High High Banking continued

As we shoveled the material into the high banker we encountered a lot of large, round, river rock. This was good. Big rocks mean big gold. I like working where there is a mixture of rock sizes. You can see the combination of sizes both in the bank and at the foot of the high banker. By the end of the  day we taken about 3 feet off of the top of the bank. One nice thing was there wasn't a hole to fill.

We've moved a few rocks. Got a few dry rocks wet.

About halfway through the day we got a sudden shower. The white PVC header on the high banker came apart. It had been assembled using just a friction fit to hold it. Luckily I had brought a can of PVC cement and we were able to glue it and after a short break, proceed with the digging.

Panning it out

Every once in a while I would take a sample of some particularly promising layer of material and pan it out. Dry land work like this has an advantage over dredging as you can pin point the layer of material that the color is coming from. When I'm dredging, all you can say is it's from this general area. Also with the dredge unless you are getting nuggets, you usually don't know how you are doing until you clean up. This high banker had a rubber ribbed mat that could be inspected for flour gold. 

The results - 34 grains

The days results. Some Arkansas River fine gold. The river gold where I usually dredge downstream from here is finer than this. This is salt and sugar grain size plus some a little larger. No nuggets this time although there are small pickers found here from time to time. We even found the obligatory dime!