Golden Grams of Goodness: Nugget Hunting Tales

[Lanny]

Gold Field Invasion

Well, it’s time for another story about the land of bedrock and gold. However, I have to give a backstory before I get into my gold tale (that will be the next story after this one).

I had a chance to head to the goldfields one day. The problem was, I would only be there part of a day, spend the night, and then come right back out.

The main reason for the trip was to head to camp and see how everything had wintered. (I’d tried, but failed to get to camp earlier, due to the ice and snow of the high elevation.) When I arrived, everything looked fine on the outside of the two living quarters. To check the inside, I opened the first one. All was tight and dry, nothing damaged after six months of snowy isolation, high in the cedar and pine covered mountains of the Rockies.

I checked the other outfit to see how it had wintered. As soon as I opened the door, disaster! There were bits of foam all over the floor, and a large corner of the table cushion was torn open, with chunks of foam on the other cushions as well.

Stepping farther inside to look at the sleeping area, the curtains above the windows, on all three sides, had holes torn all along the tops! Some had smaller holes in their mid-sections too. The bed cushions had fragments of the fabric torn loose as well. Yet, there was no strong rodent stench that accompanies a packrat invasion. That stumped me, as the place sure looked like the packrats had hit it.

Stumped, I searched the entire trailer. I found that one of the curtain rods over a side window was knocked loose from its brackets, but that was it.

To see what had happened in invisible places, I removed all the cushions, opened all the forward storage, but found nothing. Even the stash of toilet paper was unmolested, as were all of the other items stored up front.

I checked out the bathroom, but no ratty guests had been there. It was exactly the way I’d left it in the fall.

I opened the drawers by the sink and stove next, a true scene of mayhem. All kinds of organic things were stuffed into them that weren’t there in the fall, with regular items rearranged, all shoved into different drawers. Searching further, I found a nest on the shelf under the sink, a nest the size of a basketball! It was round, made of soft ferns and moss, and the vegetation was fresh and moist.

After, I removed the nest and cleaned the drawers, I opened every space and searched every spot with a powerful flashlight, but no intruders. This only deepened the mystery.

Determined to solve it, I went outside and crawled under the RV with my eye-ball melting flashlight and searched from stem to stern. The bottom was covered in solid metal, no entry points anywhere.

I went back inside to see if I’d missed something. While searching the compartments under the bed, I heard the sound of little running feet above my head. “Oh rats”, I thought. “The home-wrecker must be in the ceiling!” But, as I listened to it running around, it moved far too fast for something plowing through ceiling insulation. So, I hopped outside and quickly climbed to the roof of the other unit to look back to see what was going on.

There on the roof was a squirrel with a pinecone clutched in its paws, all frantic and stressed out, while continually looking over the far edge of the outfit. I hopped down and ran to that far side, and there I saw something I’d completely missed while pulling in to camp. A small spruce was bent over (most likely by heavy snowfall), and it was leaning against the small vent window of the sleeping area. A hole had been torn in the window screen that allowed year-round ventilation. All at once it made sense to me; the break-in mystery was solved.

I had been the victim of a squirrel home invasion, and it had only happened a few days before I’d hit camp or the unit would have been torn to bits. Thank heavens there was no nest of babies to deal with, or worse still, an entire family of squirrels partying inside.

Regardless, it was clear that mama had loads of fun tearing around on my curtains, her fabric amusement ride for a few days. I was so lucky it hadn’t been a packrat, or I’d have had to set fire to the whole outfit. Nothing gets rid of the disgusting smell of packrat.

After I’d secured camp, I only a few hours of daylight left to play with my GPX 5000. But that story will have to wait for another day.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Pesky Black Objects

Having solved the squirrel mystery, I went off to hunt some exposed bedrock nearby. It was beside the main trail in an open spot. There was lots of trash and lots of hot rocks. As well, the bedrock itself was hot, too hot for the VLF’s others had used in the past.

I’d taken out a nice catch of nuggets with my 2100 from that spot in the past. To recap, after I got the first mellow tone, my buddy and chiseled the nuggets out of tight contact-zone crevices. The crevices weren’t cemented shut like other areas where I’d chiseled nuggets out, but they were so tightly pinched together there was no other way to free the nuggets. However, chiseling was a challenge due to the bedrock’s hardness, and sharp fragments flew everywhere while working beside the target signals. I had to block the flying bits (with a tilted gold pan) in case a nugget also went flying.

Armed with my 5000 this time, I wanted to test to see how it handled this spot. I tried different settings, timings, sweep speeds, and various amounts of gain. Sometimes I ran it so noisy it reminded me of the 2100’s screeches on steroids! Other times it ran so smooth, I wondered if it was even working. But, I took my time and scanned every part of the exposed bedrock sheet. I got some very faint signals while experimenting, which were only tiny fragments of steel (and I do mean tiny).

After my fruitless search, I wandered off to a small gulch where the large-scale placer miners had trenched to get a bulk sample, one tight on the bedrock. The material was ancient, all orange and red-stained, good looking stuff. Regardless, working the virgin dirt was a huge frustration.

The frustration came from small pieces of native iron, ones encased in concretions of small rocks and sand, all heavily oxidized and completely black. They gave off good positive signals that drove me crazy. I adjusted the discrimination, fiddled with the tuning, but it was useless. I knew I didn't know the machine well enough. The tones remained as positive dig signals, and I couldn’t blank them out.

After that outing, I wanted to get deep into the contents of my owner’s manual by reading and rereading specific sections in order to fine tune my brain’s interaction with the machine. So, over the next week, I did just that.

Luckily, the following weekend, it paid off.

But, that’s a story for another day.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Squirrel Follow-up Gold

As I was setting up to detect the next week, one of the mine partners came down to the excavation to see me. He told me the best gold ran along the main drift-mine’s bedrock cut, found inside an area resembling a roughly shaped, reversed L. However, he wanted me to check the entire placer pit to see how well his crew had stripped for pay, and if they’d cut deeply enough into the softer bedrock.

I was welcome to keep anything I found. All I had to do was let him know where I found it and how much I found.

I quickly assembled the GPX 5000. The wind slashed terribly through the pit. It even rolled the detector bag across the bedrock toward a small bedrock pond, but the bag suddenly lodged in a low cut recently pumped dry. Even my five-gallon bucket of sniping tools took a header. That wind was trouble. Another trouble-maker was the heavy equipment operating upstream, throwing off EMI, and I didn’t know how well the 5000 would handle it.

After starting the detector, and keeping the coil elevated while held perpendicular to the ground, I slowly moved around in a half circle, locating the area of greatest EMI. It was coming from the equipment upstream.

I found a pile of rubble to rest the coil on, with the bottom directly facing the EMI. I did an automatic tune out for sixty seconds, and the detector settled to a quiet hum. The tuning of the GPX was impressive.

Knowing interference isn’t a worry is great while trying to hear the soft sound of gold. That’s one thing a lot of rookies mess up on. They think gold should be a loud, sharp signal. However, since gold ground is often heavily mineralized, the struggle to separate a gold signal from background mineralization may only leave a small whisper, a “bump” in the threshold.

That “bump” communicates a target possibility—a brief change in the mineralization balance.

Removing a few inches of overburden and swinging over the same spot again might produce a soft, target signal. And frankly, that’s how many nuggets are found. It’s not the loud scream or snappy zippy tone of online video finds. So, go slow, and listen very carefully. Then, if the threshold gets interrupted for any reason, remove some soil, and scan the spot again.

Getting back to my story, I walked along a shelf that skirted a deep, excavated pool in the softer bedrock where they’d chased a richer concentration of gold. The shelf beside it was composed of harder bedrock. I got a nice solid signal, used the pick and magnet as I dug and sorted, and retrieved an inch square chunk of oxidized, cast iron. That was the largest chunk of metal found so far that day.

I next detected over to where the main drift tunnel first entered the side of the pit. I noticed numerous contact zones where differing sheets of bedrock met, which included areas of obvious faulting. I detected along them, but all was silent.

The wind was nasty and would fling the coil and stem assembly off to either one side or the other from time to time.

Making it to the inverted L area at last, I quickly had a loud, growling, in-your-face signal. Disappointingly, it sounded just like the cast iron junk I’d found earlier. But I scraped off several inches of material, and the signal became a boomer. It had to be trash, as that whole, long day I’d dug countless slivers of steel and trash. Regardless, I dug down deeper suddenly noticing the blackened nature of the trapped river run in the bedrock. This was ancient material, super oxidized with lots of deep purple, red, and dark orange staining. The surrounding clay had completely lost its natural color.

I drug the material from the hole with the pick and smoothed it so that I could pass the magnet through it, checking for ferrous. Nothing on the magnet. So, I ran it back through the muck again. No ferrous. I scanned the hole—the signal was still there, a loud growler. (As the signal came from ancient material, tight on the bedrock, I started to doubt my trash theory.) Digging down about an inch more, I spread the material out on some quiet bedrock beside the hole.

The signal was in the flattened-out material, growling so loudly I was convinced it was iron or steel. I passed the magnet through the spread-out material, but no steel or iron jumped to the magnet. And I couldn’t believe it would be copper or aluminum trash at that depth, in such oxidized material, but I was stumped by the loud sound.

Using the edge of the coil to pinpoint the signal, I grabbed a lump of that stained mess. Plucking out stones one at a time, I passed them under the coil to check for hot rocks. Not a sound. Looking back where I’d pressed the coil edge while pinpointing, I saw a narrow mark in the clay where a small lump of goo clung to the bedrock. I picked it up, passed it under the coil, and bam! A rumbling blast of sound.

The target was in the material, with the clay-goo far too heavy in my hand. Squeezing with my fingers, I hit something solid in the clay. I rolled the object between my thumb and index finger. Then the sun began to shine—right there between my fingers, the unmistakable shine of a solid gold sassy nugget.

At last, I’d found my first gold with the GPX 5000, a golden moment I’ll never forget.

Scanning a bit more, I checked the hole carefully, nothing. I switched the speed to very slow and checked the surrounding ground. A bit to the left, facing upslope, I got a bump in the threshold. Removing several inches of muck produced a definite whisper. Scraping some more, I had a tone. Digging down and flattening the material, I now had a solid signal. Finding no ferrous on the magnet from the material, I scanned again. Scraping the bedrock with my scoop, I captured the signal. Sectioning the material and scanning, I had the target on the coil. It too was covered in that deep, dark stain. While rolling the material in my fingers, out popped a half-gram nugget, very coarse and sassy.

Its big brother weighed in at just under five grams.

All the best,

Lanny

P.S. I found two more in the same area the next week: one that was a gram and a half, and one that was a quarter of a gram.

[Lanny]

Little Beauty

I was out detecting with my GPX 5000, the air scented by pine, cedar, and fir. The sun was bright and hot, and there was no wind. It was a glorious day to be in the Rocky Mountains. Luckily, most of the mosquitoes had died off from the earlier cold, and there was no sign of the bear that had paraded through camp earlier in the week.

My machine was set to fine gold as I detected a patch of bedrock that had been heavily hammered by others over the years.

I used the elliptical Joey coil, a nice, sensitive little coil. I worked friable bedrock (bedrock in closely arranged plates or sheets) that rose at about a forty-five-degree angle close to a huge pile of old hand-stacked boulders. Cresting the top of the outcrop with the coil produced a subtle change in the threshold. So, I slowed down and scanned the uppermost edge again. The signal was still there. Something had changed that threshold.

Quite a few things can change the detector threshold: ground mineralization, tree roots, forest fire charcoal, hot rocks, and tiny bits of iron or steel. As well, passing the coil over a bedrock crest in either direction generates a very brief signal change while “cresting that curve”.

Nevertheless, this particular signal had a small center tone, making it unlikely to be a cresting tone. So, I grabbed my pick and removed some dirt from a pocket near the top.

The signal was stronger, and being a hot day, I used my amplified external speaker, rigging it up right below my left ear, making it much easier to hear quiet tones.

I chipped off more pieces of bedrock and scanned again. The signal was almost gone, so whatever it was had been moved. Scanning while heading down-slope proved the target had dropped lower.

Having chased signals in plates of bedrock before, when a nugget drops, it drops right quick into those plates. So, I used the pick and gently pried the bedrock pieces apart. However, I couldn’t find the target anywhere. This let me know it had indeed dropped into the bedrock.

Using a strategy I’ve used before, I tore the bedrock apart until I hit a perpendicular ledge at the base of the plates. These ledges stop anything that works its way down. Furthermore, a small pile of sandy clay, little river stones and some heavily oxidized pyrite had gathered there. This was a good sign. No one had cleaned this bedrock—ever.

I took a stainless-steel tablespoon I use for sniping, and along with some thin, flat scraping tools, I collected every bit of material, then placed it in a plastic gold pan. Taking the pan to a little seep of water located in a mossy gulch adjacent to an old Chinese wall, I panned the material.

Due to the small amount of material, I quickly had it cut down to concentrates. As I fanned the material, I noticed red, oxidized bits of pyrite, black sand, bits of ironstone, and tiny river stones. Fanning the cons some more, a sassy little nugget emerged from the super-heavies! A sub-gram nugget, it was the source of that small signal.

Never wanting to leave gold behind, I went back and scanned the bedrock, but it was now quiet.

Try this method the next time you’re out if you’re unsure of a faint signal on bedrock.

(If you’re near water, it works great. If not, drop the material in a zip-lock bag to pan it later.)


All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

Wow Lanny, you got with the program with posting stories today. Thanks for taking the time, they were a welcome read just before bed time.

[Lanny]

Thanks for reading them Jim, I'm trying to get caught up a bit on posting some of my stories, I'm glad you enjoyed them.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

(A field note from Sept. 6, 2011)

Found some more gold: detected some more nuggets; panned some nuggets and flake gold; dredged some chunky, sassy gold; met a couple of legends in this region of the prospecting world; saw a bear, a moose, and a huge bull elk, all this weekend; came across a mystery wreck deep in the mountains; got to see stars I've never seen before because the night sky was perfectly clear and unpolluted by light or any man-made substance; had to throw rocks at a bear and shout and yell to keep him from coming into camp; found an outcropping with beautiful peacock pyrite; detected a small-caliber pistol ball from the mid-1800's; saw mountain valleys and peaks I've never seen before; breathed untold gallons of pure, undefiled mountain air--it was quite the time.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Upside Down Gold Deposition

When working bedrock consider that the way the bedrock is right now may have absolutely nothing to do with the way it was oriented in the past.

In the dim past, a sheet of bedrock underlying a stream's current may have been oriented flat with cracks and crevices actively trapping gold. But many years later, the entire formation may have been up-faulted 90 degrees, or tilted at a shallower angle.

So, when checking bedrock, (whether it's part of a modern stream system, or it's now far away from an existing stream bed) and finding signs of stream action from the past (little rounded stones, sand, black sand, ironstone, and clay filling cracks and crevices), don't assume that the only gold present will found in the current bedrock cracks and crevices.

Gold may also be found (I stress "may", because it's uncommon, yet does happen) trapped in between sheets of flat bedrock. Most people check bedrock cracks that run perpendicular down into the bedrock, but it also pays to think about what may have happened untold years in the past. Those sheets that are now flat in the stream may once have been perpendicular to a stream's flow eons ago, making them excellent gold traps.

I've found gold this way before, ruling it out being a coincidence. (The Earth is exceptionally old, and factoring in earthquakes, up faulting and down faulting, tectonic plate action, meteor impacts, glaciation, etc., I've come to realize that almost anything is possible when it comes to gold deposition by Mother Nature.)

The strangest cache of hers I ever found was in an area where the entire stream deposit had been turned completely upside down! That's right--the heavies, including the nuggets, were on the top of the stream deposit layers--the ironstone was next, located below the nuggets, then the black sand below the ironstone, and the blond sands (sometimes two to three feet of it) under everything else!!). Yup--the nuggets were on the top, with the lighter heavies underneath.

The whole thing had somehow been flipped completely over, and this was a substantial deposit, about thirty feet in depth. All those layers flipped over long ago. Just imagine the titanic forces of that event.

It's true that one of life’s greatest puzzles it trying to figure out what Mother Nature did ages ago.

All the best,

Lanny

[Lanny]

Rookie Bedrock Tips

When working bedrock, if the bedrock is stacked vertical (in side-by-side sheets) and they're loose (easy to move back and forth), that's the sign of an excellent gold trap, especially if you find bedrock that's exposed at very low stream level (or bedrock that was part of an ancient channel).

The rest of the year when the water in active channels is high, everything is pounding over that loose bedrock, and because those plates are moving back and forth, it allows the super-heavies to drop in, making a great gold trap. (I've detected nuggets in these formations and panned out nuggets as well.)

Often there will be chunks of pyrite, magnetite, galena, black sand concentrations, old bits of nail, other steel or iron, etc. lodged in between those sheets, and often nice flake gold. Enough times to make it interesting, there's nuggets trapped in there as well. Sometimes those sheets will go down several inches, maybe a foot, or even up to several feet. So, detect the top portion, work down several inches (much more when possible) and check any material dug out to see if little river rocks and heavies are still being trapped (pan some of the material to find out if the heavies were still collecting or not).

If the heavies are still there, work deeper, sample again, then detect again. Work down until the heavies and small river stones quit. Below that you'll often hit thick, putty-like clay. Sample some of it (most often it's barren, especially if there's no little stones and grit running in it), and if it's gold bearing, work it. If it’s barren (tons of work to mess with thick, sticky clay), move on.

Remember, standing vertical sheets around a quarter of an inch, to a half inch thick are the target zone. If luck or hard work reveals an old channel (high and dry somewhere) with the geological features I’ve described, always, always (with detector and pan) test the material trapped between those sheets.

Working these kinds of formations (at low or extremely low water) can produce some of the best results a rookie can ever achieve. In a good gold area, flake gold is almost guaranteed, as are nuggets (often enough) to try it out.

Furthermore, I once watched a guy with a big bar pulling down vertical sheets (from an inch to three inches thick) of slate bedrock that were over four feet high. He'd then scan vertically up and down those sheet sides until he got a signal, then bar down the sheets (this was in a dry ancient channel, part of a hydraulic pit) and then detect the material that fell from those sheets, and he was getting nice nuggets! It blew me away--I'd have never thought of that.

All the best,

Lanny

[Jim_Alaska]

(A field note from Sept. 6, 2011)

Found some more gold: detected some more nuggets; panned some nuggets and flake gold; dredged some chunky, sassy gold; met a couple of legends in this region of the prospecting world; saw a bear, a moose, and a huge bull elk, all this weekend; came across a mystery wreck deep in the mountains; got to see stars I've never seen before because the night sky was perfectly clear and unpolluted by light or any man-made substance; had to throw rocks at a bear and shout and yell to keep him from coming into camp; found an outcropping with beautiful peacock pyrite; detected a small-caliber pistol ball from the mid-1800's; saw mountain valleys and peaks I've never seen before; breathed untold gallons of pure, undefiled mountain air--it was quite the time.

All the best,

Lanny

All that sounds like a wonderful trip. I can't imagine a trip any better than that.