Prospecting & Detecting

“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.

We all continued over to another location at the top of a massive placer operation. Arriving at the draw, I showed everyone where gold had been found before and we all began detecting.

What I saw was a beach area that was just completely covered in black sand. Rubbing my hands close together like a kid in a candy store, I could not wait to get set up.

As I have always done, I stashed those heavy black rocks in my pack and put them in the garden at home. They never were given a second thought until a half decade later…

I recently found myself wondering what would be the ultimate prospecting adventure. What would be the most amazing thing if I had no restrictions or limitations?

This year was a test. We had never done anything like this before, yet we grossed $30,000 in the short time we had to mine.

It took me awhile before I finally got a nice mellow signal. My nugget turned out to weigh in about two dwt (pennyweight). Over the next few hours, we all picked up a few more nuggets apiece.

The signal I was hearing was coming from a vertical bedrock crack on the bank of the creek. I removed my backpack, took out my crevicing tools and started to clean out the crack when I saw a glint of gold.