Surprise Slug

[alaskaseeker]

On our Chisana mining claims there are a few areas that the old timers hydrauliced and  of course in  the bedrock area the bits were blasted into the cracks and crevices. Steve H and I took many of these bits out of there, our weapon of choice was the hot GB2  with the six' coil.. I  I have to admit after a few years it is finally getting a little lean.. Personally this area taught me much about hunting bits.. You can find other areas too that have been scraped to bedrock and I have been given permission many times to have at it, so to say. The Bug is a killer in these areas and it get a little boring. Lol.. I started looking at these bits a little more carefully and I began to understand why you wouldn't hear some of these pieces,  but when you  disturbed the ground it was zip zip all over again.. You won't find these bits at depth, but looking at the bits you will see they are not round but flat.. Sometimes you missed them because all the detector could see was the edges they couldn't pick up. When you moved the dirt the flats were exposed and presented just enuff mass for a nice little zip.. I met a miner in the 40 mile area years ago and I always chatted with him. One particular area he had mined with his Hoe and D8, bedrock was scraped pretty clean and as far as he was concerned the mineable gold was gone.. He was moving his operation a ways and when he saw me he said the area is yours good luck.....  Damn ,damn I thought, A good spot for me , I went over the bedrock slowly and carefully soon I heard what I was listening for.. There was an amount of dirt over the spot and I brushed it away, what I exposed was a beautiful crack in the bedrock that was full of cemented gravel and gold.. I picked out a few small nug and finally when I got most of the gravel out I almost choked, In the bottom was a slug, yikes, when I dug it out, that beauty weighed 1.7 ozs... Boo ya,  Not sure I have a photo if I can find one I will post it soon. Tough being in Thailand and posting I don't have many photos only a lot of memories...

Ok here’s the slug at the bottom of the crack

[beatup]

a real beauty

[Jim_Alaska]

This is a great tip for those who think that the gold is all gone and those before us got it all. What a wonderful resource forums like this are for those who are beginners or those who are looking to better themselves.

George, there is a tip that I learned from you when I was still in Alaska that I have not seen you post about. It is one that can save a lot of time in the field. Any details that I leave out I will leave to you to explain, but in short I'll just say this much that I learned. 

George and I were on Jack Wade Creek one time early in my detecting life.  I didn't have a GB2 but he did. I only had the old Goldmaster V-Sat, which I still have. I was having more fun watching George find and dig one target right after another.

His little time saving secret was this: once a target was heard he only dug to where the target was in the scoop; he didn't try to isolate the target and pick it out, he simply emptied the scoop into a small bucket he carried for that purpose. He would then run the contents of that bucket in a sluice at a later time.

While it is true that this method doesn't give the instant gratification of seeing what you have recovered, it does serve to save an amazing amount of time in the field. There may be others who have used this method and it is not new to them, but for me it was a "first" and I was thankful I was there with him to see it in action.

[Jim_Alaska]

There is one other thing I have found in relation to old hydraulic pits that I have not seen anyone talk about. That one other thing is simply this: just because there may not be detectable gold in any one pit doesn't mean that there is no gold there.

Two years  ago I found a very small hydraulic pit close to home. My detecting efforts, as well as a friends with his GB2 turned up nothing. Normally I would have just moved on to a different location, but in this instance, because of my increasing limited ability to walk I decided to try something different.

What caught my eye was that in many places in the hydraulic pit there was a lot of ancient bedrock. As I looked over this situation I saw many cracks and crevices. So I thought this might just be a good place to crevice.

I came back with a whole pile of crevice tools, most of which are home made, chisels, hammers and my gas vac.
Of course because I am basically lazy, I concentrated on cracks and crevices that could be easily scraped out. The exposed bedrock was not very extensive so it was not long before I had worked it to where the only method left was to hammer and chisel the lager cracks open. This was hard work and it got really hot on those rocks once it hit ten o'clock in the morning, so I usually quit about that time.

This kind of mining takes a lot of time, it is not for the faint-hearted or those not willing to work hard for their gold. I even pried apart some impressive slabs of bedrock with a six foot bar and even at times a hydraulic jack. Some of the slabs I couldn't move out of the way by lifting so I had to just pry them aside with a long bar.

There is no water to be had close by, so I simply dry classified what came out of the cracks and ran the remainder through a LeTrap sluice in a small creek on another day. So, all in all it was hard work, but I could see with every clean-up that I was getting good enough gold to keep working and keep me interested. I will say that I didn't get rich doing this, but did get what I consider good gold for my efforts.

[alaskaseeker]

Well done Jim..

[Lanny]

Alaskaseeker, great story of a fun find, something to dream about for sure, such a great piece!

Thanks for the story, really enjoyed it.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Jim, your story about chasing the gold in the hydraulic pit was a tale that had to be told. I find people all of the time that try to tell me all of the gold has been found or that if the oldtimers worked a spot, they got it all, but you've proven with your story what the possible truth really is; there's often gold left if a person has the determination to be a bit innovative, which you were, and it paid off.

Nicely done, and it's great to hear from you again, and I miss the days on your Alaska gold forum; you and your wonderful wife did such a great job of hosting your site.

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Thanks Lanny. But if I remember you have had some great success in the past yourself. I remember some of the stories you told back then. I always thought it amazing that you found gold in some of the most unlikely places.

My Alaska forum is back up once more in a new format. I'd love to have you visit once again. We need some great stories to get the forum back to what it once was.