Prospecting & Detecting
Panning on North Fork American Yields Good Gold
May 2020 by Don Robinson
This second trip down was a challenge. It started in Colfax on the Stevens Trail, where the distance to the river is four miles with an elevation drop of about 1,000 feet.
Route Planning Using GPS
My intention was to end this discussion with waypoints and routes, then I found USGS maps of the Plainfield Quadrangle.
Just Another Ordinary Weekend
There was no evidence that anyone else had ever worked this gully with the exception of some old sample piles near the foot of the ravine.Dry Washing to Capture Fine Gold
There may be lots of smaller gold I cannot hear with a detector, but it looks just fine in my pan once it is out of the crevice.
Detecting Old Pocket Diggings
Looking around, I could tell that this was an old hand-digging. As I walked around the perimeter of the digging I could see shovel and pick marks scratched on the clean, hard clay and bedrock.
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.
Dredging Therapy
The big moment finally arrived. With Norm suited up, I pulled the motor to life and felt instantly better. There’s really something relaxing about the sound of a dredge running—they don’t sound like anything else.
Prospecting With a Detector: Lessons Learned
That is the course and intention for this article—to wander through some of the lessons I have learned in my thirty-two years of metal detecting and prospecting.
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• A Note from the Editor
• Going Over Old Ground With Newer Technology
• Hard Rock 101: Breaking Rock—Part I
• Tips and Tricks
• Prospecting in the Age of Covid-19
• Sharing Gold Fever with a Friend
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: Dum-Dum Dodges a Boom-Boom
• 'Wormholes'—Reckless Adventure
• All About Lead Minerals, Silver and Gold
• Melman on Gold & Silver
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