Prospecting & Detecting
Iowa Hill District
June 2012 by Chris Ralph
For the last two years we’ve held a hands-on prospectors training session in the Iowa Hill district of California’s Mother Lode country as a part of our Gold Prospecting and Mining Summit event. Because of this, I thought it might be good to take a look at the history, geology and opportunities that the Iowa Hill district still offers to the individual prospector.Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: The Disappearing Nuggets
Gold probably is one of the easiest things in the world to cheat an absentee owner out of. He would generally have no way of really knowing if a guy had found 3 nuggets or 30 nuggets on his claim.
Overcoming Repeated Skunks
When hunting for nuggets does not yield any gold for a couple days, it can get pretty frustrating. But it turns into serious mental anguish when it stretches into weeks or months.
Detecting for Gold in Nevada
Within a few minutes I got my first signal and dug out a small flake about three grains.
Discovering New Territory
This same concept is true of many of our modern-day rivers, and we have to find out where their gold originated if we can.
Shallow Water Crevicing Can Bring Big Rewards
Shallow water crevicing or sniping can produce gold if you’re persistent, a hard worker and lucky. It’s nice to have a snorkel, wet suit and goggles. The best practice for success, in my humble opinion, has always been to determine the best gold location and then figure out how to capture it.
Mining Pegmatite Deposits
With successively lower temperatures as the water mixture cools, new sets of minerals are formed and many of those stable at a higher degree of heat became subject to alteration as the temperature progressively moved lower.
WWII Vet & Prospector Still Going Strong
Lately I’ve been having success utilizing two types of detectors in succession. The first is a pulse induction (PI) detector with a blanket-style antennae, and I follow it up with a very low frequency (VLF) detector.
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