During my adventures I’ve learned a few key best practices that help me to consistently find gold nuggets with my detectors. You can apply many of these best practices to any type of prospecting. These best practices are really common sense; however, they are easy to neglect.

Day three was a copy of day two. I started real low in the long wash to see if I could prove how far down the gold had made it.

The red dot on the diagram points out where the gravels there were also carrying, but not as much color. The gold was sparse below the point indicated.

After finding little specks and occasionally little nuggets all season, I had finally reached something economical and interesting! This had never happened before along the Pellice Valley in Italy.

Over the years I have a long list on my computer and in my head of places to detect. Combining newer detectors with old and proven sites has become a blessing for my friends and me.

We descended hunched over, down a long, steep, wooden staircase to the 1,000-level.