5 Hrs Of Desert Hiking, 20 Min Of Finding

[Condor]

I caught the stomach bug which kept me pretty close to home if you know what I mean.  After 4 days of shut-in I was ready for some detecting.  We had a bit of a break with cooler weather so I went back out to the area of the "short rich gully" to do some exploring.  I put in 5 hrs of hard walking yesterday trying to find a new patch.  I had avoided this particular zone in the past because it is littered with bowling ball sized volcanics and had some minor use by the old WWII desert warfare training folks.  A fair number of jacketed bullets and mortar shrapnel are pretty common on the flats.  After a lot of walking I dropped down into a shallow gully ready to round my loop back to the truck.  I get a solid signal where I know bedrock is no more than 15 inches down.  I hit bedrock and out pops a perfectly ugly, jagged piece of yellow.  Nice, once I get my gear back in order 5 ft away I hit another good signal.  Another flat, jagged piece of gold.  Wow, that vein can't be far from here.  I get going again and 50 ft away in a secondary flood channel I get a booming signal.  Got to be a piece of shrapnel, the depth is no good, this target is in float gravel.  4 inches down out pops a 3rd piece of jagged gold.  I am convinced I'm on the vein so I start a grid back and forth up and down both sides of the gully.  No joy, plenty of shrapnel and bullets out there.  I gave it a thorough go and no more gold to be found.  

I spent the night out there and got an early start this morning.  All morning nothing but bullets and shrapnel so towards noon I start heading back to the truck.  I'm bumping my coil along and I see a quartz outcrop ahead.  I make a detour and bang, 1.5 gram piece right in the float off the quartz vein.  I start a good search and find 10 pieces, some so small they won't register on my scale.  The Zed continues to amaze me with those tiny bits.  That quartz outcrop is a good 1/2 mile from the other big pieces from yesterday so I don't think that was the source. 

Hey Lunk, sorry to throw shade on your birthday nuggets. 

 

[Lunk]

No worries Condor, those are some nice "corn flake" nuggets...good shooting!

[Au4Gold2]

Dang nice......sounds like a patch to go back too.

[AU_Solitude]

Very nice! Way to fight through the sickness and land some yellow.

[deathray]

Nice buddy! Hope it keeps producing for you.

[mn90403]

WTG Condor,

That has to be fun after all the walking.  I've walked and walked with no joy at the end.

[strick]

Living the dream...and nice shooting .

strick

[beatup]

Tony the Tiger would be proud of those corn flakes Steve,congrats.

[californiagold]

Really nice gold Condor! I hope you and the Zed keep it yellow. 

[Roughwater]

Wow, pretty gold!  

I think I see the secret of your success here.  Every time you start back to the truck you start finding gold.   To save time, I would just walk a few feet from the truck and start back and see what happens?