Prospecting & Detecting
The Fine Art of Panning Heavy Sands
October 2011 by Jim Halloran
The fine art of panning heavy sands requires a measure of patience. If you enjoy panning gold, you ought to enjoy this too, once you get the hang of it.Prospecting for Gold at Green Valley
In October, five of us decided to take an exploration trip into an area called Green Valley. This was perhaps ten miles upstream from where we had gone in September and the difficulty was access. One would think that based on the name it was an easily accessible area not far from a nearby town. This couldn’t be more wrong.
Finding Gold in Tailing Piles
Old mine workings and tailing piles can represent opportunities on many levels, from the chance to simply find a nugget on up to the commercial reworking of the old tailings for profit.
Maitland Bar Nugget to Go On Display
The box sat in a hallway and employees began using it for impromptu cricket games, no knowing what it contained.
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 Black Diamond of the Forest
Hearty trees, shrubs and plants are a product of the soil conditions in which they grow, so it makes sense that roots near an ore deposit will take on nutrients containing metals if they are present.
Small-Scale Miners Rock the Mining World
With the high price of gold, there are many new prospectors out in the hills all over the United States, and while we would all prefer to be finding those larger nuggets, it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes all that is available is nothing more than a few small flakes. The truth is, new prospectors are sprouting up all across the planet—especially in the developing nations.
Fault Zones and Prospects
As we walked back we were just reaching the point of where the faulting should be and there, covered with deep grass, was very faint evidence of an old road going up the mountainside! What was that old road doing there?
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The Bawl Mill
• Legislative And Regulatory Update
• Ask The Experts—Separating platinum from sands using bubbles
• Ask The Experts—Extraction of micro gold from black sands
• Ask The Experts—Difference between a Geiger counter and scintillator
• Then and Now: Is Gold Really Money?
• Gold, Quartz & Chalcedony—Part I
• Prospecting Australia—Part I
• Oregon Dredge Permit Litigation Update
• Gold From Black Sand Tailings
• California State Gold Panning Championships
• The Golden Days of Julian, California
• An Expensive Lesson
• Judge Denies Request To Delay Michigan Mine
• Melman on Gold & Silver







