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.
Carr Fire Gold
After burning more than 350 square miles, the Carr Fire near Redding, California, was finally out. Luckily our home was spared, and I had the opportunity to go metal detecting in burned areas previously too overgrown to access.
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.
Hard Rock 101: Blasting With Kinepak Explosives
Fortunately, there are products on the market that can address these problems and make a small-scale mining operation feasible.
Route Planning Using GPS
My intention was to end this discussion with waypoints and routes, then I found USGS maps of the Plainfield Quadrangle.
Research and Fieldwork Yield Some Promising Gold
A week later, a small team of us hit it again, and this time the gold really showed up.
The Highs and Lows of Drywashing
We were met with a plethora of mechanical problems with the dry washer and even a few with the excavator that were at times frustrating, but we were in this for the long haul, so we needed to solve these problems and move forward.
Ask The Experts
Designing my own dredge...
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• Ten Detecting Tips for the Savvy Desert Prospector
• All About Hard Rock Drills
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: When a Gold Prospector Goes to a Diamond Mine
• Why So Much Gold in Nevada?
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• Do Gold Nuggets Come Out At Night?
• Melman on Gold & Silver
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