Prospecting & Detecting
The Smell of Gold—Part I
June 2015 by W. Dan Hausel
Some claim they can smell gold. This may be, but when I take a whiff of gold, I smell dirt, rotten eggs, garlic or just nothing: my nose is everything but sensitive.
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.
Critical Minerals: Titanium
The metal is expensive, not because it is rare but because of the expense to produce and work it. The minerals mined for titanium are all oxides, unlike many base metals that are mostly mined as sulfide minerals.
Persistence Leads to Over a Pound of Gold
I have figured out over the years that the winning combination is hard work, persistence, knowledge, and a little luck. This leads me to describe one of my best finds ever, a “honey hole” of placer gold, if you will.
Gold in the Slate Creek Basin
In some areas these channels were thousands of feet wide, and just figuring out where you are in some of these diggings is a challenge.
Digging It Dry
I believe dry washing is an underappreciated prospecting method. There are plenty of places where there is some pretty decent gold to be had, but the spot is a long way from any water and dry processing may well be the best way to go.
An Alaskan in the Lower 48
Our destination was some old hydraulic workings where the old miners had washed literally mountains of material away to expose gold in ancient river channels.
Good Assays and Bad
The high prices for gold and silver are exciting and certainly have revolutionized the prospecting and mining scene. New interest in gold and silver mining is springing up from every corner, from individual prospectors armed with gold pans to exploration and mining companies working to set up multimillion dollar commercial operations producing hundreds of thousands of ounces per year. The idea of getting riches from rocks is one that motivates a lot of folks all over the globe. It’s an exciting time, but this excitement brings out another side...
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