| |
Saturday morning at 5:30 AM I was on the road. After four failed attempts I was gonna make it to "the creek" come hell or high water. With the maps and the GPS, the trip was surprisingly easy. After 2 hours of driving I parked my truck at the end of the road, directly above the creek. I thought to myself that's it - that was easy, little did I know!
I grabbed my pack and started down the hill. I knew I had quite a hike ahead of me. I decided to stay on the ridge as long as I could while heading down. The hill was getting steeper fast, it wasn't long before my hike in was more of a slide in. It was on one of these slides that my foot got caught on a shrub. I started falling forward and without thinking I just pushed off tucked into a ball and rolled, rather than fall my face in the rocks. I'm not sure how many roles I did before the brush stopped me. All I know is I covered 50 feet real fast. My pack ended up on top of my head I wasn't sure where my detector was. And I was stuck headfirst in some very thorny brush.
After backing out of the brush I stood up to assess the damage. I was surprised to find I had a few sticks and thorns stuck in me, but other than that I was fine. I found my detector about 10 feet below me, and it was fine also. I was thinking about calling it a day at that point, but the stubborn side of my brain won out. I was going to that creek or I was gonna die trying
The further I went down the hill the steeper it got . It was getting to the point where I wasn't able to go much further. But now I could hear the creek. I decided to side hill my way upstream and look for a better way to get down. I hadn't gone far, when all of a sudden, they're it was! I was ecstatic after all this time and trouble I'd finally made it.
The bed of the creek was about 30 feet wide, and there were few large boulders here and there. The bedrock look good and solid, the gravel looked a little light in color, but not bad. I took off my pack to get out my GPS and mark a way point. That's when I noticed the GPS wasn't in side pouch. It must have flown out when I was rolling down the hill. That kind of bummed me out, I only had it for three days. I then decided to get out the camera can take some pictures to creek. I had the camera wrapped in a hand towel in the pack, when I turned it on, the screen that shows you what you're taking a picture of ,was all white except for a small spot the size of the stamp. I could now see where the screen was broken. I took a few pictures, but I wasn't sure whether or not the camera was working.
I set up my detector and went to work, there were a lot of nice crevices but after an hour of detecting I did not get a single reading. I got out my pan and cleaned out a couple of the crevices, I found some good gold but all fine stuff. I continue detecting and panning my way downstream, after 3 hours of detecting the only target I got was a large bar about 4 feet long. I found it in a small high bench on the inside of a turn. Best I could tell the creek had good gold but no nuggets.The detector was working fine on my test nugget, if there were any nuggets in the creek I think I would have at least one.
I knew I had a long hard hike out, so I decided to start out a little earlier than I normally would. I broke my detector down and put it in the backpack, I knew I would be needing both hands to get out. The trip back up with pretty much uneventful, and long - very long! There were long sections where it was so steep you had to crawl. After 2 1/2 hours I was back at the truck.
I lost my GPS, broke my camera, was beat-up and bloody, and dog tired. But I still felt good, I had finished my quest. I had accomplish the mission that I had set out to do. After I got home and cleaned up, I cleaned up and weighted the gold, I had found 2.7 dwt.
Will I go back? If I had found 5 ounces of gold, I might think about it. But the small amount of gold I had in my bottle - NO WAY!
| |