nero_design
New member
Everybody likes to hear about someone else's misfortune. Let me tell you about mine:
NSW, Australia: Yesterday's adventure into the goldfields was pretty much a complete failure and I left the region with less that I had actually entered it with. If you don't count the pain I'm in today, it had it's merits and I can say now that I've at least learned a few things more than on the last trip.
This was my 7th trip to the region. I had spent many late nights reviewing maps and marking the location of previously unknown mines and diggings.
Three trips previously had established scattered small gold in the creeks and a smallish nugget which appeared to have traveled some distance over millions of years to find itself under my coil. The cost for me to take a trip out there (including food, water and petrol) is around $100 each time so I thought that a more carefully planned trip would maximize the knowledge I had gained on the region. I'd even marked the direction of the quartz veins on the charts. I had genuinely expected to find serious gold this time. I was of course completely wrong about that.
My friend and I left the city before the sun had risen and drove several hours to the region and stopped for food and drinks before making our way off road to the forest area we were determined to explore. It was due to reach 36C degrees in the shade. En route to the trail, I drove head-on into a swarm of gigantic chrome-green beetles called Christmas Jewel Beetles which struck the car at 100kmph like lead bullets. Quite a sobering experience. We parked the car in the shade at the end of the dirt track when we found it and geared up for the quest. I over-applied the bug repellent and ingested almost as much as I wore. My lips went numb as a result and I spilled my water when I tried to rehydrate. My friend said he was fine and declined the offer of bug repellent on the fact that there was none of the summer flies about. This was a decision made which he was to later regret.
[size=small]The valley we were exploring was pretty thick with overgrown plants, tall grass and plenty of snakes.[/size]
We headed down river and into very thick vegetation. I chose to swap coils from my Elliptical and mounted the 6" DD Coil to allow me to check the creeks and riverbeds for submerged nuggets and this meant that I was using it on dry ground as well. I think this was probably the first mistake of many for the day because the 6" DD HF coil is really quite sensitive. It reacted to every square foot of soil we covered. The ground was absolutely loaded with silver and iron ore. At first, we dug into the ground whenever we felt a target might be significant but within minutes, we just had to keep going or we'd never get to our destination - several kilometers deep into the valley where miners had reportedly found reef gold and rough alluvial deposits generations ago.
[size=small]The creek where I found some small gold and a VERY large spiny freshwater Crayfish... he was under the rock in the center of frame.[/size]
My friend kept borrowing my pinpointer (I purchased a Vibraprobe 570 from Kellyco after reading a thread on it here on this forum) and he managed to cover it with red mud before and scratches returning it to me. I had only just pulled it out for the first time. It is a handheld Pulse-Induction (P.I.) Detector that signals with vibrations so the user doesn't have to remove their main detector headphones. Both of us were chasing elusive targets everywhere. I dug a .22 shell casing and a WHOLE bunch of hot rocks of different types. In the creek, I detected a great target at an overflow and slipped on a mossy rock, damaging the tendons in my groin which make it all but impossible to even walk today. The target was revealed with the Pinpointer (which is waterproof) and it turned out to be a rusted nail that had long corroded and had become lodged in a deep groove on the bedrock. I discovered another deep fissure on the lip of the creek which the X-Terra's 6" coil indicated was at least 12 inches long and quite narrow. My friend still had the Pinpointer and had progressed nicely on his crater so I continued to scratch around on the creek bottom to collect the odd few grains of gold. I moved a large rock and out from under it crawled the largest crayfish I have ever seen in a creek here. It was almost a foot long and covered in huge spines. I reached out to grab it and it waved a large red and blue claw at me before it slipped away with the current.
My friend called me over to examine his excavation. After an hour of digging, he had found no target. I sampled the area with the X-Terra 70 and decided it was just mineralization in the soil. I looked down and pointed to the large rock at his feet which was glittering with gold all over each side. It was pyrite but I'd never seen so much of it in one large stone before. And it was marbled all through the quartz veins in the rock. I asked him if he intended to bring the whole rock back or just a part of it and he took a closer look. He checked it with his coil and there was no response and I did the same. It was certainly pyrites but it was amazing the way it sparked in the sun with such a silvery-golden sparkle. I decided to chip off a large chunk to take back with me and set to work with my pick. The first swing showered me with sparks that were bright orange and yellow. The rock consisted of flint I suspect and was so hard that it blunted my sharp steel point in less than two blows. I put on my protective glasses to protect my eyes from shards and kept striking the stone. Sparks flew with every impact and I was amazed they could be seen in direct sunlight. Eventually I broke off a chunk and my friend insisted on bagging it because my pack was already full. As we scrambled over the boulders, I saw another that was the size of a car engine block, also covered with a fine sparkle of golden pyrites. It was quite magical to see this on such a large scale. The rocks had most likely been smashed by miners a century before.
[size=small]The rock with quartz full of Pyrites that fooled my companion for a moment. You can see some unsuccessful pick axe strikes on the left corner area of the rock itself. [/size]
It was a long, hard slog to make it just a half kilometer downstream and it took 4 hours to get there, such was the terrain and awkward slope of the narrow canyons. Quite a ways shy of the distance we needed to cover. I stopped again to rehydrate in the 37 degree heat from the frozen 2 liter block of ice I had brought with me and found that my friend had decided against bringing drinking water with him. He assured me he had brought water with him when we left the car but it seems he was being lazy and confessed the truth only when he realized how much further I had planned to travel. He was also unable to calculate distances on a map, something I was previously unaware of.
[size=small]My friend at the crest of the mountain valley and looking down into the creek we were following - still way below the mountains on either side of us. [/size]
[size=small]Looking the other direction from the same seated position which I took the picture before this one. [/size]
We reached an impasse and agreed to climb the saddle of the nearest mountain to determine whether we should go on or return to the car so that we could try another area before the sun set. When we made it to the crest, we literally couldn't see the forest because of the trees. It was clear that we would probably not have enough light to return if we continued so we decided to turn back and cross the mountain to return. We came across a lot of broken quartz on the sides of the mountain and most of it showed signs of having been split and hewn by hand. I used the X-Terra 70 to scan the granite and quartz and then noticed a large excavated hole in the ground which was quite noticeable because of all the bright red soil that had been exposed. A large rock had been overturned and smaller stones had been pulled from the ground which clearly indicated another detectorist had been there before us. But had he found his target and extracted it? Placed my search coil over the red soil in the slight crater and noticed that a pick axe had been used to dig part of the hole but the X-70 sounded out loud and clear with a sharp signal. The target was still there. Why hadn't the detectorist who'd found it finished digging it out? I crouched down and began to dig out the hole further with my own pick when the red soil turned glossy black and literally thousands of inch long "Jumper Ants" (AKA: Bulldog Ants / Commando Ants / Meat Ants) just exploded out of the earth and covered my 6" coil and the end of my pick which was still in the soil. This was why the detectorist had fled. This was why the target remained undug. And since this species of ant is in fact a type of Wingless Wasp and not a typical ant, I threw myself backwards and scraped the ferocious stinging ants off my coil and my pick axe before stomping my feet and running after my friend who had likewise fled before me. These ants are called Jumper Jack Ants for a reason... they leap forward in quick jumps that can exceed 7cm per jump (see pic at the end of the thread) and are one of the few insects that will pursue humans or large animals for several meters in an effort to sting them. They are attracted to any movement and can be found roaming alone in the forest away from the nest as they are solitary foragers. Did I mention that they are over an inch long? It was a very steep cliff to my right as I caught up to my friend and I was just about to relax when I felt a spike of white-hot pain lance through my ankle on the inside of my left foot. The pain was so intense that I felt the tendons and muscles in my neck make a popping sound and I yanked up my jeans to see one of the inch-long ants clinging to my sock. I ripped it away with my hand and crushed it with my pick against the rocks. Now these ants have killed people with a single sting and so I had my friend remove a special cream for insect bites from my pack and I put it on my ankle to stem the agony. We found another spot of bright red soil and this time I just hovered the coil over the soil from a distance. There was a signal here too. I stomped my feet and for a moment there was nothing. Then a Jumper And appeared from a hole in the soil and jumped the 4 inch gap to land on my DD coil before latching on and stinging it. The ground below the coil instantly became a mass of furious and very dangerous ants as the entire colony began to disgorge itself to the surface to attack the intruder from Minelab.
I started to scuttle away but lost my footing. As I scrambled to shift the weight of my pack and prevent my demise, the loose dirt and rocks gave way under my feet and I grabbed the nearest plants to avoid falling down the ravine. Unfortunately, I grabbed the only cactus that I was to discover that day. The spines went down to the tendons in my hand and snapped off. I lost my pick over the edge during the scramble. My crevice sucker (for fine gold on the creekbeds) came loose from my pack and it too went over the edge. For some reason it didn't even register on me for another half an hour that I had lost equipment. I never lose equipment but this day was unique.
We returned to the car and the insect venom had made me somewhat incoherent and completely unable to focus on anything at hand. It's a day later and I can't walk properly, my muscles are in such pain.
Incidentally, my wife Rena used to come out with me on these sort of trips and was bitten by something in the bush which stripped the nerves in her brain and part of her spine from their protective sheaths, causing the impulses along the nerve to discharge into the surrounding tissues. This triggered partial blindness and a few weeks later, she lost all feeling down one side of her body. It cost us a fortune in CT and multiple MRI scans to try to find out what was happening. She's coming out with me again in a couple of days for the first time again since the incident. We still don't know exactly what caused it but insect venom was a likely cause. The symptoms were identical to MS.
[attachment 83845 RenasMRIscan.jpg]
[size=small]Rena gets her first MRI scan with more to follow. [/size]
Having returned to the car, we could access the frozen water I brought with me (it had melted in the cooler slightly) and we drove to an area several kilometers away which I knew had once given up vast volumes of Gold. Over a million ounces ...in one particular set of creeks there... had been dug in the 1800s.
I asked my friend to guide us onto the correct offroad route via the map which he opened and then immediately passed out in. I was navigating a cliff at the time with an unconscious passenger (what the heck?) and no way to turn the car around. The sun was behind me and I couldn't safely reverse. And on the dirt road ahead, the corpse of a dead wombat lay bloated in the sun and covered in flies. I got out of the car and picked up a stick to try to move it but the animal was putrid and too heavy to move without assistance or a larger stick. The smell drove me back to the car with my shirt tied around my face to reduce my desire to throw up from the stench. I used a side mirror to navigate in reverse to a side road and turned the car around to try and find another way into the valley. On the way, I stopped and took samples of the rocks by the roadside for later inspection. I saw a pair of eagles soaring overhead on the currents in the air and took the time to try to photograph them. I had no idea we had Eagles in this part of Australia until yesterday. When I got to the bottom of the valley I was seeking, the sun was setting behind the hills and the sky was starting to lose light.
[size=small]My friend passed out in the car (altitude sickness? LOL!) whilst I sampled the soil. [/size]
[size=small]One of the Eagles overhead. [/size]
I found the creek I was after (having marked it on my maps several weeks ago) and stopped the car beside it and grabbed my panning dish & shovel. One shovel of gravel showed flecks of rounded gold granules. A second shovel full showed half a dozen more. The third panload (I was using the new oddly shaped Blue pan from the US) actually had a small nugget in it. And the last panload I washed had small chunks of gold in it that I could see whilst standing 6 feet away from where I was flinging it with my shovel. This was a good spot. The piles of gravel on the side of the bank beside me were all the same size so I knew someone else had been here with a sluice recently. By now the sky was dark and the moonlight wasn't quite bright enough to allow us to pan further. My friend had also found gold but was too lazy to dig down past the surface gravel so he found less than I did. He cursed me when I found the little nugget. His decision to avoid the bug spray earlier resulted in him drawing every mosquito for miles and they formed a small crowd around him. We returned to the car just a half dozen feet away on the track ... avoided the rabbits and Kangaroos... and returned to the nearest town for a burger and cold beverages before commencing the long drive home.
Today I'm buying a recovery bucket to better process the wash and gravel. I need to repair my crevice-pump and collect some supplies and then my wife and I are returning to the same spot to see if we can determine just how much gold is there. The largest officially recorded nugget from that creek was 167 ounces. I have a good feeling there's a few smaller ones lying around there still. Will report back in shortly after I run the X-Terra about the region.
Some things I learned Yesterday:
* The Elliptical Coil is better for scanning larger areas than the 6". That smaller DD HF coil is really better suited to more refined scanning or underwater uses.
* The Blue pan which I had earlier complained about due to it's brightness in sunlight was AMAZING to use after the sun had dipped behind the mountains. In the low light, the pan was ideal. The gold particles and micro-nuggets literally shone as if they were glowing in the pan.
* The VibraProbe 570 is really quite a cool little gadget. You don't need it but it makes your day a little easier by speeding up the process of finding targets in soil. Helps avoid damaging nuggets apparently.
* Jumper Ants are the direct spawn of the devil himself.
[size=small]The rock specimen with Pyrites (Fool's Gold) which I chipped off and brought back. Take a closer look to see why it can fool anyone without experience... or a metal detector. [/size]
[attachment 83846 JumperAnt.jpg]
[size=small]The Jumper Ant is a little over an inch long. I've seen these ants on the branches of trees and watched them jump/drop 4 feet to the ground and then follow me wherever I went in an effort to sting me. They remind me of The Terminator. I suspect early Miners and Gold Prospectors would have sought out these nests with kettles of boiling water. [/size]
NSW, Australia: Yesterday's adventure into the goldfields was pretty much a complete failure and I left the region with less that I had actually entered it with. If you don't count the pain I'm in today, it had it's merits and I can say now that I've at least learned a few things more than on the last trip.
This was my 7th trip to the region. I had spent many late nights reviewing maps and marking the location of previously unknown mines and diggings.
Three trips previously had established scattered small gold in the creeks and a smallish nugget which appeared to have traveled some distance over millions of years to find itself under my coil. The cost for me to take a trip out there (including food, water and petrol) is around $100 each time so I thought that a more carefully planned trip would maximize the knowledge I had gained on the region. I'd even marked the direction of the quartz veins on the charts. I had genuinely expected to find serious gold this time. I was of course completely wrong about that.
My friend and I left the city before the sun had risen and drove several hours to the region and stopped for food and drinks before making our way off road to the forest area we were determined to explore. It was due to reach 36C degrees in the shade. En route to the trail, I drove head-on into a swarm of gigantic chrome-green beetles called Christmas Jewel Beetles which struck the car at 100kmph like lead bullets. Quite a sobering experience. We parked the car in the shade at the end of the dirt track when we found it and geared up for the quest. I over-applied the bug repellent and ingested almost as much as I wore. My lips went numb as a result and I spilled my water when I tried to rehydrate. My friend said he was fine and declined the offer of bug repellent on the fact that there was none of the summer flies about. This was a decision made which he was to later regret.
[size=small]The valley we were exploring was pretty thick with overgrown plants, tall grass and plenty of snakes.[/size]
We headed down river and into very thick vegetation. I chose to swap coils from my Elliptical and mounted the 6" DD Coil to allow me to check the creeks and riverbeds for submerged nuggets and this meant that I was using it on dry ground as well. I think this was probably the first mistake of many for the day because the 6" DD HF coil is really quite sensitive. It reacted to every square foot of soil we covered. The ground was absolutely loaded with silver and iron ore. At first, we dug into the ground whenever we felt a target might be significant but within minutes, we just had to keep going or we'd never get to our destination - several kilometers deep into the valley where miners had reportedly found reef gold and rough alluvial deposits generations ago.
[size=small]The creek where I found some small gold and a VERY large spiny freshwater Crayfish... he was under the rock in the center of frame.[/size]
My friend kept borrowing my pinpointer (I purchased a Vibraprobe 570 from Kellyco after reading a thread on it here on this forum) and he managed to cover it with red mud before and scratches returning it to me. I had only just pulled it out for the first time. It is a handheld Pulse-Induction (P.I.) Detector that signals with vibrations so the user doesn't have to remove their main detector headphones. Both of us were chasing elusive targets everywhere. I dug a .22 shell casing and a WHOLE bunch of hot rocks of different types. In the creek, I detected a great target at an overflow and slipped on a mossy rock, damaging the tendons in my groin which make it all but impossible to even walk today. The target was revealed with the Pinpointer (which is waterproof) and it turned out to be a rusted nail that had long corroded and had become lodged in a deep groove on the bedrock. I discovered another deep fissure on the lip of the creek which the X-Terra's 6" coil indicated was at least 12 inches long and quite narrow. My friend still had the Pinpointer and had progressed nicely on his crater so I continued to scratch around on the creek bottom to collect the odd few grains of gold. I moved a large rock and out from under it crawled the largest crayfish I have ever seen in a creek here. It was almost a foot long and covered in huge spines. I reached out to grab it and it waved a large red and blue claw at me before it slipped away with the current.
My friend called me over to examine his excavation. After an hour of digging, he had found no target. I sampled the area with the X-Terra 70 and decided it was just mineralization in the soil. I looked down and pointed to the large rock at his feet which was glittering with gold all over each side. It was pyrite but I'd never seen so much of it in one large stone before. And it was marbled all through the quartz veins in the rock. I asked him if he intended to bring the whole rock back or just a part of it and he took a closer look. He checked it with his coil and there was no response and I did the same. It was certainly pyrites but it was amazing the way it sparked in the sun with such a silvery-golden sparkle. I decided to chip off a large chunk to take back with me and set to work with my pick. The first swing showered me with sparks that were bright orange and yellow. The rock consisted of flint I suspect and was so hard that it blunted my sharp steel point in less than two blows. I put on my protective glasses to protect my eyes from shards and kept striking the stone. Sparks flew with every impact and I was amazed they could be seen in direct sunlight. Eventually I broke off a chunk and my friend insisted on bagging it because my pack was already full. As we scrambled over the boulders, I saw another that was the size of a car engine block, also covered with a fine sparkle of golden pyrites. It was quite magical to see this on such a large scale. The rocks had most likely been smashed by miners a century before.
[size=small]The rock with quartz full of Pyrites that fooled my companion for a moment. You can see some unsuccessful pick axe strikes on the left corner area of the rock itself. [/size]
It was a long, hard slog to make it just a half kilometer downstream and it took 4 hours to get there, such was the terrain and awkward slope of the narrow canyons. Quite a ways shy of the distance we needed to cover. I stopped again to rehydrate in the 37 degree heat from the frozen 2 liter block of ice I had brought with me and found that my friend had decided against bringing drinking water with him. He assured me he had brought water with him when we left the car but it seems he was being lazy and confessed the truth only when he realized how much further I had planned to travel. He was also unable to calculate distances on a map, something I was previously unaware of.
[size=small]My friend at the crest of the mountain valley and looking down into the creek we were following - still way below the mountains on either side of us. [/size]
[size=small]Looking the other direction from the same seated position which I took the picture before this one. [/size]
We reached an impasse and agreed to climb the saddle of the nearest mountain to determine whether we should go on or return to the car so that we could try another area before the sun set. When we made it to the crest, we literally couldn't see the forest because of the trees. It was clear that we would probably not have enough light to return if we continued so we decided to turn back and cross the mountain to return. We came across a lot of broken quartz on the sides of the mountain and most of it showed signs of having been split and hewn by hand. I used the X-Terra 70 to scan the granite and quartz and then noticed a large excavated hole in the ground which was quite noticeable because of all the bright red soil that had been exposed. A large rock had been overturned and smaller stones had been pulled from the ground which clearly indicated another detectorist had been there before us. But had he found his target and extracted it? Placed my search coil over the red soil in the slight crater and noticed that a pick axe had been used to dig part of the hole but the X-70 sounded out loud and clear with a sharp signal. The target was still there. Why hadn't the detectorist who'd found it finished digging it out? I crouched down and began to dig out the hole further with my own pick when the red soil turned glossy black and literally thousands of inch long "Jumper Ants" (AKA: Bulldog Ants / Commando Ants / Meat Ants) just exploded out of the earth and covered my 6" coil and the end of my pick which was still in the soil. This was why the detectorist had fled. This was why the target remained undug. And since this species of ant is in fact a type of Wingless Wasp and not a typical ant, I threw myself backwards and scraped the ferocious stinging ants off my coil and my pick axe before stomping my feet and running after my friend who had likewise fled before me. These ants are called Jumper Jack Ants for a reason... they leap forward in quick jumps that can exceed 7cm per jump (see pic at the end of the thread) and are one of the few insects that will pursue humans or large animals for several meters in an effort to sting them. They are attracted to any movement and can be found roaming alone in the forest away from the nest as they are solitary foragers. Did I mention that they are over an inch long? It was a very steep cliff to my right as I caught up to my friend and I was just about to relax when I felt a spike of white-hot pain lance through my ankle on the inside of my left foot. The pain was so intense that I felt the tendons and muscles in my neck make a popping sound and I yanked up my jeans to see one of the inch-long ants clinging to my sock. I ripped it away with my hand and crushed it with my pick against the rocks. Now these ants have killed people with a single sting and so I had my friend remove a special cream for insect bites from my pack and I put it on my ankle to stem the agony. We found another spot of bright red soil and this time I just hovered the coil over the soil from a distance. There was a signal here too. I stomped my feet and for a moment there was nothing. Then a Jumper And appeared from a hole in the soil and jumped the 4 inch gap to land on my DD coil before latching on and stinging it. The ground below the coil instantly became a mass of furious and very dangerous ants as the entire colony began to disgorge itself to the surface to attack the intruder from Minelab.
I started to scuttle away but lost my footing. As I scrambled to shift the weight of my pack and prevent my demise, the loose dirt and rocks gave way under my feet and I grabbed the nearest plants to avoid falling down the ravine. Unfortunately, I grabbed the only cactus that I was to discover that day. The spines went down to the tendons in my hand and snapped off. I lost my pick over the edge during the scramble. My crevice sucker (for fine gold on the creekbeds) came loose from my pack and it too went over the edge. For some reason it didn't even register on me for another half an hour that I had lost equipment. I never lose equipment but this day was unique.
We returned to the car and the insect venom had made me somewhat incoherent and completely unable to focus on anything at hand. It's a day later and I can't walk properly, my muscles are in such pain.
Incidentally, my wife Rena used to come out with me on these sort of trips and was bitten by something in the bush which stripped the nerves in her brain and part of her spine from their protective sheaths, causing the impulses along the nerve to discharge into the surrounding tissues. This triggered partial blindness and a few weeks later, she lost all feeling down one side of her body. It cost us a fortune in CT and multiple MRI scans to try to find out what was happening. She's coming out with me again in a couple of days for the first time again since the incident. We still don't know exactly what caused it but insect venom was a likely cause. The symptoms were identical to MS.
[attachment 83845 RenasMRIscan.jpg]
[size=small]Rena gets her first MRI scan with more to follow. [/size]
Having returned to the car, we could access the frozen water I brought with me (it had melted in the cooler slightly) and we drove to an area several kilometers away which I knew had once given up vast volumes of Gold. Over a million ounces ...in one particular set of creeks there... had been dug in the 1800s.
I asked my friend to guide us onto the correct offroad route via the map which he opened and then immediately passed out in. I was navigating a cliff at the time with an unconscious passenger (what the heck?) and no way to turn the car around. The sun was behind me and I couldn't safely reverse. And on the dirt road ahead, the corpse of a dead wombat lay bloated in the sun and covered in flies. I got out of the car and picked up a stick to try to move it but the animal was putrid and too heavy to move without assistance or a larger stick. The smell drove me back to the car with my shirt tied around my face to reduce my desire to throw up from the stench. I used a side mirror to navigate in reverse to a side road and turned the car around to try and find another way into the valley. On the way, I stopped and took samples of the rocks by the roadside for later inspection. I saw a pair of eagles soaring overhead on the currents in the air and took the time to try to photograph them. I had no idea we had Eagles in this part of Australia until yesterday. When I got to the bottom of the valley I was seeking, the sun was setting behind the hills and the sky was starting to lose light.
[size=small]My friend passed out in the car (altitude sickness? LOL!) whilst I sampled the soil. [/size]
[size=small]One of the Eagles overhead. [/size]
I found the creek I was after (having marked it on my maps several weeks ago) and stopped the car beside it and grabbed my panning dish & shovel. One shovel of gravel showed flecks of rounded gold granules. A second shovel full showed half a dozen more. The third panload (I was using the new oddly shaped Blue pan from the US) actually had a small nugget in it. And the last panload I washed had small chunks of gold in it that I could see whilst standing 6 feet away from where I was flinging it with my shovel. This was a good spot. The piles of gravel on the side of the bank beside me were all the same size so I knew someone else had been here with a sluice recently. By now the sky was dark and the moonlight wasn't quite bright enough to allow us to pan further. My friend had also found gold but was too lazy to dig down past the surface gravel so he found less than I did. He cursed me when I found the little nugget. His decision to avoid the bug spray earlier resulted in him drawing every mosquito for miles and they formed a small crowd around him. We returned to the car just a half dozen feet away on the track ... avoided the rabbits and Kangaroos... and returned to the nearest town for a burger and cold beverages before commencing the long drive home.
Today I'm buying a recovery bucket to better process the wash and gravel. I need to repair my crevice-pump and collect some supplies and then my wife and I are returning to the same spot to see if we can determine just how much gold is there. The largest officially recorded nugget from that creek was 167 ounces. I have a good feeling there's a few smaller ones lying around there still. Will report back in shortly after I run the X-Terra about the region.
Some things I learned Yesterday:
* The Elliptical Coil is better for scanning larger areas than the 6". That smaller DD HF coil is really better suited to more refined scanning or underwater uses.
* The Blue pan which I had earlier complained about due to it's brightness in sunlight was AMAZING to use after the sun had dipped behind the mountains. In the low light, the pan was ideal. The gold particles and micro-nuggets literally shone as if they were glowing in the pan.
* The VibraProbe 570 is really quite a cool little gadget. You don't need it but it makes your day a little easier by speeding up the process of finding targets in soil. Helps avoid damaging nuggets apparently.
* Jumper Ants are the direct spawn of the devil himself.
[size=small]The rock specimen with Pyrites (Fool's Gold) which I chipped off and brought back. Take a closer look to see why it can fool anyone without experience... or a metal detector. [/size]
[attachment 83846 JumperAnt.jpg]
[size=small]The Jumper Ant is a little over an inch long. I've seen these ants on the branches of trees and watched them jump/drop 4 feet to the ground and then follow me wherever I went in an effort to sting me. They remind me of The Terminator. I suspect early Miners and Gold Prospectors would have sought out these nests with kettles of boiling water. [/size]
