January 2011 Gold Sampling

Sampling means going somewhere to see if there's any gold or other precious commodities (minerals/gems/etc) there. In this case me and my buddy Dr Phil (hes a doctor of bedrock busting) had an area we wanted to sample, which looked real promising. We also wanted to go to another spot I knew had at least small gold from a previous trip there, but I didnt have the time to do more then a pan or two the first time. But the 2nd spot is another story for another time.

Here's some pictures from the first creek we sampled. In the very first pan there, I found about an 80-100 mesh piece, so I thought this might be a decent spot.

We then spent the next three hours, sampling further up river trying to find more Au. There was lots of bedrock to work, crevices, and plenty of gravel bars. But unfortunately, we didnt find much other Au, at all. I found one more 80 mesh in some red stained gravel that was almost a clay. So I setup the Bazooka trap and proceeded to dig to bedrock and ran about 30 or 40 shovel fulls through the trap sluice, but the cleanup was disappointing, with no Au.

Here's some pictures of the pictures of the first area we sampled.  Click on any photo to enlarge it. 

Some of my gear next to the creek.

About to do some panning here.

This is one of the crevices I was working, between bedrock. Didnt find much in here at all, except for some garnet chips.

This is how I had the bazooka sluice setup.

Here it is from another angle.

Here you can see some of the many layers of sediment and some larger river rocks. We sampled the layers and found no gold in any of it.

Another shot of the creek.

Some of the black sands from the area. Lots of black sands and garnet, but little else of interest.

Dr Phil and another area of the creek.

Sampling a sand bar.

Dr Phil classifying some material.

Dr Phil poses for a pic.

This is some promising looking bedrock we found, it even had a quartz vein running through it, but no luck working either side of it.

Here's the quartz vein next to my shovel for comparison. 

Here I am with my favorite hat. 

Packing up the gear, about to head back home. 

So we ended up working a pretty good section of this creek determined to find something bigger then about 80 mesh with no luck.  At least now we know another spot that is not worth working further. Gold prospecting is often times like this, a lot of work and time spent with no tangible return. But getting out in nature is its own reward.

Here's what I found after panning out all the concentrates from the sluice that day.  

One piece of lead, and lots of very tiny garnets and black sands from mineralization. 

Heres a close up of the garnets and black sands. Some pretty little gem chips in there.

Here's the piece of gold I found that day, its very tiny and you can see it right under the bullet. (Click on photos to enlarge)