Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales

[Lanny]

Golden Bonanza Days, Part 3: This section continues with the description of the cut and some of the detecting conditions.

High Peak 2.jpeg

(I have been stunned sometimes by the gold I’ve found doing this bedrock examination or scouring process; It was a learning curve to stop the temptation to follow my eyes, but relying on the detector’s brain instead has been a tactic that has paid well.

However, at other times when the bedrock was extremely hot or littered with highly reactive rocks, I’ve put the detectors away to rely on the slow process of sniping by using scrapers and crevicing tools to feel out the hidden gold traps. Of course, this tactic is used in areas where I’ve already been finding nice gold, and where all of a sudden with a bedrock composition/mineralization change or a sudden plague of hot-rocks tight on bedrock, I have to switch gears to look for the gold with the age-old, yet proven, process of sniping and panning. [I have a story about this as well for a later date.]

The area my son was working was not an easy spot to detect. He was swinging his coil on that aforementioned steeply rising iron-hard slope of bedrock-wall, all while trying to keep his footing secure in order to gather targets, and yes he slipped more than once [as I did when I checked it later after he’d finished], so it was definitely a sketchy place to work. We both had a few scares, but the gold was there for the getting, so we were game.



That wall of bedrock held all kinds of little traps [we even had to do hammer and chisel work to free nuggets], and those traps held wonderful gold. The hardness of the bedrock made trying to reduce it with machinery economically unfeasible for the placer miners as the damage to profit margin ratio would no support the cost of repairs involved; moreover, the miners recovered incredible gold regardless of what they had to leave behind as that ancient dinosaur channel that bedded the entire cut paid off exceptionally well.

So, in summary, the composition of the cut was undulating bedrock with a variety of low spots, crevices, water-filled traps, small yet intact areas of ancient stream-run, large gutters, warped and twisted bedrock, contact zones of bedrock with varying compositions of hardness, terraced ledges, etc., plus a steeply sloping wall of invincible bedrock riddled with small gold traps.)

Nugget Bunch 2.jpeg

To be continued:

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Golden Bonanza Days, Part 4:

My son and I kept at it, swinging the coils, gathering the signals, and depositing them in the pans. In retrospect, I adopted this “speed-panning” system a couple of years ago while working a target-rich area, and now I use it regularly if a spot proves good for continuing gold production; I no longer waste time isolating each and every target captured in the scoop.

On a related note, (in the fall of the year, or early spring) when the days are short, I don’t have much of an option to sort and sift targets as I have to quickly cover as much ground as possible to avoid the dark and the cold. So, every target goes from the scoop straight into the plastic pans. This approach allows me to maximize my time on site, which means that sometimes I’ll pan by flashlight or take the pans back to camp to process the next day. So, when I’m detecting alone, it’s an efficient time saver, but when I have someone to pan for me, I can maximize even more time!

To elaborate a bit more on the speed-detecting/speed-panning process, we weren’t ripping across the bedrock in race mode, we were carefully investigating every bump or whisper that broke the threshold. The only element of speed involved was how quickly we were able to collect and dump targets without having to isolate them.

A couple of times while swinging the coil, I heard multiple targets in one sweep (this happened to my son as well). Exciting stuff indeed when there’s more than one nugget in that coil pass! The best we did on that outing was three nuggets in one sweep. (Tip: I always use a super-magnet on an extendable wand to quickly eliminate ferrous trash, which saves even more time wasted on individual target isolation.)

To get back to my gold tale, my wife came walking carefully toward me cradling a gold pan, and what a smile! This is a good sign, and man you should have seen the nice nuggets, their gold colour sharply contrasted against the deep-green. Over the two days, she repeated this ritual numerous times.

As I was using the small sniper coil on the Gold Racer, and having chosen a more traditional section of bedrock (a softer one the machines were able to work easier), the nuggets in my pans were smaller, nothing much over two grams, with the exception of on five-gram piece that startled me. However, my son’s pan had lots of beefy pieces, but nothing over seven grams.

After my son finished working his sloped cliff (that’s exactly what it was), he wandered down to detect the south end of the excavation where there were two pools of water, separated from each other by a ridge of hard bedrock. So, I jumped his claim by wandering over to his cliff-face honey-hole to detect for leftovers. Using my Gold Racer, I reached up as far as I could to swing the coil across a sort of rounded knob, one that bumped out slightly from the bedrock slope. That nasty little spot held a signal!

Well, this caused me lots of problems because now I had to see what the signal was. After pinpointing a small area just above the knob, I left the detector at the bottom and clawed my way up, barely hanging on by the tips of my boots. I saw a small V in the bedrock that held rusted, cemented material. (With ancient, intact material like this, it’s a great sign that gold may be present.) Swinging the pick, I would get a couple of shots in, but then the pounding motion would jar me loose from the precarious knob, and I’d undertake a controlled, downward crash. I did this over and over again, until at last I broke out a chunk of bedrock with rusty, cemented material attached.

So, that’s how I recovered a lonely 1.5gram nugget my son had missed. I kept at my crazy stretching to detect tactic, and coupled it with my sketchy footing routine until I’d captured six more small nuggets (from a gram to half a gram in weight). All of the were nuggets trapped in similar, small depressions. (I had to use a sledge and chisel to break out some targets, as some were cemented in, while others were jammed tight in cracks.) On a related note, I lost track of how many bruises I collected (I felt them all though for the next few days), and I probably left enough hide from my arms to do a skin graft! The crazy things we do for gold . . .

As I was closing my gold bottle, my son gave a shout from the south end of the cut, and with my climbing days over, off I went to see what he’d discovered.

To be continued:

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

A continuing great story Lanny. What beautiful gold in the picture. looking at the general shape of the gold it becomes obvious why they got trapped in cracks. They are mostly flat and would catch in a narrow crack and remain there until you liberate them.

[Lanny]

A continuing great story Lanny. What beautiful gold in the picture. looking at the general shape of the gold it becomes obvious why they got trapped in cracks. They are mostly flat and would catch in a narrow crack and remain there until you liberate them.

Thanks for your observations Jim, and I know you've likely forgotten far more about chasing the gold than I'll ever know, but you're on the money with your comments about those flat nuggets. The bigger pieces were generally in little gutters or pockets, packed in tight by smaller stones that had been lodged there forever (some cemented in as I mentioned earlier).

All the best, and thanks for your continuing appreciation of the stories,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Golden Bonanza Days, Part 5:

My son was digging like a wild man at a spot just past the bedrock hump that split the two pools of water. As I wandered over, I could see why he was working there.

On the right-hand side of the hump (facing west), working with the 25-inch Estwing, geo/paleo rock pick (that’s one fantastic pick if you’re looking for a pick that will go all day and never let you down), he was uncovering a long ledge of bedrock that stepped out about eight inches from the intact channel wall (the bedrock ran under the edge of the wall then rose up quickly ). The edge of the ledge of bedrock then dropped about another foot in the cut into a wide bedrock trough of a different color and hardness. The combination of channel wall, shelf, and trough generated the perfect conditions for the excavator bucket to skip from the wall, off the shelf, and down into the trough.

The trough had been cut down into and cleaned well by the excavator as the rock there was softer, but the eight-inch shelf above it was tougher stuff, part of a transition zone, and being located at the foot of the wall of the face, it was still covered by intact material, but hidden by some slump that had slid down to bury the shelf. Moreover, the placer miners were not going any farther into the face as the bedrock was rising steeply to match the slope of the side of the mountain, so what was left of the channel would never be worked, no profit margin.

However, that little shelf was something else, and I was proud my son had found it on his own (he’d been detecting along, got a soft signal in what looked like ordinary, yellowish-orange channel material, but the pick soon hit solid bedrock underneath as he chased the target, so more digging exposed the shelf.

My son was working the spot by uncovering a section about two yards long, then he’d grab the Gold Bug Pro and scan the bedrock shelf, but also the junction where the bedrock joined the face. He was getting lots of small nuggets and pickers, some down in little gutters and cracks in that shelf, and some from the intact channel material at the foot of the wall where it was rising up, two pay zones. How can you beat that? Furthermore, by wife had moved over to one of the bedrock pools nearby, and he was throwing scoops of target-rich dirt into two plastic pans for her.

Blue Bowl.jpg

That’s why he’d called me over, to see that little bedrock ledge of honey that he’d found, but I didn’t want to jump his claim, so I left him working his spot, and I wandered down to the end of the trough, following a good stream of seepage water that followed the gentle, downward slope of the trough until it met a hump of harder bedrock that rose up.

To be continued:

All the best, and thanks for tagging along,

Lanny

[chickenminer]

Lanny.... enjoying the story!

[Lanny]

Lanny.... enjoying the story!

Thanks for dropping in to leave your nice note, much appreciated. Glad you're enjoying the read, and I'm sure you have lots of gold tales to tell as well.

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Lanny, you, like most good writers, have a real knack for writing in such way that the reader feels like he is right there with you. As I read your latest I could see with my minds eye each recovery and resting place of the golden bits that your son was excitedly recovering.

[Lanny]

Lanny, you, like most good writers, have a real knack for writing in such way that the reader feels like he is right there with you. As I read your latest I could see with my minds eye each recovery and resting place of the golden bits that your son was excitedly recovering.

Thanks for your appreciation of the stories Jim, and I'm glad you've enjoyed the tales so far.

I appreciate the great site you've built here for like-minded people to gather; you've done an excellent job.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Golden Bonanza Days, Finale: (I will include some general tips in this section for those that are still learning about nugget shooting.)

A small stream of clear water ran down that gentle slope over small pieces of broken, black and reddish bedrock salted with medium pebbles and smaller stones. With no intact, original material remaining, the spot didn’t look promising; however, I’ve found nuggets playing hide and seek in settings like this before.

In retrospect, I remember way back, when I first started chasing nuggets, a successful Old-timer told me, “Lanny, water and gold are good friends.” (I really didn’t understand what he meant then, but I do now. Water follows trough and gutters; it drops into cracks and crevices, and it drains downward into low spots in the bedrock. Guess what else loves to do the same thing?)

Learning what he meant, I’ve followed running or trickling water back up into bedrock that was covered in channel, and it’s led me to gold. I’ve also followed water downslope as it hugs bedrock contours, and as it dives under intact material, all with the same golden results. To be frank, I’ve also followed it and found nothing, but that’s part of the experience too: success never comes for me without failures along the way. Regardless, learning that water and gold are good friends was a remarkable tip.

Knowing the relationship of water to gold on bedrock, I scanned the area with the Gold Racer. Knowing that gold loves the opportunity to drop in water when it’s moved by machinery, I’ve recovered quite a few sassy nuggets in this way, and I put two small nuggets (the biggest being just over two grams) into my jar. Moreover, the Racer screamed on both targets due to the thin layer of pebbles and broken bedrock.

I worked my way up from the low spot leaving the water behind, and carefully detected every transition zone of hardness and color change in the bedrock. Each little fold in the rock; every crack, crevice, and friable section; all slips and faults, including numerous gutters and troughs, got scanned. As a result, lot of signals went into my gold pans for my wife to work down.

At this point in the day, the sun was high overhead without a cloud in that alpine-blue sky. Tiny orange and brown spotted butterflies, with smaller squadrons of blue and white ones, were flitting back and forth from seeps in the dark bedrock. Large, lazy, black-bodied flies, with iridescent blue and green highlights, lumbered by us while performing slow, corkscrewing aerobatics.

No wind stirred the setting, and it was getting warm, so I stripped off a layer of clothing, and as I did so, my brain reminded me it was time for a break: muscle fatigue was setting in, my stomach was starting to grumble, and I was thirsty.

Our bottled water was cached in one of the small streams of ice-cold seepage water, so it was perfectly chilled. We ate our traditional mining lunch (meat and cheese sandwiches, a piece of fruit, some chocolate pudding for desert). After eating, we all had a nice rest.

TIP: The five-gallon bucket my wife takes along makes a great panning-pool seat that saves the back muscles: moreover, anytime there’s panning to be done, if a seat [rock, bucket, bedrock ledge, etc.] can be found, muscle stress and fatigue are reduced.

Why take a rest when there’s gold to be found? Taking a gold-hunting break lets the conscious brain rest, and then the subconscious fires up and quietly analyzes the day’s global input for processing. Next, the subconscious brain delivers suggestions to the refreshed conscious brain for recognition. (TIP: I can’t overemphasize how critical it is to take breaks to keep the mind alert: rushing without breaks severely compromises productivity.)

With a rested brain, my subconscious popped the suggestion to “Go low and slow” over the previously worked northern end of the excavation. I quickly realized the bottom of the north cut needed just that process. I would head back with the Gold Racer to scrub the bedrock floor. (My son was still working his honey-ledge, so my wife stayed to pan.)

The bedrock floor had dips and rolling rises of hard rock (some bull quartz too), with occasional flatter areas of softer formations. My son had already hit these areas with the Gold Bug Pro, after working his rich rise of bedrock, but he’d made only standard passes through the bottom.

Firing up the Gold Racer, I scrubbed the coil slowly across the bedrock. I soon had a signal. I kept repeating this low-and-slow scrubbing process which netted a steady stream of pickers and nuggets for my bottle, with most targets trapped in cracks and seams that held almost no accompanying material. After finishing the bedrock, I went to the crazy areas (the places where you’d have to be crazy to look), and picked up some nuggets weighing under two grams that were obviously been redeposited by machinery action. (This tactic has produced enough gold that it’s part of my routine now when I work disturbed ground, either that mined by the Old-timers or by modern methods.)

Using the same techniques outlined above, the next day produced more nuggets as well.

Hand of gold 1.jpeg

It’s true, this may have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we certainly left with heavy gold bottles, but the wonderful memories of family fun over those two golden bonanza days was the greater treasure.

All the best,

Lanny