105 or hotter
and it was about 68 and i felt cold. i don't think i could do the Alaska cold.
good job, nice nuggets.

[Valens Legacy]

Good hunting!

Good luck on your next outing.

[rvpopeye]

Well worth the frozen fingers !

Good job X3. 

[MSC]

Looks like the 6 is working good for you, nice gold. 

[beatup]

well done and good on you

[Gerry in Idaho]

Nice solid nuggets and great read.  Need to quit working so hard and start playing hard.  Although with winter there in AK, you might need to head south.

[alaska detector]

There was a break in the weather and I went back out with a friend this past weekend. He’s a noobie so I pointed out a likely spot to crevice, gave a quick demonstration on how to pan and left him to his work.
 

I spent the afternoon exploring new spots and checking out some hidden bedrock by rolling some small boulders and got a good signal, after breaking up some bedrock out popped a quartzy nugget that was just under a gram.

I wanted to search more, but we had a cut off to get him back to town so made my way back to him to see how he did. He ended up pulling almost a gram of gold out in pickers and flakes, and had no concept how good that was for a first timer in that spot. This is the same guy who pulled out an almost 30 inch rainbow on one of his first times fishing and didn’t want to take a picture of it because it wasn’t a big deal, while I’m losing my shit for him. Some people!

Matt

[maxxkatt]

Great find. Don't forget that location in 7-8 months! I bet you won't.