Prospecting & Detecting
Practical Advice for Milling Hard Rock Ores
July 2020 by Chris Ralph
The problem is that extracting gold from hard rock is often a lot more difficult than processing placer gravels. Still, there is some very high-grade ore out there in many old mining areas.
I Finally Made It to Northern Nevada
After a while I got a very nice signal and out came a sweet kidney-shaped bit of gold weighing about three grams.
Will El Nino Move Gold for Miners and End California Drought?
I remember in the couple of years after that 1997 flood, prospectors around California did very well, taking ounces of gold from places that had not yielded any gold for years before that.
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.
Springtime Sampling In The High Desert
As the ground thaws and dries out and the warmth of spring starts to settle in, it’s time to start afresh with a new prospecting season.
The Potholes—California’s Oldest Known Mining District
Every time we prospected here we found gold, sometimes some really coarse flakes, but no large nuggets (yet).
A Good Start
We split up in order to cover a larger area and found good color almost everywhere. The bedrock was shallow on both sides of the river, but the inside bend was where we concentrated our prospecting.
Greenhorn Finds Gold in Colorado
Using a snuffer bottle to pick it out of the pan, he continued his panning efforts. He continued to find more yellowish stuff, but it wasn’t shiny like he thought gold should look.
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• Ask The Experts - Can GPR be used for lode prospecting?
• Ask The Experts - How do I extract gold from pyrite?
• Ask The Experts - Should I dig faint sounds with no indicator bars while detecting?
• Ask The Experts - Should the detector sound on iron and nickel in a gold area?
• Hard Rock 101: Micro Blasting
• Sluicing and Detecting Downstream
• Tips and Tricks
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: Does Caliche Grow?
• 10 Keys to Prospecting Like A Pro
• Polymetallic Skarn Deposits
• Speed Prospecting for Hard Rock Gold
• Forrest Fenn Treasure Chest Finally Found?
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
