Prospecting & Detecting
Highbanking on the Feather River
December 2010 by Tom Leftwich
A number of visiting gold miners were quite impressed with our operation and the amount of gold we had recovered in only three hours. No one usually likes digging and slugging buckets all day long, but we actually began to enjoy it after a few good...
A Generous Lesson on Detecting Bedrock
The signal I was hearing was coming from a vertical bedrock crack on the bank of the creek. I removed my backpack, took out my crevicing tools and started to clean out the crack when I saw a glint of gold.
Attention to Detail - Part II
Ditches almost always started in the high country and contoured the mountainsides, making a long drop, usually many miles away, to the goldfields. There are ditches in Trinity County that originate at seven and eight thousand feet in the Trinity Alps that carried water almost thirty miles.
Our Readers Say
• Re: Tyrie's Roadway Nugget
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Gold Placers in Italy
Gold is a fairly widespread mineral in the Italian Alps and in the Northern Apennines. It is found both in primary mineralization and in past and recent floods.
Weathering, Erosion and Placers
The big interest to prospectors thinking about the effect of erosion is not what might happen long into the future, but what they might find in the rivers later this summer when the water levels go down.
Prospecting Knowledge -- Pass It On!
I had two of the guys go down into the creek and each one picked out a small island of bedrock. I had them detect their piece of bedrock and then gave a critique to all on how they did.
Paperwork Guy—A Cautionary Tale
I recently grew complacent, and it caused me to make a mistake that resulted in the loss of a mining claim. It brought my mining plans for the summer to a complete halt.
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• So, Where's The Gold?—Finding Gold Detectors Miss
• The Oregon Claim
• Forest Service v. Michael & Linda Backlund
• CFTC Finds Evidence of Silver Market Manipulation
• Gold in Arizona
• Detecting for Gold in Australia—The Kimberley Trip
• Melman on Gold & Silver
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