Midsummer's panning

I spent midsummer down in the middle of Sweden and brought my sluice, pan, etc. with me. I had spent a few hours pondering over maps of the area and selected two promising streams.

The very first evening just after arriving at our summer house I went out to test the first stream. The mountain slope looked promising with a "good" long slope but the stream itself seemed too small - just about 30 cm (one feet) wide. But where it started to flare out I built a small damm for my sluice to get the needed water flow. I then ran about three bucket's full of classified sand/gravel through it and brought the concentrate back to the cabin. The day after I carefully panned it with a drop or two of tenside fluid - but nothing...


But when I drove back home I noticed a slightly bigger stream that looked promising so I tried that the day after. Here I did not have to do much to achive a good water flow through my sluice so I quickly ran six buckets of classified sand/gravel through the sluice and brought the concentrate back to the cabin. And maaaayyyybeee it could be some really small gold particles here(!). I am not certain but it looked like that, I will have to look more carefully at the samples.


For the third excursion I headed out for the second creek I had looked at on the maps. This also was on a promising slope but again the creek proved to be somewhat small... And man was it mosquito infested(!). But I endured a few hours running through a few buckets - but nothing showed up in the fine panning afterwards.


So for my last trip I headed back to the somewhat bigger creek and ventured upstream a bit to a really sweet place - man it was beatiful. And hardly no mosquitos :-) I worked quite hard for a few hours running nine more buckets through my sluice and the fine panning back "home" showed some traces of what could be some really fine gold particles - but soooo small... But I had a great time, the place was absolutely beatiful:

I am back home in the North of Sweden now and I will make more trips up here in the coming weeks. I read the other day that 200 metric ton's gold has been mined here in Sweden and there are an estmated 4000 ton's still out there only taking into consideration the top soil layer(!). So I hope I will find some gold ;-)