Gold in a Storm
Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? © 2013 DoradoVista, Inc. – Hunting4Gold.com
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Prospector Jess Hunting4Gold.com
Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Table of Contents
Where does gold go in a storm? ..................................................................................................... 3 What happens to gold in a flood? ............................................................................................................. 3 Water can be 800 times more effective than air at moving material ...................................................... 4 Gold enters the water flow upstream ...................................................................................................... 5 Gold will begin to deposit wherever the water speed just starts to drop ................................................ 6 Why do pay-streaks form? ........................................................................................................................ 7 Helical flow will concentrate gold into lines that move down toward bedrock ....................................... 9 What other things will stop gold from sinking to bedrock? ................................................................... 12 What is gold sampling? ........................................................................................................................... 13 What do you track?................................................................................................................................. 14 Why is this color count thing so important?........................................................................................... 15 Table of figures ....................................................................................................................................... 16
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 1: Where does gold go in a storm?
Where does gold go in a storm? Hey it’s Prospector Jess from hunting4gold.com. I've got a question on the board here that comes up quite often, “Where does gold go during a storm?” You see, gold is moved around on the surface of the earth by water, primarily, and man. But the big focus here is going to be on water. Because what we're looking for is where the gold moves from lode formations, which is in the host rock, into the stream beds to form nuggets and coarse gold deposits, as well as flour, fine gold, so fine that it floats on the surface if it has a chance to.
What happens to gold in a flood? So the question we're dealing with is, “What happens in a flood, and what should I do and what I should look for when I look at a stream bed to understand where gold will be?” Because that's what you want to do. When you want to find gold, you need to find where gold will be. You want to dig into that and pull out the gold. Because it's not just about hunting for gold, it's about finding gold, too. First let's take a look at the stream diagram. So this flow, shown in blue here, is a wandering stream, or a meandering stream. Now streams have meanders, some streams just have jagged rocks because they're coming down steep inclines; each stream has its own fingerprint. You want to follow that fingerprint to understand where gold is going to go. But to start with let's just take a look at flow in this curvy basin, ok? And that will get you some ideas.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
So the solid lines show the stream in low-flow, this is typically spring and summer flow after the rains have gone. These dashed lines show where the stream goes when it floods. If it fills up to capacity and beyond, that's the kind of flood that moves gold. Typically not every year will there be a flood strong enough to dig below the overburden or prior flood debris down to bedrock where the gold will be hiding. When id does it will uncover the buried gold concentrations to move it downstream further. But, if a flood happens so big that it starts to move boulders and big cobble this big or bigger, sometimes as big as a house, that's a flood that can move gold. It's going to scour out the river, and scour out the streambed, and push anything that's on it downstream. It doesn't always push on the gold directly with the water, what it will push on is something like a boulder that will smack the gold and move it downstream. And that streambed tumbling action is called saltation.
Figure 2: Water flow moves gold and cuts the stream bed
That tumbling action in the water basically is what makes the gold round and smoothed into nuggets. But suffice it to say; right now we're going to look at that. So that's this wider area, the dashed area. This narrow area is what you see typically when you're prospecting, of course you don't want to go prospecting when there's a flood going on, it's very dangerous.
Water can be 800 times more effective than air at moving material Water can be up to 800 times more effective at moving material, for a given speed, than air. So if you're thinking about getting into water that's moving at a couple hours an hour, and trying to hold up against
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? it, all you have to do is multiply the speed by 800 and you see the problem very quickly. So water moving downstream in a flood can be moving at several tens of miles per hour, sometimes ten or 15 miles an hour and that will carry anything downstream, including these big boulders. You're not going to be able to hold up against it, so wait until the water goes down. But you're going to have to find out some information and we'll cover it later, as to what happens when that water goes down, because there are still clues left as to where the water was. So as the water meanders downstream and follows this S-curve, something interesting happens during high water, and that is the gold tends to be deposited somewhere upstream. We'll just call it some mysterious place called “the source”. That source could be another placer deposit, another steam, or it could be a lode gold deposit that's actually bordering on the stream. Or it could be a lode deposit that deposits in another stream that leads to this stream. Either way, we'll just call it “the source”.
Figure 3: Mountain stream & debris piles where flood clues are
Gold enters the water flow upstream The gold enters the stream upstream somewhere, and as it enters, the water begins to interact and the gold starts following a trail that pretty much slices across the stream banks at these points. Now the reason why it slices across the points, and it crosses the middle of the stream in between, is quite
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? simple. And that is, there is some action going on in the water, and how it flows, that causes the gold to be swept into a nice streak. So the distribution isn't quite as straight a line. It will be a range of gold concentrations either side of which will be relatively low but in the middle it will be quite high. High enough that a gold pan can easily pick out the pieces and it can be quite profitable if you're in one of these linear concentration areas, they call this a pay-streak. The pay-streak primarily follows this kind of line because of how the water turns a corner. Helical flow will cause the water to sweep the gold into neat lines. It'll also affect how cobbles and boulders form on the shoreline, primarily it sweeps them into nice little piles right in these areas.
Figure 4: Flood zone - dashed lines
Gold will begin to deposit wherever the water speed just starts to drop So wherever there is a bend, the inside of the curve is slow and the outside is fast. So when we're talking slow and fast, this isn't flood, so clear out these dash lines. The slow side, wherever it slows down just enough, is where the gold will start to fall out and deposit. It's going to sift through the material as it's tumbling down the stream and deposit itself as close to bedrock or false bedrock that's clay or concreted material. It'll sit on top of whatever it can't move through during those high flows, so what you're going to be looking for are these little bends. Then primarily where you're going to start working is on the leading edge as well as through the trailing edge of these points on the bends.
So look at this area, and what you're going to want to do is start sampling across these in a fashion that finds that streak, that line. If you go down and you're not following the right area, you can be within a
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? foot of a really serious concentration of gold and you won't find it, typically three feet. You'll often times find colors, a few flakes of gold in your pan, but you won't find any serious amounts. But if you go crosswise, and we'll talk about that in sampling, then you can start finding where the gold is.
Figure 5: Site sample overview example
So this is the thing you want to watch for; is these bends, and basically you want to go and find these areas, and start working them. I'll have more on that later about how you can identify where the bends are, which ones are the best looking bends to sample, and what anomalies in the stream-bed might trap gold. More on that gold trap topic later.
Why do pay-streaks form? Hi! It's Prospector Jess again. Hey, I've got another thing going on. Remember we asked the question, “Where does gold go?” Well, let's answer a few more questions about that, because that seems to be a pretty important piece. Remember the high water and how it deposits the gold into these little areas that are called pay-streaks? What we're going to be looking at here, is primarily why this gold sweeps into these little piles, instead of just flooding and flowing downstream with everything else.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 6: Gold bearing quartz lode
The answer lies in the density of the gold. You see, gold is extremely dense, 19 to 20 times the density of water. And what that causes is, as the gold flows downstream and the water flows downstream, the gold will sink below all the rocks and rubble. Quartz, a major component in most host rock veins. This host material that seems extremely heavy, to some, like concrete, is only a specific gravity of two or three. A very heavy rock like lode stone, with extremely high iron content, might be as high as 5.5, so even impure gold is still more than twice as heavy. That is impressive. Take pure lead for instance, it's only around ten.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 7: Helical flow sweeps gold up on points
Helical flow will concentrate gold into lines that move down toward bedrock So the gold is going to sink below everything, and go as far down in the column as you can down to bedrock. That process sorts and sifts the gold and begins to find where the deepest points close to bedrock are, with one exception. That is where this helical flow takes place. You see this flow is how a stream turns a corner, and that in itself is an important factor, because when a stream turns a corner, that flow will actually bend this way.
Figure 8: Helical flow in corkscrew action
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 9: Twin helical flows down straight sections center the pay-streak mid stream
Think of the water flow lines as a piece of paper. As the piece of paper moves along, it forms a straight line and then as the flow goes on, let me see. Here we go, let's envision this flow as a piece of paper. Well, I want to turn this corner but I can't, I have to go in a straight line. But one way to make it turn would be to bend it, like this.
Figure 10: Bent paper shows flow turning corner
Now you notice the flow goes over and down and now it's turned 90 degrees or more. As it turns that corner, the flow bends around. Now you start seeing the action here as the flow goes around this corner, it's going to sweep the gold on the bottom into a nice neat line. That is an important facet of water-flow and gold.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 11: S-Curves, Points and bar formation
So this flow is going to make things turn a corner, essentially by causing a little, let me do this right. I said this is your stream bed, and the water flow is turning a corner right here. Make a corner here. To turn that corner, the flow is going to have to go along, and then it's going to want to continue in that direction, but what it does is it turns by doing that little knot and bends around this way, but now it's on the bottom, sweeping back towards this shoreline. That causes all of the material deposited on the bottom to start getting swept, think of it as sweeping your garage floor, it starts getting swept over here to this point. And basically because it flows along the streambed it's going to be scouring the material back into this pile.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 12: Flood waters redeposit gold in pay-streaks
Now remember in high, high water the water-flow is way up so as it scours it into this pile your shoreline gets filled up with large cobbles and heavy, big sands. These are gravel bars. More on that later. But as it builds up these gravel bars on the points, and bars, little spurs that go out into the water, that's where the gold gets swept underneath. It's going to sweep in and settle to the bottom and hide out until that gravel bar or boulders or cobbles, those things get swept in high, high water. So until they get swept again, they're going to hide the gold underneath. Pretty much in a line, because it tends to sweep it around and back toward the shore and scour everything in the deep water. That's why gold, typically, isn't found out in that outer part of the bend, because that's fast deep water. This is shallow beach property, or rocky gravely property. But primarily this area right in here has all the gold swept underneath and it's nice and compacted.
What other things will stop gold from sinking to bedrock? If it's there long enough it'll actually form what's called concrete. It'll actually sit down with the mud and silt and some of the calcium, and harden into a material that's as good as the bedrock, almost as good as the bedrock that it's in. The host bedrock is where you're going to go. You have to get down below all those cobbles because remember, the gold is almost twice as heavy as anything in that pile, even though some of those rocks are pretty heavy. Be careful. But the fact of the matter is, because of this, you can actually find the gold under those gravels. But you have to know where to start looking. So that's important to understand, that scouring action of helical flow will cause the gold to concentrate on the points and bars in the stream, not out on the far side in deep water. With a few exceptions, every once in a while something will happen to
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? change the direction of a stream and some of the stuff might end up being left under concreted conditions. It might be buried under what appears to be an unusual formation, it never hurts to check, but in most cases it's going to be out there in the standard locations for a pay-streak.
Figure 13: Where to start sampling
What is gold sampling? One of the next things we're going to cover here is the concept of sampling, which basically falls out of that discovery we have about how streams work, and remember helical flow sweeping gold into lines. Basically what you want to do is what's called a sample. The places where you sample are along these likely concentrations called pay-streaks. You're looking for where the pay-streak is at its highest concentration of gold. See the red *'s on the sample map shown in figure 5. So when you're looking at the stream-flow, the material sweeps as we've talked about before, the material sweeps into these bars and inside points where the water just starts to slow down, it's turning over and over as it turns the corner, and it sweeps the gold into those nice little streaks. You want to start sampling at those points and bars as we've talked about. A sample is simply a hole that you start toward bedrock.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 14: Sample near bedrock
It is usually best to start to sample in areas where you're pretty close to bedrock, or you're going to be digging a very deep and wide hole. It's ok to do that if there is a paystreak, because you’ll see there is plenty of gold. Otherwise you will have yet another fabled "Glory Hole" that doesn't pay out. You want to be careful though, because as these things get deeper the sides can collapse and it can be dangerous, so be careful out there. Also, it's not wise to dig underneath dirt because it can collapse in on top of you, and that would be a problem. It can be life threatening. So, sampling though, proceeds in each of these areas in a very methodical fashion.
What do you track? So you want to start tracking how much gold you're finding in your pan, and how often that gold is found. So how much gold you find in each pan, how often that's found, and then you want to basically use that information to predict where the gold will go. You're drawing a line, so you're going to be building a map as you go along, more on that later. The basic principle I want to explain here is a sample. You're going to fill your gold pan, you're going to pan it out, and you're going to measure how many flakes of gold you find. This is called colors. The size and count are important, the type of gold can be fine, or flour gold, very, very, tiny particles that could even float out, and if you've got sunscreen or something on your hand, it could even float out of the pan, you want to be careful about having any oil on your hands at all. Your pan should be clean of any oils, the plastics in them have to be scrubbed out before you start using your gold pan, or it can float out that flour gold.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? Coarser gold to nuggets is kind of what you're keeping your eye out for, but anything that gives you the color and the quantity is what you want to note, and so you say, “I have five colors or five pieces of gold in my pan.”
Figure 15: Gold in the pan
Why is this color count thing so important? As I count colors from five, to ten, to 50, then I'm finding the pay-streak. When I find something around there that has a lot of pieces of gold in there, I'm in a serious place that I should investigate further and at that point, I must go to bedrock each time. But it's also important to note at what level you found the gold, so you can tell what layer it was found in. Each of these are sampling concepts, and we'll cover more of that later, but that's what you want to start doing when you're looking at your gold prospecting stream bed and your claim. Because you're going to find areas where the gold is concentrated, and that's where you focus on digging, don't dig where there's no gold, it makes no sense. And if you just go in and start digging at random, you're going to have to move tons and tons and tons of dirt even to find a little bit of gold. Even if there's a lot of gold in a pay-streak, you'll have to move a lot more material than you should. And moving that much overburden won't be cost effective and it'll be back-breaking and not much fun. The goal here is to have fun and to have an adventure. Join me on the adventure of a lifetime hunting for and finding, gold. That's what we're about.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? Oh , don't forget to check out the 20-20 Prospecting report. Hunting4gold.com/get/20-20/report/ Prospector Jess, we'll catch you later, next time. Good Prospecting!
Figure 16: Good prospecting!
Table of figures Figure 1: Where does gold go in a storm? .................................................................................................... 3 Figure 2: Water flow moves gold and cuts the stream bed .......................................................................... 4 Figure 3: Mountain stream & debris piles where flood clues are ................................................................ 5 Figure 4: Flood zone - dashed lines............................................................................................................... 6 Figure 5: Site sample overview example ...................................................................................................... 7 Figure 6: Gold bearing quartz lode ............................................................................................................... 8 Figure 7: Helical flow sweeps gold up on points........................................................................................... 9 Figure 8: Helical flow in corkscrew action .................................................................................................... 9 Figure 9: Twin helical flows down straight sections center the pay-streak mid stream ............................ 10 Figure 10: Bent paper shows flow turning corner ...................................................................................... 10 Figure 11: S-Curves, Points and bar formation ........................................................................................... 11 Figure 12: Flood waters redeposit gold in pay-streaks ............................................................................... 12 Figure 13: Where to start sampling ............................................................................................................ 13 Figure 14: Sample near bedrock ................................................................................................................. 14 Figure 15: Gold in the pan........................................................................................................................... 15 Figure 16: Good prospecting! ..................................................................................................................... 16
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Where does gold go in a storm? © 2013 DoradoVista, Inc. – Hunting4Gold.com
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Prospector Jess Hunting4Gold.com
Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Table of Contents
Where does gold go in a storm? ..................................................................................................... 3 What happens to gold in a flood? ............................................................................................................. 3 Water can be 800 times more effective than air at moving material ...................................................... 4 Gold enters the water flow upstream ...................................................................................................... 5 Gold will begin to deposit wherever the water speed just starts to drop ................................................ 6 Why do pay-streaks form? ........................................................................................................................ 7 Helical flow will concentrate gold into lines that move down toward bedrock ....................................... 9 What other things will stop gold from sinking to bedrock? ................................................................... 12 What is gold sampling? ........................................................................................................................... 13 What do you track?................................................................................................................................. 14 Why is this color count thing so important?........................................................................................... 15 Table of figures ....................................................................................................................................... 16
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 1: Where does gold go in a storm?
Where does gold go in a storm? Hey it’s Prospector Jess from hunting4gold.com. I've got a question on the board here that comes up quite often, “Where does gold go during a storm?” You see, gold is moved around on the surface of the earth by water, primarily, and man. But the big focus here is going to be on water. Because what we're looking for is where the gold moves from lode formations, which is in the host rock, into the stream beds to form nuggets and coarse gold deposits, as well as flour, fine gold, so fine that it floats on the surface if it has a chance to.
What happens to gold in a flood? So the question we're dealing with is, “What happens in a flood, and what should I do and what I should look for when I look at a stream bed to understand where gold will be?” Because that's what you want to do. When you want to find gold, you need to find where gold will be. You want to dig into that and pull out the gold. Because it's not just about hunting for gold, it's about finding gold, too. First let's take a look at the stream diagram. So this flow, shown in blue here, is a wandering stream, or a meandering stream. Now streams have meanders, some streams just have jagged rocks because they're coming down steep inclines; each stream has its own fingerprint. You want to follow that fingerprint to understand where gold is going to go. But to start with let's just take a look at flow in this curvy basin, ok? And that will get you some ideas.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
So the solid lines show the stream in low-flow, this is typically spring and summer flow after the rains have gone. These dashed lines show where the stream goes when it floods. If it fills up to capacity and beyond, that's the kind of flood that moves gold. Typically not every year will there be a flood strong enough to dig below the overburden or prior flood debris down to bedrock where the gold will be hiding. When id does it will uncover the buried gold concentrations to move it downstream further. But, if a flood happens so big that it starts to move boulders and big cobble this big or bigger, sometimes as big as a house, that's a flood that can move gold. It's going to scour out the river, and scour out the streambed, and push anything that's on it downstream. It doesn't always push on the gold directly with the water, what it will push on is something like a boulder that will smack the gold and move it downstream. And that streambed tumbling action is called saltation.
Figure 2: Water flow moves gold and cuts the stream bed
That tumbling action in the water basically is what makes the gold round and smoothed into nuggets. But suffice it to say; right now we're going to look at that. So that's this wider area, the dashed area. This narrow area is what you see typically when you're prospecting, of course you don't want to go prospecting when there's a flood going on, it's very dangerous.
Water can be 800 times more effective than air at moving material Water can be up to 800 times more effective at moving material, for a given speed, than air. So if you're thinking about getting into water that's moving at a couple hours an hour, and trying to hold up against
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? it, all you have to do is multiply the speed by 800 and you see the problem very quickly. So water moving downstream in a flood can be moving at several tens of miles per hour, sometimes ten or 15 miles an hour and that will carry anything downstream, including these big boulders. You're not going to be able to hold up against it, so wait until the water goes down. But you're going to have to find out some information and we'll cover it later, as to what happens when that water goes down, because there are still clues left as to where the water was. So as the water meanders downstream and follows this S-curve, something interesting happens during high water, and that is the gold tends to be deposited somewhere upstream. We'll just call it some mysterious place called “the source”. That source could be another placer deposit, another steam, or it could be a lode gold deposit that's actually bordering on the stream. Or it could be a lode deposit that deposits in another stream that leads to this stream. Either way, we'll just call it “the source”.
Figure 3: Mountain stream & debris piles where flood clues are
Gold enters the water flow upstream The gold enters the stream upstream somewhere, and as it enters, the water begins to interact and the gold starts following a trail that pretty much slices across the stream banks at these points. Now the reason why it slices across the points, and it crosses the middle of the stream in between, is quite
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? simple. And that is, there is some action going on in the water, and how it flows, that causes the gold to be swept into a nice streak. So the distribution isn't quite as straight a line. It will be a range of gold concentrations either side of which will be relatively low but in the middle it will be quite high. High enough that a gold pan can easily pick out the pieces and it can be quite profitable if you're in one of these linear concentration areas, they call this a pay-streak. The pay-streak primarily follows this kind of line because of how the water turns a corner. Helical flow will cause the water to sweep the gold into neat lines. It'll also affect how cobbles and boulders form on the shoreline, primarily it sweeps them into nice little piles right in these areas.
Figure 4: Flood zone - dashed lines
Gold will begin to deposit wherever the water speed just starts to drop So wherever there is a bend, the inside of the curve is slow and the outside is fast. So when we're talking slow and fast, this isn't flood, so clear out these dash lines. The slow side, wherever it slows down just enough, is where the gold will start to fall out and deposit. It's going to sift through the material as it's tumbling down the stream and deposit itself as close to bedrock or false bedrock that's clay or concreted material. It'll sit on top of whatever it can't move through during those high flows, so what you're going to be looking for are these little bends. Then primarily where you're going to start working is on the leading edge as well as through the trailing edge of these points on the bends.
So look at this area, and what you're going to want to do is start sampling across these in a fashion that finds that streak, that line. If you go down and you're not following the right area, you can be within a
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? foot of a really serious concentration of gold and you won't find it, typically three feet. You'll often times find colors, a few flakes of gold in your pan, but you won't find any serious amounts. But if you go crosswise, and we'll talk about that in sampling, then you can start finding where the gold is.
Figure 5: Site sample overview example
So this is the thing you want to watch for; is these bends, and basically you want to go and find these areas, and start working them. I'll have more on that later about how you can identify where the bends are, which ones are the best looking bends to sample, and what anomalies in the stream-bed might trap gold. More on that gold trap topic later.
Why do pay-streaks form? Hi! It's Prospector Jess again. Hey, I've got another thing going on. Remember we asked the question, “Where does gold go?” Well, let's answer a few more questions about that, because that seems to be a pretty important piece. Remember the high water and how it deposits the gold into these little areas that are called pay-streaks? What we're going to be looking at here, is primarily why this gold sweeps into these little piles, instead of just flooding and flowing downstream with everything else.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 6: Gold bearing quartz lode
The answer lies in the density of the gold. You see, gold is extremely dense, 19 to 20 times the density of water. And what that causes is, as the gold flows downstream and the water flows downstream, the gold will sink below all the rocks and rubble. Quartz, a major component in most host rock veins. This host material that seems extremely heavy, to some, like concrete, is only a specific gravity of two or three. A very heavy rock like lode stone, with extremely high iron content, might be as high as 5.5, so even impure gold is still more than twice as heavy. That is impressive. Take pure lead for instance, it's only around ten.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 7: Helical flow sweeps gold up on points
Helical flow will concentrate gold into lines that move down toward bedrock So the gold is going to sink below everything, and go as far down in the column as you can down to bedrock. That process sorts and sifts the gold and begins to find where the deepest points close to bedrock are, with one exception. That is where this helical flow takes place. You see this flow is how a stream turns a corner, and that in itself is an important factor, because when a stream turns a corner, that flow will actually bend this way.
Figure 8: Helical flow in corkscrew action
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 9: Twin helical flows down straight sections center the pay-streak mid stream
Think of the water flow lines as a piece of paper. As the piece of paper moves along, it forms a straight line and then as the flow goes on, let me see. Here we go, let's envision this flow as a piece of paper. Well, I want to turn this corner but I can't, I have to go in a straight line. But one way to make it turn would be to bend it, like this.
Figure 10: Bent paper shows flow turning corner
Now you notice the flow goes over and down and now it's turned 90 degrees or more. As it turns that corner, the flow bends around. Now you start seeing the action here as the flow goes around this corner, it's going to sweep the gold on the bottom into a nice neat line. That is an important facet of water-flow and gold.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 11: S-Curves, Points and bar formation
So this flow is going to make things turn a corner, essentially by causing a little, let me do this right. I said this is your stream bed, and the water flow is turning a corner right here. Make a corner here. To turn that corner, the flow is going to have to go along, and then it's going to want to continue in that direction, but what it does is it turns by doing that little knot and bends around this way, but now it's on the bottom, sweeping back towards this shoreline. That causes all of the material deposited on the bottom to start getting swept, think of it as sweeping your garage floor, it starts getting swept over here to this point. And basically because it flows along the streambed it's going to be scouring the material back into this pile.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 12: Flood waters redeposit gold in pay-streaks
Now remember in high, high water the water-flow is way up so as it scours it into this pile your shoreline gets filled up with large cobbles and heavy, big sands. These are gravel bars. More on that later. But as it builds up these gravel bars on the points, and bars, little spurs that go out into the water, that's where the gold gets swept underneath. It's going to sweep in and settle to the bottom and hide out until that gravel bar or boulders or cobbles, those things get swept in high, high water. So until they get swept again, they're going to hide the gold underneath. Pretty much in a line, because it tends to sweep it around and back toward the shore and scour everything in the deep water. That's why gold, typically, isn't found out in that outer part of the bend, because that's fast deep water. This is shallow beach property, or rocky gravely property. But primarily this area right in here has all the gold swept underneath and it's nice and compacted.
What other things will stop gold from sinking to bedrock? If it's there long enough it'll actually form what's called concrete. It'll actually sit down with the mud and silt and some of the calcium, and harden into a material that's as good as the bedrock, almost as good as the bedrock that it's in. The host bedrock is where you're going to go. You have to get down below all those cobbles because remember, the gold is almost twice as heavy as anything in that pile, even though some of those rocks are pretty heavy. Be careful. But the fact of the matter is, because of this, you can actually find the gold under those gravels. But you have to know where to start looking. So that's important to understand, that scouring action of helical flow will cause the gold to concentrate on the points and bars in the stream, not out on the far side in deep water. With a few exceptions, every once in a while something will happen to
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? change the direction of a stream and some of the stuff might end up being left under concreted conditions. It might be buried under what appears to be an unusual formation, it never hurts to check, but in most cases it's going to be out there in the standard locations for a pay-streak.
Figure 13: Where to start sampling
What is gold sampling? One of the next things we're going to cover here is the concept of sampling, which basically falls out of that discovery we have about how streams work, and remember helical flow sweeping gold into lines. Basically what you want to do is what's called a sample. The places where you sample are along these likely concentrations called pay-streaks. You're looking for where the pay-streak is at its highest concentration of gold. See the red *'s on the sample map shown in figure 5. So when you're looking at the stream-flow, the material sweeps as we've talked about before, the material sweeps into these bars and inside points where the water just starts to slow down, it's turning over and over as it turns the corner, and it sweeps the gold into those nice little streaks. You want to start sampling at those points and bars as we've talked about. A sample is simply a hole that you start toward bedrock.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm?
Figure 14: Sample near bedrock
It is usually best to start to sample in areas where you're pretty close to bedrock, or you're going to be digging a very deep and wide hole. It's ok to do that if there is a paystreak, because you’ll see there is plenty of gold. Otherwise you will have yet another fabled "Glory Hole" that doesn't pay out. You want to be careful though, because as these things get deeper the sides can collapse and it can be dangerous, so be careful out there. Also, it's not wise to dig underneath dirt because it can collapse in on top of you, and that would be a problem. It can be life threatening. So, sampling though, proceeds in each of these areas in a very methodical fashion.
What do you track? So you want to start tracking how much gold you're finding in your pan, and how often that gold is found. So how much gold you find in each pan, how often that's found, and then you want to basically use that information to predict where the gold will go. You're drawing a line, so you're going to be building a map as you go along, more on that later. The basic principle I want to explain here is a sample. You're going to fill your gold pan, you're going to pan it out, and you're going to measure how many flakes of gold you find. This is called colors. The size and count are important, the type of gold can be fine, or flour gold, very, very, tiny particles that could even float out, and if you've got sunscreen or something on your hand, it could even float out of the pan, you want to be careful about having any oil on your hands at all. Your pan should be clean of any oils, the plastics in them have to be scrubbed out before you start using your gold pan, or it can float out that flour gold.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? Coarser gold to nuggets is kind of what you're keeping your eye out for, but anything that gives you the color and the quantity is what you want to note, and so you say, “I have five colors or five pieces of gold in my pan.”
Figure 15: Gold in the pan
Why is this color count thing so important? As I count colors from five, to ten, to 50, then I'm finding the pay-streak. When I find something around there that has a lot of pieces of gold in there, I'm in a serious place that I should investigate further and at that point, I must go to bedrock each time. But it's also important to note at what level you found the gold, so you can tell what layer it was found in. Each of these are sampling concepts, and we'll cover more of that later, but that's what you want to start doing when you're looking at your gold prospecting stream bed and your claim. Because you're going to find areas where the gold is concentrated, and that's where you focus on digging, don't dig where there's no gold, it makes no sense. And if you just go in and start digging at random, you're going to have to move tons and tons and tons of dirt even to find a little bit of gold. Even if there's a lot of gold in a pay-streak, you'll have to move a lot more material than you should. And moving that much overburden won't be cost effective and it'll be back-breaking and not much fun. The goal here is to have fun and to have an adventure. Join me on the adventure of a lifetime hunting for and finding, gold. That's what we're about.
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Gold in a Storm
Where does gold go in a storm? Oh , don't forget to check out the 20-20 Prospecting report. Hunting4gold.com/get/20-20/report/ Prospector Jess, we'll catch you later, next time. Good Prospecting!
Figure 16: Good prospecting!
Table of figures Figure 1: Where does gold go in a storm? .................................................................................................... 3 Figure 2: Water flow moves gold and cuts the stream bed .......................................................................... 4 Figure 3: Mountain stream & debris piles where flood clues are ................................................................ 5 Figure 4: Flood zone - dashed lines............................................................................................................... 6 Figure 5: Site sample overview example ...................................................................................................... 7 Figure 6: Gold bearing quartz lode ............................................................................................................... 8 Figure 7: Helical flow sweeps gold up on points........................................................................................... 9 Figure 8: Helical flow in corkscrew action .................................................................................................... 9 Figure 9: Twin helical flows down straight sections center the pay-streak mid stream ............................ 10 Figure 10: Bent paper shows flow turning corner ...................................................................................... 10 Figure 11: S-Curves, Points and bar formation ........................................................................................... 11 Figure 12: Flood waters redeposit gold in pay-streaks ............................................................................... 12 Figure 13: Where to start sampling ............................................................................................................ 13 Figure 14: Sample near bedrock ................................................................................................................. 14 Figure 15: Gold in the pan........................................................................................................................... 15 Figure 16: Good prospecting! ..................................................................................................................... 16
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