Has Anyone Here Done any Gold Prospecting?

[Michigan Swampbuck]

I've had a head cold for a couple weeks and I didn't even get a 1/4 of a five gal bucket of river sand through the sluice when I stopped. Then the creek was getting low so I adjusted the sluice and waited for the next rain. I finished that bucket and did another half bucket while the flow was going so nicely though the sluice. At the end of that, I removed the field stones from the sluice and let it run straight though for a few hours. Yesterday, I took the sluice out and cleaned at the house and panned the sluice material.

Now, I had done a pan here and there before cleaning the sluice and didn't see any color. I kept thinking is that gold? No. Is that gold? No. I was thinking I got skunked and began to wonder why, until I got into the last bit of material from the sluice. The last few pans had produce five nice sized flakes. There is no doubt when you see that color in the pan, it screams GOLD!

I cleaned up the vial and recollected the flakes then added the new ones and now have 16 gold flakes in the vial, six more then before. Not much, but it proves its there and I'm getting better at bringing it up out of the creek sand.

The flour gold is all through the black sand and I have never been able to recover that, so I'm saving the black sand for future experiments. I want to get a spiral gold wheel to extract that fine dust that teases me when I see it.

[Michigan Swampbuck]

The creek is flowing from the recent rain, so I went out and did a half of a 5 gallon bucket of sand through the sluice. I panned the last scoop of sand when I got to the bottom of the bucket and found a nice sized flake. Plus I found a tiny lump I had forgot about in another vial stuffed down in my field pack. It might not be gold, but it looks like it is.

I'll clean up the sluice later and get a few more flakes. The creek is winding down already, so I'll bring up the sluice until a good rain comes through again.

[Ksihkehe]

The creek is flowing from the recent rain, so I went out and did a half of a 5 gallon bucket of sand through the sluice. I panned the last scoop of sand when I got to the bottom of the bucket and found a nice sized flake. Plus I found a tiny lump I had forgot about in another vial stuffed down in my field pack. It might not be gold, but it looks like it is.

I'll clean up the sluice later and get a few more flakes. The creek is winding down already, so I'll bring up the sluice until a good rain comes through again.

Is this the normal time of year for the creek to wind down or is it early this year? We had a fairly light winter for snow and everything seems to be pretty dry now, but it's not too far ahead of schedule. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't see a drop of rain until September.

I don't know if a few flakes in considered good in the industry for two and a half gallons of material, but I'd be pretty happy that my sluice and panning were good enough to get anything at all. I get the impression that panning doesn't require much skill to start and learn, but a sluice seems fickle and it seems entirely possible to run one and not capture any of the gold passing through.

BTW, I did finish your magazines over the course of a few days. Good reads. It reminded me of a lot of little local and regional zines that were published now and then back in the day. They always had a lot of cool stories that you wouldn't find in the regular newspapers. I think a number of them got bought up by marketing companies at some point and they still run them for free, but it's not the same. I have very little knowledge of the UP, so there were lots of interesting stories in there that I had never heard about. I've always like small town historical societies. I feel like the people, those with the community roots and the drive to preserve that kind of nuanced history, are dying off. The same seems to be happening with fraternal and civic organizations as well, like everyone is just going through the motions until they cease to exist entirely.

[Michigan Swampbuck]

Thanks for reading that stuff. I have an article about this very subject, gold on the Muskegon River nearby. 

There is a forum I put up using open-source PHP code on my website server. I will be writing up some of my findings there as a new thread about that article on "Gold in the River!".

[Ksihkehe]

Thanks for reading that stuff.

Thanks for making the world a little more interesting. Reading is the easy part.

[Michigan Swampbuck]

When I cleaned up the sluice, I used dish detergent and soaked the mat material in a bucket, like washing clothes. That was after spraying it off with the garden hose. That brought out some flecks and flakes along with a lot more black sand. I'm saving the black sand to try and extract the fine "flour" gold dust that is in there.

I added five more flakes to my vial, plus one from before I cleaned up the sluice. There are a few large flakes with the rest more like small flecks, so there are better than a dozen flakes in that vial. Plus some larger material like a small nugget, a couple of millimeters in diameter, and some inch-sized quartz pieces with what may be pyrite throughout. That is all I have for all the work since the end of last season, but the real rewards are being out there on the creek and having proof of concept by trying different things out.

I believe I can do better, it is time to make some alterations to the sluice. But I got 6 flakes out of half a bucket, and that meets my quota of at least 12 flakes per full 5-gallon bucket of sand, so I know that much is possible to do.

Now to work up a pack for next weekend and see how I can do with minimum equipment out in the field. I don't expect to do very well or even get one flake to be honest, but that stream is bigger, deeper, and runs year-round. My concern is that it is played out, however, they actually bring in sand with gold flakes from somewhere else. It is a campground where people spend the whole season panning that stream and using different equipment. Last year, I saw a couple scuba diving with a vacuum hose system that had a floating pump and sluice.