Prospecting & Detecting
Bedrock Gold: When It’s There and When It Isn’t
February 2018 by Chris Ralph
Has your experience ever led you to wonder why some gold is deposited on bedrock and in crevices, while other gold is not? We’re going take a deeper look at this and see what we can figure it out.
Breaking Rock the Old School Way
Prospectors have many reasons why they might want to break rocks. These include dividing up a specimen too large to carry.
Gold in the Slate Creek Basin
In some areas these channels were thousands of feet wide, and just figuring out where you are in some of these diggings is a challenge.
The Winning Hand
The operation and techniques employed are highly successful in producing free gold with minimal work involved while maintaining an environment protection process through the use of recycled water and a settling pond.
Sunset Sunbaker
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.
Volume is the Key to Success
While recovery rates are important, they must necessarily be secondary to the volume of material processed. Running more material at lower recovery rates is generally preferable to increasing the efficiency of the system.
Backwards Find
I furiously started pulling material out of the side wall and putting it in my scoop. It didn't take long to discover that the source of the scream was from a one-ounce chunk...
Gold Detecting Strategies for Hydraulic Mines and Debris Flows
The old timers typically washed these areas down to bedrock, and some areas appear terraced. I would imagine this is because these hydraulic mines were generally where the miners found old Tertiary river channels on the sides of mountains that were gold-bearing.
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