Nuggets make for the best memories and this patch was just adding to mine. In the hours of daylight I had left, I worked from that nugget to the bottom of the patch, collecting eight more nuggets.

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.

Some of these events can cause half of an entire mountain to plummet down into a gorge or canyon, damming up a stream system and causing a flood when the earthen dam finally breaks from the water backing up behind it.