A one penny weight nugget. Took a trip up to my claim this weekend. The weather was perfect for some hiking and detecting. Lows in the morning were about 45°, the high in afternoon was about 60°. When the weather cools down it makes for a real enjoyable day of hiking.
I've been looking for a section of ancient channel and the best I can tell, it should be on west side of the canyon. I've been looking for this section of the ancient channel for 10 years now, each time I check a different area of the hill. I'm only able to do a small area each time because the hill is so steep. Hiking in this area is very tough, you can hardly stand on it. There are couple of gullies I had to cross. One of them was very steep, a foothold I thought was moss covered bedrock turned out to just be moss. I slid down the hill roughly 30 to 40 feet on my butt. No worse for wear, when I looked for a way back up, I decided to detect at that elevation for a while.
I stopped for lunch about noon . For me one of the best parts of detecting in the hills, is sitting on the side of the mountain with the river running below, just relaxing and taking in the scenery. After lunch I hiked down to the river to do some crevice detecting, I don't want to go home without at least, a little bit of gold.
I've been looking for a section of ancient channel and the best I can tell, it should be on west side of the canyon. I've been looking for this section of the ancient channel for 10 years now, each time I check a different area of the hill. I'm only able to do a small area each time because the hill is so steep. Hiking in this area is very tough, you can hardly stand on it. There are couple of gullies I had to cross. One of them was very steep, a foothold I thought was moss covered bedrock turned out to just be moss. I slid down the hill roughly 30 to 40 feet on my butt. No worse for wear, when I looked for a way back up, I decided to detect at that elevation for a while.
I stopped for lunch about noon . For me one of the best parts of detecting in the hills, is sitting on the side of the mountain with the river running below, just relaxing and taking in the scenery. After lunch I hiked down to the river to do some crevice detecting, I don't want to go home without at least, a little bit of gold.
Lower boom section of our old jib crane. Which is pictured in the mining section. While hiking up stream, I came across the lower boom section of our old jib crane. It was lost in the flood of 1996 - 97, about 2 miles upstream from where it was laying in the gravel. We had it chained up to a couple of 1 1/2" pins anchored in the bedrock about 30 feet above high water. When we came back in that spring we found the pins sheared off flush with the bedrock and not a sign of the crane anywhere. We found out that we had lost a lot of equipment during the flood that year. We decided to build a new jib crane, because there was no way to dredge the hole we wanted to, without a crane. We decided to build the new one out of aluminum. The old crane work great but it was very heavy and hard to move around. The new one works better and is much lighter. Two people can pack the sections up the river without killing yourself.
I detected for quite awhile before I finally found a piece of gold, it was difficult to detect because the water was up quite a bit. After a couple hours it was starting to get the late and I still had quite a hike ahead of me. Rather than have to navigate the same gully that I slid down, I decided to stay low for as long as I could. But then I had the hike straight up the hill to get over another gully that there was no way to get across. I'm not sure if my way home way any better than the way I took in, all I know was, I sure was glad to see my truck. I ended up going home with a handful of square nails two lead bullets and a one penny weight nugget.
The stuff I found. Square nails lead bullets and a penny weight nugget. All of it I took out with me. I try to take all the junk I find out with me, so the next guy doesn't have to deal with it. You should always take any lead you find, out with you. Everyone talks about the environment but - miners are the only ones who are cleaning up the river. We need to let people know that!
One thing I wanted to mention, you should always check your gear before you head out. I know this. I tell my customers this. But did I do it - no. I got all the way up to the claim and on the hill before I realized that one of the earpieces on my headphones was dead. So I could have missed some targets because, I couldn't hear that well when I was down by the river. I was only able to hear the very loud targets, most gold targets are very low.
| | |
RSS Feed