Hillside Gold Nuggets

[HardPack]

On 8/2/2022 at 2:52 AM, Victorius said:

By analogy with the bends in the river?

Yes. Gold will settle in low pressure areas, back eddies, etc and will move downward towards bedrock (or false bedrock) as the particles travel down slope or down stream. On the hillside look for a decrease in the degree of slope such as a narrow bench or even a path or trail and around large boulders. You could pan sample up stream until the gold drops off then dry pan sample or detect upslope on one or both sides of the drainage. Keep a look out for hillside surface quartz float with rust from iron oxidation. Once the hillside quartz float drops off move back down slope looking for a quartz vein outcropping. The major quartz veins will run with the faults often with minor quartz vein crossings. If iron is present at these crossings (pockets) the gold will drop out. Keep in mind these vein may not surface. The old timers would dig a trench to bedrock below and parallel to the suspected quartz vein. Gold can travel for miles downstream from the original source. Do some research on pocket gold mining and sampling.  Good luck.

[Dan Smith]

Here are the results from a day trip detecting the hillside between a ajor hard rock mine and a river containing alluvial gold. The gold I found has the character of reef gold and my future efforts detecting will be focussing upslope towards the source. The gpx 6000 with standard coil and no threshold is a potent combination in this area.

[rvpopeye]

It's working ! 

[Victorius]

 

I walked around with a Nokta Legend 6" DD coil metal detector at a frequency of 40 kHz, and found nothing except iron debris. By the way, here are the rocks in the river under the slope.

What can you say about the rock formation of this place? What are the gray stones called?