Hand Full of Big Gold

[steve herschbach]

Here is a nice shot of some large gold nuggets found by Dave R at Ganes Creek, Alaska in 2004 with a White's MXT. Dave was the resident "gold guru" and dug pounds of gold with his MXT over the years at Ganes Creek. I doubt there are many people who have as many hours on the MXT as Dave. He went out at night and hit the areas after a dozen other people had pounded them all day and almost always found gold everyone missed. He had the technique down pat.

[attachment 252942 ganesdr.jpg]

Steve Herschbach

 

[tvanwho]

So, what were Daves magic MXT techniques,tips and tricks, Steve? Is he still at the mine?

-Tom V.

 

[steve herschbach]

So, what were Daves magic MXT techniques,tips and tricks, Steve? Is he still at the mine?

-Tom V.

It is all at http://www.detectorprospector.com/gold-prospecting-equipment/whites-electronics-mxt-metal-detector.htm Just take all that and add over a thousand hours of experience.

I do not know if Dave will be at Ganes any longer now that the pay-to-mine operation has shut down. Probably not.

Steve Herschbach

 

[Silicon John]

I just posted this photo and will use it again. Dave Rankin is at the grill, cooking steak. His wife, a short lady is there and taking the photo of the gold is Melody Tallis. The one on the TV show, "Gold Rush." In 2004 Dave helped Doug Clark out with us tourists. He drove the pickup (with thousands of dollars in metal detectors bouncing on the pickup bed floor) out to the days cat push. I came back to Ganes Creek in 2006 for two weeks and Dave was not there. By then they had a school buss an our metal detectors did not get bounced around or stepped upon. Not sure where Dave was for the two weeks but his wife was there as the cook in the two weeks of July 2006.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

Here is a 33.85 oz nugget found at Ganes cr in 2003. It was found about 2 miles at the cobble piles down stream from camp with a Gold Bug II with a 14" coil. It was laying on the surface and about 50 different people went over it the previous year.

 

[steve herschbach]

More like 50 other people went around it, including me! Just goes to show how being the first over the magic spot is the key in most cases, as a good set of eyeballs would have found that, let alone a detector. Irony is that is the first area ever took me because people had actually found nuggets sitting on the surface in that location. I found a much smaller nugget there. Anyway, good on you for finding one of the larger nuggets ever found at Ganes Creek!

Steve Herschbach

 

[tvanwho]

How in the world could 50 people walk over a lump that size in plain sight and bright yellow? Were they watchng their meters too closely and not doing any eyeballing?
I seem to recall you had trouble on the airplane bringing that piece home?

-Tom

 

[steve herschbach]

People walking around in the area is not the same thing as walking over, though I suppose that is possible.

Steve Herschbach

 

[mudpuppy]

n/t

 

[Steve in Idaho]

After they would push with the cat, every thing would be covered with gray muck. There was also a lot of large metal targets in the ground. Remember that all detectors then did not have meters to look at. During the spring thaw, the rain and snow melt would wash the rocks off leaving those bright yellow targets shinning in the sun. I actually saw the nugget before running the coil over it. It was like sticking your detector on the side of a truck. A very loud scream that almost blew my ear phones off. And yes, the airlines was not going to let me carry it on in my carry on luggage. They thought that I would use it as a weapon and hi-jack the plane. It took me 4 hours to find a solution with the Feds and put it in my regulator luggage.

 

[fongu]

Great finds. That's not a gold nugget, it's a boulder. It looked like it was heart shaped and the gold in the first photos sure were huge. Imagine the airlines thinking you would use something like that for a weapon. Thanks for posting these photos. I watch Gold Fever on Saturday mornings at 6 am, but I've never seen anything like this except at an auction he and his wife went to.

 

[Silicon John]

Steve it has been some time since you and your partners at Dolan Springs, AZ invited Gary Thomas and me to park our RV's on your property and go to Gold Basin to swing our metal detectors with your group. You may remember that it was raining sideways when we arrived at Dolan Springs that January evening in 2005. I think we had dinner in the Thomas' motor home and then the gold stories started. Steve you were kind of as you did not know us but when I brought out my few nuggets from Ganes Creek you left and came back with the whopper that you had found. It blew Gary and me away.

Gary and I had driven from San Jose, CA to Las Vegas, NV and across Hoover Dam (there is a bridge now across the Colorado River about 1/4 mile south of the dam) then onto AZ-93 to Dolan Springs. A bit of history there too. At Hoover Dam armed guards stopped us and came inside to inspect the RV's. Bomb scares were the order of the day then too. Now you do not even drive on top of Hoover Dam at all. The guard saw my plywood box with the Minelab 3000 in it and he asked about it. I told him it was for finding gold. He asked if we found any and I told him. "about every day" I was pushing it a bit.

It turned out to be far two wet to go out nugget hunting and Gary and I felt lucky we got back onto black top on our way to Quartzsite, AZ. I was leaving 3 inch deep tire tracks in the sandy, muddy ground on your lot. We got some good photos of you and your buddies and more important I got the one photo that I treasure. Me holding that big, beautiful, 33+ Oz gold nugget. Oh, those were the days.

 

[Silicon John]

Got to thinking about how well Dave Rankin did with his MXT at Ganes Creek. Not to distract from Dave's ability, but he did have at least things that gave him an edge over the rest of us Pilgrims. 1) He was there and knew the entire gold claim as only one can know the land, by spending hundreds of hours on it. Once when I brought in a small size nugget he looked at it and said "you found that in the fine material down north of the runways, down toward the trees." He was right on. 2) He was there and saw when the bulldozer had pushed through a hot spot and saw nuggets being found. So he knew where to look. 3) Each of us would pick up and bring away all the trash targets (mostly iron) that we found. I guess it was to prove that even if we were not finding gold, we were trying and could handle a metal detector. So when Dave Rankin went, in the quiet of the evening, or on weekends, swinging low and slow over the better producing areas, there was much less trash to contend with. Sometimes gold was under that removed trash and the novice had moved on, without rechecking the area. I do think Dave had an edge up on the rest of us and envy him for it.

The MXT was the correct metal detector for Ganes Creek in my opinion. The second time I went to Ganes Creek I started out again using the Minelab 3000 and would dig most every target, like I had done two years before. Well it was killing me. I had gotten older. So I switched to my backup MXT. After that I only dug: copper, aluminum, brass, lead, and gold and some hot rocks. Dave Rankin probably could discriminate away from the hot rocks. I never learned how.

I had heard that Dave would fly to Anchorage with his gold and sell the nuggets for a premium at the Saturday, Anchorage, Alaska Flea Market but I do not know this for sure. You would not want to sell those beautiful nuggets as common flower gold. The photo shows Gary Thomas at that Flea market in 2004. Note: Dave if you read this I mean no disrespect.

 

[tvanwho]

When we left Ganes in June 2005, we stopped at some curio shops in downtown Anchorage near a Hostel place where we stayed overnite. One shop had tons of gold nuggets for sale but they looked awful yellow,like too yellow? I had my little gold and quartz specimen from Ganes I got with my Lobo ( A whisper signal by the way) and a solid piece Gerry McMullen gave me for trying hard. ( I seem to recall gold was around $450 an ounce back then)
My 2 pieces were not over 5 grams but the shop owner offered me $275 for them !! He told us the tourists want the white quartz pieces that have gold showing vs the solid gold nuggets.

-Tom.ps, Steve in Idaho, do you keep that monster locked up or on display somewheres? Can't be too trusting these days? I was in a county museum in Arizona a few years ago, and they had a meteorite in a display case with a value of like $40,000 posted on a card. That seemed like an invitation to being robbed to me...but what do I know?

 

[Steve in Idaho]

tvanto: I sold that nugget back to Doug Clark and it went to his partner's wife. She kept it with a lot of other gold in her house and all of that gold was stolen a couple of years ago. None was recovered.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

John: I remember that time very well. I only wish that we could have gotten out and found some gold. You and Gary were good friends.I still see Allen at the gold shows.

 

[Steve in Idaho]

That nugget got to be known as the "Heart of Ganes cr." I have many pics of that nugget.

 

[steve herschbach]

A very sad affair, that. My 5 oz nugget was given to Doug, who have it to Dan Wiltz. He had it with him when he crashed his Super Cub and died, and the nugget was never found. They suspect someone got to the wreck site first and took the cash and gold.

Steve Herschbach

 

[fongu]

Didn't they used to hang claim jumpers in the good old days? I can't stand a thief. If you want something I got, ask for it. I will either share or say yes or no, but don't take it.

 

[Silicon John]

The photo is me holding two gold nuggets. This was taken at the big gem and mineral show in Tucson, AZ in February of 2004. Doug and Cathy were there at a gold stand. A friend of Doug from Colorado was displaying and selling gold. Doug let me hold the 58 Oz and the 120 Oz nuggets from his mine at Ganes Creek. These were found by a commercial miner and not in the armature group of gold nuggets. I gave Doug a check for my first week at Ganes Creek that day.