Historically, Montana has been an important gold producer, in terms of both lodes and placers, and it still produces gold for the prospector today.

Now it was time for the nerve-wracking part of the job: actually removing anything from the hanging wall we deemed to be in need of removal because it was either loose, could be loose, looked loose, or we felt it was just downright dangerous

The first and most important thing of the sampling process is to try to be as unbiased as possible. There is a natural tendency to select rock that looks the best—even unconsciously.

With successively lower temperatures as the water mixture cools, new sets of minerals are formed and many of those stable at a higher degree of heat became subject to alteration as the temperature progressively moved lower.

I pulled out the nuggets I had worked on previously and looked at the size of the wire basket that the items to be cleaned are placed into. It looks much like a miniature french fry deep fryer.