February 1st, 2011 Gold Prospecting

So I got out of college early that day and I had a couple hours to burn. I got home, gathered my gear and headed to the creek. I took my pack with pans and classifier, the bazooka gold trap, a couple buckets, and my 4 foot shovel.

The first spot I setup the bazooka at was a section of creek where a lot of rocks had dropped out. The creek widens there so I thought anything heavy would hopefully drop out as well. I did several pans and found one about 60 mesh in one of those pans and also there was a false bedrock (some kind of clay saprolite) only a couple inches down, so I decided to just setup the bazooka and clean off that false bedrock for a couple feet.

Here's a short video of that spot, and some of the pock marked quartz I was finding there. Also some pictures of that spot.


http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/3241/ius.mp4


I focused on digging on the right hand side of the creek, but now I am thinking maybe I should have tried the left hand side as well. There's always next time I guess. Click on photos to enlarge.

Here's looking at it from upstream.

And downstream of where the bazooka sluice was setup. Click on photos to enlarge.

And the bazooka setup there:

I wont say it was a bad idea to sluice there because I found my biggest piece of gold for the day there, but unfortunetly there was not much else there. Heres a picture of the cleanup from the sluice. I ended up running the sluice for about an hour and a half, and I moved a lot of dirt. There just wasnt a lot of gold there. How that small picker got there and where it came from, I have no idea. Most pans from there did not have any gold at all.

Since I wasnt finding much there, I ended up going to another spot that I knew (from panning there previously) had some decent fine gold at least.

I did a couple pans and sure enough found some gold in each one. Click on photos to enlarge.

So I decided to setup the bazooka here.

Here's a video of that spot. I built the sides of the dam up for the bazooka as I dug it out of the creek. Some nice gneiss, quartz and shale in that section.

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4997/5z6.mp4


It took me about 10 minutes to setup the bazooka again since I had to dig it in, then build sidewalls and then shovel out behind it. But once it was setup it was flowing like a champ. I worked this spot for about an hour and a half. The material I was working was hard packed, so it was a real pain to shovel. I didnt bring a pick so I had to keep bending down and prying the shales and flat rocks loose from the side. Then after the rocks were washed clean of clay I would have to bend down and clear those stones from the bazooka grizzly. The bazooka moves so much material that you pretty much have to constantly shovel out behind it, so the trap doesnt plug up. Click on photos to enlarge.

Here's where I was digging, and some of my gear. Click on photos to enlarge.

I did as much as my back could handle for the day, then I was getting hungry and headed home to eat lunch and post this story for you guys to read. Here's the cleanup from the 2nd spot. Much more gold, even if most of it was fine. Click on photo to enlarge.

Hope you guys liked the story.