Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

I went out to check out some remote California placer spots I'd never been to before a couple weekends ago. Even in the high country, it was 100 plus and thats unusual - at least there was plenty of shade, and I took a folding chair and ice chest with cold drinks. Unfortunatly, I didnt find any gold at the new spots. One of them however had seen a heck of a lot of dry washing recently. I mean someone had spent a couple weeks cratering a spot in one of the pits. He must of been getting some gold - he was working a spot of bedrock that had probably been too cemented for the old timers to work, but after siting open to the weather, a century of freezing and thawing had loosened it up so that it could be worked. A friend was with me using his modified GS5, and niether wone of us could find any gold on the DW piles or in the recent diggings. I took a sample to pan it out and see what kind of gold was causing this heavy DW work (I havent panned it out yet). Having not found any gold, we then went to a spot where I got some nice nuggets previously. I came up with this piece - 2.4 grams, about 1.5 dwt. It gave me some ideas for additional places to work around that area. Maybe it will lead to more gold - we shall see.

Depth was only about 2.5 - 3 inches so it was easy to hear. Its long and gave a bit of a wobly signal, so I guessed it might be a bit of rusty iron wire, but dug it anyway. It was out in a meadow near some old workings - like about 30+ yards away from old stacked rock piles. I have gone through some of the nearby meadows previously and had zero luck in them. This is the first gold from the meadow area. The workings and diggings around the workings have yielded all the gold I have found here so far. The problem here is the "topsoil" layer with lots of pine needles, roots, humus, etc. - its about a foot thick and most of the gold is below that (which is why diggings and roadways have been most productive). However this nugget proved that the topsoil is not barren of gold. I guess I need to do some more exploring and better differentiate between parts of the meadow which may yield gold and other parts which probably will not. Its going to take some head scratching on my part to make that distinction, as it all looks about the same. Its possible that I may make some differentiation on geology, and maybe on ground mineralization (the meadow ground I was going through was so mineralized that I was forced to use a DD coil). Thats why I said in the first paragraph that it "It gave me some ideas for additional places to work around that area."

Chris

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

interesting Chris and very nice find. I don't know much about detecting or panning for that matter. Are you saying that to assess this area you are going to kind of step back and look at the lay of the land for any indicators of where gold might "settle".

Is that the right term. I understand when panning for gold on rivers, the inside bends of a river are often better because the water flow slows down there allowing the gold to settle out of the water stream.

Now where there is no stream present, what occurs? How does gold come to accumulate in those areas. Is it the same process but in a time so long ago there is no longer any water there now? I know you get seams of gold, but how do they get there? Can you see tell tale signs in the lay of the land that indicate a higher probability of gold being there?

Thanks

edit: I'm reading your links which I think are going to answer my question.

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

Hi Glass -

This is a spot where no stream is present. The tell tale sign of an ancient stream (and these do exist) is rounded, water worn rocks. Here however, all the rocks are angular and sharp.

At this spot, the gold is litterally erroding out of the rock, veins and other deposits in place on the mountain. The seams and veins were formed long ago deep in the earth, and uplift has brought them to the surface where the forces of weathering and erosion set the material free. The tell tale sign of gold here is:
1) quartz vein material all over the place; and 2) old timer diggings all over. The gold formed in a certain rock type near a fault. I need to look more in that rock near to the fault where the topsoil overburden is likely to be fairly shallow.

Chris
Chris

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

Guess the oldtimers missed that one !

Nice pic, thanks !

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

Where a person finds one nugget there's always others...ecept in cases the nugget was accidently lost by someone in an area from which it did not come.

Do you home work re the geology of the area where you found the nugget. Try to figure out how it got there, and then work likely prospects.

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

Maybe you could give some advice about panning. I have two buckets of black sand. If there is any gold it is likely to be awfully fine, the kind that goes away if you just point your finger at it. I haven't done much panning. Any advice on how to handle this?

It's left over from my father's work before he died. He would have used mercury on it.

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

I found these in Colombia and had them mounted-not sure I should have had them mounted."Jimmy" had a shop right on main street and used mercury to process the local gold-the old fashioned way-his small foundry vented into the main street.All his mercury flasks came from Russia-he was living with mercury poisoning. One day when (if) the FARC disappear, this area, Caucauscia be the hottest gold rush going on.Notice the wooden gold pans.

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

What the hell is that funny looking round thing in the middle of all that beautiful money???:cry1:

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

Hi Saul, The best way to deal with 2 buckets of black sand on the cheap is to set up a small rain gutter sluice powered by a small bilge pump or your water hose. Line the gutter with black ribbed matting or carpet... and slowly spoon feed the wetted (very important to wet the sand first and maybe add a little jet dry or dishwashing soap to it) black sand. Run the tailings into a bucket cause if you aren't sick of this after the first time they should be run again. The object is to get rid of most of the waste and still have the gold. Once you have turned 8 gallons into one or less perferably then you can start panning tablespoons at a time, use a snuffer bottle to suck the gold out of the pan. If there is any gold at all you should see it. Hope this gets you a nice keepsake from your dad.
If you just want $$$ you can buy or mine a few grams of placer gold and mix in with the black sand and sell 5 lb bags of panning dirt on ebay but I don't think thats why you kept the dirt. Good luck to ya, Mark

Re: Hot gold - new right out of the ground
 

Here is some basic info on panning:

Basic Panning information