Randy's Feb 2012 California Gold Prospecting Trip

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Randy's Feb 2012 California Gold Prospecting Trip

Postby C-17A » Sun Feb 19, 2012 11:52 am

Greetings Gold Dreagers,

One more “War & Peace” Trip Report of my recent time out in the hills prospecting...

Always looking for a chance to gold prospect, I took only my pan, hand trowel, crevice tool and snuffer bottle with me to California, as I went to Southern California to hop onto a C-17A flight overseas. Never know if/when I might get a few hours or more to “hit the hills”. I planned in an extra day on the front & back of the trip so I could do any required just-in-time training before, if required, and mission slip time on the backside.

As luck would have it, I was good to go on training, so Thursday, 2 Feb 12 was all mine to crew rest and prospect before my 3 Feb 12 departure for overseas. I made photocopies of several relatively close areas/claims in the GPAA Claims Guide. CA-44 Bautista Placer, CA-45 the Crystal Group and CA-46/47, Holcomb Valley Gold were especially interesting to me, and relatively close to March ARB, CA, in Riverside, CA, where I was staying.

Here is my “gold adventures” exploits in detail:

1). Thursday, 2 Feb 12 – Bautista Placer. Located southeast of Hemet, CA, up Bautista Canyon Rd. I was up early, coffee & fed, and cruising to Hemet by 8 AM. Claims guide said seasonal water, drywashers preferred, and take your own panning water in search of flakes and fines. I stopped at the Target in Hemet to buy a small plastic tub to pan in and 4 gals of water. I expected a dry gulch experience with dry panning the coarser material and finish panning in my tub. The day was beautiful.......clear, cool, going to be sunny.

Once past the town, and thru the orange & grapefruit orchards, I crossed over the dry Bautista creek just as it exited the hills and hit the flat farmland. No running water, but those two big culverts under the bridge looked promising, as they often act like riffles in a sluice box. So, I turned around, parked and went down into the creek bed below the road to inspect. Yep, some material still in the lowest parts of the culvert, and I could see where others had thought the same thing and were diggin’ for gold.

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I grabbed my pan, trowel and crevice tool & proceeded to scrape off the sandy overburden and get one big pan of material from the joint areas, hoping for some color. I took it with me up the canyon, planning to pan it later, which I did, but other than black sand, found no gold. Not a good start. Well worth trying...

Miles up the canyon road you come to the state prison, where the blacktop road turns to dirt, and then about 1 mile further on dirt to the middle of the claim on the creek. I parked in a pullout and walked to the bank edge, and about 75 feet below me could see & hear water running. YEAH! I wouldn’t need to drag my tub & jugs of water down the steep hill, as I could pan in the seasonal creek still flowing, at least a little.

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I packed my lunch, water & stuff into my little backpack and down to the creek I went....hoping for gold.

At the creek, I could see a nice little flow of clear, cool water and boot prints of some other prospectors in the sand & mud. I wondered how they did and if I might do better... I set up downstream a little ways, where the decomposing granite bedrock met the waterline at a slight elbow turn. I wanted to crevice the bedrock, thinking it might be the most productive, as I was armed with nothing but a little hand trowel, I wasn’t going to be diggin’ a pit that day into the creek bed. I creviced one pan full of material and panned it. Yes! One ultra tiny speck in my first pan. I didn’t get skunked. I continued to sample pan different spots. Good black sand, so that was encouraging, despite the very coarse, almost white granite sand that made up most the creek material.

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After 4 or 5 pans and only 2 or 3 specks, time to move. The sun was up, warming fast towards 70 degrees in the sun, and the deer flies came out in full force, buzzing around your face, nose and ears. Why do they want to crawl inside your ears I’ll never know... Anyways, I slowly worked my way up stream, and spying a boulder in the middle of the creek and I creviced a nice crevice in it, hoping for color that should collect there over the many years of floods. Thirty minutes and 2 pans later, just 1 more speck.

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O.K. Feeling a little disappointed with over an hour, maybe 10 pans and 3 or 4 specks, I moved up stream past several wider, flatter sandbar areas looking for more bedrock close the water and deep in the creek bed. Several hundred yards upstream I found that spot, and started crevicing and panned out 3 pans over about 30 minutes. Got 3 pieces of lead birdshot and maybe 1 speck. Bummer. Decided to have lunch and just enjoy the light breeze, sunny day and admire the rough hills all around, as some of the taller hills were over 4,000 feet. Interesting mix of yucca, coyote brush, cacti and oak trees in that area.

After lunch, I pressed further up stream, and the creek flowed slower and slower. I hoped to not run out of water for panning. I eventually came to the dirt road at a creek bend, where several big time pullouts existed and I could see folks would pull off, camp and prospect this area hard.

Evidence was the foot trails, and many holes dug in the creek banks and piles of cobbles and screened rocks. Well, if they were working so hard, maybe better “flakes and fines” here, perhaps? I sample panned a pan from the bottom of several holes in the creek, and even up on top of a big boulder/cobble/gravel bar between 2 forks of the creek, hoping for some flood gold, but sadly nothing. Last hole I sampled here:

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It was way too wet for drywashers, so panning or sluicing was it this time of year, and I unfortunately didn’t have a sluice to move a bunch of material. So, after about 3 ½ hours of prospecting I had 3 lead birdshot and maybe five 100 mesh specks to my credit, I decided to walk back to the rental car and head back to the base and get ready for my mission out on Wednesday. I was honestly a little disappointed, but hey....I didn’t get skunked and I did get some good exercise, and fed a few deer flies too.

2). Sunday 12 Feb 12 – Steele Peak and Holcomb Valley Gold.

Amazingly, I was back from overseas on time, despite the jet giving us maintenance fits at times, I found I had a day off before flying back to Georgia. Time to prospect and make up for the Bautista Placer near skunking from the outing previous... I saw the weather channel was reporting up at Big Bear Lake lows of 21 and highs of 45 degrees, and partly cloudy. I didn’t want to get too early of a start only to find everything frozen solid. Plus, when I flew into Ontario I saw a goodly amount of snow up at Big Bear still hanging around in the shadows and on the north side of the mountains.

So, I elected to first check out a spot just west of Parris, CA, which was south of the base, where my Big 10 map showed a surprising number of old prospects clustered around the base of Steele Peak, all 2,529 feet of it. Forth Street west of Parris, turned into Ellis Ave. and that turned into Santa Rosa Gold Mine Rd. Hey, good name for a road I was hoping to prospect for gold on (or off of), don’t you think? I found a side road that headed up the hill and soon pulled off at a pullout, out of the way of traffic and surveyed the landscape. The land was vacant and looked to be county land. Below was a dry canyon, and the far side showed some obvious diggin’ in the hills....old road, pad, who knows...

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I carried my tub, water and worked my way down the steep hillside to the bottom & back up the far side to the exposed area. I saw obvious quartz stringers in the decomposing granite bedrock, and decided that if the Big 10 map showed up to 15 prospects/mines in the past around here, most likely hard rock mines. I dug decomposing quartz as best I could, not seeing any visible gold in it. I then took 2 big rocks and made my own stamp mill, hoping to free up any gold inside, eventually getting 1 big pan of ground up quartz material. I dry panned it slowly to get the big stuff out and then water panned it in my tub. Sadly, no free gold to be seen.

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O.K., I tried, and time to get off the hillside and down into the gulch below.
I worked my way thru the stickers, brush and realized that water never really flows down that gulch with enough frequency/force to wash material. I saw no sand/gravel bars to sample or bedrock to crevice....just dirt with grass growing on it. I worked my way to where it crossed the road and decided this just wasn’t working out for a guy carrying 3 gals of water, a tub, pan and such. I left the stuff by the side of the road and hoofed it back up the road about ¼ mile to the car and elected to head out to the high mountains up near Big Bear Lake.

It was about 10:30 AM now, and after I navigated I-215 to Hwy 60 to I-215 again, to I-10 to Hwy 330 to Hwy 18 I arrived at Fawnskin, on the north shore of Big Bear Lake about 11:30 AM. The claims guide said to proceed northwest out of Fawnskin on several dirt roads to Holcomb Valley. Mountaintops in that area are about 7,600 feet, and in the shade plenty of snow was still on the ground. The dirt roads were surprisingly good, and my little rental car made the drive no problem, even with a few wet/muddy/soggy areas. The hills were beautiful.

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About 5 miles west I came down a steep hillside and crossed what I believed to be Holcomb Creek looking at my topo map.

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I drove up another dirt road on the west side of the creek about ¼ mile until I came to a feeder creek. I decided to stop there, park, and have lunch and strike out on my prospecting. It was noon, and lunch up in the fresh air was very good, the sky being mostly sunny with big puffy clouds by rapidly. It wasn’t windy at ground level, and cool in the shard and nice in the sun.

The feeder creek flowed water like a large gutter, and up it I went, digging behind several large rocks in the creek, and after 2 pans I had my first speck. Yeah! Not skunked. Now, to find more and bigger gold... The whole area had been burned off in years past by a wildfire, and almost all the pine trees were dead and charred black. Many had weathered to an eerie ½ black, ½ bleached white army of skeleton trees marching off into the distance in every direction. The openness too exposed all the large granite rock formations and showed the ruggedness of this southern California mountains area. Looked to be a lot of granite, so I pondered where the gold had come from originally. Holcomb Creek did have good amounts of quartz in it.

Several hundred yards up that feeder creek I came to a large bend and my first (and only) large gravel bar below a huge, beautiful rock outcropping.

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Not surprising, I could see several large holes, cobbles piled up and screened rocks in piles where other prospectors had worked hard to classify and sluice for gold.

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They wouldn’t have worked that hard if they weren’t getting something I supposed, so I too dug in the bottom of the big hole and 2nd pan gave me a generous amount of black sand and 3 small but chunky pieces of gold. Yahoo! I worked this spot for about 1 ½ hours and got some specks/pieces in almost every pan. Nothing big yet, but CA gold you could actually see and could show off to someone.

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I decided to move, wishing I had a sluice I could just shovel material into vs. hand panning each & every pan. Upstream the creek got too boggy, too small and too overgrown with vegetation. I decided to go all the way back down to the actual Holcomb Creek and try there. Once there, I could see it was running nicely, and the creek bed was very sandy/gravely and full of rocks.

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This was going to be hard, without any exposed bedrock, for a guy with a pan & hand trowel as his only tools...

I dug in several gravel bars, where others had dug, hoping to see/locate maybe a black sand layer or flood gold pay streak. After 5 or 6 pans, not a speck. I decided to hoof it way up stream, as the day was getting long, the sun moving low now in the western sky, and only a few hours of good daylight left. Lots of willows in the rocky creek bed, and about ¼ mile up I came across a spot folks had camped and they worked REAL hard chopping back the willows in the creek and diggin’ a big hole around several large rocks.

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I sample panned all 4 sides as best I could and only got one speck. I moved on...

About another ¼ mile up I came across another feeder creek, although this was a dry one, and marveled at the beautiful rock outcroppings up above in the bright sunlight. Up it I went, and within 100 yards found an area that many a prospector had worked, with various holes in the banks. I saw just enough percolated water holding in the creek below to pan, so I scooped up a pan of dirt from the bottom of one of the holes and could barely pan it out, but it had 2 nice flakes in it! Never look a gift puddle in the mouth...

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After panning 3 pans worth, and each had at least several specks, I decided to pan the sandy material at my feet, thinking if it washed down here each winter, could have more gold. Yes. My very first pan was heavy with black sand and 4 or 5 pieces of tiny, chunky gold. I ran out of material after 3 pans, with some gold in each, and by now that panning hole was full material and had too little water to pan well. Time to move up stream as the sun was setting hard now in the west at 4 PM. Too little time left....dang it.

Just a little further, hopping over boulders, I spied a perfect spot of exposed granite bedrock sloping into the bottom and a small pool of water in it.

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I raked off the slime, decomposing leaves and dug the material out of the foot deep hole with my trowel. Very first pan had a small picker and several flakes in it....yes! I took my crevice tool, scraped the crevices & bottom as best I could, although I couldn’t see thru the muddy water, then washed the material to the very bottom with my fingers, and dug and panned it. Got a nice big picker! One more pan with a few specks and it was cleaned out, however I wished I had my hand dredge sucker tube with me to REALLY clean that spot. I know there was gold left in it...

Almost 4:20PM now, in the shade, getting cold, and about time to get out of the hills before it got dark and call it a day... I climbed a little further up the creek bed, admiring the rocks up above, and saw another similar but smaller hole and dug & panned it.

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Just 1 pan’s worth of material, and only a few very small flakes. Yep, this was the area I needed to be in the whole time. Now I know exactly where to go next time I am ever in southern California and to bring my hand dredge with me too. The walk back was beautiful, the snow still on the ground in the shade on the north side of the hills up around 7,100 feet.

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It was great fun to research the possible locations with the Claims Guide & Big 10 maps, hit them, and actually find some gold, even with nothing more than a pan, hand trowel, crevice tool and snuffer bottle...

Here’s my final gold take. Happy with the chunky gold and 2 pickers!

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I made and uploaded 10 short YouTube videos over my 2 days prospecting. Plz go take a look. First one here, and they flow in series to follow my “gold adventure” story for February 2012. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYdM2kSlYHE

God bless & good luck in your next prospecting trip out!

Randy “C-17A” :D www.goldadventures.biz
C-17A
 
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Re: Randy's Feb 2012 California Gold Prospecting Trip

Postby russau » Sun Feb 19, 2012 2:20 pm

thanks again Randy for the tag-a-long! looks like you had a good time anyway!
russau
 
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Re: Randy's Feb 2012 California Gold Prospecting Trip

Postby C-17A » Tue Feb 21, 2012 8:45 pm

Russau,

Thanks for the positive press.....

Yep, I had a grand adventure. Fun to take you and others along for the ride. ;)

Can't wait for my next Trip Report advising all of my latest exploit in the field.......will share once it's posted.

Good luck & God bless!

Randy "C-17A" www'goldadventures.biz :)
C-17A
 
Posts: 182
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Re: Randy's Feb 2012 California Gold Prospecting Trip

Postby russau » Wed Feb 22, 2012 4:29 am

with the fuel prices getting crazy,tagging-a-long in your videos helps out this cabin fever. im glad someone is getting out! today, here in Missouri, the temp is supposed to get up to the upper 60s. so im going to pull out my 2 inch Proline and hit a friends farm creek.lots of bedrock/cracks and some pools of water. but itll be sunny and my chance to get out aswell!
russau
 
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Re: Randy's Feb 2012 California Gold Prospecting Trip

Postby Hoser John » Wed Feb 22, 2012 8:27 am

:) The locals have called Holcomb Valley Hopeless Valley for many MANY years as not productive as you've now seen. Way toooo much work for next to no pay. My Granny lived there in Big Bear for many years with cabins for rent and still have the 1956 Gold Panning trophy on the mantle here. Was a nice place in the 50's but now just waaaay tooo many folks and they paved paradise fulla parking lots and junk food-thanx for the current update much-John
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