You find yourself with a bucketful of concentrates that you have accumulated over the season and consider the logical next step: to reduce the bucket of cons to a gold bar. Where do you begin?

…in spite of the fact that the well-pounded spots probably don’t have much gold left, I see all too many prospectors hike down to a creek or other spot at the first place the road comes near it just because it’s the easiest access point.

At the end of the day, Jerry showed me how to clean out the sluice box and then how to pan out the concentrates. As we finished panning, there it was—a little tiny smile of gold...