Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales

[Lanny]

Just thought I'd post this: Move Those Rocks!

One of the greatest mistakes I see made in gold country by eager rookies, is the mistake of not wanting to move the rocks--the ones in the channel, or the ones high-and-dry out of the present channel. I'll see people pecking around the rocks, dipping the tip of their shovels between the rocks to get as much material as they can, but not using the elbow grease necessary to move those rocks!

Especially the rocks stacked on bedrock--the ones thrown up there by higher, faster moving water long since gone. Sure, there's often clay, and maybe roots, and other crap jammed in there, and it's most certainly tough digging, but that's the dance you need to step to in order to find the good stuff.

I you dig around in the sand and the loose stuff, you'll most often get a little fine gold, and those specks can be pretty, but the better stuff needs some serious moving of nastier material.

The bigger rocks travel with, and drop out with the nicer gold. Generally, so do the darker rocks (at least up here)--for some reason, many of the heavier rocks are darker. I know the old timers used to look for darker, stained, heavy rocks. Also, don't be afraid to get to the very bottom of any cracks or crevices you uncover. Trust me, the gold loves to get down there as far as it can--so you should too. Also, watch what's coming out of the crevice--there should be lots of little packed stones and often some clay too. Wash it all very carefully--break up any bits of clay--mush them around on the bottom of your pan until they dissolve. I've found some very nice gold trapped in clay jammed in crevices!

So, don't be afraid to move those rocks, and be exhaustive in your efforts to clean out the cracks and crevices. Remember that specific gravity should be your guide--most of the time the nicer gold travels with the beefier rocks, and the pieces of steel, and the lead fishing weights. . .

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

All good advice once again Lanny. Attention to these seemingly small details will pay off, maybe not in every case, but it will pay off in the future. Another way it will pay off, at least to my way of thinking is that you will not torture yourself later for not doing these things and worrying what you may have left behind.

[ProspectingAK]

Good advice Lanny! Any advice on moving them big boulders?

[Jim_Alaska]

Good advice Lanny! Any advice on moving them big boulders?

I am not Lanny, but try big pry bars, on the order of six feet long. Come-alongs are good, winches are better, and of course chain, cable and three rail truck chains.

[Joe S (AK)]

AK,

It's always easier to roll a big rock than drag or pick it up.

Whenever I happen to stumble on a big'un I'll carefully remove as much material from the downstream end with a long handled shovel (or if I happen to have the 2" dredge in use I'll use it along with long handled shovels, rakes and a 4' or 5' section of PVC pipe taped to the intake of the nozzle) to CAREFULLY AND SLOWLY clean out a fair amount of surrounding downstream material. I try for a hole lower than the rock. Then pry and roll the boulder into the cleaned out hole. Especially if it's on bedrock, that boulder is going nowhere for a long time.

Joe

[Jim_Alaska]

Rolling is the way to go. If using a come-along or winch you can fasten to the opposite side you are pulling from and as low as you can get it. Bring the cable over the top of the rock and now when you pull it will roll easier. Dead dragging boulders is a terribly inefficient method.

[Lanny]

Lost Drift-Mine Cache

Quite a few summers back, I heard a fascinating story, one set in a mountainous, heavily wooded area with pines, firs, balsams, birches, and aspens. The forest floor is covered in undergrowth, dark canyons abound in the wilderness area, but somehow a tiny human population clings to civilization.

The only way to get to the goldfields is by logging road, always dangerous, often terrifying. Wildlife abound in the cool climate: deer, moose, elk, wolverine, fisher or martin, cougar, grizzly and black bear. And for humans, the far northern latitude ensures ice on the fire bucket in the outfitters tent even on summer mornings.

In that vast northland, rushing streams of icy water race from the mountains into deep glacial lakes, while slower streams are choked with alders. Dark, alpine peaks loom in every direction, their lower reaches covered in deep deposits of boulder clay (thick masses of clay and rock dropped by glaciers), ones that cover ancient streambeds rich in coarse placer.

These thick deposits of boulder clay roof the dark world of the solitary drift miner, for to follow the gold, the miner must find a bedrock outcrop, then tunnel beneath the clay by hand while drifting along the bedrock contours. Constant shoring of the mine is essential (with hand-cut timbers and lagging) to prevent cave-ins.

It is brutal, backbreaking work, as the tunnel height is kept as low to save on materials and labour. As well, boulders are a battle, with the drift-miner detouring over, around, or under the blockages. In addition, when rich ground is hit the miner “rooms out” a large area with parallel tunnels, backfilling as the work progresses. The work is lonely, with long, tedious days, but as the work is done underground, a constant temperature above freezing allows winter-long work, during the long, dark winters. In the spring, when the freshets (spring runoff) start, the pay pile is sluiced with the coarse gold placed in either a poke, or a tobacco can, or in coffee cans when the take is heavy.

Thus some setting and the context for the tale that follows:

Late one chilly evening, as we sat around a warm campfire, the local placer miners told of how several years previous, a reclusive member of their tiny community failed to appear at the log-built community store and post office for his weekly visit.

In the tiny community settlement, every resident rendezvous on the same day, mail day. The miners, loggers, and trappers take time to socialize and to catch up on the news. Clearly, in such a remote area, anytime someone breaks a routine, the locals head out to see what’s wrong.

Sadly, the searchers found the miner dead in his cold cabin. On his table was a nice tub of rich gold concentrates. Coarse it was too. Everything in the cabin was peaceful and in order. No foul play, the miner had passed quietly away in his sleep, off to the big nugget mine in the sky.

The mystery is that as a dedicated drift-miner, he had been mining full-time for decades in a great spot. Yes, decades. His diggings were located on great gold-producing ground. Everyone knew it was so as he always paid for his supplies at the community store in nuggety gold. (They still take gold as payment even today; there’s a set of scales on the store counter.)

However, as is the case in that tiny community, many live alone, just as the dead miner did. So, the local recluses exist without the companionship of spouse or family. They seem to thrive in the solitude.

On a side note, some of the more colorful, mysterious characters there won't allow you to take their photograph (under any circumstances!), which hints of being on the run. In fact, certain ones are. Some have been hiding out since the Vietnam war, unaware that a pardon has been granted.

On a different note, there is no local bank for gold deposits. The nearest bank is four to six hours away, the time depending on the uncertain road conditions. Moreover, heading to the city suits only those that WANT to get out; some never take the opportunity, preferring solitude and isolation.

To return to the story, the deceased miner was working a rich, ancient tertiary channel that resided with stubborn determination under a steep cliff of boulder clay. He had spent endless summers and winters of unimaginable effort tunneling along the bedrock, doggedly staying with the ever-fickle gold. It is understood that the miner's golden challenge is a riddle that forever taunts to be solved, a quest to find the solution to a mystery left eons ago by a coy Mother Nature. Regardless of Mother Nature’s efforts, the miner had solved the riddle; he was one of the masters.

For those of you that have seen old placer drift mines, you are familiar with how the tunnel's low height forces the miner to work in a perpetual, stooped condition. Thus, the reason why so many of the Old-timer's walked permanently hunched over. Clearly, the drift miner's work was backbreaking, formidable, and uncertain, but in the miner’s mind, there was always hope.

On a related note, I have gazed into those still dripping, cold, damp tunnels while trying to imagine only a pick and shovel to excavate the stubborn ancient river channel, filled with endless cobbles, stubborn cemented material, and mammoth, defiant boulders. Moreover, the constant fear of cave-ins must have been an endless strain.

I must confess that I was too dumb to realize that people still mined using such old methods. I assumed they had vanished decades earlier. Nonetheless, other determined miners still use this method of hand-mining, just as the dead miner from the small community did.

As the deceased miner had no family that anyone in the community was aware of, the locals declared a treasure hunt to try to locate the cache.

They found nothing.

As I pass through this long winter, somewhere deep in that primeval northern forest there resides a rich treasure, one once claimed from Mother Nature, yet now silently reclaimed, trusted to her timeless care yet again.

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

That was a wonderful local history story Lanny. I agree that there have been many that took the very same path and many were never en heard of. Your story could not have been told or known except for the small backwoods community that was there.

Like you, I have seen and wondered at the old tunnels. It is almost impossible to not go in and look around, but I am claustrophobic and that works in my favor. Old mine shafts are extremely dangerous.

There were of course other miners with other methods, many of them were solitary also. I knew of one in Alaska and have walked his hand cut trails and seen some of the work he did. His life was diversified, he mined in the summer and trapped in the winter. His story is a fascinating one and one that I have been attempting work work on in book form. Unfortunately my book writing is very slow, this one has been 15 years in progress, mostly because I don't work on it. I am a terrible procrastinator; it is too bad because unlike many writers, I have a lot of resource material, much of it is from my own personal observation and information gathering.

[Lanny]

A Lonesome Nugget Tale

Flashback to the the summer of '99, and I was swinging the SD2100 up in Northern British Columbia. We four-wheeled up an incredibly bad road to get to the site. The road was so bad that one of the other mining operations had dropped a big four-wheeled military surplus truck into one hole, and the unit sunk down far past the axles. After fetching a Cat, they finally got it out.

So, this was the same road we had to negotiate, with the same hole, and we moved very carefully around the edges of it, as well as around other nasty water traps until we finally made it to a small creek in the high, northern mountains where the road turned into a rough trail. Being muddy and slick, the truck started to slip off the road, and we had to stop, walking was the only way forward

I got set up, made a lot of noise to alert the Grizzlies in those thick pines that we were in the area, and then I set off to do some detecting. It was a sunny day which meant the bugs were bad, but there were butterflies, songbirds and beautiful, iridescent humming birds at work on the alpine blossoms. High overhead, thin white clouds drifted on the mountain currents.

Bordering the side of the trail, there was a long stretch of exposed bedrock that the Old-timers had cleaned off in the 1800's; however, as I detected, all I found were various sizes of square nails, bits of old tin cans, and tiny pieces of wire.

A bit later, I spotted the remains of an old cabin farther up the trail. I scouted around it and tried some detecting, but there was so much trash under the moss beside the building that I gave up after a short while. I marched over to the creek and was confronted with piles of Old-timer hand-stacks, ones left where they'd worked the creek bed. However, all I found was the regular trash plus bits of lead from tin can solder.

I worked my way back down the trail to where the truck was parked. My buddy was slugging it out in the brush while swinging his 2100, and he was in a serious war with the bugs, and the bugs were winning! In retreat, he came blitzing back to the truck for bug dope, and off he went in a different direction.

So, that left me standing alone by the truck. I'd already detected all of the exposed bedrock I could find, but I'd noticed a curious spot earlier back up the trail where someone had dug a test hole and piled a big mound of muck beside the road.

Since I had nothing else to do, and since my buddy was eagerly donating to the Northern Bug Blood Bank, I wandered down to the test hole. I detected all around the bottom of the hole and only found a few bits of tin, and two square nails. On the sides of the hole I found more nails, but these were round nails, so obviously this was an area that was worked in the 30's. To elaborate, there were more miners active in this particular goldfield in the 30's than there were in the 1800's gold strike.

At the far end of the test hole, there was a large boulder. I scanned it, and the whole thing was a hot rock! I'm no geologist, so I have no idea what kind of rock it was, but the 2100 constantly sounded off on it no matter how I configured it. However, just to the side of it was a little dike of dirt, one pushed up from the test hole. I climbed up on top and started to detect it. The ground was very slippery, and the next thing I knew, it had caved off and down I rocketed into the muck and water in the bottom of the test hole. (Zero points for grace.)

After that slippery adventure, I was ready to head back to the truck. I was muddy, wet, and tired. It had been a long unrewarding day, yet that far north there's still daylight at eleven p.m., so my stubborn streak kicked in, and I decided I'd claw my way back up to detect the top of that wall of dirt once more. And that's the thing, the material was dirt--no river run in it, just a bunch of black clay and goo (in retrospect, the black should have tipped me off that it came from deep down near bedrock). I walked along more carefully this time, came to the break in the dirt I'd made when I slipped off, and I gingerly slid the coil across the gap. Almost instantly I got a nice sweet signal. This one was nice and smooth, no harsh iron growl.

I worked my way across the breach and set up shop. I passed the coil over the signal again, approaching from a different direction. Still a nice smooth sound and very clear. It sounded like it had to be shallow. I dug down with my plastic scoop and scanned again. The hole was silent, but the scoop had a nice rich sound when I scanned it. I processed the dirt in the scoop, and then dumped the remaining bit in my hand and passed it under the coil. The signal was definitely in my hand. I dropped the dirt onto the coil and, thwack! The object hit the coil. All I could see was that black dirt. I moved the lumps around and one of them squealed when I moved it. I picked it up and rubbed off the dirt. The golden glow confirmed its identity. It was a nice, sassy five-gram nugget.

I detected around the rest of the dirt, but no more luck. When my buddy came out of the bush and saw my nugget, he gave the detected the spot as well, but no luck.

My lonesome nugget was the only one that came to play that day.

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Nice story Lanny. Right now, at this time of winter there is not much I wouldn't do for one lonesome nugget. One thing I thought I might mention in regard to the cabin you found. There always seems to be an abundance of trash metal around old cabins. It makes detecting around them very exasperating. BUT.....

Way out in the wilds of BC and Alaska there were no banks or other places for safe-keeping. Some of the old time miners would hide their valuables and many times gold they were hording. One of the favorite places to hide their gold until they could sell it in the city was right under the base logs of their cabin. For this reason I never miss an opportunity to slowly detect all along the base logs of any cabins.

One other hiding place I found one time, quite by accident and very hard to find is a hand made hole in a large tree.
I found a square hole, about eight inches by eight inches that had been cut into the trunk of a large Spruce tree. Nothing in it when I found it, but it was obviously a hiding place. It was not near any cabin, but was along an old miners hand cut trail. The hole was not visible from his trail, but it faced away from it along the side of a very small creek. I only found it because I was attempting to navigate the small creek on my snow machine and happened to see it.