Aquachigger Goes Dredging In Nome, Alaska

[Steve Herschbach]

Published on Aug 15, 2017 -  In this video we work on finding a promising area to set up the gold dredge and then get it up and running. We work it for a day. In the end, I pan out my concentrates, but did not capture the final pans. But I think it's an interesting video and I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did making it.

 

[Steve Herschbach]

I am home! 

[flakmagnet]

I used to dredge a lot. Even though I do not think I would have the patience to work ground that gave up gold that fine (is that typical of the gold up that far north?), it made me miss being underwater for 10 hours a day. Thanks for showing…

[LipCa]

Good video. Too bad no gold

[Steve Herschbach]

12 hours ago, flakmagnet said:

(is that typical of the gold up that far north?)

The gold shown was not the full cleanup, just a pan with a few specks in it. The types of pans I just tossed back in the creek! Alaska is a huge state and the types of gold found vary considerably. However, gold found in Alaska is small on average compared to even the western U.S. with a vast amount of the placer gold produced by bucketline dredges churning out fine gold returns. The gold found by people in Alaska with suction dredges runs larger though than that shown in this video.

Aquachigger spent quite a bit of time in Nome in August 2017 and has several videos of his trip posted at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRybViBMNQTebWV5tLkKdmYQsiU9zfFGt

Here is gold typical of what I dredged a lot south of Anchorage - that is a 2 ounce vial for scale. Mostly what I called "overlay gold" as jewelers liked to buy it for making watchbands and such.