Prospecting & Detecting
Placer Gold Deposits of New Mexico
February 2019 by Chris Ralph
While a large number of locations have yielded some placer gold, most of the state’s placer production has come from a few productive districts.
What Have You Got to Lose?
It’s accepted knowledge that wet methods will recover more fine gold than dry methods and processing the gravel as a whole will get more gold than only using a metal detector. The question is how much more?
Strategies for Detecting Heavily Pounded Areas—Part III
This helps me to see if there is a pattern taking place with where I am finding nuggets, and when I study the map layer with all of my pins marking nuggets, I can drop in new pins where I want to search the next day.
Wild and Scenic River Prospecting—North Fork of the American River
Today it is getting tougher and tougher to find a place to prospect. There is one significant haven left for the small miner...
A High Country Patch
As he was working near the extreme low end of the ground sluicing, I heard a yell through my headphones. Making my way down to him I could see the smile from a long distance.
Sulfides and Intergrain Gold Wire Nuggets
...these nuggets have not traveled far from the lode because the golden wire lattices would have been torn apart or flattened during weathering of rock and deposition by violent stream action.
Sniping for Gold—The Next Best Thing to Dredging
I poked my head out of the water and said, “You won’t believe what I am going to show you!”
Prospecting Underground: Use Caution
In underground placer work, the contact point of the bedrock tunnel and the gravel is a very weak point and always has to be timbered. The bedrock here is thin, fractured, and the gravels loose from many years of oxidizing.
Subscription Required:
The Bawl Mill
• Ask The Experts - Do I need something other than a fire assay for PGMs?
• Ask The Experts - This low-grade ore is not worth processing
• The Hunch
• Resurrecting An Old Hard Rock Mine—A Series of Small Victories
• The Basics of Exploration Leases and Contracts—Part I
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: A Long Hike
• Mutiny on The Mason
• Who Jumped Whose Claim First?
• The Value of Evidence
• Over The Divide: Charles "Chuck" Cushman
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
