Report from last summers long expedition

I just noticed that I never wrote anything regarding the longer expedition I made last summer. I spent a few days and although I had a great time I did not find any gold.



But especially one location right next to a river was wonderful, there was a large trout showing itself now and then just outside my camp site. I had brought a camping chair and sitting in that just admiring the large river floating by after my dinner was wonderful. Although that trout was really making me regret I did not bring any fishing gear :-)



I had to drive off-road to get down to the river but it was easy with my 4x4 Toyota, this place I will definitely return to some other time and bring some fishing gear - a truly lovely place!

I tried a number of places to look for gold but no interesting signals from my Goldspear, tried to pan a few locations as well but no luck... And no bedrock, this is hard to find up here, the gravel/rock layers seems to be really think up here...



One location was really interesting, I had spotted that when pondering upon my maps last winter and it seemed really interesting with a deep canyon - maybe I could get down to some bed rock down there. The road leading up to the canyon was not suitable not even for a 4x4 so I loaded up all the "needed" gear (Goldspear, shovel, pan, classifier, sluice, food & drink and started the long walk.



It started raining but the canyon itself was really cool, deeeep with steep sides and it was a bit of an adventure getting all the way down to the creek at the bottom some 100 meters down. Unfortunately I could not find any suitable spots for panning/sluicing down there...

The creek just ran through a field of really large boulders and I could not find any gravel/sand anywhere... And it was really mosquito infested so I climbed up on the other side after a couple of hours.



I also found a small tiny creek with lot's of sand close to my camp for that night (just 100 meter from the tent) but no interesting signals from my Goldspear, not even any significant levels of black sand...

I followed this quite a stretch upstream. But at least I used this creek to refill my water tank - crystal clear and really cold and good tasting!



A few hundred meters from that was another creek that was dry from water - probably fills up when it rains. It looked interesting as well but nothing was found after digging there for a day...



I also stumbled upon a spring where a small creek started it's flow - a beautiful spot to say the least but no gold. Right next to that I found a couple of fresh moose legs and I guess some poacher had been there since this was a month before the moose hunt is supposed to start...



Anyway, a really nice trip anyway - saw lot's of wilderness and camped in some really beatiful places. Saw some wildlife of course among that some forest birds, moose and reindeer.

I have not made any trips so far this summer (2007) but I might make an attempt this Saturday if the weather continues as it is now. But it is getting late in the season and quite cold in the water (frost most every night now).