Prospecting & Detecting
Springtime Sampling In The High Desert
April 2018 by Alex Dolbeare
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.
Advantages of Modern Prospectors
Modern-day placer miners have many advantages over the prospectors of the gold rush days. Our prospectors can reap many benefits from accumulated knowledge of the last 100 to 150 years, which is a long and impressive list.
Using Vegetation and Soil Conditions as Prospecting Aids
Wouldn’t it be great if you could know if there is gold in the ground without setting foot on the ground? Well you can, to a certain extent, if you can recognize mined ground from unmined.
Old Dog(Fighter), New Trick
Then it occurred to me that the drywasher was designed by an engineer. Gotta love engineers! Those slide-rule geeks always tinker with gravity, angles, curves and flow.
How to Research Prospecting Locations and Mining Claims
If you are interested in researching mining claims for any purpose, you will first have to decipher the BLM’s LR2000, a Rube Goldberg database seemingly designed by a 1980s Soviet-era computer hacker.
Ganes Creek After The Flood

Detectors: Past, Present and Future

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The Bawl Mill
• Legislative and Regulatory Update
• Ask The Experts - What Do I Look For and How Do I Sample?
• Ask The Experts - Prospecting Around Graeagle
• Hunting Down Paystreaks
• Deep Nuggets From The Strange Little Patch
• We’re Still Thinking About It
• How to Evaluate Mineral Claims—What to Know Before You Buy
• Dredging Safety: Don't Ignore The Warning Signs
• Russian Plane Spills 3 Tons of Gold on Runway
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices