It finally happened, the rain stopped for a couple of days this weekend. I took the opportunity to get out and do some detecting. The rivers are way to high for prospecting, so I thought I would do a little treasure hunting. The snow has me held to the lower elevations. It's fairly hard to get around above the 3,000 foot mark. When you have to work in the lower elevations it's a lot harder to find spots to go. The private land is in smaller parcels. In the higher country a lot of the private land is in very large parcels. You only need to get permission from one person to open up hundreds or thousands of acres to explore. In the lower elevations you may need permission from 3 or 4 people to work 10 acres.
I decided to head up to a piece of land I all ready have permission to go on. It is only 70 acres but in good gold country. I grabbed the camera and headed out early, wanted to make a full day of it. The drive was about 2 hours. The distance wasn't that far but the roads are narrow and in very poor condition ( you tax dollar not at work!).
It was fairly cool when I got there, but turned out to be a nice day. I started to work my was down a ridge toward the creek, detecting as I went. It was very slow going because of the brush. After a couple of hours, all I had to show for my work was half a dozen 22 bullets and a hand full of square nails. Things picked up after lunch when I found an old brass 12 gauge shotgun shell. Next up was some kind of pliers - I think. I worked my way down toward the creek, I think I crawled most of the way because of the brush.
When I got to the creek it was running very high. I located a spot where a gully met the creek. I could tell there had been quite a bit of water running down this gully durning the storms. Where the water had been running down the gully, met the creek, it deposited the black sand it had picked up from the gully, you could see it in pockets on the surface of the ground. I scooped up a couple of pans and took them down to the creek. Found a good spot and panned them out. It was very slow going because half of the pan was black sand. I found a lot of very fine gold in each pan. There was a lot of pieces but not much weight because the gold was so fine. I wasn't complaining tho - I'm going home with some gold on my first trip out this year!On the way back to the truck I found 3 old beer cans, not worth anything - but kinda cool!
All in all it was a great day. I found some treasures and went home with a little gold. I also found out that sitting on your butt for 3 months will make you out of shape. Guess I will have to go more often to get into better shape.
I decided to head up to a piece of land I all ready have permission to go on. It is only 70 acres but in good gold country. I grabbed the camera and headed out early, wanted to make a full day of it. The drive was about 2 hours. The distance wasn't that far but the roads are narrow and in very poor condition ( you tax dollar not at work!).
It was fairly cool when I got there, but turned out to be a nice day. I started to work my was down a ridge toward the creek, detecting as I went. It was very slow going because of the brush. After a couple of hours, all I had to show for my work was half a dozen 22 bullets and a hand full of square nails. Things picked up after lunch when I found an old brass 12 gauge shotgun shell. Next up was some kind of pliers - I think. I worked my way down toward the creek, I think I crawled most of the way because of the brush.
When I got to the creek it was running very high. I located a spot where a gully met the creek. I could tell there had been quite a bit of water running down this gully durning the storms. Where the water had been running down the gully, met the creek, it deposited the black sand it had picked up from the gully, you could see it in pockets on the surface of the ground. I scooped up a couple of pans and took them down to the creek. Found a good spot and panned them out. It was very slow going because half of the pan was black sand. I found a lot of very fine gold in each pan. There was a lot of pieces but not much weight because the gold was so fine. I wasn't complaining tho - I'm going home with some gold on my first trip out this year!On the way back to the truck I found 3 old beer cans, not worth anything - but kinda cool!
All in all it was a great day. I found some treasures and went home with a little gold. I also found out that sitting on your butt for 3 months will make you out of shape. Guess I will have to go more often to get into better shape.
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