The Chisana Story

[Steve Herschbach]

I knew the ground had seen a lot of detecting, and so I was not sure how the GPZ 7000 would work out. I was sure lots of tiny gold bits remained however, and I knew the new 6" coil for the Minelab Equinox 800 was super hot on tiny gold. I therefore initially was going to use this detector a lot during the trip. I figured it was a perfect opportunity to show off the new 6" coil and what it can do by finding a large pile of tiny gold. In particular it gave me an opportunity to fine tune my Gold Mode settings for the Equinox 800 that I wrote up into an article later on.

Minelab Equinox 800 on patch of decomposed bedrock

Tiny gold nugget in scoop found with Equinox

The photos above are great because it shows detail of the little patch of sand the Equinox is sitting on.....

Minelab Equinox sitting on "patch of sand"

It would be easy to walk right by a little patch of sand like this in the middle of a flat stream bottom. However, you are looking at exposed bedrock. The volcanic basalt rock here decomposes on the surface into coarse sand. The clue is the particles are sharp edged, not rounded. As you dig deeper the material turns to rounded pebbles in sand, and then crumbly rock, and eventually solid rock. See the GPZ photo in the last post for another look. The gold however starts right at the sand layer, which is where the original solid rock surface was when the gold was deposited. The rock then weathered over millenia with gold both at the sand layer and also deeper down where it had settled into the more solid material. Spotting a location like this can make all the difference - I found a half dozen tiny gold nuggets here on my arrival and added a few more later.

Half gram of Minelab Equinox gold nuggets

The problem with this is the tiny bits do not add up as fast as the larger nuggets. After my initial success with the GPZ 7000 I suddenly lost interest in using the Equinox as much, though I regret now that I did not make more use of it than I did.

The weather on our arrival had a few days of colder weather with freezing temps overnight, but then cleared up into the sunny interior weather I have often experienced at the mine. A day of rain slowed things up a bit but I got another 4.5 grams in seven nuggets. The next cool day it was five more nuggets at 4.1 grams.

The following day saw the weather lift and warmer temperatures prevailing. What I was finding with the GPZ is that we had done an excellent job over the years depleting the shallower gold. There were however lots of gram type nuggets just a little out of reach of the VLF and older PI detectors that the GPZ 7000 with my Insane Settings were lighting up at depth. In general though there was no one hot spot - it was just scattered gold everywhere I went. There would be a little deeper pocket of crevice in the bedrock, and out would pop a nice nugget with a decent signal.Then a half hour might go by, with another nugget found.

Nugget excavated from pocket in bedrock

We settled into a pattern of lazy mornings around camp. I would generally wander down the creek with George for a half day of detecting. Then back to camp for early supper. Then back out in the long evening for a little more exploring or prospecting.

That being the case I was more of less working half days with the GPZ 7000, but I was finding 6 - 10 nuggets a day often getting 1/4 oz in a day. That first bright, sunny day I found nothing all morning, but then hit a better area in the later part of the day and got eight nuggets for 6.9 grams of gold.

6.9 grams found with GPZ 7000

I was feeling quite confident with the GPZ 7000 now. I was cherry picking, as the solid nuggets made nice, sweet clean tones. The hot rocks tended to warble. In material over a foot deep I did switch the General/Difficult to shut up the larger hot rocks that might be found at depth and was still getting good performance on the larger gold nuggets. By and large I tried to stay with my hot settings however. They really did allow me to run the coil over a few inches of compacted brush to punch through and find nuggets in the bedrock below. It was great fun, with the hardest work being the digging/hacking of the nuggets out of bedrock crevices.

I purposefully went after a area of large broken bedrock and brush that had foiled me before but where I swore gold had to be lurking. I almost immediately banged out a 5.9 gram nugget, my largest of the trip.

5.9 gram gold nugget found with GPZ 7000

I honestly had no expectations at all for this trip, and had set no goals with the idea of just taking it easy a day at a time. Yet here I was early in the trip kind of surprised at how well things were going. I was motivated to hunt later than normal that day, and ended up with almost a half ounce of gold in eleven nuggets at 15.2 grams total. My total for the trip was at 1.21 ounces, and I already felt pretty happy with the gold. This in turn takes a little performance pressure off, making things even more enjoyable! 

GPZ 7000 working hillside area

To be continued....

[Steve Herschbach]

I now had a nice little bottle of gold going for the trip. I was worried however that the weather would take a turn for the worse. I wanted to hike up Bonanza Creek and explore / take photos and if rain set in the creek would get too high to ford. The nice weather was holding for now and I decided to hike around on the photo tour. These are some photos from several different days in this time frame.

One of the numerous squirrels hanging around camp

We are all used to seeing sluice box riffles that go across the sluice box from one side to the other. The oldtimers were more interested in high volume operations and the ability to let large rocks slide through a sluice box uninhibited. They often employed "pole riffles" which are literally wooden poles laid lengthwise down the sluice box. Rocks would slide down the poles, and gold fall into the crevices between the poles. Since wood wears the poles were often topped with strips of steel. As an alternative railroad rails were laid lengthwise down the sluice. This method lost a lot of gold but the miners were more focused on what they were capturing, and they captured a lot of gold. These riffles are why there is so much reconcentrated tailings gold in Bonanza Creek.

Steel topped pole riffles from old sluice box

As noted before I was on a quest to get some good ptarmigan photos. There are quite a few in the area and I got some good photos of the adults. The chicks were balls of fuzz that disappeared into a brush pile if I got anywhere near so no photos of them. Here you see examples of both female and male summer plumage. Both genders turn snow white in winter.

Female willow ptarmigan

Another ptarmigan hen

Up close and personal!

Male willow ptarmigan

And a side view of the man of the family

Alpine dwarf fireweed

Upper Bonanza valley with Coarse Money Creek camp in distance

Old rocker box and shovel

Parka squirrel doing what they do - eat all day

To be continued....

[Steve Herschbach]

George was having a good time taking it easy sniping bedrock for smaller gold with the Gold Bug 2 and SDC 2300. Here is one of his work sites.

Working bedrock with Fisher Gold Bug 2

George did not get any big nuggets this trip. George does have a knack for finding some real beauties however. The last trip to the mine George had found as nice a nugget as I have ever seen come out of the Gold Hill area. At 8.59 pennyweight (20 pennyweight per Troy ounce) it is just a hair larger than the largest nugget I have found in the area. It is not the size that makes it impressive since a few multi-ounce nuggets have been found at Chisana. What makes George's nugget exceptional in my opinion is the character - nice, fat, and solid gold.

8.59 pennyweight gold nugget found by George on previous trip

I got back to metal detecting and had another good day. Here is a shot of some of that leafy ground cover I mentioned earlier. The GPZ 7000 was doing great at running over this stuff and getting the gold below.

Minelab GPZ 7000 and thin brush hiding gold nuggets

Ten more nuggets for Steve - 8.8 grams

To be continued....

[Steve Herschbach]

At this point I was feeling a little funny. I am the sort of person that wants everyone to find gold. If I start getting too far ahead I get this weird guilty feeling, like I am cheating or something. When this happens I tend to back off a bit and maybe lend a helping hand to somebody else.

In this case just like on my last trip Dudley was finding that the gold dredging was not a get rich scheme. I thought he was actually doing pretty good as he was getting close to a quarter ounce a day with the 4" dredge. He would not be satisfied with that however and would move to a new location looking for something better. It did not get better, more of the same, but then time lost moving around. I decided to be his assistant for a couple days and help set up a second dredge at a new location while he worked the main site. Then he could sample the new site to see if it was any better while I looked for yet another spot and moved gear there.

2.5" dredge sample location

And another sample location

Dudley working test dredge at second sample site

Try as I might I could not find anything better than what Dudley was already working. And truth be told after a couple days I was quite happy to get away from the water and get back to metal detecting. Dudley kept plugging away but as I slowly pulled ahead of him in gold production he was starting to see that maybe metal detecting is not so boring after all!

Dudley working along rock wall with 4" dredge

The gold being found gold dredging

To be continued....

[Steve Herschbach]

The rest of the trip was nice though clouds kept threatening to move in. They would clear out however and the sun would appear again. With time running out I got back to detecting with the GPZ 7000 plus a little bit here and there with the Equinox. All in all I was only averaging about eight nuggets a lazy day of detecting, getting about 1/4 ounce a day average.

Hand stacked rocks and bedrock - nugget detecting heaven!

I have mentioned I have never found a nugget weighing even a half ounce at Gold Hill, though they are mentioned in the old records, and I know of some found more recently by others. I really thought I had one this trip however. I was in a bedrock gut leading into a mined pit that was producing nuggets. I got a deep signal in a bedrock pocket right in the bottom of the little gully. Whatever it was was wedged down in deep and tight, and when I first laid hands on it I thought "Aha!" but it was not to be. I found the largest copper nugget I ever found though there is very little copper exposed on the surface. I will treat it with acid later and post a photo someday, but for now here is what it looked like fresh out of the ground.

Large copper nugget - should have been gold!

The last couple days of this great trip were dedicated to some serious camp cleanup and so this adventure finally came to a close. My detecting had exceeded expectations. I am certain I could have found more gold had I worked more single-mindedly at the task, but the fact is this trip was a near perfect balance of relaxation and finding gold. I finished up with just a hair over 3 ounces of nice chunky gold.

Three ounces chunky gold found by Steve with GPZ 7000

The Equinox 800 had proven itself to be an excellent tiny gold sniper on this trip. It was the GPZ 7000 that made the day however, literally making it feel like cheating compared to what the other guys were able to do. Dudley and George both got gold but it was the GPZ that impressed us all. I have long known how powerful the machine is, but this is the first time I have run it on ground I know very well. It was amazing at how easy it was for me to do well just one more time at Chisana and Bonanza Creek.

Dudley had been hoping to find a couple nice pendant nugget for his daughters but the dredge kept finding smaller gold. I gave Dudley what I considered to be the best pendant nugget I found at 5 grams and traded a second 3.5 gram nugget for some fine gold he got dredging.

Pendant nuggets 5 grams and 3.5 grams

Again, just a fabulous trip. Thank you George and Dudley for the invite and a great time. I have learned never to say never, so I don't know if I will ever return to Chisana and Gold Hill again or not. I am grateful I got this last trip in however as it ended my decades of visits to the hill on a somewhat brighter note than the last time.

I hope you all enjoyed this trip down memory lane and a rare look at places and times in Alaska that few will ever see or experience. I am very lucky to have been born where and when I was. I have seen Alaska transition from true frontier to modern civilization in my lifetime and this is just a small part of what I have experienced. There are many people in this tale who have not been mentioned at all out of respect for privacy issues. My thanks to all of them.

Thanks again for riding along on this long thread!  One last look at Gold Hill below....

Steve Herschbach
2018 Herschbach Enterprises

Gold Hill at Chisana, Alaska

[IdahoPeg]

Wow. What a  trip.....thanks for taking us along on the great Alaska adventure! 

[Northeast]

It has been a fantastic post to follow Steve.  Thanks for the look at the country and the gold.

Certainly some beautiful landscapes in there.

 

[Jackpine]

From beginning to end what a great adventure in picture and narrative.

Thanks for taking us along Steve

[Hard Prospector]

Fantastic story Steve,  seeing and experiencing  Alaska this summer made it even richer for me.

[hawkeye]

Steve,

A thoroughly enjoyable story of your Chisana adventures and photos of incredible Alaska scenery.  Thank you.