Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales

[Lanny]

(NOTICE: No gold found on this outing. Read on only if you enjoy the adventure.)

Deep Canyon Ghost Camp

We’d heard rumours, but we’d never followed up on the information . . .

We were told to head down the logging road until we saw a large area off to the left side that had a designated winter pull-out for vehicle parking. After we’d found the spot, we were supposed to check the forest behind the pull-out for an old trail, and by following the trail, it would lead us down the mountain into a steep canyon where the Old Timers had taken out lots of chunky gold, and all of their work was done by hand as the gold was shallow to bedrock; shallow diggings, the Old Timer’s bread, butter, and cream. Furthermore, there was supposed to be an old cabin where a highly successful miner had been found dead. His body was discovered during the deep winter snows, and only located weeks after he’d died, but his cache had never been found. So, it seemed like a good spot to investigate.

We grabbed a couple of detectors, some bear spray, a flare gun with bear bangers, some sniping tools, a couple of pans, and off we went.

Not far into the trees we found an old cabin, but it wasn’t quite old enough for the stories we’d been told, but it did have some cool items in it; however, there were no other structures, and we’d been told there were “cabins”.

We carried on, picking up the thread of the trail, but we got crossed by some deadfall. Working our way through, we were soon on our way downslope. In short order, the steep trail dropped in pitch even more, and the surrounding forest was extremely quiet, which was unexpected.

We were in an area of dense growth, but no buildings were visible anywhere. As we rounded a bend in the trail, we saw a collapsed roof, and under the roof, the drooping remains of a log structure. Off to the right at about a 45-degree angle, there was a building that had obviously been a workshop at one time, as lots of cast off materials and machinery parts surrounded it.

In front of us, right off the trail to our left, was an old root cellar, and someone had been digging behind it, throwing out all of the old cans and bottles. To our immediate right was a building and part of the roof was beginning to collapse. What was interesting is that under an intact portion, there were still many cords of cut firewood.

As the steepness of the descent increased, we came upon a large, long log building, one that had been re-roofed in more modern times. To elaborate a bit, the cuts of the logs where they were fitted at the ends had been beautifully done by some master builder in the past. Those logs were securely locked; it was built to weather any kind of severe force. To the left of the long building, there was a house, the roof over the porch collapsing, and when we went inside for a peek, someone had done a lot of work to cover the rooms in every ceiling with tin, and that was curious.

After poking around the surrounding buildings for a while, and after snapping some pictures, we worked our way along the edge of the cliffs to get down to the creek.

One of the first things we noticed was a hand-stacked rock wall on the opposite side, one expertly crafted on the bedrock of the creek to rise up to then intersect the cliff face. Someone went to a lot of work to stabilize that spot.

Visible above the rock wall and the cliff were countless hand-stacks of cobbles, evidence of the gold rush where the miners were working the shallow diggings to get to the easy placer. (Later on, we met a modern-day miner, and he told us there were lots of nuggets recovered in the two to three-ounce range!) As the canyon was so steep, and due to the shallow deposits, it had never been worked by mechanized mining.

My son fired up his detector and set off to see what he could find.

While he was hunting for targets, I set up to provide over-watch: we were after all in the land of the grizzly and the black, as well as the territory of the cougar.

As luck would have it, there were no encounters with apex predators, and it was a beautiful afternoon with the forest lit by golden shafts of soft sunlight that filtered down from high overhead. However, the normal symphony of mountain songbirds was absent, as were any signs of hummingbirds or butterflies, all my normal companions while chasing placer. In addition, no mountain flowers were present, reflecting the scanty soil conditions of the canyon.

As I kept watch, I moved around and noticed that every place there was any kind of a gut or a draw the miners had tossed out the cobbles to reach the bedrock bottom. In fact, I couldn’t find one place where they hadn’t excavated any likely-looking spot. Furthermore, as I looped above the area where my son was working, I came across numerous trash pits with all kinds of interesting old cans and containers, rusted evidence of either former food or fuel needs.

My son called me down to the creek where he’d isolated a target underwater, but it turned out to be a small part of an old square nail, which for whatever reason always sounds off like a good find on the pulse machine. He kept digging the rest of the afternoon and recovered countless trash targets: square nail tips and sections; intact square nails of various sizes; bits of can-slaw; a chunk of punch-plate; various pieces of wire of differing compositions; as well as chunks of lead, etc.

What he didn’t find was any gold, but that’s the way it goes in the nugget hunting game; buckets of trash get dug before the gold gets found. In retrospect, I don’t even know how many buckets of trash I dug before I found my first nugget, and I think that’s what kills most beginning nugget shooters. They give up after the first palm-full of trash or sooner. Nugget hunting requires serious dedication and patience, but when that first sassy nugget is finally in the palm, there’s nothing like it, nothing.

We gathered up our gear, took a few more pictures of the cabins and buildings on our way out, and then hit the switchbacks as we slogged our way up out of that silent canyon.

We will go back, but with a different focus this time. We’ll move some hand-stacks from some likely looking spots to give the underlying, undetected bedrock a sniff. I mean, two to three-ounce nuggets? Something had to have been missed in a crack somewhere . . .

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Another good story Lanny. There may have been no gold, but the experience created golden memories that will be with you for the rest of your life.

Many times it is the "on the ground" experiences we encounter that are the real treasures.

[Lanny]

Another good story Lanny. There may have been no gold, but the experience created golden memories that will be with you for the rest of your life.

Many times it is the "on the ground" experiences we encounter that are the real treasures.

So true Jim, the experience will always be a golden memory of time spent with my son, nothing more valued than that.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Now, for a few things I've learned about working bedrock.

When checking bedrock, always look very closely at the surface. Clear all of the material off of it first. Moreover, any clay, and associated material, that is sticking close to the bedrock, carefully save it, so you can pan it out. This means that you'll need some sniping instruments to clean out all the visible cracks and crevices as well.

Go to a wholesale supply store, a place that sells lots of various hardware/automotive items, to get some things. Several screwdrivers of various sizes is a place to start. Take a slot screwdriver, place it in a vice then bend a couple of inches of the end into an "L". This will make the screwdriver into a little digging/scraping tool, very handy for cleaning out crevices. You might buy an awl as well to use for probing. Also, if you can find them, you can buy dental-type instruments--they come in all kinds of hook and scraping conformations, making them excellent for working narrow crevices, and they're made of stainless steel, making them robust and not prone to rust.

As well, buy several sizes of wire brushes, from the small, almost toothbrush sized ones to the larger ones that you'd scrape a wall for painting preparation. You'll need a variety of chisel sizes as well to break open crevices: the good gold goes down deep, and even if the crevice is narrow, it wasn't always that way. I've taken nice nuggets out of crevices that were far too narrow at the top to let in the nuggets they held.

This opens up all kinds of theories as to how the nuggets got there, but regardless, they are there, so it's irrelevant how they got there. Bust open those crevices until you're sure you're at the bottom, and rip up the bedrock bottom--a note on this later.

A note on chisels: you can buy ones that have a protective shield on them so you don't smash you hands and fingers. To run the chisels, you'll need a small sledge. Buy a fibreglass handled one as they're much tougher than the wooden ones, and the water doesn't affect them. As well, paint your sniping tools fluorescent orange--trust me, you'll leave things laying around and it's much easier to spot them later.

You'll need a variety of brushes, from stiff bristles to softer ones as well. Also, you'll need something to sweep your sniping concentrates into. Those little plastic shovels that kids take to the beach work well for tight places, and plastic dust pans work great in larger areas. A plastic gardening/planting scoop works wonders too. It's also a good idea to have to have a steel one as well; they're a lot tougher for digging.

Stainless steel spoons of various sizes are handy for digging and for collecting, and sometimes a tough, small plastic spoon will work in a pinch.


An important point, that I'll now address, is that after you've cleared all the visible cracks and crevices, and cleared and or washed the bedrock down, take a very close look at the bedrock to see if you can notice any subtle differences (colour, texture, folding, etc.). Also, watch out for a purple stain with any adhering clay as for whatever the reason, this purple colour sometimes indicates hidden crevices and gold.

To elaborate a bit on the bedrock's subtle differences, the reason for this is that sometimes, eons ago, the stream was running little bits of material the exact same colour as the bedrock. This material, in combination with binding minerals, formed a matrix that cemented in cracks and crevices, and often, gold was already trapped in those crevices. The cemented material makes the crevices virtually invisible, but if you look very closely, and if you chip away at any suspicious looking spots, you may discover a hidden, once invisible crevice. Furthermore, any cemented material should be carefully crushed and panned as I've found a lot of nice gold this way.

Now, the best way to find these obscure crevices is with a detector if the nuggets are big enough. I've found many a sassy nugget completely hidden in camouflaged crevices. Moreover, the matrix is as strong as the host bedrock, and the bedrock will break off with the matrix while chiseling the nuggets out. Always work well to the sides, and above or below the target signal, so you don't damage the nugget as you chisel it out.

This is where it's critical that you have the right detector for the temperature of the bedrock--by temperature I mean that a cool temperature would be a low mineralized bedrock that a VLF would run smoothly on; and by hot I mean bedrock that only a premium pulse or GPZ type machine will operate on. If your current detector just screams and gives up on hot bedrock, go borrow or buy one that will run on that bad bedrock just to be sure you're not missing gold. Moreover, if any of you have further tips on sniping, I'd love to hear them as well. I know there's always more I need to learn.

All the best,

Lanny in AB

[Lanny]

Checking old hand-stacks of rock and old bedrock workings

I ran into a guy from the Yukon a few years ago while I was up in north-central British Columbia, and he was running a big placer operation in the Yukon. He told me that they always pushed off the piles of hand stacked rocks from the old-timers and then they carefully checked the bedrock underneath with detectors for gold. Not only were there nuggets the old-timers had missed, there were sometimes virgin strips of ground that he said were incredibly rich. He explained it this way: in the rush to mine the bedrock, the old-timers had stacked their rock piles over virgin ground, and then got too busy, or rushed on to new diggings, etc., and they never got back to the virgin dirt they'd buried in the first place.

I know of a nugget shooter that found an incredibly rich patch under such a pile of rocks. He took out hundreds of small nuggets, and some nice fat ones too, and the strip was only about three feet wide at its widest point!

This makes me think of tales some old-timers up north told me of how mining companies were in a hurry to get to the bedrock, and to quickly get the chunky gold, kind of like skimming thick cream off of milk and not really caring about the milk underneath, and that some of those companies were very sloppy in their recovery. As well, there were always other rushes going on that lured them away to "better" ground.

There are countless piles of hand-stacked rocks where I'm working, and I've winched rocks off before and found good gold. In fact, in the area I'm referring to, for years nugget shooters have been winching the boulders off the bedrock, and they've recovered a lot of nice nuggets as the detectors can see what the old-timers could not possibly visualize in that bedrock.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Another tip, High up bedrock.

I was out one day digging a whole bunch of old boot tacks from long since disintegrated miner's boots! The little nails were all over the place, including down in crevices, well rusted or (for the non-ferrous) green with patina. I was also finding the little tips from old square nails, so I knew there were still targets to be found.

I found a few pieces of lead, from spent bullets, a steel button from an 1800's miner's shirt, a couple of pieces of wire, and many, many square nails, as well as a few more modern nails from the 1930's.

After digging a palm full of nails, I went down to a spot on the river that has always intrigued me, but one I've been handcuffed from detecting. The old-timers washed lots of gravel over this notch in the cliff: it's an area of high slate cliffs, where the slate has been sluffing off eons. I've always looked up at those cliffs and thought, that with all the jagged protruding edges, some gold must have been trapped, especially with all the sluice runs sent over the edge, including the virgin material that had eroded over the cliff before the miners started their workings.

Anyway, I've never been able to find anything but small flakes trapped in that jagged bedrock, and these discoveries were made by panning. However, I decided to walk along the base of that cliff to detect it.

Well, I hit all kinds of square nails, and spent bullets (I found a nice old 44 caliber slug too, and a big bore rifle slug with grease grooves), as well as bits of copper and brass wire. Being somewhat frustrated, I decided to cut some footholds up the slump at the base of the cliff, enabling me to reach higher up the cliff with my detector.

Almost instantly, I got a signal. I pinpointed it easily, cut some more steps with my pick so I could get up to the signal, and then I trapped it in the scoop. The target was the rusted tip of a square nail.

I rested the coil as I stepped back down and the coil swept through an arc over a new spot and gave a crisp signal. I stayed put on the cliffside and scanned the spot again. Of course, my brain was saying, "It's another piece of trash."

I reached up gingerly with my super-magnet to see if a nail would jump out, but none did. I say I reached up gingerly because the whole area of dirt holding the signal would have gone scurrying down the cliff, and you know what a nightmare it is to try to find a target after that happens.

No metal jumped to the super magnet, but the target could easily be copper, or a sliver of lead, or another non-ferrous boot tack!

I carefully inserted the tip of my scoop where the coil had pinpointed the signal. I saw a golden flash as the dirt poured into the scoop! 


I worked my way back down the slump to a level spot, scanned the scoop, and there was a nice crisp, mellow growl. I sifted the material onto the coil and heard a whap!, then a scream from the coil. I gently moved the particles around and there grinning up at me was a sassy nugget.

I now have lots of new area to search, difficult though it will be.

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Wow Lanny, Thanks for the wealth of stories today. I got up late and had a real treat reading them. Lots of good information too, thanks again.

[Lanny]

Wow Lanny, Thanks for the wealth of stories today. I got up late and had a real treat reading them. Lots of good information too, thanks again.

It's great to hear from you again Jim, and many thanks for letting me post on your forum.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

More Nuggets In The Bedrock Tips

One Saturday, June 14th, I got ready to head to the hills to try to find some gold. I grabbed my pulse machine, and I picked up my partner, We drove the four hours to get to the gold fields. The day was incredibly beautiful.

We cached our equipment in the outfitters tent we always set up for the season and went out with the detectors to find some gold. The week before, I'd finally found a nugget on the slate cliffs.

My buddy headed off to stomp some ground he'd been saving, and I went to a gully that had always intrigued me, but one that had consistently skunked me. The old-timers had done a massive amount of hand mining in this area, with stacks of rocks piled all over, and it's shallow to bedrock in quite a few places. There's massive old pines, and lots of guts, shallow little washes, with cast up boulders everywhere.

Well, what I'd noticed on previous trips, was that someone had moved a lot of hand-stacks from places that were shallow to bedrock, lots of them. So, they must have moved them for a reason. However, I'd tried detecting those places with my Minelab pulse machine, and I'd never found anything but little steel and brass boot tacks, as well as the ubiquitous square nails from the 1800's gold rush.

I started detecting along the exposed bedrock, generously uncovered by someone else. All at once, I got a whisper amplified by my enhancer. So, I kept scrubbing that coil over that faint bump in the threshold signal with the coil right tight on the bedrock. (To elaborate, the friable Slate bedrock is in up-faulted sheets, the tips broken in fractured finger-like projections.) 

With my pick, I worried out any loose bits of rock and soil, scanned again, and there was a sweet, mellow signal. With no soil or gravel to work, I started to pry out pieces of the bedrock but scanned after removing each piece. Having now exposed a  small space in the bedrock, the tip of my small sniping coil fit it nicely, and the signal was coming right through one of those sheets of bedrock, the piece perpendicular to the surface.

I kept carefully breaking the rock and scanning, and I noticed that the signal was moving, not getting any louder, but moving deeper. The target still had that soft, sweet sound, no harsh-edged tone. So, I removed a chunk of that sheet and the signal remained stationary, no drop. I looked and I saw a golden glow, a nice, flat nugget. I called my buddy over to see the nugget, and then I was ready to move to an adjacent spot, but my wiser buddy suggested that I scan the hole again--Duh! Sometimes I forget the basics, so I scanned again, and I got another signal! I retrieved another flat nugget, one lodged tightly between two sheets of bedrock, about an inch from where the other nugget was.

Then I really went to work on that little area--about two foot square--but no more signals. But, the bedrock sloped away downhill, and I noticed two inches of small, gravelly overburden and clay covering it. I scanned it, but no signal. However, and this is important, I took my pick and cleaned off all the dirt, every bit, then scanned it again, another sweet whisper.

I broke the sheets of bedrock, but the nuggets dropped quickly every time the bedrock was disturbed. Nevertheless, I got two more nice, flat nuggets that way, and one of them was bent on the end, as it was lodged in a perpendicular crack. So, I took out four nice small nuggets from a section of bedrock about ten feet long, a minor patch. I scraped around in the bedrock farther down the gulch, but got skunked.

I went back to the Outfitters tent to get some grub, geared up again and went to another spot that's always looked good, a place also cleared by someone eager to get to the bedrock. I used the same slow, "scrubbing the bedrock" technique, but got blanked.

It was getting dark, and I went up over a big sheet of bedrock that had a lot of slump on it, a spot loaded with square nails. I got a sharp signal, moved the dirt and a square nail flew to the super-magnet. Remembering my buddy's counsel, I scanned the spot again. Once again, that same soft, sweet tone I'd found earlier.

Only this time, the bedrock was different, solid, no leaves or sheets, just solid, hard stuff. I worked hard with my pick, went down a couple of inches, and out popped a nice, flat, nugget. By this time, I was beginning to think that maybe this was my day, and I'd better scan the spot again. Perhaps there was something lucky or sound in that technique. I did, and there was another signal, but I could not break the rock anymore with my pick.

So, I headed back to the tent for a masonry chisel and my small sledge, and a flashlight because it was dark! My buddy came back with me, and he made the bedrock chips fly. Every time he chipped out a chunk, I'd scan again, and the signal got louder. Yet, down four inches, the signal moved. Up on the side of the hole, in some bits and broken chunks of rock, the signal rang sharp and clear. Nestled in it was a little beauty with a pot belly and a very flat end.

I rattled the gold around in my gold bottle, six sassy nuggets in one day! It seems when the gold finally comes, it does so with a rush.


Update: I went back later to that solid bedrock with the Falcon MD 20 and got a couple more grams of gold from those cracks!

All the best,


Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Another great story Lanny. We would do well never forget to re-check the hole. and also remember to never pass over those small murmurs in the threshold.