Final Run At One Of The Ski Fields Before Winter Hits

[phrunt]

I've been a bit slack with doing adventure posts for a while now, no real reason for it, just lazy I guess! 🙂 Today was a beautiful day, perfectly still and not too hot, not too cold, the ideal day to head up one of the mountains and fire up the Manticore.

I quite like the Manticore, while I don't find it's target ID's as good as the Nox in a way its helping my detecting, I focus a lot on target ID's coin hunting cherry picking coins so I dig as little as possible so I don't cause damage to the fields, but when at the ski fields they're wild rocky soil places so digging a hole isn't as damaging and easy to fill it back in like it was never dug so using the Manticore with it's less accurate ID's doesn't overly matter as I tend to dig any non-ferrous.  The ski fields aren't overly loaded with junk, for the most part the junk is accidental rather than people throwing rubbish down, for example I found no pull tabs at all even though people often drink out of cans while skiing/snowboarding.

The drive up the mountain takes about half an hour once you get to the bottom of it, it's quite a steep drive and many cars overheat trying, it's said to be one of the most dangerous roads in the country, I think it's fine in summer, but winter lots of cars go off the edge from slipping in the ice and snow or crash in some way or another, especially tourists.  They should all take the shuttle busses and it'd save a lot of grief.

Made it up to the base of the ski area, I wanted to detect where I've never been before, so I went up to the top of a beginner/intermediate lift which took me over an hour to walk up there, but figured the most likely people to fall are beginners going up lifts for the first time so it had the most chance of decent finds.  The base magic carpet areas where beginners not capable of using lifts go are always a little over-detected being the easy area to get to right at the base and an obvious place people are constantly falling over.

They must still have juice running to the snow guns, these pole sort tended to cause much worse EMI than the other larger guns, not sure why but the Manticore really didn't like working near these ones.

The ground is mostly rough broken up schist.

this hole to the right of my control pod was a bit of a weird find, a golden knife.  Not sure if it's gold, it's not magnetic, quite heavy and comes up as a solid 10 ID on the Manticore.

I found this silver ring shortly after the knife.

It was in this hole to the right of the control box.

It's marked silver, the knife has no markings.

This is the area I was mostly detecting, in the distance they set up snow jumps along the trail where the snow guns are for beginners to practice jumping, another good place they constantly fall over.

The foreground here was most of my finds for the day.  No sign of any surface stuff, far too late in the autumn (fall) for that, if I wanted surface finds I'd have to go just after spring while the snows still melting away, by now people have been wandering around all summer exploring so all of my finds were digs.  Go earlier and some quite good stuff can be found without a metal detector, mostly phones and wallets.  The ground here is quite variable around the mountain and required reasonably frequent ground balancing when I moved from one spot to the next, there were of course hot rocks too.

I thought I'd head back down, my wife and daughter came along and they went to the lake, yep, lake, there is quite a big lake up here. it's straight ahead in this photo in the top right corner. 

This is it, nice clear water, perfect for a drink refill.   I think the lakes around 2000 meters above sea level, something like 6500 feet.  It's the first time I've seen it not frozen solid, I mostly am up the mountain in winter and spring when it's frozen.

And my total finds

Mostly bits off clothing and branding stuff off skis, snowboards and boots.  See how none of the junk I found looks like something someone would throw down? I'm quite happy people treat the place with respect and don't throw rubbish around.

I have no idea what this thing is, I'm not sure if the 1923 is the age of it or a model number, I couldn't find it on a quick Google search. 

$10 in current currency NZ spendies on the right, the gold $1 and $2 coins, and the left is oddly all old 20c coins, with one 5c and one 10cent.  All pre-1980s coins.  The goldies were mostly all from the 1990's except the shiny one which was a more recent 2020 coin.

5 cent don't exist anymore, 10 cents are now different and junk cupro coins and the 20 cent coins now are small rubbish cupro things too, the cupros are made in Canada, these older ones give a nice solid signal.

The $1 and $2 are about the easiest coin to find, nice solid signal, never corrode, they just get a bit dull with age but clean up pretty good.

The more unusual stuff, looks like an Aussie was littering the coin, a 2002 year of the Outback special edition coin.  The left one is some Chinese 100 coin and the right one I'm not sure, some UK 50 pence coin that I've never found before, unusual shape.

The Aussie looks like it's been run over by the snow groomers a few times over the years 🙂

So, a fun day out, probably my last detect at the ski areas, it was only 2 weeks ago the area was covered in snow, but the snow was too soon and melted already, the next lot probably won't melt.

Happy enough with the Manticore, in fact it's excellent other than it's target ID's, when it comes to Cherry picking coins in the fields I'll stick to using the Nox and especially the CTX, I need the more stable reliable ID's so I dig as few holes as possible.

[Valens Legacy]

Looks like you had a great hunt with some nice finds.

The knife looks like it is heavy plated gold so it should still have some value. I hope that it is all gold and you cash in on it.

Good luck on your next hunt and glad to read about your adventures again. Love the pictures also.

[Rivers rat]

Well done matey i would have thought that a pick and a simple machine will do the job but you took out the big guns

 

 

RR

[phrunt]

26 minutes ago, Rivers rat said:

Well done matey i would have thought that a pick and a simple machine will do the job but you took out the big guns

RR

My plan was to take my Ace 300i with Nel Tornado but I forgot to charge its batteries up so the Manticore got to come along, I doubt would have done any better with the Manticore than the Ace in this situation.

[palzynski]

Beautiful pics , thanks Simon ...

[mn90403]

Thanks Simon.  It is 'odd' to see a place not covered by snow.  You'll have to look through your old pictures and show us what it looks like in snow.

The 'top' with the piece of chain you found reminds me of a canteen chain.  Its design was to be strong and prevent the chain from cutting but it looks like that one broke off.  The cap doesn't appear to have a water seal or screw so maybe it is just a protective cap?

I'll have to look up other finds you've made with your Manticore.  I don't have one yet.

[Digalicious]

Great story, cool finds, beautiful pictures / scenery, and very little junk to deal with.

A heaven sent "Phrunt hunt"!

[Rick N. MI]

Beautiful photos and incredible land where you live.

[phrunt]

4 hours ago, mn90403 said:

Thanks Simon.  It is 'odd' to see a place not covered by snow.  You'll have to look through your old pictures and show us what it looks like in snow.

The differences are pretty crazy between winter and now.

This would be the same spot I took the photo yesterday when I got up to the base area of the ski field.

This is from up a bit higher showing it better.

This is the lake frozen

And the beginners jumps area where I did all of my detecting yesterday, I target areas where people stack a lot as that's when they lose stuff.  The other good spot is under lifts but its mostly dropped phones as nobody uses coins these days.

This is how the road can look when it goes a bit wild after snow then rain then a freeze all in one night and you can see why I wished tourists that have never driven in these conditions just caught the bus, but no, many prefer to drive up in hire cars and get stuck or crash than pay for a bus.

and the view from the top of the mountain looking down the other side from the first photo, this direction faces the town which is on the right of the lake in the photo along the water towards the back of the photo.

[Kodiak]

Now thats a Knife!  Seriously though, great story, beautiful scenery and nice finds.  Thanks.