Gold Prospecting: For Better or Worse

As we got closer to a wide stream bed, we started hearing some gunfire. It was single shots at first, then semi and automatic weapons fire…

Sure enough, after hiking a couple miles uphill and hacking through some brush, we found the place just as he had described it.

…while we were packing up, my wife called for me to help her with something, so I set the pan containing the gold down, off to the side of the parking area.

Well, the last time I headed out, I decided to go alone. Big mistake. Since I first started my prospecting adventures, I have had both knees and one hip replaced…

Luckily, at about that time, I buddied up with a somewhat cantankerous, but very helpful, guy named Rod. He had become a local legend for his ability to consistently find gold.

It all occurred when Gus and I returned to a remote placer gold area where we had previously found really good gold. The problem was that it would take about an hour to walk through the desert to get to it.

Gold probably is one of the easiest things in the world to cheat an absentee owner out of. He would generally have no way of really knowing if a guy had found 3 nuggets or 30 nuggets on his claim.

All of this made me have to conclude that those dummies just didn’t know what they were doing. It was a couple of years later before the solution for this puzzle became clear to me.

On about the fifth time across one of these slopes, and down near the little wash...bam! I found a nice chunk of rock, laced through with gold. Wow! How had I missed this?

Midway into my first tank of gas I was beginning to see color in my sluicebox. Needless to say, I was excited.

It said to put a number of different-sized nuggets in a jar, and then cover them with the magic cleaner fluid. Then, vigorously shake the contents for a couple of minutes.

…more difficult terrain must be traversed in the hope of locating small pockets, low depressions or small gullies on needle-covered slopes.

I noticed an area which I could crawl through to keep going in a straight line. I got about three feet into the pile and Bob yelled for me to stop…

At first we decided to see what the flat by our camp would produce where the old-timers had worked it with their Pelton wheel and dragline buckets.

The catch being was that it was about 60 miles from Anchorage near Hope, and a good four or five-mile hike uphill to the claims.

Australians have told me that emus, being very curious, will pick up and swallow anything shiny or unusual. They say aborigines will kick and pick apart any emu poop they see to check them out for nuggets.

The sound got quiet when the fuse burned down into the clay. I waited, and waited…

He got out his new salt gun and began searching for the source of the intruder. He soon isolated the sound to a point in the rafters above the stove.

What are they? They are too hard to be lead, and are not tarnished like silver should be.

…being sneaky, I filled in the hole, and buried therein some trash items that I had previously found, just to discourage any other detectorist that might come along.