Prospecting & Detecting
A Golden Past
July 2021 by Ralph Wetterhahn
My mining partner Keith McBride and I spent a week in May working on a twenty-nine man crew split up into six teams at a couple of “pay to mine” mining camps.
Getting A Successful Start in Metal Detecting for Gold
Once you have a detector, learn how to use it and get out in the field—you can’t find anything with it in your garage.
California Sniping
I opted for the underwater portion of the river. All I have to do is float down the river and pick large flakes and small nuggets out of cracks and crevices while staying cool in the summer heat.
Gold: Is It Everywhere?
Gold, on the other hand, is super rare, and is one of the rarest elements in the earth’s crust. It averages only 0.000004 percent of the earth’s surface. That is four parts in a billion.
The Historic Gold Rush Town of Quincy
…we focused on various layers of hard-packed flood material out of the creek, and we also obtained some material up quite a ways from the creek itself on bedrock.
Mineralization, Ground Balance and Metal Detecting
The right ground balance setting for the conditions you are working is critical. If your detector isn’t set properly, you will lose depth of detection, sometimes to an extreme degree.
Pickers and Nuggets

Revisiting an Old Mine in Idaho Reaps Rewards

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