It was actually kinda hot out there that day. I was sweating when I was at the creek because I was wearing so much waterproof clothing, plus all the shoveling from running Indy's trap sluice. Thanks to my good buddy Jerry, who goes by the Eastern Prospectors forum name of Indy, he let me borrow his bazooka gold trap sluice to use. Hes also been prospecting probably longer then I been alive and is a wealth of info relating to prospecting.
So anyway, I cleaned out a 3 foot by 3 foot section of creek by shoveling that material into the sluice, maybe a little more. I shoveled til I hit a nice schist saprolite false bedrock that looked really promising, since it was bright red with oxidization and I could see black sand all on it as I brought the shovel up. But I got less gold total then I have gotten from one pan in other spots, so I dont think I will try this spot again. Plus I had no bigger pieces of magnetite or other heavies in my cleanup pan at all. When you are out prospecting you always want to look for heavies in the pan, if you are not finding any then it tells you that you are not in the optimal place to be digging. All the heavies will usually settle in a line in the creek or river, the old timers called this line the pay streak or the pay dirt, expressions which are still used today.
Dont let people tell you that sluicing or dredging is bad for the environment, its not and a single rainfall moves more material naturally then 100 prospectors would. The one place in the entire creek where the most fish are found is in the couple of holes I dig. This creek averages a couple inches deep in most places, but the minnows love to hang out in the deeper holes I dig.
Heres Part 1, 2 and 3 of some videos showing the sluice setup and the creek in the snow.
Despite moving a lot of material, the cleanup was not great but it was good exercise at least, and beautiful scenery. My camera battery went dead very soon again even though it was fully charged because of the cold temperature. I know now that I could have simply charged it up by warming it up.
The gold I got was tiny but the trip itself was invaluable.
Look how neat the scenery looks. I could almost imagine being in Alaska instead of South Carolina and doing this. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.
Oh and about the time it was getting dark I heard what sounded like a yeti roaring off in the woods. Either that or some kind of bull moose. I dont know what it was, but it convinced me it was time to go in a way the cold weather could not.
Here's an article from 1895 about a real bull moose encounter. I know the noise I heard wasn't really one, but it was the only thing I could think of that sounded similar.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F50914FF355416738DDDAE0894DF405B8585F0D3
And here's the cleanup of the sluice cons, not much gold but it was nice to get out:
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