Yet one more Trip Report on the 2nd half of a split weekend 30 & 31 Oct 10...
"Happy Halloween". 
I posted a 1st half Trip Report here recently, on Saturday, 30 Oct 10, with a gold prospecting buddy, Pete B., as we attended the GPAA Gold Show in Gainesville, GA, and then drove to Dahlonega, GA, about 25 minutes away, and prospected on Yahloo Creek for several hours, and ended the day panning Crisson Gold Mine cons at the Crisson mine in Dahlonega, GA. Pete drove home that afternoon...
Anyways, this Sunday morning broke early, cold and clear.........brrr. I checked out of my hotel and headed to the Chestatee River a few miles South of town. I pulled into the big pull out at the Hwy 19 bridge, and parked. Nobody around, all quiet, so I got out a hand pan and hand shovel and walked to the river. Went to the river well below the bridge & started sample panning. Loads of black sand, and only a speck or two, both -100 mesh. Walked back to my Jeep, and saw the local Deputy Sherriffs had set up a radar speed trap using that pull out as a base camp, and two of the 3 had cars pulled over writing tickets. I decided to vacate that area of heavy police activity and drive down river about 3 miles to the public access to the Chestatee River.
Pete B. and I had looked at this public access earlier on Saturday, and it looked too wide, too uninviting, without any character or bedrock to crevice at the access stairs. So we left on Saturday, but today, Sunday, I walked all the way to the upstream boundary and saw exposed bedrock!
So, I parked my Jeep on the dirt access road on the bank, got all my hand equipment, waders on and went down the bank. In short order I was using my crevice tool and small hand trowel to fill a pan and look for gold, any gold. First pan was a bust, BUT my second pan had some color!
So, that started about 2 1/2 hours of crevicing, hand dredging, moss mining, and bedrock busting........as the sun rose and the day warmed up.
Used my Deserdog 1 1/4 inch hand dredge to suck out some very looking crevices in the bedrock only a few inches under water. Nothing but red garnets/ruby dust and black sand. Dang it!
Dug in some tree roots and got better small color. Creviced in some decomposing Saprolite bedrock, and again, just a little color. Hmmm..........kept moving down stream looking for a hole or holding point or better place.
I saw a big fold of exposed bedrock out in the river, 1/2 in and 1/2 out of the water, and waded out, cleaned out the rocks, creviced and hand dredged it all. Panned it out and nothing!
What? That was the PERFECT deep nugget trap if there ever was one........oh well.Took a water break and realized that this area I was standing on had some nice well worn exposed bedrock, and on top, maybe 1 inch to 4 inches deep, was a VERY old & hard packed conglomerated gravel layer. I used my kick butt new Stanley 36 inch forged pry bar to poke, dig, chop, scrape and otherwise loosen up this old gravel material and scoop it with my hands & hand dredge it and pan it. I got nice little flake gold in every pan!
A few old lead birdshot too. Interesting more than a few flakes showed mercury on them...
Issue was this was like working rock hard CONCRETE! Hard as heck, and near impossible to break apart. No small effort. But, as this was the best gold spot of the day, I spent about 1 1/2 to 2 hrs playing in this spot and hand panning, pan after pan. By about noon it as time to pack up, load up, change clothes and hit the road 3 1/2 hrs South to home.
I had found a little Chestatee River gold, some lead bridshot, and added yet one more place I found GA gold!
I've yet to pan out 2 small bags of gold cons I bought at the GPAA Gold show, or the rest of the Crisson cons Pete B. & I bought the day before. Soon I'll try to get both panned and post a cons report.
So, go where gold's been found before, read the stream, work the bedrock, and even with a few simple tools & hand pan you CAN find gold.
Will post pics soon. Here's several videos I made to document the fun & nice weather, albeit a little cool....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTz81AT-AzA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edg2L6T4fbE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMCbRLYeNUU
Enjoy & get out there before Winter hits!
My new Keene "deluxe" crevice tool was again "the bomb"! I recommend it to anyone as yet one more weapon in your prospecting arsenal to get to the gold!
Randy "C-17A" www.goldadventures.biz