Prospecting & Detecting
Breaking Rock the Old School Way
June 2013 by Chris Ralph
Prospectors have many reasons why they might want to break rocks. These include dividing up a specimen too large to carry.California to Allow Suction Dredging in 2019?
There are a few questions you will need to ask yourself before you apply for a suction dredge permit from the State Water Resources Control Board.
Detecting: Small Creek Yields Good Gold
Most of our gold recoveries have been in the cracks of the bedrock. Hot rocks in the form of dikes cross the creek at various locations, causing us to skip those areas.
Determining the Amount of Gold in Rich Ores
This is just the type of specimen that could have been easily ignored by the old-time miners. It felt a little heavier in my hand than a chunk of quartz of that size ought to have been.
It Pays to Know Your Bedrock
On our last trip, we brought ropes and went down the first waterfall forty vertical feet, only to be confronted by a second, sixty-foot-high, overhanging waterfall that emptied into a slot canyon.
Get The Lead Out!
If you do the math, it equates to about $1,500 of heavy metal value per three-hour dive. This is good wages, and you are doing a service to the environment by removing this toxic metal.
The Life of an Independent Prospector
“JP, is it possible to make a living looking for gold with a metal detector?” I get asked this question a lot...
Return to Chicken, Alaska
I figured it would be quite conservative of me to shoot for about four ounces of gold instead of the twelve ounces I had found in 2013.
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