Stuck On Gold!

[BMc]

Thought I would recycle a previous post from a now defunct forum showing a couple of detecting trips and the end results of getting stuck while crossing a steep and narrow creek in the Bradshaw Mts of AZ.
 Awhile back, a couple of friends joined me to check out a hand dug hard rock mine/prospect in central Arizona that I had recently located but not had a chance to detect. No claims records or markers could be located and it didn't appear to have been worked in years.
The previous miners had crushed the ore and shoveled it onto the crude wooden ore chute that snaked down the side of the ridge to the creek below.
The country rock of the prospect hole appeared to be a mushy red quartz conglomerate that looked unstable. No hard quartz lead was observed. After several minutes of examination, and detecting around a large, indignant pack rat that currently occupied the prospect, we decided to depart the area. No gold was found but in the interest of keeping morale up, we decided to drink some of  the "we found gold" beer anyway.
The next day, I soloed to an area where I'd previously had good luck. It had rained a few days prior to my arrival and the ground was dry on the surface, but still damp a few inches down. I got into the area OK at first, then ran into a heavily washed out cut across the road, so I turned around going back out and as I angled down to cross a steep "V" shaped creek where I'd had no problem coming in, the mushy schist bedrock crumbled and dropped my rear bumper down enough where the Pintle hitch of my military style cargo trailer buried up, causing the bumper to be high centered with no rear wheel traction. Bummer.
I cleared part of the hang up with a sledge hammer and chisel but finally had to resort to a high lift jack and stacked rocks for clearance and traction. While I was gathering rocks in the creek, I noticed that  part of  the bank appeared to have recently eroded and collapsed, exposing a couple of large rusty, vuggy chunks of quartz which looked interesting. After I was able to get my truck unstuck and up the road a ways, I grabbed my EQUINOX 800 and went back and started detecting the stretch of the creek downstream from where I had found the rotten quartz. Most of the pieces were on a shallow compacted layer of gravel in the narrow stream bed, and a few were on top of flat rocks covered with sand and dirt.

After I started finding those little dinks I forgot all about getting stuck!

 

[Gerry in Idaho]

Love reading these adventures and seeing raw pictures of the good and bad. That bed/bumper getting stuck was way more angle than most would take with a trailer in tow.  Just think of a regular size bed of normal truck as the rear wheels are even more forward allowing for even longer rear end. They'd still be out there.