I recently found gold in gravel. We had a flood just before winter hit so I went up to my spot to try and get some samples. I took a small amount from the gravel. The gravel does sit on bedrock but it's roughly 4-5 feet under the dirt. I honestly didn't think I would find anything but I got super lucky!
Very informative. On one of my claims in Lassen there is a false bedrock of volcanic ash that has cemented. Easy to break through when dry but is way harder to get through when wet. Happy Prospecting 2023!
I have a small claim in BC Canada. As I am only hand mining (pans and a small 10" sluice) the rules here are that you can only go down 1.2 Meters (approx 4'). Most of the gold here has been pushed down by past glacial movement. I am working old creek beds currently where you can see the river has changed course over the last 100 yrs. and finding huge boulders. Most of the gold I am finding is on top of clay layers. Can't get down to bedrock as it is deeper than permitted without going into all kinds of permits etc. (BC is horrible for the amount of "rules" and money grabbing by gov't). Only finding small stuff so far. Last year was my first season and I am a complete newbie. Still, over the summer I got about 5 gr. with each yard of material producing at least 1/2 gr. As I am disabled and 70 yrs. it is slow going and I often need help to dig. I have taken on two partners for the upcoming season who are young healthy strong men to help. i am also a female so not as strong.
EJ: You need a model of the gold size distribution on your work area. Once you have that you can classify down to just above a respected size that you want to target. Then check your discard pile for larger prices with a pi or vlf gold detector with a moderate to large coil. ( Divide and conquer). The garrett goldmaster 24K and its predecessor (whites goldmaster gmt e series can find tiny peices of gold and at the same time scan the subsurface for black sand accumulations. The other standout must have detector for finding small gold is the MD 20 (E BAY)... which can really help you pinpoint and find gold of any size. If there is no metal trash a pulse induction dector can really see deeper larger targets that are harder to dig. Now what we want to do is spend our limited in the field time building a concentrate bucket for final processing at home. I have a square wooden box that is exactly 1/2 cubic foot inside and I can test pan it down to get an idea of how hot my ground is. There is an expansion factor that we also consider like 10%. You knowing you have x gm/Cy and knowing your gold size distribution... now your in business. Now you need a bigger sluice box and some screens and some concentrate buckets. XP and Minelab have the best 1/2" plastic pan screens and SE for 1/4 and 1/8 and smaller. The bigger the size the faster the processing speed. Faster not always being better. Must have gold pans... Garrett Supersluice, XP standard pans and the XP Batea for speed panning. Proline 14 and 17 and the Gold Claw... for building a concentrate bucket to take home. 14 inch pans are the best size for Creek panning. Larger pans for safety pans and classifying, ect. I use my Estwing metal pan like a scoop shovel and a #1 mini shovel with a v shaped handle works great. Some kind of gem microscope will also be helpfull on fine gold. My 360x gem microscope works great for fine and ultra fine gold. So 99 percent of what we do is going to depend on our gold size distribution, our grams per cubic yard and our overall deposit size ( hopefully in millions of ounces) and finally the rate at which we can extract our gold. Once you get your concentrate home you can run it thru a mini plastic gutter concentrator to clean up or reformat your river sluice box using rubber mats and recirculation for final clean up. Finally take a look at your area using Google earth in the off-season. Cheers!
Great video! Beach placers also concentrate coins and jewelry like we experienced this January along the Ca coast. But as you say they can disappear by the next day! Often a lot of small gold is found on a clay layer (false bedrock) in Ca streams but normally the bedrock below produces little because the early mines had worked it.
Great video at just the right time. Started digging a spot a couple days ago, it wasn't much, a fly speck in fact, but got my first ever gold this morning out of about 3/4 bucket of dirt. Pleased that it stayed in the pan for me as did the black sands and a couple aluminum chips that had fallen into the bucket from another project. Thanks for the insight, hoping to learn more from your book too.
Chris, thanks for your dedication to these videos. You've helped me get thru the hardest parts of this winter with your positive attitude. Hope you find it big this season :)
You are a true professional and it’s amazing that you are willing to take the time to educate anyone who wants to watch and listen! Really appreciate you!
Ok, gotta tell this one. When I was young one of my fathers old friends was a man named Hank. Hank was born near the turn of the century and was quite old when I was a child. Everywhere hank went he was remembered, even if he had only been there once. A real character! In the early 80's Hank was in a nursing home and was getting a little senile. One day my friend and I were there visiting him when he told us a story. A story about a spring he knew of where the gravels were loosely consolidated. He said you just took your bar and shoved it in, shook it like this here, and the nuggets just come-a-rolling out! He also pointed to the frost free spigot out back and said if you turn it on, she'll run about a half once an hour! Of course we found his stories a bit amusing. Fast forward 30 years and my brother and I had discovered a short run of nuggets where they had been deposited adjacent to the main gut that the old timers had worked. Took over a hundred nuggets out digging down to bedrock. Now, just below the duff and a thin layer of soil was a loosely consolidated layer of pea gravel. You could stick your shovel in it and pry up and down and fill the shovel full. So...I had to call my buddy up and tell him we owed old Hank an apology! Cuz on several occasions I stuck my shovel in, shook it like this here, and the nuggets just came-a-rolling out! Granted 95% of them were on bedrock but several of the nicer ones were just below surface in that loose pea gravel.
@@ChrisRalph There was 3 foot of gravel/clay between them and the bedrock nuggets. I think it came down at a later time in a big flood and spilled over the rim of the main channel. The previous material acted as a false bedrock. It was wierd they were in that 8 inch layer of very loose pea gravel. The only reason we found that deposit is because of that layer. A machine had pushed up a furrow and my brother found a beutiful 1/2 oz on top of it. Then 5 gallon bucket samples kept yielding little pickers. Then we dug.
I'm so glad to have found your channel today. I received yesterday a parcel of creek rock from california! I don't yet know what I'm looking at but they're all beautiful. Lol. I also have gems our family collected in the early seventies from North Carolina and Arkansas,all uncut, and I'm feeling more confident about what to do with them after watching many of your videos. Thank you!
Hi Chris, I have been watching your very informative and professional videos on gold prospecting and I just wanted to let you know that thru your channel, I've learned probably more practical and useful tips and advice than of all the Finnish videos combined (and let's just add the Swedish content in too). We have pretty good placer deposits here in Finland but north of the Arctic circle only, inside the East Lapland granulite belt (well, more like at the edges of the granulite belt) that starts from the Norway Karasjok area makes S to SE kind of L shaped bend and reaches all the way across the Finland-Russia border (well, the border after 1944 armistice..). What is interesting, is that the Lapland Greenstone Belt ends where the granulite belt starts, there are no placer gold at CLGSB but lots of shear or fault zones and they all travel from SW to NE thru hundreds of Kms inside the granulite belt. The bedrock is very old, very loose and it's kind of a thumb rule to get into the weathered bedrock at least a feet (preferably two) cause the very best coarse grained nuggets tend to sit there. Area is more or less size of Wales. It's a real pity we don't have transatlantic free trade zone between ETA and US & Canada, therefore if I'm to buy for example Proline or Keene 2,5" Dredge, the price will be triple if not quadruple before I actually get the equipments in hand (and it's not the transit, but God knows how many fees and charges, VAT, important duty, tariffs etc). No one makes them them in Europe, exactly - not within ETA. All the best small business placer gold equipments are manufactured in USA. It's been real pleasure to watch your videos, especially because you don't do err how are they called..."infomercials" (I hope I got it right) but instead give so much facts but manage to do it without "lecturing" so it's never been boring or waste of time learning thru your channel. I'd make a bet you have quite a few followers from Nordic countries (just bear in mind our combined population would fit in NY, LA and Chicago 😄) All the best from Finland 👍
Do you try hand fed sluice boxes in that area? Also, its possible (with difficulty) to build your own dredge. Thanks for the information. Another possibility is metal detecting nuggets.
Spot on Ralph ! Can't agree with you more on this subject. On my claim, the gold is found mixed with clay at all levels. Sometimes I find nuggets and pickers just a few inches from the surface, although, lower zones near the caliche layer, or false bedrock, tends to yield the most. If the caliche is fractured or altered, nice gold can be recovered within. Smooth caliche yields very little gold, just as the example you showed of smooth bedrock of a creek. Thanks for sharing. Keep warm up there. I'm sure your buried in snow recently.
I hear the same concerns from other prospectors in northern parts. We're getting snow and rain down here too. Should be good spring flowers and runoff this year !
I always have a blast coming by fam. Loads of great info. Thanks for the class 🤠⛏️. Keep on having fun getting that au and living the dream fam. Gold Squad Out!!!
Thank you providing value in your content and for responding so quickly! I'm re-watching the midwest video now. I'm a big fan your super smart and funny!!!
Hey Chris, when you found the gold on the false bedrock, had the bedrock been picked over in the past? I've always found the biggest gold on the bedrock in streams and rivers. Once we punched through a false bedrock layer of clay about a foot deep and found bedrock at 15 feet, and recovered about 6 ounces of gold spread over about 6 feet wide and 25 feet long. Best spot we ever found. It's amazing how quickly nature replenishes itself, wish I could go back, but the claim got jumped.
@@ChrisRalph I was refering to the time when you were dredging and you found nothing on the bedrock, but gold on the false bedrock. I was curious if earlier miners had picked clean the finds before you got there.
Another interesting video. I can always learn something new. I deal with glacier deposits and beach sand mostly around here. Not as much bedrock. But there are some areas I plan to prospect this summer...
Always looking out for your videos, got a good kick out of the telluride one, recently got myself some cores and samples from cripple Creek bonanza area, and it looks nice. But the real challenge will be processing it.
Hello Chris, I have a ?. About clechee that is every where I look it's like being in a farmers field, over time big rocks, as well as boulders will come to the surface, well what I am asking is had there ever been Gold found within the clechee or beneath it in the dirt. I am not a Gold prosspector yet. I was thinking of buying the Gold monster 1000 metal detector. Bottom line, is this a place to look for Gold or is it a waste of time looking. Thank you Chris Ralph, God Bless You.
Hi Chris, I am new on learning all different kind of rocks and gem stones, your videos have so much great information, thank you Have a question, I found a piece of rock in Ca when I went for a hike, there are a lot of silver and gold color shining stuff on it, how can I find out what are those, is there place that I can get help with..thank you again 🙏
Many different minerals have the same colors so its hard to tell by color. Please watch my videos on how to Identify minerals for yourself. Part 1 can be found here: ruclips.net/video/MpkW58ZeQlc/видео.html and Part 2 can be found here: ruclips.net/video/zOWo49X90gA/видео.html and Part 3 can be found here: ruclips.net/video/_ab5NngRlVw/видео.html
Do you know anything about Iowa's flour glacial gold? I'm ruining my house, the wood floors, and every dish/bowl I have. I keep dragging home stuff but I don't know what I'm doing. If the books good for Iowa I'll buy it...let me know
Thanks for your videos do you have any recommendations for looking for gold in Maine ? I’m in Long Island and figured I would head to Maine ? Thanks so much
I make a good living from my prospecting ventures - but I do a whole lot more than just pan and metal detect for nuggets. If you want to see more about that, check out my video on it at: ruclips.net/video/kBm8mnbMYsc/видео.html
I saw on GPAA claim location in vulture area Arizona red spots on side hills. Further investigating the area with satellite imagery I could see there used to be massive water flowing over the hills, down the slope the sediments began to deposit probably low pressure where suspended sediments in the water were able to drop. I've seen on black sand cleaner table the lighter material will move first the heavier material will drag behind. From satellite imagery I saw the red material in the top hills, but the spots where sediments began to deposit were lighter colors. Wish I knew how to convert KMZ files from Google earth into STL files for 3D printing the surface of the map. Than run an experiment with running water and fine black sand, dirt to see where will I expect to find deposits of heavy material. Than I could take image overlay on Google earth and pinpoint high probability zones...
Well, that was on purpose. Destroyed placers are like ex-wives - they aren't placers anymore. And terminal moraines can give rise to good placers, but only after they are eroded and washed by streams.
@@ChrisRalph Not necessarily. Glacial terminations can offer lag deposits where there has been no stream reconentration. The lighter material erodes away on a gentle slope leaving large boulders and other heavy material. This results in a near surface deposit but has not been cut by a stream. Destroyed placers are not always utterly destroyed. If you can recognize them, sometimes there is a remnant of a remnant, as I describe it, and in that remnant is the coarse nuggets. There was once a great placer deposit but now it's like the trail end of when you dump a bucket of concentrates. Just the heavies.
Well, maybe in some very rare circumstances. All the moraines I have ever messed with are super low grade to the point of being worthless - until they are re-concentrated by the force of flowing water. What you are talking about seems more like a hillside placer, though not from a nearby hard rock deposit, but from re-concentrating the moraine gravels on the hillside.
@@ChrisRalph They are pretty rare. In Montana when a moraine terminates it leaves something like a toe if you will. Gold was taken from Soap gulch and moose creek near Melrose. Some might argue they are lake shore deposits as both exist. I know a few others there too but land owners wouldn't appreciate me telling where. Remnant placers? I don't know how rare they are but I know they're danm hard to find as they leave very little in the line of tell tale signs and I suspect would only be found where bedrock is exposed over large areas such as in AZ. Lag deposits are also mentioned from Kennedy gulch in Mt and on the east slope of the contenital divide out of Denver.
Chris, is it possible to have terrible gold in the top layers but a great payday on bedrock? I finally staked a claim. It has never been dredged before. I found the "paystreak" but at best in the first few feet it's only a quarter gram per yard. Is it possible that it can be this terrible but if I get to bedrock I find a lot of gold to make the amount of work getting through 10-15' of overburden worth it? Or am I likely wasting my time? Thanks.
Yes its possible that most or nearly all of the gold is on or near bedrock. However just because there is no gold shallow it does not mean you are for sure going to find good gold on the bedrock. Getting through 10 to 15 feet of overburden is pretty crazy unless you have bulldozers and other heavy equipment.
@@ChrisRalph I can get through 10' in a few days with my dredge. But the reason I'm asking is because I have to hike in 300 pounds of equipment a few miles on foot to be able to set it up, so I want to make sure there is at least a good chance it's worth it! I've never found a spot that hasn't been dredged before, so I'm dreaming of it being like what the old timers originally found here bucket dredging. Thanks for the reply!
If a crystal doesn't beep at all with a Mine lab Gold Monster 1000 detector, do you think it's still worth crushing and checking it or should I not bother with it?
Not all gold is coarse and large enough to be seen with a metal detector. I have some rock with no visible gold that yields about 1 gram per 30 pounds of rock. The gold is all too tiny to be seen on any metal detector, but large enough to capture with a pan.
@@ChrisRalph thank you, I knew you'd be the one to ask . And thank you so much for reading and answering your comments . I really appreciate you and all you do.
Dude Chris Ralph. You're my dad bro. Hahahaha jk jk I did just buy your book. You've changed my life and given me an alternative and a priceless skill. Thank you very much.
Are Palaeochanel's ever found above bedrock; as if the channel was just temporary? I'd love to thank you for all the information that I have received from your videos, good freebies are hard to find
Yes, once in a while they don't cut down to the full bedrock of the older channel. In those cases the gold of the temporary channel is on a false bedrock.
Great video Chris! Do you have an actual photo of what false bedrock looks like? Because greenhorns like me learn differently. Anyway it's always great learning from your videos!
Im taking some of this knowledge Chris, I’m off to (********) in Scotland for a week of river and embankment panning, so we pray to the universe its warm and dry.
Its a layer that is above true bedrock that is durable enough that the stream does not break through it during floods. Its usually a layer of hardened clay. Because the stream does not break it up, gold deposits on it because that is the current floor of the stream.
I have another question : RE ancient ocean . I understand that part of our country was a shallow ocean if I'm not mistaken . Is it possible for the ancient ocean to have contributed in dislodging gold or deposited gold in various locations ?
I remember years ago I went prospecting with a buddy and back then I noticed he was running the sluice with too much water pressure , even back then I knew he was washing gold right out of the sluice box but I could not argue with him because he was "the expert " and he did not like being fact checked . Fast forward to present time , I am studying your book and videos and I think I have gold fever now . This time it is with common sense that I have learned from your book and videos .
saw rhyolite in a stream bed went to find it ,found nothing should have marked the coordinates. hammer a piece off to crush. i'll find it again. have a good day.
Depends on where you prospect. If all you ever prospect in is creeks and rivers, then yes. But in the places I prospect - like residual placers, its not more than 50% of the time at most.
I recently found gold in gravel. We had a flood just before winter hit so I went up to my spot to try and get some samples. I took a small amount from the gravel. The gravel does sit on bedrock but it's roughly 4-5 feet under the dirt. I honestly didn't think I would find anything but I got super lucky!
Congrats. Sounds very good.
Very informative. On one of my claims in Lassen there is a false bedrock of volcanic ash that has cemented. Easy to break through when dry but is way harder to get through when wet. Happy Prospecting 2023!
Prospectors have to be aware of potential false bedrock if they want to get the most gold!
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I have a small claim in BC Canada. As I am only hand mining (pans and a small 10" sluice) the rules here are that you can only go down 1.2 Meters (approx 4'). Most of the gold here has been pushed down by past glacial movement. I am working old creek beds currently where you can see the river has changed course over the last 100 yrs. and finding huge boulders. Most of the gold I am finding is on top of clay layers. Can't get down to bedrock as it is deeper than permitted without going into all kinds of permits etc. (BC is horrible for the amount of "rules" and money grabbing by gov't). Only finding small stuff so far. Last year was my first season and I am a complete newbie. Still, over the summer I got about 5 gr. with each yard of material producing at least 1/2 gr. As I am disabled and 70 yrs. it is slow going and I often need help to dig. I have taken on two partners for the upcoming season who are young healthy strong men to help. i am also a female so not as strong.
Well, best of luck to your in your efforts.
EJ: You need a model of the gold size distribution on your work area. Once you have that you can classify down to just above a respected size that you want to target. Then check your discard pile for larger prices with a pi or vlf gold detector with a moderate to large coil. ( Divide and conquer).
The garrett goldmaster 24K and its predecessor (whites goldmaster gmt e series can find tiny peices of gold and at the same time scan the subsurface for black sand accumulations.
The other standout must have detector for finding small gold is the MD 20 (E BAY)... which can really help you pinpoint and find gold of any size.
If there is no metal trash a pulse induction dector can really see deeper larger targets that are harder to dig.
Now what we want to do is spend our limited in the field time building a concentrate bucket for final processing at home.
I have a square wooden box that is exactly 1/2 cubic foot inside and I can test pan it down to get an idea of how hot my ground is. There is an expansion factor that we also consider like 10%.
You knowing you have x gm/Cy and knowing your gold size distribution... now your in business.
Now you need a bigger sluice box and some screens and some concentrate buckets. XP and Minelab have the best 1/2" plastic pan screens and SE for 1/4 and 1/8 and smaller. The bigger the size the faster the processing speed. Faster not always being better.
Must have gold pans... Garrett Supersluice, XP standard pans and the XP Batea for speed panning. Proline 14 and 17 and the Gold Claw... for building a concentrate bucket to take home. 14 inch pans are the best size for Creek panning. Larger pans for safety pans and classifying, ect. I use my Estwing metal pan like a scoop shovel and a #1 mini shovel with a v shaped handle works great.
Some kind of gem microscope will also be helpfull on fine gold. My 360x gem microscope works great for fine and ultra fine gold.
So 99 percent of what we do is going to depend on our gold size distribution, our grams per cubic yard and our overall deposit size ( hopefully in millions of ounces) and finally the rate at which we can extract our gold.
Once you get your concentrate home you can run it thru a mini plastic gutter concentrator to clean up or reformat your river sluice box using rubber mats and recirculation for final clean up.
Finally take a look at your area using Google earth in the off-season. Cheers!
Great video! Beach placers also concentrate coins and jewelry like we experienced this January along the Ca coast. But as you say they can disappear by the next day! Often a lot of small gold is found on a clay layer (false bedrock) in Ca streams but normally the bedrock below produces little because the early mines had worked it.
Yes, the old timers got a lot of it.
Great video at just the right time. Started digging a spot a couple days ago, it wasn't much, a fly speck in fact, but got my first ever gold this morning out of about 3/4 bucket of dirt. Pleased that it stayed in the pan for me as did the black sands and a couple aluminum chips that had fallen into the bucket from another project. Thanks for the insight, hoping to learn more from your book too.
Glad to know it was helpful.
Chris, thanks for your dedication to these videos. You've helped me get thru the hardest parts of this winter with your positive attitude. Hope you find it big this season :)
best of luck to you to as well.
You are a true professional and it’s amazing that you are willing to take the time to educate anyone who wants to watch and listen! Really appreciate you!
Thanks - glad you enjoy the videos.
Ok, gotta tell this one. When I was young one of my fathers old friends was a man named Hank. Hank was born near the turn of the century and was quite old when I was a child. Everywhere hank went he was remembered, even if he had only been there once. A real character!
In the early 80's Hank was in a nursing home and was getting a little senile. One day my friend and I were there visiting him when he told us a story. A story about a spring he knew of where the gravels were loosely consolidated. He said you just took your bar and shoved it in, shook it like this here, and the nuggets just come-a-rolling out! He also pointed to the frost free spigot out back and said if you turn it on, she'll run about a half once an hour! Of course we found his stories a bit amusing.
Fast forward 30 years and my brother and I had discovered a short run of nuggets where they had been deposited adjacent to the main gut that the old timers had worked. Took over a hundred nuggets out digging down to bedrock. Now, just below the duff and a thin layer of soil was a loosely consolidated layer of pea gravel. You could stick your shovel in it and pry up and down and fill the shovel full. So...I had to call my buddy up and tell him we owed old Hank an apology! Cuz on several occasions I stuck my shovel in, shook it like this here, and the nuggets just came-a-rolling out!
Granted 95% of them were on bedrock but several of the nicer ones were just below surface in that loose pea gravel.
Interesting. Sounds like the ones above bedrock were on their way down but had not made it yet.
@@ChrisRalph There was 3 foot of gravel/clay between them and the bedrock nuggets. I think it came down at a later time in a big flood and spilled over the rim of the main channel. The previous material acted as a false bedrock. It was wierd they were in that 8 inch layer of very loose pea gravel. The only reason we found that deposit is because of that layer. A machine had pushed up a furrow and my brother found a beutiful 1/2 oz on top of it. Then 5 gallon bucket samples kept yielding little pickers. Then we dug.
Finally! An answer I can understand. Thanks
I'm so glad it helped!
Great video Chris. VERY entertaining and informative, as always.
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Your channel is gold in itself.
Thanks for those kind words.
I'm so glad to have found your channel today. I received yesterday a parcel of creek rock from california! I don't yet know what I'm looking at but they're all beautiful. Lol. I also have gems our family collected in the early seventies from North Carolina and Arkansas,all uncut, and I'm feeling more confident about what to do with them after watching many of your videos. Thank you!
Thanks for the kind words. I've got loads of videos and many more are on the way in coming weeks.
Hi Chris, I have been watching your very informative and professional videos on gold prospecting and I just wanted to let you know that thru your channel, I've learned probably more practical and useful tips and advice than of all the Finnish videos combined (and let's just add the Swedish content in too). We have pretty good placer deposits here in Finland but north of the Arctic circle only, inside the East Lapland granulite belt (well, more like at the edges of the granulite belt) that starts from the Norway Karasjok area makes S to SE kind of L shaped bend and reaches all the way across the Finland-Russia border (well, the border after 1944 armistice..).
What is interesting, is that the Lapland Greenstone Belt ends where the granulite belt starts, there are no placer gold at CLGSB but lots of shear or fault zones and they all travel from SW to NE thru hundreds of Kms inside the granulite belt. The bedrock is very old, very loose and it's kind of a thumb rule to get into the weathered bedrock at least a feet (preferably two) cause the very best coarse grained nuggets tend to sit there.
Area is more or less size of Wales.
It's a real pity we don't have transatlantic free trade zone between ETA and US & Canada, therefore if I'm to buy for example Proline or Keene 2,5" Dredge, the price will be triple if not quadruple before I actually get the equipments in hand (and it's not the transit, but God knows how many fees and charges, VAT, important duty, tariffs etc).
No one makes them them in Europe, exactly - not within ETA. All the best small business placer gold equipments are manufactured in USA.
It's been real pleasure to watch your videos, especially because you don't do err how are they called..."infomercials" (I hope I got it right) but instead give so much facts but manage to do it without "lecturing" so it's never been boring or waste of time learning thru your channel.
I'd make a bet you have quite a few followers from Nordic countries (just bear in mind our combined population would fit in NY, LA and Chicago 😄)
All the best from Finland 👍
Do you try hand fed sluice boxes in that area? Also, its possible (with difficulty) to build your own dredge. Thanks for the information. Another possibility is metal detecting nuggets.
Great Video !!!!!!!!
Glad you enjoyed it.
Spot on Ralph ! Can't agree with you more on this subject. On my claim, the gold is found mixed with clay at all levels. Sometimes I find nuggets and pickers just a few inches from the surface, although, lower zones near the caliche layer, or false bedrock, tends to yield the most. If the caliche is fractured or altered, nice gold can be recovered within. Smooth caliche yields very little gold, just as the example you showed of smooth bedrock of a creek. Thanks for sharing. Keep warm up there. I'm sure your buried in snow recently.
Getting very tired of the snow. We always get some but we have had snow in the backyard since before Thanksgiving. I want to go prospecting!
I hear the same concerns from other prospectors in northern parts. We're getting snow and rain down here too. Should be good spring flowers and runoff this year !
Love these instructional videos. So glad I found ya! Learning alot.
Awesome! Thank you!
I always have a blast coming by fam. Loads of great info. Thanks for the class 🤠⛏️. Keep on having fun getting that au and living the dream fam. Gold Squad Out!!!
You bet, glad to hear that you enjoyed it.
Thank you providing value in your content and for responding so quickly! I'm re-watching the midwest video now. I'm a big fan your super smart and funny!!!
Awesome, thank you!
You can always find gold in the blacksand from small waterfall mountain places.
Ok.
Hey Chris, when you found the gold on the false bedrock, had the bedrock been picked over in the past? I've always found the biggest gold on the bedrock in streams and rivers. Once we punched through a false bedrock layer of clay about a foot deep and found bedrock at 15 feet, and recovered about 6 ounces of gold spread over about 6 feet wide and 25 feet long. Best spot we ever found.
It's amazing how quickly nature replenishes itself, wish I could go back, but the claim got jumped.
I've found gold on false bedrock a number of times, but if you mean the time while I was dredging, the bedrock was such that you just could not tell.
@@ChrisRalph I was refering to the time when you were dredging and you found nothing on the bedrock, but gold on the false bedrock. I was curious if earlier miners had picked clean the finds before you got there.
Another great video. Chris, thanks for sharing the hard work and experiences you have gone through.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Great video Chris very informative! Thank you for sharing your knowledge!
Thank you Dan Brent
My pleasure! Lots more fun videos coming out soon.
Another interesting video. I can always learn something new. I deal with glacier deposits and beach sand mostly around here. Not as much bedrock. But there are some areas I plan to prospect this summer...
Best of luck to you in your prospecting efforts.
@@ChrisRalph Thanks!!!
Great presentation Chris.
I always learn something new from watching your videos, Thanks!
Glad to hear it!
❤❤thanks Chris great info!
Glad it was helpful!
Thank you
Glad it was helpful!
Hi from Australia
Hello my friend. What part of the lucky country are you located in?
Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge, very helpful
Glad it was helpful!
Thanks Chris, I enjoyed this informative episode.
Glad you enjoyed it!
can you explain gold thats just in the sand gravels and still feet above bedrock?
The video talks about false bedrock layers.
Excellent video
Thank you very much!
Thank you. Very informative!
You are welcome!
Great video! Thanks Kirk for pointing me to this :) super informative
Glad you liked it, and happy to help!
@@ChrisRalph oh it will. Almost all the way through it and have learned so much. I needed this. Thanks Chris!
Awesome show. I learned a lot. ❤
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great information. Thank you for sharing your knowledge 👍⛏️😎
Thanks for watching!
Thank you for the insightful information, Chris! I never knew that much about false bedrock! Thank you!
Happy to help!
@@ChrisRalph thank you for your generosity and enthusiasm!
Always looking out for your videos, got a good kick out of the telluride one, recently got myself some cores and samples from cripple Creek bonanza area, and it looks nice. But the real challenge will be processing it.
Also noticed some flour gold in some field "hard pan" on the farm, another form of false bedrock.
Be careful as telluride fumes can be toxic.
@@ChrisRalph thanks for the heads up, might have to melt it outdoors on a breezy day with a respirator.
Hello Chris, I have a ?. About clechee that is every where I look it's like being in a farmers field, over time big rocks, as well as boulders will come to the surface, well what I am asking is had there ever been Gold found within the clechee or beneath it in the dirt. I am not a Gold prosspector yet. I was thinking of buying the Gold monster 1000 metal detector. Bottom line, is this a place to look for Gold or is it a waste of time looking. Thank you Chris Ralph, God Bless You.
The video you commented on - listen to it again. I say that gold can be found in caliche and I explain what Caliche is.
Hi Chris, I am new on learning all different kind of rocks and gem stones, your videos have so much great information, thank you
Have a question, I found a piece of rock in Ca when I went for a hike, there are a lot of silver and gold color shining stuff on it, how can I find out what are those, is there place that I can get help with..thank you again 🙏
Many different minerals have the same colors so its hard to tell by color. Please watch my videos on how to Identify minerals for yourself. Part 1 can be found here: ruclips.net/video/MpkW58ZeQlc/видео.html and Part 2 can be found here: ruclips.net/video/zOWo49X90gA/видео.html and Part 3 can be found here: ruclips.net/video/_ab5NngRlVw/видео.html
Thanks Chris. Great information as usual.
My pleasure! Glad it was helpful.
Your web site is great.
Glad you liked it - I am hoping to do a big update in the coming months.
Do you know anything about Iowa's flour glacial gold? I'm ruining my house, the wood floors, and every dish/bowl I have. I keep dragging home stuff but I don't know what I'm doing. If the books good for Iowa I'll buy it...let me know
I did a whole video on Midwest gold. You can check it out here: ruclips.net/video/lJoRt5Un9SE/видео.html
Thanks for your videos do you have any recommendations for looking for gold in Maine ? I’m in Long Island and figured I would head to Maine ?
Thanks so much
There is some gold in Maine, but not a lot, DO some research on Google for gold deposits of Maine.
Chris you are awesome! Have you made enough money to pay for yoir adventures? Or is it just a hobby? Gold fevor is real !
I make a good living from my prospecting ventures - but I do a whole lot more than just pan and metal detect for nuggets. If you want to see more about that, check out my video on it at: ruclips.net/video/kBm8mnbMYsc/видео.html
Can show more of us about Colorado Geology?
In time I will do that.
I saw on GPAA claim location in vulture area Arizona red spots on side hills. Further investigating the area with satellite imagery I could see there used to be massive water flowing over the hills, down the slope the sediments began to deposit probably low pressure where suspended sediments in the water were able to drop. I've seen on black sand cleaner table the lighter material will move first the heavier material will drag behind. From satellite imagery I saw the red material in the top hills, but the spots where sediments began to deposit were lighter colors. Wish I knew how to convert KMZ files from Google earth into STL files for 3D printing the surface of the map. Than run an experiment with running water and fine black sand, dirt to see where will I expect to find deposits of heavy material. Than I could take image overlay on Google earth and pinpoint high probability zones...
Best of luck to you in your prospecting.
You forgot to mention Lag deposits. Like on terminal glaciers and destroyed placers.
Well, that was on purpose. Destroyed placers are like ex-wives - they aren't placers anymore. And terminal moraines can give rise to good placers, but only after they are eroded and washed by streams.
@@ChrisRalph Not necessarily. Glacial terminations can offer lag deposits where there has been no stream reconentration. The lighter material erodes away on a gentle slope leaving large boulders and other heavy material. This results in a near surface deposit but has not been cut by a stream. Destroyed placers are not always utterly destroyed. If you can recognize them, sometimes there is a remnant of a remnant, as I describe it, and in that remnant is the coarse nuggets. There was once a great placer deposit but now it's like the trail end of when you dump a bucket of concentrates. Just the heavies.
Well, maybe in some very rare circumstances. All the moraines I have ever messed with are super low grade to the point of being worthless - until they are re-concentrated by the force of flowing water. What you are talking about seems more like a hillside placer, though not from a nearby hard rock deposit, but from re-concentrating the moraine gravels on the hillside.
@@ChrisRalph They are pretty rare. In Montana when a moraine terminates it leaves something like a toe if you will. Gold was taken from Soap gulch and moose creek near Melrose. Some might argue they are lake shore deposits as both exist. I know a few others there too but land owners wouldn't appreciate me telling where. Remnant placers? I don't know how rare they are but I know they're danm hard to find as they leave very little in the line of tell tale signs and I suspect would only be found where bedrock is exposed over large areas such as in AZ. Lag deposits are also mentioned from Kennedy gulch in Mt and on the east slope of the contenital divide out of Denver.
Chris, is it possible to have terrible gold in the top layers but a great payday on bedrock? I finally staked a claim. It has never been dredged before. I found the "paystreak" but at best in the first few feet it's only a quarter gram per yard. Is it possible that it can be this terrible but if I get to bedrock I find a lot of gold to make the amount of work getting through 10-15' of overburden worth it? Or am I likely wasting my time? Thanks.
Yes its possible that most or nearly all of the gold is on or near bedrock. However just because there is no gold shallow it does not mean you are for sure going to find good gold on the bedrock. Getting through 10 to 15 feet of overburden is pretty crazy unless you have bulldozers and other heavy equipment.
@@ChrisRalph I can get through 10' in a few days with my dredge. But the reason I'm asking is because I have to hike in 300 pounds of equipment a few miles on foot to be able to set it up, so I want to make sure there is at least a good chance it's worth it! I've never found a spot that hasn't been dredged before, so I'm dreaming of it being like what the old timers originally found here bucket dredging. Thanks for the reply!
I'd do a lot of sampling first to see if there is good gold in the area and that the area seems worth dredging before bringing in 300 pounds of stuff.
Learning alot
Glad you enjoyed it
If a crystal doesn't beep at all with a Mine lab Gold Monster 1000 detector, do you think it's still worth crushing and checking it or should I not bother with it?
Not all gold is coarse and large enough to be seen with a metal detector. I have some rock with no visible gold that yields about 1 gram per 30 pounds of rock. The gold is all too tiny to be seen on any metal detector, but large enough to capture with a pan.
@@ChrisRalph thank you, I knew you'd be the one to ask . And thank you so much for reading and answering your comments . I really appreciate you and all you do.
Dude Chris Ralph. You're my dad bro. Hahahaha jk jk
I did just buy your book. You've changed my life and given me an alternative and a priceless skill. Thank you very much.
Let me know how you do.
Are Palaeochanel's ever found above bedrock; as if the channel was just temporary? I'd love to thank you for all the information that I have received from your videos, good freebies are hard to find
Yes, once in a while they don't cut down to the full bedrock of the older channel. In those cases the gold of the temporary channel is on a false bedrock.
@@ChrisRalph , thank you for the knowledge
Great video Chris! Do you have an actual photo of what false bedrock looks like? Because greenhorns like me learn differently. Anyway it's always great learning from your videos!
It can look like different things, but most often looks like a layer of clay.
@@ChrisRalph Ok thanks so much Chris!!
Awesome 👍😎
Thank you! Cheers!
Good
Thanks
Im taking some of this knowledge Chris, I’m off to (********) in Scotland for a week of river and embankment panning, so we pray to the universe its warm and dry.
Best of luck to you in your efforts.
@@ChrisRalph thank you pal, I’ll let you know if we get anything decent.
I do not understand what you mean when discussing false bedrock . Can you explain in more detail. I can't visualize what you're talking about .
Its a layer that is above true bedrock that is durable enough that the stream does not break through it during floods. Its usually a layer of hardened clay. Because the stream does not break it up, gold deposits on it because that is the current floor of the stream.
@@ChrisRalph thank you , I appreciate your vast knowledge and expertise .
I have another question : RE ancient ocean . I understand that part of our country was a shallow ocean if I'm not mistaken . Is it possible for the ancient ocean to have contributed in dislodging gold or deposited gold in various locations ?
I remember years ago I went prospecting with a buddy and back then I noticed he was running the sluice with too much water pressure , even back then I knew he was washing gold right out of the sluice box but I could not argue with him because he was "the expert " and he did not like being fact checked . Fast forward to present time , I am studying your book and videos and I think I have gold fever now . This time it is with common sense that I have learned from your book and videos .
I'm composing a comment and my phone dumps me suddenly and won't let me go back to complete my thought. I wonder if it sent or obliterated my message?
I dont see anything, but the comments you made after this.
Watching my morning u tube routine I see a few content creators also experiencing electronic issues. Thanks for getting back to me.
Not all area's have gold.
Yes, not all area's have gold
saw rhyolite in a stream bed went to find it ,found nothing should have marked the coordinates. hammer a piece off to crush. i'll find it again. have a good day.
Let me know the results in a future comment.
@@ChrisRalph 👍👍👍. ok.
tx
glad you enjoyed it.
You really need a pop filter on your mic. Hard to listen to with nice headphones. Thanks in advance for the knowledge and refresher. 🍬
I have a new mike and am transitioning to a new computer and other new equipment.
@@ChrisRalph Heck yeah! Have fun tinkering with it all. Tell Mike I say hello 😉 Thank you so much for the valuable knowledge🤙
Hello l am thalland man like
Hello - we have a language translation problem.
I try do rok but can not fine pleas?
I do not understand your English.
99اسما الله حسنا
ok
no not always…just 90% of the time
Depends on where you prospect. If all you ever prospect in is creeks and rivers, then yes. But in the places I prospect - like residual placers, its not more than 50% of the time at most.
Less than an HR ago (see next comment).
Glad you enjoy the videos.