South Carolina Gold Prospecting

February 13, Sluicing + Panning

2011-07-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

Around February 13, 2011 I got permission for a new spot so of course I couldn't wait to get out there and see how the color was. Its not too far from another place I was finding some gold so I was hoping the color would be bigger at the new spot. Dr Phil came with, and we sampled up and down a good ways. While sampling, Dr Phil hit on a pretty nice little spot for fine gold that I had just walked past, and we worked that for a 5 gallon bucket or so. But after a bit we both wanted to see what else was around and we were both hoping for some chunkier pieces so we kept moving. There were signs of someone having dredged in a couple places clear to bedrock, and also some tailings piles that looked pretty old. Besides the pans and other equipment, I brought the bazooka, and Dr Phil brought his back packable Angus Mckirk sluice. Oh and I almost forgot, I found a spot with the most crazy pock marked, tore up looking white quartz I have ever seen there. Some of the pock marks were 2 inches or more across and looked like big crystals were in there once. My camera was low on battery though by that point, but next time i go back I will get some pics. The quartz that was mineralized like that, was also nearby where we were finding some nice fines, so possibly they are related.

Always exciting to be on a new stretch of creek. Never know what you are going to find before you put that first shovel in. Might be loaded with gold or (more likely) nothing important at all.

Long stretch of creek that looks like it had never been worked, but there wasn't much of anything here except some magnetite black sand.

Here's all the equipment you need when finding a good spot to work. A shovel, the bazooka gold trap sluice, and a bucket to clean it up into.

This boulder had an amazing amount of black sand around it. When I was classifying the material it was solid black before I had even started stratifying. And lots of lead and other heavies, but no color!

This is the first spot I had the bazooka setup at. Because the gold was so fine (around 100 mesh) I classified to 4 mesh first, then ran it through the bazooka.

One of my better pans, keep in mind the color was mostly fines here so this one looked good. It came from a layer of false bedrock that Dr Phil found.

Dr Phil posing for a pic again. This is the stretch of creek that had a good bit of fine gold.

Spot I was digging with very small gold (barely visible to the naked eye). Dr Phil found this spot, I had walked right past it to sample a turn instead and he called me back showing me there was some fines here.

Here's a video of Dr Phil feeding his Angus Mckirk sluice.

Here's one of those sections of creek.

Here's how I had the bazooka setup and running in one spot, I also ran it in another spot but have no video of that. This was near where we were finding all the fine gold, so I went ahead and classified to 4 mesh first before I ran it through the sluice. Check out the black sands.

And my final take for the day. A lot of fines! It was a beautiful day to be outside, and trying a new spot. For the amount of material I worked (not that much), that is not a bad day at all. I spent more time sample panning here and there, then actually running the bazooka.The gold there is mostly powder size, but who knows there might be a couple bigger pieces somewhere around that we missed.

February 9 2011, Gold Panning

2011-07-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

I did some panning on February of this year, I didn't take a pic of every pan that time. But heres some of my better pans that day.

Some of the dirt, see the lovely oxidized rust color in there? Almost always good gold in that stuff.

Some of the tailings pile. Lovely pegmatite (thanks Indy!) and enough white and smoky mineralized quartz to thoroughly wear me out when I carried it out.

More of the manganese stained vein quartz. Whenever I find this stuff, I know its going to be a good day. I dont know what the other rock is with the quartz vein, but it was rust stained so I carried it out too. Will crush and examine later. That other rock was pretty heavy for its size, maybe gneiss.

This was one of the better pans for a little bigger pieces since most of the stuff I was finding was fine.

This is the cleanup pic after I re-panned all my concentrates.

January 13, 2011 Gold Panning

2011-07-29T14:21:00.000-07:00

On January 13th 2011, college was canceled again, but my back was sore from shoveling and I didnt want to carry a sluice and buckets and all that plus my other gear. So I just did some panning.

Creek pictures.

I did some test pans, didnt find any color in most places so I kept moving.

My pack and pans. I started finding some little specs here so I focused on this spot further.

Here's some of the material I was working. some kind of saprolite false bedrock. See all the black sand?

Another pic of the clay/saprolite.

Yet another pic of the saprolite/clay.

More clay/saprolite loaded with heavies.

[URL=http://img211.imageshack.us/i/imgp4794.jpg/][img]http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/9565/imgp4794.jpg[/img][/URL]

This is the saprolite bedrock that was decaying away into that clay. It sure holds onto the heavies once it decomposes.

This is how much black sand per pan in this spot on top of that false bedrock.

First pan with color of the day.

Another pan.

Yet another pan.

Despite getting lots of heavies in this pan, didnt get much gold, but still better then nothing.

Best piece of the day, about half the thickness of a grain of rice.

Short video of that piece.

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/8043/dm4t.mp4

One of my better pans from today, see how many heavies are in there with the gold? I was almost into the pay streak.

Pictures of the woods.

Overall the gold was pretty small, except for that one piece, but at least I got out and had a great time.

January 2011 Gold Sampling

2011-07-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

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.

[URL=http://img405.imageshack.us/i/imgp5105fj.jpg/][img]http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/3356/imgp5105fj.th.jpg[/img][/URL]

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)

February 1st, 2011 Gold Prospecting

2011-07-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

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.

February Gold Prospecting in the Snow

2011-07-29T06:21:00.000-07:00

I went gold prospecting back in February, when we had the big snows.

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: