Garrett Axiom At Nome, Alaska

[Steve Herschbach]

I made a quick trip to Alaska recently, where I still have family, and ties to my old business. While there, I took advantage of an opportunity, and did something I have always wanted to do. Go metal detecting for gold nuggets in the Nome area! I've been to Nome a couple times in the past, but it was just passing through. And it seems I was always too busy finding gold someplace else, to ever make it to Nome to find gold. I had a day of travel, three days detecting, and another day of travel. Not as long as I would like, but as things turned out just perfect.

I had a typical Alaska style adventure just getting a truck rented, and finally made it to the mine location that evening after a full day of flying. The weather in Nome was stunning blue skies. Here are a couple pictures of the beach and the view off the road to the mine. Click or double click on on the photos that follow, to get larger high res versions.

The Beach at Nome, Alaska

Along the road north of Nome (Teller Highway)

I got settled into my accommodations and talked with the miners about what they were doing. Nobody had used a detector successfully here, and I was hoping to give them some information about their ground, in return for this chance to find a little gold. I always am a little hesitant when I arrive in unfamiliar territory and people, but everyone was very nice. Weather was perfect, and most amazingly, a cold snap had put the mosquitos down. I could not ask for a better start. 

I hit the a more recent place they had mined and done well, and like many far north gold mines situated in tundra and permafrost, the thing was a mud pit. There was a surprising amount of blue clay in the material. There are no glaciers in the Nome area today, but what I was looking at was classic dense, blue glacial clay deposits. It's a good thing I had packed my mud boots, just in case. And in fact, my very first Nome nugget came out of a gravel layer, right under one of these clay deposits. It was right on the edge of the cut, where they had stopped due to hitting permafrost. A few days had allowed the stuff to thaw, or otherwise I'd be hacking at stuff tougher than asphalt.

First nugget from hole next to Axiom search coil

My first Nome Gold!

The spot they were working was both virgin ground, and old tailings, so the material was full of ferrous junk, and a few non-ferrous items like shotgun shell ends. Working in mud is not very fun, as I had to use care to not get myself stuck in a bad spot, and excavating many targets was an exercise in trying to find a small thing in a handful of sticky goo. But I hunted a long day in the northern summer sun, determined to make the most of my limited time. I ended the day with a little over 14 grams of nice gold nuggets. The last few came from a hot spot in a brown layer, but after excavating a few nuggets, I hit permafrost. I left the last signal, figuring I would come back later after it had a chance to thaw some more. Anyone thinking it's nuts to leave a nugget signal, has never tried to hack into permafrost. It's ice mixed with sand and gravel, and it tends to dent more than chip away. Really tough stuff.

First day of detecting in Nome area with Garrett Axiom

The next day I explored around more, and hit quite a bit of exposed bedrock along the creek, above the current workings. There were plenty of old workings up the creek still, but this bedrock was surprisingly devoid of targets. It made me wonder if somebody had detected it at some time in the past, and I think that's a fairly decent bet. It's hard to find places where a detector has never been these days, and this bedrock was a glaringly obvious place to hunt gold. Yet I found no gold, and only a couple trash targets.

I did spy some large old tailing piles up the creek, the sort I am used to hunting in Interior Alaska. Large steep piles of gravel, stacked against one side of the small valley with a dragline. I had very little gold to show for the day so far, so that afternoon I hiked up though the brush and wet creek areas, to get to these old piles. They were very steep, but washed loose material, easy digging, and no sign of dig holes. I started at the tops, and wound my way back and forth across the faces of the piles. The Axiom was really great at this due to its light weight. Heavy machines are ok in flat ground if you harness up properly, but swinging uphill on a steep hillside is something else.

A couple trash targets, then a nice, deep nugget. Oh boy, I was excited now! I had left a warning about where I was going, with instructions to send out a rescue party if I was not back by a certain time, so I had a hard cut off point I had to keep an eye on, allowing for time to hike back out. I therefor got with the program, and scanned as efficiently as I could. I got all but the last couple piles in this little set done, before I just had to walk away and get back to camp. But my few hours detecting had me getting close to 3/4 ounce of nice, chunky gold nuggets! They were all old gold, coated with what I am guessing was manganese oxide and/or iron oxides. I showed off my gold, got a quick bite to eat, and went back up that evening to hunt the last couple piles. And got a couple more nuggets, just over 25 grams total for the day. The largest was right at 10 grams, my largest for this trip, and almost completely coated with oxides. Pretty cool looking actually, something different from the norm. It shows the old timers were losing some pretty large gold, no doubt due to poor recovery systems. It might be economical to mine these tailings again with better equipment, since they are clean and stacked, ready to process.

Top of a tailing pile

View down the pile - bigger and steeper than it looks!

10 gram nugget, the largest found on this visit, from the old tailing piles

Dark gold off the old tailing piles

I had only one full day left to hunt, which seemed like not enough by far. However, the forecast called for a big storm moving in the next day, the day I was leaving. With that in mind leaving seemed like a pretty good idea, because if things were a mudhole in nice weather, it was bound to be a real mess in pouring rain.

I decided to hit the newer workings again, since I had covered the closer old tailing piles halfway well, and the next set up was quite a ways up the creek, and some wet ground in between. The hot spot I had left as frozen was my first destination, and a good choice this turned out to be. The ground had thawed more than I expected in 48 hours, and I got that first nugget out in minutes. Then another. And another. This was a seam of blue clay, with some coffee ground colored brown gravels just on top. The clay was a classic false bedrock. The brown color is from the water percolating down through the gravel, picking up iron minerals as it goes. It hits the impervious clay layer, and stays there, or travels laterally on top of it. In the process, the iron oxides get deposited, creating a distinct brown layer of gravel and sand, usually inches thick, sometimes a foot or two. I encountered this very same pay layer at my old mine at Moore Creek, where we called it "coffee grounds" due to the color of the generally sandy material. It was a sign of the best and richest material, and looked like the exact same scenario here.

Digging into the paysteak with Garrett 24K and Axiom

Closeup of blue clay exposed in middle, and brown material just on top of it

I was literally scraping nuggets off the clay layer, and finding some larger ones embedded in the top few inches of the clay. While doing so, I noticed the sand was full of smaller gold. Visibly scattered through the sand and gravel! I scooted back to camp fast, and grabbed a gold pan, plus a Garrett 24K. My plan was to use the super hot 24K to isolate tiny bits, then just scoop them into the pan, until I got a pan full, then pan them out. Far faster than chasing really tiny bits one at a time.

I fired up the 24K, a hot, high frequency VLF, and got a big surprise. Every swing, there were rocks banging out like gold nuggets. They were all over in the gravel, though possibly more concentrated in this pay layer. I've only seen this stuff in one other location before in all my years of detecting. Graphitic slate. Graphite is used to make pencil lead, and more revealing, battery posts. It is non-ferrous and quite conductive. In fact, it reads exactly like gold on a VLF metal detector. The miners had mentioned problems with hot rocks. I didn't even know the things existed running the Axiom, while the 24K was banging hard on every one of them. They would not ground balance out, and this one below reads a solid 56 on the 24K, a solid gold reading. No wonder the miners were not detecting. This place is a poster child for why a person needs a PI detector for some locations. This is not a common hot rock in most places, but is fairly common in the British Columbia gold belt of Canada. The location north of Anchorage is in the Petersville District.

Graphitic slate from the Nome area

OK, fine. I went ahead and took a few pans right off the clay layer, going for what I thought was the best stuff based on the nuggets the Axiom was finding. My first pan was one of the best I have panned in a very long time; I'm guessing close to 1/10th ounce of gold! Very rich material. I panned a couple more pans, then decided I'd leave it be for the miners. They needed to come back and mine the rest of this location after it fully thawed. I later talked to them about it, showed them what I was finding, and they are going to do just that.

I scouted along the edge of the cut some more, and found more exposures of the layer in various locations, and found a few more nice nuggets in it. Another good day with over 1/4 oz of gold found, including 6.6 grams of small gold found with the pan.

I was leaving very early the next morning to catch the noon flight out of Nome, soI cleaned everything up and met with the miners. They were quite appreciative of the information, both on the results in the old tailing piles, and the virgin pay layer left yet to mine. That, and finding out they needed to get an Axiom ASAP. 

The largest 10 gram nugget stayed with the miners, and putting the panned gold aside, I ended up with 1.16 Troy ounces found with the Axiom in three days. The dark stuff cleaned up well after a few days in both 1% HF Whink, and oxalic acid. 1.48 ounces total gold found. Not bad at all, and I may very well visit this location again some day, when I have more time to spend. Though I am happy I left when it did - it started raining that night, and kept it up hard the day I departed.

Many thanks to my hosts, and to Garrett, for helping make the connections, that made this all possible.

Gold found detecting and panning by Steve near Nome, Alaska

1.16 Troy ounces found by Steve with Axiom, after 10 gram nugget left with miners

[phrunt]

Wow, what a post and adventure!  That place is incredible, those miners are on some good ground with decent size nuggets.  I bet you'll be going back there if you get the chance.

The thing I see most is people don't think the Axiom will handle bad ground and perform well in it, it clearly does and with ease.

Some really nice gold there.  Gotta love Alaska, if I lived in the US it'd be Alaska for sure.

[Steve Herschbach]

Thanks Simon. People will no doubt say "such and such a machine would have found that gold also." Perhaps, but that misses the point really. Which is that the Garrett Axiom is a very capable nugget detector, and a real pleasure to use.

Some might wonder why I was not running a larger coil. Well, I just love that little 11" mono. The machine balances perfectly with it, and is an easy swing in the worst of terrain. The 7" width gets it into tight nooks and crannies. I had limited time and no lack of targets, and frankly, punching deeper into really nasty clay is not all it's cracked up to be either. So I used the 7" x 11" mono exclusively on this trip.

[jasong]

Amazing stuff and a great report. 

Sometimes I read some of these 100+ year old reports from various areas where they talk about the miners taking out 5-10 ounces a day with a rocker or by pan and it seems some are exaggeration. But 1/10th of an ounce in one pan off false bedrock there shows it's possible in the right untouched ground....

Also goes to show just how useful a metal detector can be in the right hands for commercial operations and exploring. Easily the most underutilized tool in the commercial prospecting/mining world right now I think. 

[abenson]

Wow Steve, nice report! What a fun trip and adventure. Lots of nice looking gold too. Axiom is showing it's usefulness as a serious gold detector. For the little bit I used yours I was really impressed with the ergonomics and you've shown on multiple occasions now the Axiom is a very capable PI for gold hunting. Looking forward to your future adventures and reports with the Axiom.

[oneguy]

Nice work there boss...!!!!  had a chuckle when Phrunt mentioned if he moved to US it'd be Alaska.  You better be real tuff between the weather and skeeters. 

[phrunt]

11 minutes ago, oneguy said:

Nice work there boss...!!!!  had a chuckle when Phrunt mentioned if he moved to US it'd be Alaska.  You better be real tuff between the weather and skeeters. 

I like cooler weather and for some reason skeeters don't like me, Brisbane in Australia where I lived had swarms of the suckers, they attacked everyone around me and left me alone, I think I taste bad.  We have sand flies here in NZ and it's the same thing they go for everyone around me but rarely touch me.  The cold thing must be in the family, my sister moved to Burns Lake in British Columbia, Canada from tropical Brisbane Australia.

The combo of a Garrett Axiom and a Garrett 24k seems a deadly combination, and to think it's completely Garrett, two of the better prospecting detectors on the market, a few years ago the choices from Garrett were vastly different with the ATX and AT Gold being the pick of the bunch.  How times change 🙂

[oneguy]

Thinking about it after the fact...every place has it's drawbacks.  EVERY time I see a vid from Australia and see all those f'n flies, then think about snakes, heat, wind etc. I'd never hold up down there....

[beatup]

well done Steve and good on you helping out those miners .

[Jonathan Porter]

Superb read Steve and wow what a haul. 🤩