Took a break, found gold...

[slodave]

On some journey either when I was a kid on a family vacation or my parents picked it up, but for years, I have had a metal gold pan lying around. A few years ago, one of my glider buddies started to go to a local river and prospect for gold as a hobby. He'd come to our field with half an ounce, an ounce... Granted, not from one day, but over a few spread out days. It turns out he was dredging. I asked him about going and he always said sure, just bring a wet suit... Actually, a dry suit is preferred at certain times of the year, but I could not see myself spending money on a wetsuit that I'd not get much use out of...

When my bird passed in January, I was given new freedoms. Spring/Summer was around the corner and since gold prices were always in the news, I got the fever again.

I dug the old steel pan out of a closet and did a little looking as to where one could go around SoCal. Turns out there are lots of places and turns out there are a lot of active placer and lode mines all over the place. Turns out my first few forays were actually on a claim - oopsss. Newbie mistake. Fortunately I only found one teeny flake and have not been back since.

I decided to buy a sluice as it really is back breaking work. Turns out, shoveling dirt and gravel into 5 gallon buckets ain't much easier... But, it's fun and I enjoy being outdoors and. I am not expecting to retire off a huge gold nugget anytime soon. I also decided that the new plastic pans are a lot better designed and lighter too.

Check it out... This one needs to be opened with quicktime or it won't work
http://davemason.net/video/River.mov



That's not the current total... But it's still under a gram.

And a pano of part of the river... Screws up the page formatting, so here's a link..
http://davemason.net/images/SGR_Pano.jpg

Current gold total, under a gram, but it does add up - over time, lots of time... That's a quarter on the left...

There is a little more from a day that I went with a friend, but I gave what we found to him.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

At 1300 an ounce or whatever stupid price people are paying these days I can't imagine it's a waste of time - even if you're finding a gram a day it'll pay better than most office jobs.

[slodave]

I should add some info....

There are two gold prices. The first is what we all follow, currently in the $1200.- range. There is also the specimen value, which can be two to three times that. But... The gold that is naturally found is not 99% pure, anywhere from 18 to 23%, so selling specimens is where you can make money.

It's still a hobby, I really don't expect to get rich. I'd be happy with the couple hundred I have invested in equipment and gas.

[tabs]

You done purty good there partner...U digging up around Newhall? You got a Keene Engineering Sluice? You might want to get a 1/2 screen to screen the dirt as you shovel it into your bucket. Done business with Keene going back to the 1970's..Told them one day there was more Gold in selling the equipment than in them thar hills and they said "your right."

Fell in love with the purty yellow stuff when I was in the 8th Grade and saw some guys were running sluice boxes up on the East Fork of the San Gabriels. They would climb up the side of the mountain and bring down the dirt to be washed through a Sluice. From that time on I was bitten and have climbed over a good part of the East Fork at one time or another. I knew some of the old timers who prospected up there in the 1930's and 40's..ya know during the Depression..

Knew this old timer whose Dad used to prospect down in Arizona in the 20's & 30's. One day when he was a kid he and his Dad were walking along with his Dad behind. His Dad said, "You in the habit of not picking up Gold nuggets.?" His Dad picked up a nice nugget just laying on the ground. Keith was a cement contractor out in Arcadia, CA and when he could get away he would billy goat his wooden Dry Washer up the sides of the mountain. He would always find about what you found for a coupla hours of shoveling. Keith always did wear grey work cloths

I know one place out on the East Fork in a Hydraulic Cut where the bedrock comes down in a sloping fold, if you moved about six feet of burm you would be able to dig virgin dirt along a low point in bed rock. You ask your friend what that means...

I've taken a few trips up into Northern CA and have dredged on the N Fork of the Yuba and North Fork of the Feather in Plumas County.. Also bin up on Slate Creek and did some panning at Howland Flat in Sierra County..which is 12 miles shy of Poker Flat..of Bret Hart fame. Very purty territory up there..Wouldn't mind goin back to Slate Creek..but its all claimed up and you would have to pay a rental fee to work a claim.

I even built my own 4"suction Dredge running an 8hp Briggs motor..bought the motor/pump/air compressor and hoses from Keene and the Jet Tube from Arthur Fiedler in Grass Valley...he was old back then and was one of the first suction Dredge builders...Had someone bend the t6061 Aluminum for a 6 foot sluice and header box. built my own floatation out of metal tubing and would float the thing on Tractor Inner tubes. Been up onthe Yuba and Feather rivers with it...Floated it across the Nfk of the Yuba river that was chest deep...

Talked to a coupla Farmers outa Salinas back in 75, they were workin their claim on the N Fork of the Yuba...had a 6 inch Keene Dredge with 2 8 hp Briggs motors along with a hugh Navy surplus winch with a 55 gallon drum cut down to haul boulders outa their hole in the bottom of the river. They had a pile of boulders the size of 60 gallon tanks all piled up nice and neat. Seems like they went up there summer time had a coupla new PU trucks and a brand new travel trailer. Asked them what the biggest nugget they ever found and they said 32 oz..they also said the year before they went down through 30 feet of overburden to get to bedrock only to find a old miners pick and pan. To get the big stuff you gotta go deep down into the river...where no one has bin before.

If ya wana fool around with a Dredge a 4 incher or 5 incher is the minimum to run..the key is to run a large volume of gravel through your sluice box and to be able to get down into the river. Anything smaller is basically wasting your time unles you are just Sniping here and there....One man can run a 4 inch Dredge..I've done it..

Would like to go one Prospecting one more time up into Northern CA...I would probably buy the Keene Floatation pontoons and one of their new light weight Sluice boxes...and put my Dredge back together that way...It is a lot of fun working in the river in a wet suit on a hot summer day...especially if yer findin the yellow stuff...you can't wait to get back in the water in the morning if you have found a few nuggets the day before. It is back breaking work and moving boulders the size of a small car isn't much fun..My problem is that I don't have anyone to go with..and it is too dangerous to go alone..especially if you are diving on an air system..

[tabs]

Originally Posted by slodave

I should add some info....

There are two gold prices. The first is what we all follow, currently in the $1200.- range. There is also the specimen value, which can be two to three times that. But... The gold that is naturally found is not 99% pure, anywhere from 18 to 23%, so selling specimens is where you can make money.

It's still a hobby, I really don't expect to get rich. I'd be happy with the couple hundred I have invested in equipment and gas.

Back when I was a teenager and climbin all over the East Fork my second sluice box was made of wood..and when wet it got heavy...an retired guy who prospected as a hobby was runnin a nice 4lb Aluminum sluice box...He aske when are ya gona git one f these aluminum jobs...I said when I find enugh Gold to pay forit...He said then you never will git one...So I rushed on down the hill to the rock store they had in Azusa, CA back in the day and bought one for $15.00. Which was big money back in them days. Still have that box BTW..

BTW Partner when U got water running through the sluice never put your hand in the sluice..your hand disturbs the current and creats turmoil which will make the Gold jump..Bring a small piece of plywood to cut the flow of water off if you wana pick out something. U also wana have your sluice at just enough of a sloping angle so that when ya dump the dirt it slowly eats away at the leading edge...As for a pan I always wa spartial to the metal pans the rustier and more pitted the better to create a rough bottom .but make sure they is no oil or grease in the pan asit will float the Fines right outa your pan.. The idea is keep shaking the pan to settle the Gold which is 20 X heavier than water to the bottom and then float out the lighter pebbles and sand..Always be sure to break up any clay cause some Gold might be trapped in the clay.

[slodave]

Why tabs, you didn't recognize the river? It is the East Fork. To be fair, the river has changed paths in its huge banks over the years. Last time I was there, a couple of guys were digging down - again and found a rock that had a 1930's date on it... I know that area has been mined consistently for about the last 150+ years.

Dredging was suspended last August in Cali.... Yeah, ***** if you want, but what's done, is done. There is a a lot of fighting to reinstate dredging. We'll have to see.... Before picking on Cali, Oregon's got some tight regulations too..... No doubt, this can be damaging, but it is fun and is such a part of our history. High banking is still allowed.

As of late last year no more year round camping. I know about how it has been populated since the depression. Bernie Mcgrath is still there, but seems to find other places to park his camper from Sunday night until Thursday. I'm still at 'nugget ally'. It still produces a lot of flake and the rare 'picker', but as you said, other places still pay out. Just need to figure out where....

My sluice is a Keene A52...

http://www.keeneeng.com/

[on2wheels52]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

At 1300 an ounce or whatever stupid price people are paying these days I can't imagine it's a waste of time - even if you're finding a gram a day it'll pay better than most office jobs.

They work for $36?

Dave, who is paying x2 (or more) for specimen value? Are you talking about nuggets & placer gold?
Jim

[slodave]

Jim,

The bigger nuggets (1/2oz or bigger) are worth a lot of money, intact... A troy ounce (31.1g) of flake/flour gold will be worth about market value, maybe a little more. I'm just passing on what I read. Some of the lode gold becomes almost like sculpture, the quartz around the gold is dissolved, leaving these wild, natural wire like shapes.

I'm new to this and don't have much to brag about.

[tabs]

Yeah as if I can tell from the 2 pics you are showing that it is the East Fork. How far up stream are you.going? Do you dig up past the end of the paved road? The Narrows is about 5 miles up, and about 2 miles up you can still see washed out bridges from the 30's.

Before the 69 flood Bedrock was close to the surface..after that the river bottom rose about 20 feet and no more Dredging was done you had to climb up on the sides to get anything. Of course up by the Narrows bedrock starts to show itself.

About a 1/2 mile above Camp Williams there is a fire road on the North side from the canyon up...the road goes through an old Hydraulic Mine...I did a lot of digging there. That is where my old friend told me I would never get one of those Aluminum sluice boxes. His name was Harold King and he and his wife were retired and living in a Mobile Home park by Camp Williams.

Also as you drive up the canyon there is a outcropping of white quartz in one of the old hydraulic mines on the South side of the road ...I used to talk to the old boy who owned and lived on that property. He had been mining there since the 30's. He knew all the hot spots and where mining had gone on. He sold his Gold to Knotts Berry farm.

The biggest nugget to come out of the East Fork in the time I was there was about the size of a mans thumbnail and about as thick as a 50 cent piece. The guys who got that piece actually tunneled into the side of the mountain in one of the old Hydraulic mines...they even shored up the tunnel with wood.. Their little spot was right past the bridge where Glendora Montain Road intersects the East fork road..on the south side there is a Hydralic mine...and it is quite a climb to get up there but I bet yu can still see their tailings and little cement pond which was fed by a spring.. they used a sluice and recycled the water.

[tabs]

Originally Posted by on2wheels52

They work for $36?

Dave, who is paying x2 (or more) for specimen value? Are you talking about nuggets & placer gold?
Jim

I talked to a guy back in the 70's who had been panning and sluicing for Gold on the Middle fork of the Yuba for 20 years. He said the biggest nugget he ever found was 3/4 of an OZ..Big Gold nuggets are very rare and are worth many times the bullion price..Back when Gold wa s$300 an OZ a one oz Gold nugget would be worth north of $2000.00

There Is 2 types of Gold mining Hard Rock where you follow a vein and Placer mining...there are various types of Placer mining..digging in the current stream bed ..using a pan, sluice or dredge, Hydraulic mining where a big stream of water from a hose or pipe is used to wash away a mountain (where a Tertiary stream bed once flowed), the gravels are run through sluice boxes. This type of mining was basically outalwed about 1870 as it was very destructive. Finally there is Drift mining in which a tunnel is dug into the mountain along the pay streak. Most of the commercial Placer mining ceased at the begining of WW2, hwever there were a very few mines that never really ceased even if they were run on a very limited scale.. The 16 to 1 in Alleghany, CA is one of the more famous..and produced som big nuggets.

The biggest nuggets to come out of CA during the Gold Rush weighed some 500 Troy Pounds.. Theywere found in the Chico area of CA. Other big nuggets came out of the North Fork of the Yuba River..The little town of La Porte CA in Sierra County shipped some 60M USD of Gold at $20 a Troy oz during the Gold Rush...This equates to about 3,000,000 oz of Gold. Slate Creek was one of the biggest producers in the area.

What is ironic is that the 49er's would be digging on a claim, hear about a strike somewhere else and abandon their claim for the new diggings without playing their current claim out. Combine that with overlapping claims and there is still virgin dirt to be dug..Now if the Chinese came in you can just about forget about finding any Gold as they would literally use a toothbrush to sweep the bedrock..So there is a real potential of some really big nuggets being left in CA.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by slodave

http://davemason.net/images/SGR_Pano.jpg

Current gold total, under a gram, but it does add up - over time, lots of time... That's a quarter on the left...

There is a little more from a day that I went with a friend, but I gave what we found to him.

That's really cool. You may not get rich off of the stuff, but it's one of those things that few folks have ever done. Really cool, I'm jealous.

[red-beard]

How many hobbies out there pay money instead of costing money?

[tabs]

[QUOTE=slodave;5416757]


QUOTE]

On the other side of the Stream right in back of you in this picture is a Draw with an big Oak tree..you should be digging along bedrock on that side of the stream and do clean out any crevice you come across very carefull and completely..

You also want to dig in the oxidized red gravel..

[KevinP73]

So how does this work, do you rent a space on the river (sorta like a mini claim) ?

[Hugh R]

I have a huge LA County debris basin in front of my house in Newhall, no one up stream, perhaps I should think about panning there. It gets cleaned out about once a decade.

[cgarr]

Don't you have to fill out a 1099 IRS form or something like that?

[pwd72s]

The local gravel company washed the gravel it digs...they're mum about how much gold they recover, but it must be enough to make the operation worthwhile.

[Zeke]

Why, it's Coboy Tabs.

And Bushwhacker Dave.

[911boost]

I was a member of the GPAA for a cuple of years. It was worth it for the claims book. I have a pastic pan as well and have used it some.

Looks like you are having fun.

Bill

[tabs]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

The local gravel company washed the gravel it digs...they're mum about how much gold they recover, but it must be enough to make the operation worthwhile.

That is exactly what the Sand & Gravel companies do at the bottom of Azusa Canyon, where Slodave is Sluicing.

Funny thing is nobody ever got a flake outa the West Fork of the San Gabriel River..Gold is found all the way back to Mt Baldy on the East Fork. No one has ever found a Vein of Gold as a source it is all old Tertiary Channel Placer Gold.