Second prospecting of 2008

All rightie then, I managed one more trip this season. Now I went back to the same stream as last time but now the water level had risen quite a lot since last time as it had been raining a lot.

I headed upstream a bit and found a suitable spot on the "inside" of a small curve of the stream and started digging behind a large rock hoping that some gold would have been caught behind the boulder.


I realized after a couple of minutes that someone else had been digging for gold in the same location before me as there was a small hole right next to mine(!) - this is the first time I see some evidence that someone else had been in the same location, and this after several years of prospecting. Looot's of wilderness up here, usually you do not see a single sole during trips like these!

Look carefully in this picture and you will see the old hole further in from the stream from "my" hole where I am digging now. Also note how conveniently close I managed to place my sluice today - some times you have to haul/carry the buckets some distance to the sluice...



Also note the hassock of grass in the classifying mesh, sometime you can find quite a lot of gold among the grass roots as they acts as natural gold traps - so carefully go through these!

I brought all of the concentrates back home and will go through them on a cold and dark winter evening when the snow is falling outside :-)

Hopefully I can manage a few more trips than this next summer, maybe the nuggets will lay there in the pan one day - but at least I get to soothe my soul and relax a long way away from the hectic city life...