Well, I made it out & back to California again, for my annual family reunion & gold prospecting “adventure” and this year topped last year in many ways... Plz let me share the experience with another long, long, long story:
19 Sep: Up at 4AM, double-checked all my “must have” gold prospecting equipment was in my BIG suitcase, had breakfast & off to the Colorado Springs airport, a 2 hr drive. Had to do a stop in SLC, as I was on Delta airlines, and arrived Sacramento to stay again with my sister, Susie, in Rocklin as my base camp. Arrived about noon, and home we went. Last year we dropped off my stuff, changed into prospecting clothes, and went to the hills for half a day. But this year I decided to simply unpack, inventory equipment, shop for food I’d need for the week and stop by Lowes to buy some heavy-duty waterproof gloves to pan/crevice with and a BIG 69 inch forged steel fencing pry bar to REALLY bust some bedrock this year. Last year I only had a 3 footer and had to pass on so many good looking cracks & crevices...
20 Sep: NF & MF American Rivers at Auburn -- On my own for the day, so up early & off to Auburn to the confluence of the NF & MF American Rivers to crevice & pan. The water on both rivers is at record lows, so I hoped to get into some un-worked (and believe me most is worked to death close to the road) bedrock, like Susie & her friends did earlier in the year, and got some good gold. Arriving I saw her spot was dramatically different now, covered in cobbles and under 1 to 2 feet of water. Bummer... So, I worked the huge exposed bedrock areas downstream as close to the water, and slightly under water, as I could. I used my hand sucker tube to pull up creviced material below the surface. I cleared off big rocks on ledges and dug, crevices & panned. To my disappointment, I found very little, just a lot of lead fishing sinkers, iron, etc. Hmmm...
Went down stream to the confluence, panned different gravels hoping to maybe change gears & sluice the rest of the day. Only got a few specks here & there... So, walked up under the old bridge & bedrock busted in the mid-90s sun & heat. A few flakes & specks in some pans. Tried digging in the South bank, in rock hard cemented gravels with my bar. After 3 pans only had a few more specks. By 4 PM I was cooked, had a little color, and headed home. Not a lot of gold, but enjoyed the “hunt”!
21 Sep: Downieville Day 1 – A Friday, setting up for our first big family reunion weekend. Up to Downieville in a 3 car motorcade, arriving about noon. After checking in, changing, I led the family downstream to the local gravel bar to sluice & pan for flood gold. Last year we got some decent flakes & fines here, and just a short walk from our hotel. This was my brother & sister-in-law’s first time prospecting and Carey & Tammy did great! After a few demo pans they were getting the hang of panning. Carey’s very first pan had a very nice flake in the black sand staring back at him! Can you say motivating? Within the half an hour we had 2 sluices and 5 pans running....
It was a beautiful, if not warm day, probably 90 degrees. Nice the breeze blew a little & the water was super clear & cool. Susie’s son, Bijar got into panning & sluicing too for the first time, finding some gold. Jerry ran my Tee-Dee sluice and we could see small flakes & specks loading up in the black rubber v-groove matting, and everyone splashed, prospected, had fun... About 4PM we cleaned up, and I panned out the cons from the sluices and not bad....some nice flakes & fines. Back to the hotel to get cleaned up, enjoy libations & chips/dip on the front porch & relax before dinner.
22 Sep: Downieville Day 2 – I got up early while the family slept in and headed down river with my BIG pry bar as the sun came up over the hills. With the water level so low, I able to easily wade across to the far side where there was good exposed bedrock. I stopped half way on a large cobble/gravel bar and dug 2 pans of material from the roots of river brush...nothing. Hmmm... O.K., over to the bedrock.
Luckily, there was lots of cracks & crevices to be worked, and after busting off a cap-like rock, and scraping out the silt, muck, dirt & panning I got my very first picker & some good flakes! Yeah!
Let’s get more gold... I pried up bedrock, panned as I could as the sun came up and by 10AM the family was at the river. We set up those that wanted to sluice & hand pan at the gravel bar & Jerry, my sisters Susie & Judy and Bijar waded over with me to crevice & bedrock bust.
The day was super clear, warming nicely & could not have been better. Most every pan usually showed some color, and some had decent chunky pickers or bigger flakes. At 1 PM most left for lunch as I prospected on... About 3:30PM Susie & Jerry returned with a sandwich for me.
We kept crevicing until 4:30PM, heading back for more family time on the front porch.
I panned out my snuffer bottle and showed everyone the very nice pickers & flakes/fines for the day downstream. I panned out the snuffer bottle family had gotten sluicing & panning upstream. I combined the prior days gold & this gold into a vial for Carey & Tammy to take home as a memento of their very first prospecting family reunion “gold adventure.”
23 Sep: SF Yuba at Oregon Creek – Last day of the first family reunion weekend. Up to Sierra City we all drove to have breakfast there at the Buckhorn bar/restaurant where a small creek flows thru the outside patio area. They always have great food & amazing views of the Sierra Buttes above. The annual Hot Rod show was in town, so we admired the cars, ate, and walked the small town. A new gold prospecting shop had opened up since last year, so several of us checked it out. I bought a suction bulb, as I hoped later in the trip to do some underwater sniping, and Jerry bought a nice large blue pan & snuffer bottle. Back to the hotel, checked out and Carey & Tammy departed for home as the rest of us drove back towards Nevada City, and first stopped off at the SF Yuba River where we traditionally pick wild blackberries to make a homemade cobbler later that evening.
This was a drier year than last, so berries were harder to find on the vine, but with many eager hands willing to get scratched & stained, we eventually got enough for a cobbler. Yum! One thing I wanted to see at this spot on the river was IF a section of old rug was still to be found lodged between 2 boulders at the waterline. Two years ago I spied this rug and pondered the possibility of trapped fine gold in the fibers, and after halfheartedly trying to dig it out of the rocks in the hot sun, I gave up. Last year it was not to be seen, apparently buried under rocks & gravel. I really wasn’t sure if it had washed away in the annual floods, or not. But this year it was right there again, partly exposed. So, I worked to free it, and after a lot of diggin’ it was mine!
I rolled it up, saving the fine dirt in & on it, and carried it back to the Pilot. Later at home I’d cut it into sections, beat the absolute snot (and dirt) out of it, and pan out the silt, clay, sand.
Guess what? I did get some fine gold, just not as much as I dreamed about after 3 years in the river.
Oh well, can’t blame a prospector for trying to strike it rich with a dirty old rug!
We drove further down to the confluence of the SF Yuba River & Oregon Creek and while mom & my sister Judy stayed at the beach, Jerry, Susie & I hiked up stream to bedrock bust & crevice for several hours. Last year we found the beach/easy access areas near parking well picked over/worked, so this year we wanted to go further upstream. The polished smooth granite bedrock was slippery & hard to cross in spots, but we decided to work the South side of the riverbed in the shade, as it was very hot & sunny. We creviced, panned, and actually found very little color. Good looking holding spots offered up very little. Bummer... I dug a river grass root ball out of the middle of the river between several boulders, as a change of tactics. O.K., a few flakes, but not worth the time it takes to wash out a root ball. We panned some gravels dug from the higher bench, where others had obviously been working in the past b others. Just a few specks... So, by this time we headed back, stopping at one spot to pry up a few big bedrock slabs covered in moss, and did find a few bigger flakes, but overall, for several hours we didn’t get much. Still, we had fun on the river. Back home we unpacked, made wild blackberry cobbler and celebrated a successful weekend.
Kinda looked like a dog’s face, doesn’t it? Ha.
24 Sep: Mineral Bar, NF American River – My day out alone, so I decided to hit Mineral Bar, hike way down stream, take my big pry bar and bedrock bust & crevice. Last year I did pretty good doing this here, but swore I’d get a bigger, better bar, which I did this time. Up at O’Dark 30, and at Mineral Bar at 6:45AM as the sun rose. I got about ¼ mile downstream using the trail & hopping rocks, passed up where I worked last year and kept going into new territory... Had to wade back and forth several times to get down steam as the canyon narrowed dramatically, the bedrock became super polished/slick, and going was tough.
I found it hard to find any bedrock to bust, as it was so smooth, hard, polished, few crevices.
I played around until about 10AM, finding very little. But, I then changed tactics and looked up to the higher bench areas & unworn bedrock and started finding crevices & I started finding color! My very first pan up high had a picker & a lot of nice flakes. Yeah!
So, from 11AM to 4:30PM I focused up high, where who knows how long ago this gold was deposited, maybe 20 to 30 feet above the current water level.
I got a goodly amount of gold, BUT I sure had to work for it in the hot sun & mid-90s temps. My big bar allowed me to break up the crevices, and after an initial scraping, cleaning, brushing, I then carried buckets of water up, poured into the holding points and used my hand sucker tube to extract the last measure of material from them. This really paid off, often getting as much gold in the last 5% of the dirt as the first 95% I could get by hand.
26 Sep: NF & MF American River Revisited – I drove the day before to visit my brother Larry in San Jose, and after a great time, I headed back to Rocklin in the morning, arriving about 11AM. I decided to not waste the half day available to me, so I hit the closest place, Auburn & the state recreation area there again. This time I’d hike up the NF American River, above the 730 foot high Foresthill bridge, which was further than I’d been before, and bedrock bust, crevice there... It was sunny & hot by noon, like mid-90s again, but the gold doesn’t care about the weather. I just kept guzzling water and surveying the prospects...
Finally, just before the big elbow bend & Emerald Pool, as named by the locals, I spied some bedrock on the East side, in the hot sun of course, and began working it. Yep, been worked over pretty well in the past, but my big bar let me open up some bedrock others couldn’t & I got some real good flakes. My sucker tube let me really clean out some holes, crevices and depressions others could get the last 5% from and again some good fine gold was mine. I poked around on the far side on the West bank, but didn’t get much. By 4PM I was cooked, hiked back to the Pilot, having a successful day in my book.
27 Sep: GPAA Nancy’s Gold Claim – Wanting to try a spot I’d never been to before, I decided to drive out past Foresthill and hit the “new” Nancy’s Gold claim on the MF of the NF American River way up stream. Again, up at O’Dark 30 I headed out, arriving actually before sunrise. Had to wait until it was light enough to see well. Got a good picture of the sunrise over the Eastern hills....awesome!
The access from the bridge across the river was challenging, maybe even a little unsafe, on the steep dirt trails that zig-zagged below each bridge end to the riverbed below. So, I decided to take the gated off 1-lane dirt road on the North side upstream to try and get to the river below. After about ¼ mile I was able to get to the river, but since it was marked claimed, had to walk, hop rocks, wade back down river to below the bridge to get to the Nancy’s Gold claim before prospecting. Yep, right at the bridge you could see it had been worked hard in the past... So, I headed down river looking for better prospects. Going was very tough...brush, grape vines, smooth boulders & cobbles mostly, no defined trails, steep ravine sides both sides. By 9:30AM I only had one big flake to my name.
I worked further downstream, and found better bedrock, busted open some really big crevices, and eventually started to find some color.
Without that big bar, I’d have had a very bad day.
I worked it hard until 4PM and started the long walk back up river, hoping boulders, wading & skirting the hillside. This claim is not for the weak, faint of heart, suffering more than a few scrapes, scratches & bruises. I found surprisingly little black sand, more of a garnet looking heavy sand in my pan. Back above the bridge ¼ mile, back up that dirt road to the Pilot & I was heading home, safe & sound, but dead dog tired.
28 Sep: Mineral Bar With Family -- My 2 cousins, Linda & Becky, drove down from the Redding, CA, area to spend the weekend with us prospecting and such, but before we headed out for Washington, CA, on Friday for the weekend, we decided to hit Mineral Bar crevicing & bedrock busting. So, Susie, Bijar, Becky, Linda & myself arrived about 10AM and hiked downstream. Part way to the first elbow bend we stopped, started crevicing and panning and got some first gold for the day. Another warm, sunny day in the hills... About noon it was time to hike further downstream in search of better bedrock & gold, as the areas we were in had been worked well in the past. On to the second elbow bend, and after a great lunch in the shade, we waded across to the far (West) side and began bedrock busting and started finding much better color. Susie creviced & panned.
I pried off slabs high up on the rock wall face & hit sections high up on a huge bedrock pile. No pickers, but we weren’t getting skunked. Becky, Linda & Susie panned up some nice color.
Again, that big bar made the difference in my book, as without it I doubt we’d have found what we did. Fun was had by all, and by 4 PM we decided to hike back, head home. Our gold for the day:
29 Sep: Washington, CA, Day 1 – This was our weekend destination, as we’d stayed in the Washington Hotel 2 years previous, creviced & panned the SF Yuba River and found decent flakes/fines and had a great family time. Visiting Washington is like going back in time...the locals are colorful and the scenery as pretty as it gets in the Mother Lode country. Millions in gold were taken out of the river & hard rock mines in the hills around Washington in the 49er glory days, and we wanted to find some too!
Arriving about 11AM we checked in, changed up and headed up river to some private property owned by Jim, a friend we made the previous year. Jim graciously offered to let us prospect on his property, and we were excited to see him again & look for gold. Arriving we carried all our equipment across the river and set up. Luckily, Jim was there, as he has a home on the river, and we all started crevicing, panning, and finding some flakes & fines in our pans.
After about 1 ½ hours Jim took me on a little walk of part of his property, and what a neat place...had a feeder creek, several defunct old hard rock mines up the hill, and footings by the river where an old stamp mill ran. On the feeder creek, not running now due to being so dry & late in the year was a HUGE waterfall plunge pool, full of water. Hmmmm....
We both wondered how to maybe drain it and prospect the bottom for gold... I got my metal detector from the Pilot & detected that creek bed for about 1 ½ hours, but kept diggin’ up piece after piece of iron from the old days...square nails, wire, etc. Dang it, no nuggets.
As I dug the iron, I got some good material to pan out in that big pool, and always found a little chunky fine gold in each pan. Not a lot, but enough to keep me interested, so I stopped detecting & started pitching rocks & panning from different areas of the dry creek bed and gravel bars. Always just a little fine stuff. Well, back to the river and the girls crevicing & panning... Here’s our gold for the day:
Jim invited us all over for a 6PM outdoors BBQ and so we did... We relaxed drinking wine, chipping/dipping and cooking dinner. It was superb! Several of Jims’ friends that lived local came over too. It was a great fun. Back to the hotel for a shower & rest.
Man, did that lumpy bed feel good...but I couldn’t really get to sleep until after 1 AM, as the bar was hopping (like always) and the party carried over out into the street off & on...
One of the locals had this on his broken down station wagon. A lot of truth being told. Ha!
30 Sep: Washington, CA, Day 2 – We had breakfast in the hotel, packed out and headed back up to Jim’s place. Jim & I decided to use his Honda engine/water pump & suction hose to try and drain that waterfall plunge pool and see what was (or was not) at the bottom. No better time than now, as Jim said it runs water most years, and this year being especially dry was a good time to try it. So, we carried the equipment across the river & to the pool as the girls got back to bedrock busting and panning. Within minutes the Honda was fired up and we were draining the pool...
The water flow was such that it started to make the feeder creek run again with water, kinda humorous when you considered it. Down, down, down the water level dropped and still no bottom. We thought the suction hose was about 15 feet long, so we first thought that hole was like 15 feet deep, once we got it drained, we later realized it was about 7 ½ feet deep and about 8 feet around. Luckily, once drained it didn’t have a large boulder in the bottom, just 1 medium rock and some gravel.
Jim got a 10-foot aluminum ladder and I went into the hole with my metal detector to search for nuggets. I got numerous signals, but after scooping each up with my plastic treasure scoop found only iron. So, after all signals were identified, I scooped and panned out several pans of bottom material. Sadly, only a little fine gold, nothing big. Oh well, the adventure was in the hunt, and now Jim & I knew for certain what was (or not) at the bottom of that hole....we hoped for a glory hole, but got a great story to tell in the end.
Back at the river the girls were making the day pay with more nice flakes & fine gold, and splashing in the cool SF Yuba River...and sunning on the sandy beach. Becky & Susie did more of the bedrock busting & diggin’ and Judy & Linda did more of the panning. Talk about a fine oiled gold getting’ team! I decided to take my detector and set off upstream to a huge area of exposed bedrock and detect for possible nuggets. I really wanted to find one for Jim, our host, and find something larger than a picker on this California gold trip. It was hot out in the sun, and keeping my headphones from slipping off my head as I bent over and dug targets way down in some deep crevices was, well, nearly impossible. I poked around and after an hour had several .22 bullets, a bunch of junk iron, and several coins. O.K., not this time for nuggets.
Back to the girls, who had decided that Becky & Linda had stayed as long as they could and needed to head home, and we than all decided to pack it up, being about 3:30PM. Back across the river, loaded up the Pilot, said our goodbyes to Jim, thanked him profusely for his hospitality and friendship, and we drove home, with some nice SF Yuba River gold and even better memories. Man, can’t wait to visit Jim again next year, maybe spending an extra day there to get a tour of some old mining camps in the local area. Again, many thanks to Jim!
1 Oct: Last Day, Back To Mineral Bar – Sadly, my last day to prospect the California hills, and having the best luck at Mineral Bar, I decided to hit it again, hit it hard, and get more gold bedrock busting with my trusty 5 ½ foot, 16-lb bar. Arrived early, headed downstream at 7AM and got to my previous spot at 7:30AM. I reworked several cracks & crevices from the time before, and then decided to really work a couple of big bedrock spots where the flooding water would have gold possibly slide down a smooth rock wall and collect in several large crevices. They were tough to break apart, but with considerable pounding, chomping, prying I slowly got these big sections to split apart.
Panning the material behind & underneath I got my first nice picker for the day! There were generous smaller flakes & fines too, which helped make the effort pay off.
Funny, the more I pried off, the less gold I found. So, I switched to working the older bedrock way up on the hillsides, and started finding gold again.
I was surprised how much that big bar paid off, as if one looked at a long, thin crevice that seemingly had near zero dirt/material in it, but when you spent a few minutes chomping, digging in it, breaking it open, scraping it with my crevice tools, I’d end up with a full pan of dirt. Then after panning, I’d carry up buckets of water, soak the crevice, re-crevice tool it, and get out a lot more dirt using my sucker tube, always having gold in that last 5%. So, the water often softened up hard packed material that had gold in it. I learned to go the extra mile, so to speak, and not leave gold in the crevices... The last place I dug material:
I played hard all day, guzzled water, splashed in the river every other pan of material to stay cool as possible in the mid-90s heat & sun, and kept finding a little gold in each pan. By 5 PM I’d panned my last pan of sand/gravel from a high bench spot and hiked on back to the Pilot. I put in a full 9 or so hours, and felt like it. Back at the house I panned out my snuffer bottle and actually surprised to see I’d gotten more gold, with several nice pickers & larger flakes than the successful trip before...
Here’s my metal detector finds, with some of the junk we cleaned up out of the rivers:
I organized, packed up my suitcases and got ready to fly home next day.
2 Oct: Flew Home to Colorado – Departed Sacramento 10AM and got to Colorado Springs at 4PM and home 6PM. Now it was time to a good rest from my California vacation! I combined all my little vials of gold from different days and surprisingly ended up with 4.63 grams of very nice California gold, ranging from pickers to large flakes to small flakes to fine dust as small as 200 mech. Very happy with the “gold adventure” 2012, and many, many thanks to all my family that let me keep the lion’s share of the gold we found.
I made 17 short videos, and have them posted to my YouTube Channel. Hope you enjoy them as much as this Trip Report & pictures embedded here. First video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKTOcdYL ... ature=plcp
Hope everyone gets out soon, before Fall turns into Winter and it gets harder, or impossible to prospect until next Spring... My personal goal for next year is to get even more of my family members in California involved, sharing the fun & excitement of gold prospecting up in the hills...while we still have the health & ability to do so.
One thing I relearned from all my time on the rivers...gold prospecting is NOT linear, meaning you can bust your backside diggin’ & moving a huge slab of bedrock or boulder & get next to nothing and you can flake off a very small piece of bedrock and get a bonanza of pickers & flakes behind it. Yep, gold is where you find it, and never where you don’t!
God bless,
Randy “C-17A” www.goldadventures.biz
Tons a au 2 u 2 and what a fun tag along. Looking forward to next years post already as nice visitn' some a my old stomping grounds via your hard labors-John 