The High Mountain Prospector.

 Gold Prospecting & Sampling, How To Find Gold
Nov 232011
 

BY JOSEPH F. GROUT

Preparing Yourself Properly for a Gold Prospecting Adventure

 

Each summer, thousands of prospectors head for the high country in search of gold. However, not all of these prospectors are from the mountainous regions which they will be entering. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of prospectors are from flatland areas of the Midwest and East. Therefore, it is an easy observation that you prospectors should take some extra precautions and attempt to prepare yourselves for what you will encounter in the high country.

Obviously, one of the best things you can do to help ready yourself for a high country expedition is to get in shape. Luckily, there are many exercises that will help you get into top physical condition, but you must be willing to discipline yourself and stick with your exercise program.

Basically, there are four elements to a S.A.F.E. prospector fitness program.

These elements are Strength, Ability, Flexibility and Endurance. While everyone is born with ability, the other three elements are the things that must be worked on.

If you are serious about starting an exercise program, it is important that you stretch for several minutes prior to each workout. This stretching will improve your flexibility and help you become more limber.

Maybe the most important thing that a would-be high mountain prospector can do is build his or her strength. After all, you must be physically strong if you are going to carry a backpack into a remote wilderness setting!

If you are serious1y interested in building strength, it is important to work with a given weight until it is easy for you to perform several repetitions without any problems. As soon as your starting weight becomes easy, add more weight! However, if you are mainly concerned with muscular endurance, which most prospectors are, then you should probably stick with lighter weights, adding more repetitions to a set.

Some weightlifting activities I utilize when preparing for a high mountain prospecting trip are the bench press and leg press. The leg press is probably the most important of the two, as it helps your legs build strength, which is vital, due to the fact that your legs will be your transportation.

After you finish a workout, you should cool down and do a few more minutes of stretching, as this will help prevent your muscles from tightening up.

Building endurance is another important part of any prospector’s life. Every spring, after a lethargic winter, I attempt to build my endurance by taking long walks. Walking is an enjoyable endeavor that you can do by yourself or with others. There is no need to walk at a fast pace; and as you walk, relax and take in any sights and sounds along your travel route.

Normally, if you are a prospector, you are also an outdoors person. This means that you may have fish and wild game in your freezer. Both fish and wild game are excellent foods. Therefore, as long as we cook these foods with low fat and cholesterol in mind, they will fit in nicely with our exercise program.

Now, let us suppose we are healthy and fit as a fiddle. The next step before traveling to a destination is deciding what items we need to take with us. This is where things can get tricky, because most people attempt to take far too much. As you are deciding what to take, keep in mind that everything you take will be in your backpack, which is of course carried on your back. Whenever I go high mountain prospecting, I normally hike as high as timberline and sometimes even higher. Therefore, I like to keep my backpack as light as possible while still carrying the essentials.

Some of the items I carry are: a light-weight sleeping bag (capable of keeping me warm in very cold temperatures), toiletries, a first-aid kit, a Eureka Mountain Pass tent, a pair of cotton gloves, a gold pan and classifier, a suction bottle, vials for gold, rope, an extra set of clothes (two sets of socks), fire starters (wax strips), weatherproof matches, a small camp shovel, topographic maps of the region I am in, some military MRE’s (food), fishing tackle (flies, leaders and line), a telescopic fly rod, a mess kit, a poncho, and a firearm of some kind. I also tie a military coat and stocking cap onto the outside of my pack, as the temperature at high altitudes can get surprisingly cold. On my military web belt I wear a hunting knife and a canteen, with a canteen cup.

While I realize that these items are the bare essentials, they will have to suffice; because more weight is impractical. Remember, you are going to do a lot of climbing, so keep it enjoyable.

As soon as your destination is known, you may want to consider staying at a motel in a high mountain town for a couple of days, before entering the forest. Staying a few days at a motel or local campground will help you become a little bit more accustomed to the altitude you have entered. If you attempt to head right into the mountains without becoming acclimated to high altitudes, you may experience altitude sickness. Altitude sickness is caused by the thin air your body is unfamiliar with. I have learned, through a very scary personal experience, that altitude sickness is something to be taken very seriously. Remember, you cannot beat the mountains; and if you think you can, you will find yourself getting beat! Respect the mountains and your trip will be much more enjoyable.

Entering the wilderness is a great experience that is almost indescribable. It is easy to find yourself imagining that you are the only person around for thousands of miles. For instance, when I go to the mountains, not only do I prospect, but I also take plenty of time to enjoy the solitude and great trout fishing that the high mountain streams and lakes offer. When in the deep forest, I can think my own thoughts and do what I like. It is a feeling of independence, where only the most hearty and rugged individuals can make it!

Enjoying the mountains also requires that you have a basic understanding of weather patterns. You don’t want to become caught in a serious storm. Keep in mind that lightning is very common in the mountains, and you should try and avoid bad weather.

Upon reaching a suitable location for a base camp, the real adventure begins! I make a good camp and then, feeling1ike a child on Christmas morning, I grab my gold prospecting gear and begin searching for a likely place to try my hand at panning. Normally, I enjoy panning along small creeks. There is something mystical about panning along a creek!

The key to finding high-grade gold is in knowing how to prospect, and in having the right attitude about it. If you don’t have much experience in it, I would advise that you attend some training and gain some experience under the watchful eye of seasoned professionals before striking out on your own. This will save you lots of time in trying to muddle through the learning curve on your own.

My first day of panning is usua1ly short-lived, because there are many camp chores that need to be done. Gathering wood for a small fire is critical. A small fire provides warmth and a means of cooking the trout that I catch.

Fishing for trout in high mountain lakes and streams is something that all prospectors will enjoy. The trout, normally not very big, are scrappy fighters and are just about always ready to hit a properly-presented fly. Some of the flies I regularly use are the western bee, black gnat and royal coachman. However, the fish at this altitude are not picky and will hit almost anything.

The mountains have been a home away from home for my family for 100 years. They have seen my grandfather, my dad, and myself enjoy all that they have to offer, providing us with an understanding of what it takes to be responsible and self-reliant.

While I have not become rich yet by prospecting for gold in the mountains, I have found enough gold to pay for my entire prospecting trip. The experience of a high mountain prospecting trip, however, is worth more than any monetary return to me. Especially when I find a deposit of gold nuggets!

Still, I have not given up hope of striking something rich. That possibility exists; and, I suppose, is the thing that makes prospecting in the high country one of the best adventures available to man – or women!

Becoming a high mountain prospector may not be for everyone, because it requires an able-bodied, physically fit person who has a strong mind and a desire for adventure. If you believe that you have these characteristics, what are you waiting for? After all, there is no time like the present to experience the adventure of a lifetime!

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Different Kinds of Sampling

 Gold Prospecting & Sampling, How To Find Gold
Nov 232011
 

By Dave McCracken

How much you need to qualify a gold deposit in advance depends upon the additional investment that will be required to gear-up for production.

Dave Mack

In placer mining, there are fundamentally two kinds of sampling:

1) Discovery: Attempting to locate a higher-grade deposit of value inside of a larger volume of lower-grade material.

2) Quantification: Extracting and analyzing smaller portions, to gain a perception of how much value exists within a larger volume.

The general concept behind sampling is to minimize investment into a specific mining property, or a particular project, until there is enough proof that a mineral deposit exists which contains enough value to justify a more substantial investment.

The kind of sampling that you should do, and how much is necessary, largely depends upon the ultimate objectives, and/or how large of an investment you will make to implement a commercial project – especially that portion of the investment which cannot be recovered and re-committed to some other project at a later time.

For example, if you are going to join The New 49’ers Prospecting Organization to gain access to 60+ miles of mineral properties in northern California, and decide to devote an extended period of time into searching for and developing high-grade gold deposits along those properties, the money you would spend outfitting yourself with a sampling dredge is something you can depreciate over the extended period. This is because the investment will not be confined to a single mining project or property. When you are done, because the dredge and gear will be accessible, you can regain some of your investment by selling the used equipment.

How much sampling would be necessary in advance of making this investment? Not so much, because most of the investment is not committed to a single mining property. Before a final decision is made, perhaps it would be worth spending a week of your time participating in a Group Mining Project, to obtain some direct exposure to the activity, and see if this is how you want to spend your time.

On the other hand, if you were considering a substantial capital investment to start up a full-scale commercial dredging program on one specific mining property out in the middle of Borneo’s rain forest, where accessibility is only available by helicopter; it would be wise to first send in a sampling-team to confirm the existence of commercial deposits that will allow you to make a reasonable return on your investment. Knowing that most of the capitalization into this kind of mining project is unlikely to be diverted to some other program at a later time, how much sampling would be enough? It should be enough to:

1) Verify that commercial deposits exist on the property; and,

2) Quantify the deposit(s) well enough to become certain that the commercial value of the project is justified.

Sampling is a careful, organized method of attempting to locate high-grade mineral deposits; and then, obtain a reasonable perception of the value they contain.

Here are a few basic sampling principles:

1) The larger the sample, the more accurately the sample results will represent the larger volume of material that has not been analyzed.

2) The more samples you take, and the closer they are together, the more accurately the average result will represent the larger volume of material that has not been analyzed.

3) To achieve an accurate result in sampling, it is vital that you thoroughly clean all of the values from sampling equipment in-between samples.

4) As mineral deposits can be found at different strata’s within a streambed, a good sampling program does not only test in different geographic locations; but also at the different layers within a streambed. This is because it can often be more commercially-productive to mine a deposit only down to a specific strata.

 

On this river in Madagascar, the gold (plentiful) was so fine, the sample material had to be dredged into a large catch basin suspended between two boats, and then processed using specialized equipment on the bank.

5) To be effective, recovery-equipment used in sampling must have the capability of concentrating the values which exist within the deposit. Where special recovery equipment is needed, and the sampling must be accomplished with portable dredging equipment, it is sometimes necessary to dredge the samples into a floating catch-container. Then the samples can be carefully processed on land.

Sizing the gold being recovered, and the gold that is not being recovered, is an important part of a sampling process.


6) Care must be taken to ensure that foreign material is not introduced into the material being sampled which can render the result inaccurate. Just as this has to do with foreign material from other geographic locations, it also has to do with material from different strata’s within the streambed, if layers are being tested independently of each other.

7) The smaller the sample being analyzed, the more the result can be thrown off by the introduction of foreign material (called “contamination.”)

8) Tailings from a sampling recovery system should be carefully analyzed to see what values are being lost; and whether steps can be taken to recover the values in a production operation.

9) Ultimately, only the values that can be recovered during production should be included in the final business projections.

10) Care must be given to measure the amount of raw volume that is excavated to extract a sample. Because the value recovered must be related back to the amount of material that was moved and/or processed to obtain the result. This relation will need to be measured against the volumes and costs associated with a potential production operation.

For example: If an average cubic meter of streambed gravel to be processed will produce $10 in gold (gold at $425/ounce), at a gross production cost of $4 per cubic meter, when a production dredge is operating at 100 cubic meters per day, you can predict a net income of $600 for each dredge participating in the program.

Sampling is generally accomplished in two steps: The first step is to locate the existence of a mineral deposit. Usually, when we use the term “preliminary sampling program,” we are talking about a project where the existence of high-grade deposits still needs to be confirmed.

The second step is to sample the deposit(s) enough to gain a perception of its value. And that’s what this article is really about; how much quantification is necessary? The answer to this question largely depends upon the additional investment that will be required to gear-up for the desired volume of production.

Where we dredge along the Klamath River in northern California, using the very same equipment and support-structure in sampling as we do in production, we do not have to do very much quantification of a deposit before launching into production. This is because just finding the high-grade is reason-enough to mine it. Although, we usually do devote several samples in an effort to find a low-grade area where we can place tailings. Then, we establish the value of the deposit as we mine it.

The reason we can do this, is that under these circumstances, there is no substantial amount of increased financial risk when we transition from sampling into production.

Local miners were recovering rich deposits in the Cambodian jungle using very primitive, low-volume methods. Here was a good place to start with a sampling dredge.

However, many situations are different from this. Some mining projects are just in the start-up phase. Some mining prospects are in remote locations. Under many circumstances, to minimize risk, it is wise to begin with portable sampling equipment to complete the preliminary sampling phase of the program.

Local miners were supporting their villages in Madagascar by digging gravel from the bottom of the river out of boats using long-handled shovels. Our sampling later proved they were digging on the strongest line of gold in the river.

In this case, the question remains how much quantification is necessary to support the evolution to the next level of operations? This will always come back to the program objectives – which often have to remain flexible, depending upon what is discovered during sampling.

Here are several different levels of quantification:

1) Doing enough additional samples to prove that a high-grade deposit justifies bringing in a larger-sized suction dredge to go into production. As part of this, it is important to work out the best type of recovery system to use, and decide how many production-shifts you will run. Night operations require special lighting equipment.

2) Doing enough samples along a stretch of river to prove that high-grade deposits are extensive enough there to justify bringing in multiple production dredges, and setting up a substantial support infrastructure.

3) Doing a series of controlled samples, an equal distance apart, along a portion of a river, to statistically-quantify the value of a mineral deposit. This is often done under the watchful eye of a consulting geologist who will certify the results in preparation for a larger-scale mining operation with the use of mechanized machinery that might float on platforms.

  

 

4) Doing a series of controlled samples, an equal distance apart, for some distance across an entire section of river, to quantify the average-value of the river gravels. This almost certainly would be accomplished under the guidance of a consulting geologist(s) who will certify the results, in preparation of financial instruments for investment bankers or a public trading company.

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Defining Acceptable Ground

 Gold Prospecting & Sampling, How To Find Gold
Nov 232011
 

By Dave McCracken

It is important to define for yourself how much gold you need to recover to make the effort worthwhile.

Dave McCracken

 

It is a very good idea for you to define for yourself what amount of gold is minimally acceptable for you to recover on a daily basis. It might be a half-ounce per day. It might be more. Or it might be less, depending upon the size of the dredging or other mining equipment you are using, your operating expenses, and how much gold you need to recover to make the effort worthwhile. The main point here is that you should set some minimum standard. If you are recovering that much gold on a daily basis, you will stick with it. If your daily averages start dropping below that point, you will start sampling around for better ground.

There are several good reasons for doing this. One is that if you do not know about how much gold is acceptable to you, and what is not acceptable, you can waste a lot of time “going on hoping” (for some undefined target) while you continue to dredge in low-grade material, rather than sample around for something better like you should. Another good reason is that you need to determine how far to each side and how far to the rear to dredge into the lower-grade material along the boundaries of a pay-streak. I covered this subject more thoroughly in another article.

Perhaps the best reason that you need to define a minimum acceptable level of daily gold for yourself, is so you can take in the better, and much better, and tremendously-better pay-dirt as a bonus when you find it. This could be on a regular basis if you become good at sampling. If you do not take on the good finds as a bonus, you can find yourself comparing the good finds with the acceptable finds; and pretty soon the acceptable finds may not be acceptable any more! This is especially true when you are dredging up a high-grade pay-streak.

I know of a guy that was new to gold dredging, who was into a very large pay-streak which was paying him a little more than half-ounce per day for every day that he went out and dredged. He was happy with this. That was well more than an average day’s wages in the profit he was making over top of expenses, and gold prices have been going up to make that even better. Everything was going along just fine until one day when he uncovered a bedrock up-cropping and pulled six ounces of beautiful gold out of a single pocket in the bedrock just in that one day. The following day, he was back into the half-ounce amounts again. Only that was no-longer good enough. He quit shortly thereafter. He left the area, never came back, and I have not heard of him since.

What happened? He got spoiled from the incredible feelings generated from uncovering really valuable golden treasure. This causes something which is often referred to as “gold or treasure fever.” Once the extreme high-grade was finished, he could not go back to recovering just half-ounce of gold per day, anymore. It is kind of like losing the person you love. Nobody else will do.

If you stick with gold prospecting long enough to get good at sampling, there will always be greater highs. But if the greater highs are the only thing that is now acceptable pay-dirt, you will find yourself frustrated a lot of the time.

If you define for yourself what is acceptable as pay-dirt, as you continue to get better at sampling, you will find that there is a surplus of acceptable ground available to you. Therefore, you will be able to upgrade your minimum acceptable levels a degree or two as time goes along.

If you are willing to mine every bit of acceptable ground that you can get into, and are willing to accept the bonuses as they are uncovered, and just treat them as a bonus, you will be making more gold more of the time – and you will find more bonuses, too

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The Basics of Successful Gold Mining-Part 2

 Gold Prospecting & Sampling, How To Find Gold
Nov 232011
 

By Dave McCracken

Part Two – Sampling For Paystreaks

Dave Mack

 

There are few things in the world more enjoyable — and more exciting — than finding your own pay-streaks, particularly when they are rich! It is one thing if someone else turns you onto a previously-located deposit — which, by the way, you should always take when it is offered to you. It is much more emotionally satisfying when you locate a rich deposit by following the signs discovered by your own sampling program. Seeing the first flakes of gold uncovered, when you knew they were going to be there even before you saw them, is a wonderful feeling; it is a true thrill to follow those flakes into a rich deposit. There is nothing else like it! Some say there is no cure for gold fever.

The procedure for finding pay-streaks is quite simple, really. The key is having the emotional fortitude to follow through with your sampling procedure, by following up on positive signs if they are there. And remember, you don’t need to find a pay-streak in every sample hole. Otherwise, sampling would not be necessary. You only need to find a pay-streak once in a while to make mining pay off — on any scale.

As we discussed in part one, pay-streaks form in those sections of a riverbed where the water force slows down on a large scale during major flood storms. Because gold is so much heavier than other average streambed material in the river, particles, flakes and nuggets of gold tend to collect in these large, slower-moving sections of river, while the lighter materials continue to be washed downstream.

Pay-streaks can be large or small, depending upon the size of the low pressure (low velocity) area in the river and depending upon how much gold traveled through each particular area during major flood storms.

Here is a location on our mining property at K-15A during the 1997 flood

Here is the very same location at K-15A during normal summer flows.

Pay-streaks always form on the path that gold follows in the river. Sometimes there may be more than one gold path, because the gold may be originating in the river from several different sources.

Pay-streaks are very important to miners because they are larger than single-type deposits, such as those found in a bedrock crevice along the gold path. Therefore, pay-streaks are easier to find. Because they tend to be long and wide, pay-streaks are deposits which can be worked usually for quite some time.

Gold can be recovered from a pay-streak which is located on bedrock; it can also be found throughout the streambed material or on the top of a flood layer.

It is important to understand what flood layers are. They are separate strata of streambed, which were laid down by different storms or perhaps at different periods during the same storm. The various layers are usually very easy to distinguish from one other. Each has different colors and consistency, and the gravels are usually of different compact hardness. If you are looking for it, you can nearly always see the changes in flood layers as you dig or dredge a sample hole deeper into the streambed. Sometimes there is only one layer over the bedrock. Often there are two or more layers.

As we discussed in part one, gold is extremely heavy. Therefore, most gold travels along the bottom of the other suspended streambed material as it is being washed downriver during a major flood storm. If the material is washing down across bedrock, then gold can become trapped in the various irregularities, cracks and holes. Sometimes, if conditions allow, gold may even be deposited on top of smooth bedrock to form a pay-streak in a low pressure area of the river.

Sometimes, because the flood storm is not quite extreme enough to break up pre-existing hard-packed streambeds, material moving during a storm will wash over the top of already-established streambed layers, rather than across the bedrock. Therefore, newly-formed pay-streaks may be found on top of pre-existing streambed layers, rather than on bedrock.

It is very common to find pay-streaks on top of a streambed layer. Sometimes you can find pay-streaks on top of several different layers in the same location. Sometimes, you can find pay-streaks on a layer, but not on the bedrock in the same location.

Most gold-bearing rivers have some amount of gold disbursed throughout the streambed material, so you tend to recover a small amount of gold out of each sample hole. We call this “traces.” This usually is not very much gold; not enough to get very excited about and not enough to support a small-scale mining operation. It only takes a few sample holes to give you an idea of the average amount of gold that is disbursed in the general streambed. You can pretty-much expect to get this small amount of gold from each sample hole that you dredge or dig. If you recover more gold from a sample hole than is showing up in the average streambed, it is important to realize you are onto something — even if it is not exciting, yet.

Remember, sampling is the business of following positive signs into a pay-streak. When you are finding increased amounts of gold in an area, it is likely that you are onto the general gold path, and you are into a low pressure area of some magnitude. You may be very close to an excellent deposit.

So the first thing to do, once you start finding increased amounts of gold in a sample hole, is figure out exactly where it is coming from. Is it coming from a layer? This is really important to know.

Several years ago, I had a friend who was recovering two pennyweights (1/10th of an ounce) of gold per day with a 4-inch dredge, dredging in four feet of streambed material. He had been trained in the old school of thought, which says you always dredge to bedrock, no matter what. I jumped into his hole one day and noticed almost immediately that a lot of his gold was coming off the top of a flood layer which was located about six inches beneath the material’s surface. Investigating further, I found there was some gold coming off the bedrock, but it was not very much. About 95% of his gold was coming off that layer. Once I pointed it out, he began to just skim off the top foot of material, and he started recovering about five times as much gold. This is why it is important it is to establish exactly where the gold is coming from in a sample hole!

If you dig a sample hole through deep material and only find a marginal amount of gold, the location might still be worth working if you discover that the gold is coming from a layer change closer to the surface.

When I am dredging a sample hole and see a change in layers, I always slow down and uncover a section off the top of the new layer while careful1y looking for gold. If there is a substantial amount of gold on the layer, it is never hard to see if you are looking for it. All you have to do is hold the suction nozzle further away from the streambed material so there is just enough suction to pull the gravel, but not enough to pull the gold, which is about six times heavier. Underwater magnification makes the gold very easy to see. But you have to be looking for these changes in layers, and you need to slow down and look on top of them as they are being uncovered.

The gold is more difficult to see if you are digging up on the bank. In this case, layer changes can be sampled separately with the use of your gold pan or other recovery equipment.

Seeing an increase in the amount of gold in a sample hole, even if it is just a small increase, is one of the most important signs to recognize in sampling. You would not see the increase if you were not on the general gold path and on or near a low pressure location in the river. Seeing an increase in gold is always reason to investigate that location further, either by spreading the hole in different directions to see if it gets better, or by digging or dredging more sample holes in the immediate area. You should be acting like a dog who has found a nice, juicy scent!

As mentioned in part one, one of the biggest barriers new miners need to overcome is their own doubtful thoughts about how much gold they are not going to find in a sampling location. Many beginners have themselves talked out of finishing a sampling project long before they have properly completed it! Forget what you think might not be there, and just work hard to see what actually is there. This is what sampling is all about!

Time and time again, I have seen beginning miners start a sampling project, start recovering some gold which is not enough for their minimum requirements, but is far greater than the average amount of gold in the river; and then give the area up because it is not good enough. Afterwards, someone else will open up the same location a little more and find a rich pay-streak. Yet, the original miners are still sampling elsewhere, not having found a pay-streak of their own. Short of finding an acceptable pay-streak, a visible increase in the amount of gold recovered from a sample hole is the best sign you can look for. Don’t walk away from it until you are more than certain it is just a low-grade pay-streak which you have no interest in.

There is something mystical in the way gold affects people. This has been known for a long time. How much gold a person is finding, or not finding, definitely affects his or her emotions. Successful miners have learned to set the negative emotional impact aside and to use effective sampling techniques and hard work instead.

It has been well proven throughout history that gold is much easier to lose than it is to find. And, no doubt, men have walked away from more gold deposits than they have found due to the way they were emotionally affected by the results of their sampling operations.

I know of one man who dredged a sample hole and was recovering four-to-five pennyweights of gold per day. He spent a day pushing the hole towards the bank and discovered that someone had been there with a dredge ahead of him. He spent a day pushing the hole to the right and found the bedrock going deeper, but the gold was getting a little better and the pieces bigger. He decided the area was too difficult and not paying well enough, and went to sample elsewhere before he even came close to defining what kind of pay-streak he had located. What causes a person to give up so easily when the signs are so good? Why walk away from a location with fantastic signs to go sample a new location where you have not yet discovered any positive signs? The answer has to do with the way gold affects people’s emotions, and the fact that it is much easier to lose than it is to find!

There is an excellent lesson to learn from this: Watch for an increase in the amount of gold in your sample holes. Leave your negative emotions out of it. Follow up positive signs when you see them — always. Have some patience, and positive signs will lead you into the pay-streaks.

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The Basics of Successful Gold Mining-Part 3

 Gold Prospecting & Sampling, How To Find Gold
Nov 232011
 

By Dave McCracken

Part Three – Sampling is a never-ending process

Dave McCracken

 

You would think that sampling could end once you’ve found a pay-streak. Because, once you’ve found a pay-streak, you start your production operation to recover the gold. However, sampling continues on, possibly even to a greater degree, even after you’ve located a rich deposit.

When you locate a deposit that you have determined is good enough to work, your next step is to define your deposit’s boundaries. This takes more sampling. It is generally done by dredging or digging more sample holes. The first and most important boundary you should find, especially if you are dredging, is the lower-end, meaning the downstream-end of the pay-streak. This is because you need to find a place to drop your tailings where they will not end up on top of your gold deposit.

In mining activities of any kind, tailings placement is of primary concern right from the beginning of the operation. You generally do not worry about it too much during sampling, because you have not determined there is a deposit in the immediate location as yet. But as soon as you are certain there is a deposit worth developing, where you place your tailings becomes very important!

In dredging, providing you are going to have the time to develop the entire deposit, you usually back your dredge further down river, dredging sample holes as you go, to locate where the deposit plays out. It is then smart to dredge a few more sample holes below this point to make sure the deposit really did play out where you will put your tailings. Then, start dredging from the tail-end of the deposit, dropping your tailings over the area that you have already worked.

As you work the deposit forward, you also must locate the left and right boundaries of the deposit. This also requires your sampling attention, only in a different way. Rather than dredge or dig sample holes, pay close attention to how much gold you are recovering while continuing to move your production hole in the direction of each side of the deposit. In dredging, if you are into a healthy deposit, you will see gold when you uncover the strata of streambed material where it is located.

As I mentioned in the earlier parts of this series, when you find gold in a sample hole, the first thing to do is establish where it is coming from. Is it from the contact zones between streambed layers or is it coming off the bedrock? This also applies to production mining. You need to know where the gold is coming from so you can watch that particular strata of streambed material closely to make sure it is still paying as you move your production hole forward and toward the left and right side boundaries of the deposit.

In dredging, if it is a good pay-streak, when the paying strata is uncovered, you can actually see the gold if you slow down and look. You will also see the gold disappear once you extend beyond the boundaries of your pay-streak. It is standard practice to slow down and watch your pay strata closely when production dredging. By following this procedure, you will continue to dredge up pay-dirt with a minimum of non-paying material. This means that the job of sampling never really ends, even when you are mining a good pay-streak; especially when mining a good pay-streak!

When digging, as in high-banking, you cannot depend as much on seeing your gold as you dig in the pay strata, so it can be necessary to clean-up your recovery system more frequently to make sure you are still mining in a section of the gold deposit. You can also sample the pay strata with a gold pan on a regular basis to make sure it is still paying in sufficient quantities.

The idea behind a production operation is to mine all of the deposit, while mining as little of the non-paying material outside the deposit as possible. However, you cannot always directly see where the deposit plays out. So you must be constantly watching how well the deposit is paying and where it seems to play out. This can sometimes be difficult to do; because some pay-streaks are not entirely consistent. For example, a non-visible obstruction or change in the bedrock upstream can cause an entire section of pay-streak deposit to boil out and give you the false impression of a boundary–when there might be an even richer section of the pay-streak several feet beyond where it apparently plays out! This has happened to me a number of times when I discovered further upstream that the pay-streak was wider than I thought. Then I had to drop back and pick up what I had missed on my first pass.

Keeping these thoughts in mind, just do your best to figure out what the deposit is doing as you follow it. Every once in a while, it is important to devote some time and energy continuing to sample beyond the apparent boundaries of the pay-streak to make sure you are not missing anything important.

Short of actually finding a rich pay-streak, finding an increase in the amount of gold in a sample hole is the best sign to look for while testing. Finding an increase in gold means more sampling is a good idea in the immediate area.

In the same way, finding a rich pay-streak means much more sampling is justified in that immediate area–especially beyond the apparent boundaries of the pay-streak you are working. This sampling is best done as you move forward, before you start dumping your tailings in that location.

Another important thing is to determine for yourself how much gold you actually need to recover on a daily basis to make it worth your while to work the deposit. Sometimes there is a big difference between what a person says he or she must recover and what a person will accept in order to remain in a deposit. You should be honest with yourself about this. If you need to recover five pennyweight a day, then you should not be production mining in a deposit which is paying only one pennyweight a day, unless you have some reason to believe it is going to improve right away. Also, if five pennyweight a day is your acceptable level, you should discipline yourself to mine the lower-grade gravel on the boundary-edge of a pay-streak if it is paying this much or more, no matter how much more the higher-grade section of the gold deposit is paying.

Some pay-streaks have a richer portion in the center or along one edge, and a lower-grade section throughout the remainder, which still may be high-grade enough to work by your own standards. Yet, you will find yourself much more interested in recovering the gold out of the rich section, because it is more exciting as you uncover all that gold. It takes personal discipline to work all of the acceptable portions of the pay-streak, when only one portion is extremely high-grade. I have seen many deposits (some of them my own) wasted by miners moving forward, dredging only the high-grade, while dumping tailings on the lower grade–but still acceptable–portions of the pay-streak. We all learn through hard-won experience just how valuable pay-streaks are once they are located, and how important it is to production-mine them in a disciplined and orderly manner, wasting as little as possible

There is an old maxim which always seems to be true: If you are looking for easy gold, go where others have already found it, and look beneath the area in which they started laying down their tailings! People get so excited when first discovering a deposit, they usually don’t think much about what they are dumping their tailings on top of until it is far too late!

The main point I have been trying to make here is that sampling really never ends. When you are not in a deposit, you will find yourself sampling to find one. When you find one, if you are wise, you will constantly sample to keep yourself within the boundaries of the deposit. Then, you’ll need to sample again to find another pay-streak in the immediate area once the first one runs out. Sampling basically is your procedure to acquire the necessary perception of where the gold is so you can recover as much as possible for your efforts. This is why you want to be good at it.

Don’t quit!

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The Basics of Successful Gold Mining-Part 1

 Gold Prospecting & Sampling, How To Find Gold
Nov 232011
 

By Dave McCracken

Part One – The Fundamentals

Dave Mack

 

During the Group Mining Projects we conduct each season, I always like to start by discussing the most important and fundamental ingredient in successful gold mining. That basic ingredient is you, yourself!

You are the one who makes decisions for yourself. You decided to get into mining in the first place. You also make the decisions on how you are going to approach gold mining, and how you are going to deal with all of the problems and the barriers to your success. Regardless of suggestions or input you receive from others, you make the final decisions on what you are going to do-no matter what they are.

The main problem in gold mining is in overcoming unknowns. Until you find them, you do not usually know where the good gold deposits are located. If it were really easy, all the gold would already be gone. The fact that so much gold is being recovered by small-scale miners today proves it was not easy to find in the first place. Otherwise, the old-timers would have found it all!

True, it is much easier for us now than it was for them. We have low-cost modern equipment they never even dreamed of! Accessibility to gold-bearing areas is excellent. We have new technology as well as the benefit of the technology developed by the old-timers. We also have historical information that directs us to the proven gold-bearing locations. The old-timers had it much more difficult than we do. But, it is still not that easy. When you get out into the field, you are mainly faced with not knowing where the gold is! And, this is where it comes down to you and your ability to overcome problems and the unknown.

Gold mining procedure is very simple. And there is an enormous amount of gold still accessible to the small-scale miner. The problem you face is not knowing exactly where it is. It can be six inches beneath where you’re standing or where you are digging, and you will have no idea it is there for sure until you find it!

You live by every decision you make. If you decide in your own mind there is no gold in an area or on a claim, you are probably not going to prospect that area, unless you change your mind. It is important to avoid making decisions that are not based upon solid observation. A miner on any scale must be an investigator, a hound dog on a tricky trail. Good investigators never rule out possibilities before their time.

Successful gold mining is generally done in two steps: First is sampling or prospecting, and then, production.

While some gold-bearing creeks and rivers tend to have gold values dispersed throughout their entire streambeds, there is generally not enough gold to make a small-scale mining operation payoff very well. Because we are limited as to how much gravel we can process as small-scale miners, we need to find higher-grade deposits. This means we need to look for them, and this is where sampling comes in.

When my partners and I first started gold dredging, we made the mistake of putting our dredge into a likely spot and dredging in that same location for about 30 days, even though we were not getting very much gold. We had in our minds that we had to keep going because we just might uncover a bonanza at any time. While that may have been possible, we would have had to be very lucky to find a rich deposit this way.

Because gold is so heavy — about six times heavier than other average materials found in a streambed, such as rock, sand and silt –it tends to follow a certain path when being moved in a river. This path generally runs from inside bend to inside bend (when the waterway is running at flood stage), and in a meandering line between the bends. Gold deposits are sometimes found elsewhere, but the statistics of history show that most recovered deposits have been located along these paths.

This is a very important bit of information; it provides you with a good idea of where to start your sampling. You can rule out about 90% of the riverbed at the start, and concentrate your sampling efforts along the path where you are most likely to locate an acceptable gold deposit.

Let’s define a few basics: “Bedrock” is the solid hard rock of the earth’s crust–like a cliff or like the solid rock you see in highway road-cuts through the mountains. “Streambed” consists of all of the rocks, sand, silt, gold, and other sediments that end up in the bottom of a creek or river. Streambed always lies on top of bedrock. A “lode” gold deposit is gold that is still locked up in solid rock, often contained in quartz veins. “Placer” gold deposits are created after erosion has broken the gold away from the lode and deposited it elsewhere. There are different kinds of placer deposits. The difference primarily has to do with how far away from the original lode the gold has traveled.

Hidden irregularities on the bedrock channel of a river can change where the gold path runs. So, until you locate the gold path, you are never certain where it is going to be. But inside bend to inside bend (during flood stage), and a meandering line between inside bends, is a good place to start your sampling. I have seen some gold paths located off this line, so you have to be flexible. But this is what sampling is all about. Sampling is done by digging or dredging test holes in different locations, comparing one against the next, establishing where the better results are coming from, and following those positive signs until you locate an acceptable deposit.

Most gold-bearing rivers have a certain amount of low-grade gold values dispersed throughout the gravel. The general gold path tends to have more gold along it than the average gravel throughout the rest of the river. You also generally find more iron and other heavy elements along the gold path.

When making test holes, keep track of the amount of iron, iron objects, and gold that you recover from each hole. After you have completed a number of holes, you will start to get an idea of the average gold values and other heavy materials in the riverbed. Then, when you turn up more than the average amount in a test hole, it is a sign that you have located the gold path. Sometimes, there is little visible increase in gold, but there is a visible increase in the amount of iron rocks, pieces of lead, and old rusty objects.

There is a certain amount of microscopic-sized gold moving downstream in some rivers at all times. However, gold that is large enough for us to recover with our small-scale mining equipment generally does not move in a riverbed to a large extent, except during major flood storms. Storms of this magnitude are able to generate enough water force and turbulence to get all or most of the streambed material flowing down the riverbed along with the water.

Because gold is so heavy, when being washed downstream, it quickly works its way to the bottom of the other materials being washed along with it. The gold also moves more slowly. Cracks, crevices, holes and barriers in the bedrock can trap the gold out of the flow of water and material. And of course, this happens much more along the general gold path than off of it.

Gold deposits along the general gold path can be small or large, depending upon the size of the gold trap. The most important type of gold trap in river mining is called the “pay-streak”. Pay-streaks always form along the gold path where the river’s flow slows down on a large scale during a major flood storm. One example is the tail end of an inside bend in a river. Centrifugal force places most of the water pressure to the outside of the bend, leaving a low-pressure (low-velocity) area at the tail end of the inside bend. This is a very common location in gold-bearing rivers to find pay-streaks.

Another example is where the river slows down after a long stretch of faster water. Anywhere along the general gold path where the river slows down on a large scale during a major flood storm is a likely spot to find pay-streaks.

Pay-streaks are important because they are large deposits as opposed to smaller, single-type deposits–like what you might find in a bedrock crevice along the general gold path. The size and richness of a pay-streak depends upon the size of the low-pressure (low-velocity) area created in the river, and on how much gold traveled through that section of the river during the flood storms which formed the deposit.

Most pay-streaks have definite left and right outside boundaries, meaning the gold tends to run out quickly once you get outside the pay-streak. Sometimes upstream and downstream boundaries are not so easy to distinguish. Varying water flow turbulence during major storms can sometimes make a pay-streak somewhat inconsistent. It may appear to be good for a while, bad for a while, and then good again, but the outside left and right boundaries tend to hold true most of the time.

Because pay-streaks have some size to them, they are much easier to find than single-type deposits while sampling. Most successful river miners use the following technique to locate and recover pay-streaks: First, locate a proven gold producing section of the river. By digging or dredging sample holes, locate the main gold path. More sample holes are continued along the path until a pay-streak is located.

This method is generally used whether the operation uses gold dredges in the river, sluices, or even heavy equipment up on the bank. Since the bank consists of older streambeds left high and dry, you are just as likely to find pay-streaks on the bank, or in the ancient streambeds further away, as you are in the river itself. If you are able to find acceptable amounts of gold in a riverbed and you want to find more, look upstream and downstream along the same line of flow in the riverbed. Keep in mind the direction water and material would be moving in a major storm. Gold generally will have moved in the same direction as the water flow.

The point about locating a proven gold-producing section of river is really important! You can save yourself a lot of time and energy by finding out where other miners are already doing well. If somebody has located a pay-streak, there will almost always be more pay-streaks in that general area of the river.

Investigation to locate proven areas, and communication with local successful miners to find out where deposits have been located, can save a great deal of sampling time. All of the really successful small-scale miners I know make it their business to stay updated on who is finding deposits and where.

The overall process of successful mining is quite simple. We have it down to a science, having taken most of the chance out of it. Gold travels and deposits along special lines. A knowledgeable, energetic, persistent sampling effort is assured of always finding the next pay-streak.

Sound simple? It isn’t that easy! This is because you never know where the next deposit is or how long it is going to take to find it. And, this is why it always comes back down to that important, fundamental ingredient, which is you!

You are the one who decides where to put your sample holes, how large to make them, and how long to continue them. You are also the one who evaluates the test results and has to decide what to do next. You have to decide, based upon your sampling results and the other information you have collected, whether a certain section of river deserves further sampling activity or if you should move on to another location. Every decision you make is a crossroads that will directly affect the final outcome.

It is important to realize that how much gold you get from your mining activity depends entirely on you and what you decide to do. A good miner is an investigator who tracks down where the gold is coming from, and diligently works his or her way right into it. How good you are does not depend upon how much time you have spent at it in the past. It depends upon how much you really want to succeed and how willing you are to hustle yourself into a deposit.

I know of quite a few people who have discovered rich gold deposits in their first season. I also know a lot of guys who have been at it for years, and still cannot seem to find acceptable deposits for themselves. Why is this? They are not sticking to the right procedure. They are making the wrong decisions, and, a lot of the time, they are (deciding to) giving up too easily.

Again, the main problem is not knowing. So, based on the information you do have, you are constantly being put to the test, having to decide if the gold is likely to be in a certain area or if it is more likely not to be.

People who have the most trouble in gold mining are the ones who give up too easily. You need to give your sample holes a little more time and effort than they deserve, but without overdoing it. This is a matter of judgment which gets a little easier with experience. It’s always going to be a challenge, though; because you don’t know if the gold is going to be there right up until the point when you find it!

Once you find a good deposit, it is easy to see why it is located there, and you will also see how easy it was to find. But when it runs out, you are right back to not knowing where the next one is going to be. Gold mining is always an emotional challenge.

The problem most people have with mining and sampling has little to do with judgment in sampling. It has to do with other basic decisions they have already made concerning their own personal success. It is very difficult to help someone become a successful miner when that person has already decided he or she is not going to do very well at it. Some people work at it just a little bit, and then give up on their sample holes long before they are completed. You cannot find gold deposits this way unless you are awfully lucky. This is good food for thought for everyone.

Some people get into gold mining as a get-rich-quick solution to other problems they have created in their lives. Any person who is giving up or quitting in their personal life hasn’t much chance of succeeding at gold mining!

If you are not finding enough gold, you cannot blame the claim, the river, the club you belong to, or anything else. Blaming an outside source might make your ego feel better, but it will not help you locate more gold. You are either getting it, or you are not. Blaming anyone or anything else is going in the wrong direction. The answer is to become effective, communicate with other miners to find out where the gold is coming from, and then get busy with your sampling. If you want to do well in gold mining, you have to make it happen!

And, if you are not sure if you have given a sample hole everything it deserves, be honest with yourself about it and give it a little more. It takes personal discipline to be a good sampler!

This is not to say that gold mining cannot be fun. It is a great outdoor activity no matter how much gold you find while you are prospecting for high-grade deposits. Once you get involved though, you will find it is more fun if you are finding more gold! If you are looking for challenge in your life, if you want to put yourself to the real test, then gold mining is just the thing for you!

When you are producing sample holes and not finding acceptable amounts of gold, when you are not sure where the gold might be, and you are not sure exactly how to deal with it, that is when you are put to the real personal test. This is when you have the opportunity to see who you really are and where your personal improvement lies. There is not a successful miner alive who does not have to deal with this on a continuing basis! This is why it always comes back to you. If you are strong enough to pull yourself through it, you will learn to sample, enjoy new thrills, and attain personal achievement and growth, not to mention the gold you will find.

There is much, much more to know about the business of sampling, which we will continue to cover in future articles. But we have covered the most important and fundamental ingredient here. If you can get yourself squared away with the right attitude, and approach mining with a stiff upper lip and the eye of a tiger, you will have no trouble figuring out the rest!

Don’t quit!

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Fighting the Gold Bug by Sampling

 Gold Prospecting & Sampling, How To Find Gold
Nov 232011
 

by John Cline

I talk to a lot of other miners, asking for different ways to do this or that. One observation that has surfaced is the importance of sampling. And, how many miners lack this practice. Many miners can “read” a river or creek, and some sample, but many don’t. This past year, I’ve talked to several miners who can’t understand why they are not finding gold. They are set up in a great looking location, they have moved many large boulders, they have cleaned the bedrock, but still very little gold. Well, believe it or not, they have been bitten by the gold bug. They have “gold fever,” they are working for all they have… but bottom line, recovering nothing for their effort. I have experienced this same frustration.

A couple of my friends and I set up our dredges in an area that looked great. Within the first hour, we knew that we were working someone else’s tailings. This area hadn’t been worked for ten years or so, but still we were in some tailings. We moved to our second location. We worked a hole for two days without success. Afterwards, we asked ourselves why we hadn’t found anything. We were in hard-pack, we found the red layer, we were on bedrock, but still nothing. When we asked some the local old timers why, their answer was “that’s gold mining” or “sometimes you find it and sometimes you don’t.” The real reason we did not harvest any fruit for our labor was that we had not sampled. Oh, we looked at the water flow and studied the river, but we had not sampled either location. It’s like working with our heads in the hole and not looking up to see which direction we’re going. When one climbs out of the hole, looks around and yells down to the others “We’re going in the wrong direction!” The others yell back “It doesn’t matter–we’re making good progress.”

Webster’s definition of sampling: “…a part, piece, or item taken or shown as representative of a whole thing, groups, species, etc., specimen; pattern.” We sample all the time and really don’t give it a second thought. Recently my wife Marge and I were going out to dinner with our son David and future daughter-in-law, Daphne. And, we had a hard time deciding where to go. I suggested one place and they said it was a great place for lunch, but not so good for dinner. This happened several times and then we decided on a nice restaurant. Believe it or not, this is a form of sampling. David and Daphne eat out much more than we do, and in other words, they sampled for us.

In my last article I shared with you my experience with Dave McCracken and his weekend Group mining Projects. During the workshop Dave made two points over and over, which have made a considerable difference in mining for me. The first is being proactive and having a goal. The second was the importance of sampling. During the Project we had twenty-plus people sampling and formed a good picture of the area–where the gold was, and where it wasn’t. When you work by yourself or with a friend or two, you must create that picture.

First, I believe that a sample hole when power sluicing (high banking) or dredging must have at least 50 square feet (5 feet x 10 feet) of bedrock cleaned. I feel that this should give us a fair sample of the potential for gold we should recover. We systematically take the hole apart by deciding the location that we will work, how big an area, and how deep we will go before testing the high-grade trap in our Pro-Mack High banker/Dredge Combo. Let’s say that the overburden is about three feet deep. We divide the area into sections. Take the first foot or so from one side, then test the high-grade trap for results. We then do the second half of the hole. If we run into a different layer of material we clean each half of our hole to that depth, trying not to go any deeper. Why? Well, if we do we’re not getting a good sample of the material and potential gold above that layer. After we have cleaned the top portion of each section, then we go down to bedrock, again looking for different layers of material, heavy metals such as lead, steel, etc., working each section and testing before working the next layer. We continue with this process until we have cleaned our test hole, thus creating a picture of where the gold flow is located. In the drawing I have included, we tested a creek on our claim. This is a secondary creek of the main creek, meaning that the creek “split,” forming an island. This section of creek is about 30 feet wide and runs about 150 feet long before merging back into the main flow. The water

was mostly 4-6 inches deep, with the exception of a few holes. As we sampled this area, we drew a map of each location we worked and recorded the results.

In Hole #1 at the top of the divide, we cleaned about 50 square feet of bedrock. There was about 2-1/2 feet of overburden. No defined layer difference. In the top half of each section, we recovered some fine gold and several small flakes (what we call flood gold). In the bottom of each section we recovered not only flood gold but several nice small nuggets. There was no apparent difference between the left or right side of the hole. Total weight recovered was 3.5 pennyweights (dwt).

In Hole #2, about 25 feet below the first, we cleaned about 150 square feet of bedrock. We started from the inside curve, working to the outside. We decided our approach would be to divide the hole into six sections, each being about five feet. Again, we systematically removed about a foot and a half of overburden, testing the high-grade trap before moving to the next section. We discovered that the west half of the creek had a good amount of flood gold and the east half had almost none. When we removed the remaining overburden to bedrock we found the following:

The west outside half: 2.5 dwt., and a one dwt. nugget.

The west inside half: 2 dwt. of nice pieces.

The east inside half: Five to six grains of fine flood gold.

The east outside half: Almost nothing.

In Hole #3, about 40 feet below Hole #2, we decided to work the center of the creek westward. This time we decided to test three parts. The bedrock was showing in several places and the overburden wasn’t more than two feet deep, so we cleaned the bedrock without sampling midway. We found the greatest amount of gold in the middle third of the hole. All total being a little more than 5 dwt., 3.5 dwt. from the center and very little from the inside third.

In Hole #4, about 25 feet below Hole #3, we decided to test out our theory that the gold was on the west side of the creek. Again, we systematically cleaned about 60 square feet of bedrock, but this time on the east side of the creek. The results–you guessed it, almost nothing.

As Dave McCracken states in his dredging videos, when you hit pay dirt or the paystreak, the hardest thing to do is to fall back and find the tail end of the flow. In Hole #5 we dropped back another 50 feet, almost to where the little creek flows back into the main channel. Again, we started at the center and worked westward, and you guessed it. Almost the same results. The westward half of the hole proved to be the best. Total weight found was 7 dwt. We talked to the miners above and below us. There have been several nice nuggets an ounce or larger, as well as several quartz rocks with gold taken.

I have talked to many miners about sampling and recording. It is hard to believe the number of miners who play the hit or miss approach to mining.

If you are out to have fun and find some gold, then sample, find gold and have fun. If you want to find a little more gold, then use a systematic approach. This approach must center around sampling and recording, sampling and recording, and more sampling.

Knowing where the gold should be does not mean that it is there, but your chances are better. Like many of you, David’s mining and mine is limited to weekends and summer vacation time. If we’re going to be productive, find gold and beat that gold bug, then our time sampling is of greatest value to us. We can plan our summer vacation in the area that has sampled out the best.

We have now sampled several locations and recorded our gold recovery. Some locations have been very interesting with good potential, and others did not prove out at all. We haven’t made our plans for next year, but we have created a fairly good picture of where the gold is, and where it isn’t. A very important first step.

If we decide to mine the creek above, guess which side of the creek we will be mining? I’ll let you know how the summer goes, but until then, remember to keep a smile on your face, your back to the wind, and watch out for that gold bug.

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