Prospecting & Detecting

As he was working near the extreme low end of the ground sluicing, I heard a yell through my headphones. Making my way down to him I could see the smile from a long distance.

My largest nugget from this area is almost one-half ounce. I’ve found several smaller chunks and many pickers in addition to the fines and flakes that I put in my poke.

On my weekends off I spent many hours dredging the Second Broad River from Cane Creek Road up to the headwaters. I used a three-inch dredge with air and graduated to a five-inch with air.

A two-pronged approach is necessary to restore suction dredging; federal preemption needs to be established as addressed above via petition; and clarification from the EPA is needed to establish that no Section 402 permit is necessary when there is no “addition” of a pollutant.

Gold trapped in the cracks can be encrusted close to the walls or mixed with sand and pebbles, making the gold difficult to see and then extract. Crevicing requires a lot of patience to achieve positive results.

“Much of the ground where Ms. Hollingshead found her diamond is made of unweathered volcanic rock. When it rains, flowing runoff often leaves loose gravel, and sometimes diamonds, on the surface in these areas.”

It was time to prime the pump and start the engine! Dan’s priming method is to use a small, submersible, 12-volt pump. My priming method is to use a hand-operated diaphragm pump.

“The evidence is clear—mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract precious commodity investment dollars...”

Please note that new mining claims filed on or after September 1, 2019, will be subject to the new fee schedule.

Much more information can be gained from that single source and gives you ideas on the gravels for dry washing or where the nuggets may lie for metal detecting

Many of you have read recent articles that include pictures of some of the nice nuggets that have come out of this area. I’m going to talk very briefly about a few of my friends and some of the nuggets they have been taking out of this area…

The first requirement is permission from a land owner. This can be tricky and it’s always a bit nerve-racking to approach a stranger cold with such a request.

Not long after this, I was camped out with the geologist beside the Similkameen River where he showed me the evidence that an ancient channel existed on our claim.

As I laid in my Jeep and tried to get some rest, I began to realize how tired I was. I felt like a little kid who walked around Disneyland for 12 hours with his parents.

My hunch was that the gold is coming down the apron, falling off to both sides and into both gulches. I say that because the gold we found previously has the same characteristics and color across the entire area.

Each day for the first part of the week my boys and I picked and chipped away at that wall, stockpiling dirt in 5-gallon buckets and cement mixing tubs.

Through a program that began in 2011, Barrick Gold Corp.-owned Golden Sunlight has paid out more than $45 million to small miners in the last seven years...

Some ask if a prospector can collect an entire ounce in a day. It is possible; I’ve done it before.

Nuggets make for the best memories and this patch was just adding to mine. In the hours of daylight I had left, I worked from that nugget to the bottom of the patch, collecting eight more nuggets.

I pulled out the nuggets I had worked on previously and looked at the size of the wire basket that the items to be cleaned are placed into. It looks much like a miniature french fry deep fryer.