He began hiking my way and was as astonished as I was when he saw it. Another high five moment! It makes you wonder how long this gold had just been sitting there on the ground.

The placer gold shows up in ground sluice areas, hydraulic pits, secondary channels and hillside diggings. It is coming down the hillsides from an ancient channel left high and dry millions of years ago.

The only thing that saved me was talking to a local miner who gave me a “heads up” that private individuals owned all the mineral rights in that section.

…it was immediately evident the previous owner had not been using a detector. During just a few months of working the dumps part-time, he recovered gold in quartz specimens valued in excess of $40,000.