Prospecting & Detecting
Reading A River: Understanding Erosion and Gold
December 2020 by Chris Ralph
Rivers are not just random and accidental; streams and other drainages are what they are because of the forces of erosion acting on the bedrock.
Dry Washer, Wet System or Metal Detector?
I love to dry wash old nugget patches found by detector operators, and I have found my fair share of gold dry washing those areas. I have also found a few nuggets using a detector on the bedrock exposed by dry washing the patches.
The Essentials of Dry Washing
Most dry washers have a feed rate adjustment. It needs to be set so that the material flows evenly over the riffles and does not bury them.
Ganes Creek Hits 10 Years—Part I
Find huge gold nuggets with your metal detector! That has been the promise, and for a lucky group of detectorists in the Ganes Creek “Pound Club” the reality of finding gold at Ganes Creek, Alaska.
Detecting for Gold: A Return to Familiar Ground
I probably swung over a few targets without noticing them. My first target came about ten minutes later as I went over a part of the high bench in this wide section of the dry wash.
Crumb Hunting With A VLF Detector
Chris got a nice target signal on the edge of rising bedrock, but still in a low, but washed area. After breaking up the bedrock, he recovered several pieces of gold amounting to almost three pennyweight.
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.
Prospecting Hard Rock
We panned out maybe three gold pans of the material and we were shocked at the gold that was there. This rock appeared to be rich.
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The Bawl Mill
• Legislative and Regulatory Update
• Ask The Experts - Is this prospect worth sampling?
• Ask The Experts - Can you recommend resources for southeast Alaska?
• Ask The Experts - Can I pay someone to research a claim for me?
• Ask The Experts - Do larger detector coils see deeper nuggets?
• The Basics of Permitting and Bonding Your Mining Operation
• Plotting and Persistence Lead to Big Gold
• Using Countercurrent Material Flow to Improve Gold Recovery Efficiency
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: The First Year Is The Hardest
• Mining In The El Paso Range of Southern California
• Tips and Tricks: A Dredging Tip for Clearing the Tailings Pile
• The Kern River
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
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