How to Get Started in Gold Mining

How to Get Started in Gold Mining

Prospecting for gold is an activity that has captured the imagination of man for thousands of years. There’s something about gold that grabs at our sense of adventure like nothing else in the natural world. The men and women who participated in the gold rushes of the 1800s left us with rich stories that are just as entertaining to read today as the day that they happened.

If you are the kind of person who loves the outdoors, craves adventure, and enjoys the sense of accomplishment that comes along with achieving difficult goals then gold prospecting is an activity that you should consider.

There are a lot of things to think about when starting to become a prospector. The first thing is to determine what your personal goals are. There are several different paths that you can take and each one will require different skills and knowledge.

get started gold mining canada

Choose your path

Do you want to be a recreational prospector? That would mean prospecting as a hobby or pastime while still having another source of income. Recreational prospecting is a great hobby and very rewarding. As a recreational prospector you may or may not need to own a claim and the investments in equipment and training are minimal.

If you aspire to become a small-scale miner you’re going to have to invest a lot more time and money into your endeavors. You’ll need to hold your own claim and will require substantially more equipment than a recreational prospector.

Full-scale commercial miners are a whole different story. You’ll require advanced knowledge of gold deposits, exploration, sampling, and mining techniques as well as heavy investments in mining property and equipment.

In addition to the scale of mining activities that you plan to engage in you’ll have to think about what type of prospecting you want to do. There are two general types of gold prospecting Hard Rock and Placer.

Placer gold is the type that is deposited in river gravels and ancient stream beds. Hard rock gold is located in its original source, in actual rock. The prospecting techniques and methods used for placer and hard rock are totally different with very little overlap. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to explore for both types of gold.

Once you’ve set your goals you’ll be better positioned to set yourself up to reach them. It’s pretty difficult to start from scratch and become a full-scale commercial miner in your first year but that hasn’t stopped people from trying. If you are considering that path make sure that you have some people supporting you with legitimate mining and exploration experience.

Learn prospecting techniques

Different types of gold deposits require different techniques to find them. As a fledgling prospector, you won’t become skilled at all aspects of gold exploration right away. You’ll have to determine what type of prospecting you want to focus on.

To get started you’ll need to learn some basic geology and an understanding of where gold is likely to be found. You don’t have to become a geologist but it will be helpful to understand a few of the different rock types and environments where gold is commonly found in your area. Placer gold is found in creeks and ancient river channels while hard rock gold sources can occur pretty much anywhere in the right kinds of rock.

You’ll want to learn the difference between igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks. You’ll want to be familiar with minerals that occur in the same environment as gold such as quartz, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and mica. It’s important to be able to tell the difference between fool’s gold and real gold.

For hard rock prospecting, you’ll want to be able to recognize the types of environments where gold deposits form. Some common types are epithermal, porphyry, and volcanic massive sulfide. That all might sound new to you now but through research and experience, you’ll learn to recognize the signs of these different environments.

Placer gold and hard rock gold start out the same but end up being collected in different locations. Placer gold is just in-situ gold that has been eroded and concentrated in a creek or river environment. That being said, placer deposits don’t always point towards hard rock deposits and the opposite is also true.

Spotty River paleochannel gold

In placer exploration one of the most important things to understand is how to read a river. That means being able to understand which parts of a creek are likely to contain concentrations of gold. Placer gold is not distributed evenly, instead, it collects in certain parts of a stream while other parts have little to no gold.

The density difference between gold, water, and other minerals is a key component of placer prospecting. Since gold is very dense it takes a lot of energy to move it, when the water loses energy the gold will stay put. Basically, gold will accumulate in sections of the creek where the water velocity slows down. For example on the inside bends where a point bar is forming, on the downstream side of obstructions in the creek, or on riffles or old channels.

You’ll need to recognize the different types of placer deposits. Not all placer gold is found in streams.

  • Flood Gold is found in the upper gravels of a creek or river that actively move during floods. This gold tends to be small in size and can change from year to year. Flood gold can be found right on the surface of gravel bars in many cases.
  • Streambed Placer deposits are located within a stream or river channel but in stationary gravels that don’t move with seasonal floods. Streambed deposits tend to have larger gold but require more work to produce. When prospecting these deposits get as close to bedrock as you can as gold will sink to the bottom over time.
  • Bench Placers and Ancient Channels are remnants of old rivers that have changed course. They are basically streambed placers but the river is no longer running with water. Benches can be high above the current river and ancient channels can be in a totally different course than the river today. These are difficult to prospect but locating one of these deposits could bring you lots and lots of gold. More info on that here: Paleochannel Hunting Guide
  • Residual and Eluvial Placers are placer deposits that form near a hard rock source. They are formed by erosion as gold-bearing rock breaks free from its source. Gold can accumulate in the hillside in pockets. These deposits can be very rich but tend to be small in size. Pocket hunting can be lucrative for a small miner though.
  • Beach Placers form by concentrating placer gold due to the wave action of a beach instead of the flow of a river. A famous example of this is the deposit in Nome, Alaska which is featured in the TV reality show “Bering Sea Gold”.

Once you’re able to recognize places where gold is likely to accumulate you’ll need to test the gravels. There is one fundamental skill that is used at every stage of placer prospecting and that is gold panning. You’ll have to spend the time to become good at gold panning. There are numerous devices available that are marketed to make up for lack of gold panning skill. No tool is more important to a gold prospector than his trusty gold pan!

Gold panning, like all placer methods, is based on the density difference of gold vs water, gravel, and black sands. When suspended in water gold will sink to the bottom of the pan. There are two steps to gold panning, agitating the material and washing away the less dense sands. As you’re panning you’ll alternate between these two steps, agitate and wash. As you’re agitating the material you’re allowing the gold to sink to the bottom of the pan, then you want to keep the gold in the bottom while you wash away the lighter material. Eventually, you’ll be left with only gold and nothing else.

Just like any skill it takes time to master. The best way to learn is to start out with lead shot. Try different sizes of shotgun pellets or BBs and mix them with gravel to practice. Once you’re able to separate the shot from the gravel you’ll be ready to try it for real.

You don’t need a lot of tools to start out. Lots of people go on a buying spree when they get started in prospecting. Don’t do that. All those extra gimmicks aren’t going to help you find more gold. Especially things like metal detectors and panning aids.

In addition to a gold pan, you’ll want a ½” or ¼” screen and a snuffer bottle. That’s all you need. The screen helps remove the larger pebbles which makes panning easier and faster. A snuffer bottle is a small plastic bottle that helps you keep your gold. It functions like a turkey baster, you squeeze it and use the bottle to suck up gold out of your pan for safekeeping.

Gold pan kit beginner

As you advance in your prospecting career you’ll find the need for additional tools. Gold pans are excellent for testing gravels and separating concentrates but sooner or later you’ll want to run larger samples and produce a bit of gold. To run larger samples you’ll need a device that can concentrate gold at a higher rate.

A sluice or highbanker is the next logical step. A sluice is a tray set at an angle with riffles that collect dense material (ie. gold). A highbanker is a portable machine with a sluice and a hopper that allows for concentrating larger amounts of material, usually between ¼ to 2 yards per hour. A high banker is the largest machine that you can run in BC without a permit, more on that below.

There are much larger wash plants available for larger-scale testing and full-scale mining.

When it comes to larger-scale mining you’ll need to learn about exploration, sampling, and mining on a larger scale. Each of those steps requires a lot of detailed knowledge, give us a call when you get to that stage and we’ll help you out.

Stake a Claim

Once you’ve made a discovery it’s time to stake a claim. There are a lot of things to consider when deciding which claim to stake. You’ll want to consider things like location, accessibility, price, type of deposit, and several other factors before you commit to a piece of ground. You’ll also need to consider the licensing and regulations.

In British Columbia, it is necessary to hold a Free Miner’s Certificate in order to hold a claim. This certificate provides certain rights such as access to mineral lands and to tenure ownership. The history of the FMC actually dates back to medieval Europe.

In order to obtain an FMC in BC it is necessary to visit a Front Counter office in person to verify your ID. The government website can guide you through the process.

You’ll have to decide if it’s beneficial for you to stake a claim yourself or to buy one from somebody else. The cost to stake a claim is quite low, in BC it costs about $100 for each 500m x 500m cell in staking fees. This is done with BC’s online staking system. In other jurisdictions such as the Yukon, physical claim posts are still used. There is a lot of debate about which system is better but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Buying a claim from someone else is much more expensive but if that person has already done some of the exploration work it could be worthwhile. Be extremely cautious of people advertising claims with good gold on them. Since the early days of the gold rushes in the 1800s speculation and deception have been part of this business. Mark Twain famously defined a gold mine as “A hole in the ground with a liar at the top”. Today is no exception.

If you are considering buying a claim from someone else do your due diligence first. That means doing your own testing on site. Test enough so that you’re confident in the gold grades being advertised. If you aren’t confident in your ability to do that then you’re not ready to buy a claim.

  • Location: The location of a claim is fundamental to whether it will be successful or not. First and most importantly it must have gold on it. After all, you can’t mine gold if it isn’t there. As mentioned above you should do significant research and test an area prior to staking it. Secondly, you need the claim to be in a location that you can get to on a regular basis. If it’s located far away from your home and you can only get there once a year how will you be able to work it?
  • Access: Aside from the gold grades you’ll need access to the property. You’ll have to decide what kind of access is necessary. If you want to be bringing in equipment you’ll need some kind of road access. Some newly discovered areas don’t have roads but you’ll need to decide how adventurous you want to get and how much development work you’re willing to do on your own. You’ll also want to determine the access to water and if you can get down to the creek or not. Is the claim in a canyon, or on top of a mountain?
  • Type of Deposit: as we discussed above there are different types of placer deposits. An area that you are considering claiming could have a creek, or it could be on a high bench with no water. It could be a beach placer or even high up on a mountain. All of these areas could host a viable gold deposit but you’ll have to decide if your skills and ambition are a match for the task at hand.
  • History: the mining history in the area is also important. You don’t want to buy a claim that’s already been mined out. It’s important to make sure that there’s still some gold left for you. There are scenarios where historical miners make mistakes or had poor prospecting techniques and left lots of gold behind. Sometimes that can be due to superstitions or insufficient funds. It’s also important to not get caught up in urban legends or miner’s tales about the area.
  • Other Land Owners: a mineral or placer claim gives you the rights to the hard rock or placer minerals within the boundaries of your claim. It does not give you ownership of the land. Someone else could own private property in the same location, other parties could have the forestry rights, traplines, or there could be things like a power line or pipeline right of ways, gravel pits or indigenous land. There are also provincial parks and other types of land ownership such as legacy claims and crown-granted claims to look out for. As a claim owner you have certain rights to access and develop your claim (even if it’s on private property in many cases) but the less conflict you have the better.

Ownership of a claim gives you certain privileges but it also comes with responsibilities. A claim will require upkeep in the form of assessment work or payments in lieu. You’ll also need permits for advanced work and mining which require a lengthy application process and first nations consultation in most cases. Spend the time to properly research and test a claim before you take the plunge, especially if you’re considering spending a lot of money on it.

Learn the Regulations

No matter what scale of gold prospecting you are going to engage in you’ll have to learn the rules and regulations. Now that’s easier said than done. In most jurisdictions, the rules are not readily available, especially in British Columbia. The major rules are usually somewhat easy to find but they are always ripe with exceptions and open to interpretation. Unfortunately, the mining regulations in BC are based on a patchwork of laws and there is no manual or anything that clearly summarizes the rules. Just like any law though ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking it.

In BC, the rules regarding mining claims and land access are covered by the Mineral Tenure Act. You can access the regulations here: Mineral Tenure Act

The BC Ministry of Mines (or The Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Low Carbon Innovation if you want to use their full name) has put out a good summary of the rules for small-scale mining without a Mines Act Permit called Bulletin #38. You can access that document here: Permissible Activities without a Mines Act Permit

Other acts that regulate mining activities are the Mines Act, the Mining Right of Way Act and the Water Sustainability Act. The MTO website has links to the actual legislation behind those acts: BC Mining Legistlation

Small scale mining without heavy equipment is permitted in BC under the conditions in Bulletin #38. Larger work programs require permits from the Ministry of Mines and are subject to additional regulations.

There is no guidebook to the BC mining laws. It would be nice if the government could put together a book as they have for studying for your driver’s license. Unfortunately no such document exists. The Atlin Placer Miner’s Association put together a document called the Atlin Placer Mining Best Management Practices Guidebook, which was an attempt to create a guidebook.

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This article is a brief overview of how to get started in placer mining. This is by no means a comprehensive guide. Each of the points mentioned in the article should be followed up on. Hopefully we answered some of your questions though.

There’s always more to learn and a good prospector will always be learning. Even experts in the field welcome the opportunity to learn a little bit more. The best advice we can give is to be patient, pay attention and hopefully you can find an experienced prospector to work with. The best way to learn is to work with someone who already has the knowledge.

Happy hunting!

Searching for Ancient Rivers in West Africa

Searching for Ancient Rivers in West Africa

In April 2021 West Coast Placer was hired to assist in exploration for a large-scale alluvial gold project in Sierra Leone, West Africa. This program took place in the Kono region of Sierra Leone which hosts diamonds as well as gold in their placer deposits. It was a great experience and it was really cool to see how they do things in West Africa compared to the West Coast of North America.

seismic bedrock placer sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is famous for its alluvial diamonds. We were working in the Kono district which is where the plot of the movie Blood Diamond took place. The region where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character died at the end (spoiler alert) is not far from the survey area that we were exploring.

Despite extensive diamond mining taking place in the region since the 1930s very little attention had been paid to the alluvial gold deposits. There are a lot of artisanal miners active in the area but their sole focus is diamonds and they often discard the gold that they dig up. That fact surprised me because even in Canada where the average income and standard of living is much, much higher nobody would ever throw gold back into a river. That’s one of many things that’s different in Africa.

alluvial diamonds gold Africa artisanal

The placer deposits in the Kono region are much older than anything in BC or the Yukon. Much of the bedrock is Precambrian (500 million to 4 billion years old) and hasn’t ever been glaciated. By contrast, the rock in BC is less than 200 million years old and has been bulldozed by large glaciers on at least 4 occasions. Despite the differences, some things are the same in pretty much every placer environment. Over time rivers and streams move and leave their gold deposits behind in ancient paleochannels. That’s what we were looking for. Our system is designed to map bedrock depth and show the location of paleochannels.

Ancient Channel Gold Map Africa
Actual Map from a survey in Africa in 2021

Travelling internationally during the covid-19 pandemic is quite an adventure. In April 2021 the vaccines weren’t available yet and travel restrictions were very tough. We had to do lots of covid tests at each leg of the journey and there were a few hiccups. One of our team members wasn’t allowed to board the flight to Belgium from Montreal because his test was taken too far in advance. He had to get another PCR test and catch a flight the next day. On the way back I almost had to stay in a covid hotel, fortunately, the Canadian government honored my essential service exemption.

artisanal mining village sierra leone

It was interesting that Sierra Leone didn’t have a lot of covid restrictions. That’s because three years prior to the breakout of Covid -19 around the world West Africa was center stage to the worst ebola outbreak in history. When covid broke out in 2020 they knew what to do and locked the whole country down with no exceptions. By the time we arrived in 2021 the whole country had a total case count of 80 and zero deaths. With the intense screening protocols for international travellers they were able to keep infection rates to a minimum, something that wealthy western countries weren’t able to do, even with the advent of vaccines.

We spent a few nights in the capital city of Freetown and headed off to Koidu Town to begin our exploration. The bedrock mapping survey covered a large area that was chosen due to the prevalence of artisinal mining and topographic features that favoured the development of paleochannels. We had some knowledge of hard rock gold production in the area and anecdotal evidence from local artisanal placer miners.

excavator placer alluvial west africa
There’s no 6 month wait for permits in Sierra Leone

We had a crew of local laborers which included the son of the Paramount Chief. That was important for public relations since we didn’t speak the local language and it was important to explain to the villagers what we were doing. Having the chief on our side let everyone know that we were working along with local government and not just rolling in to take all the resources for ourselves.

Sierra Leone is ruled by a combination of federal government and chiefdoms. The mining claims are managed by both levels of government in a complex way. Without the support of the chief it would be hard to get the necessary permitting and support of the local community. Luckily for us, the local chief is a miner himself and we got along really well.

The artisanal miners do a lot of the work by hand. They often use gas-powered water pumps similar to what small-scale miners use in Canada. Mostly for dewatering though, they don’t have highbankers like we do back home. In Africa people carry everything on their heads, even the water pumps.

artisanal miner carrying water pump on head

Most of the washing is done by hand using gem screens or large gold pans. The larger operations use a rudimentary hydrostatic jig. There are very few operations using heavy equipment but manpower is readily available in this area.

The local miners have a method of digging shafts that works really well in the clay-rich gravels in that area. They dig a shaft about 1 meter wide and dig out foot holds on the way down. In this way they can reach bedrock in a day or two and get really good samples from the bedrock interface. The company that we were working with hired a large crew of local miners to dig shafts instead of using a drill. The samples were better and expert shaft diggers were more than willing to work for $10 US per day.

shaft made by artisanal miners sierra leone
Shaft made by artisanal miners in Kono region

Getting supplies in a third world country can be an adventure in itself. We tried to bring everything that we needed with us but we counted on procuring some supplies locally. One thing that we need lots of was flagging tape. Since this is a mining area we thought it wouldn’t be too hard to find. It turns out that there is no flagging tape available for sale in the entire city of Koidu. Despite two full-scale kimberlite mines right next to the city. We had to buy fabric ribbon in bright colours and use scissors to cut it in order to mark our lines.

It turned out that the local kids like the fabric just as much as we did since they would come right behind us and pull all the ribbon off the lines as soon as we were done. Sometimes they wouldn’t even wait till we had completed the line which made a few sections really challenging.

Some of the more high tech mining devices in Africa are really cool. The company had some really efficient gold centrifuges for testing the gravels. They’re like a gravity concentrator that you see in North America but made to be economical and easy to deploy. One machine is called the Gold Kacha and works really well.

Gold Kacha Centrifuge Africadiy sluice sierra leone

Centrifuges aren’t commonly used in placer mining in BC and the Yukon but that’s something that we should really consider. The gravity concentrators on the market are expensive in Canada but you can get a Gold Kacha out of South Africa for about the same price ad an average highbanker setup here in BC.

The local gold panning technique is quite different from what I’m used to. They use a large rounded bowl with handles on the sides. There are no riffles and the sides have a very gentle slope. My technique didn’t work to well with their pans. The local technique is to swirl the material in the pan while letting the lighter stuff wash over the sides. One of my crew members demonstrated the technique in the video below.

The bedrock mapping survey was a huge success. We identified a clear paleo-valley and an ancient river channel that spanned several kilometers. Much of the area that we identified with the seismic survey as an ancient channel had never been exploited by artisanal miners.

One great thing about working in Sierra Leone is you don’t need permits as you do in BC. We were able to start digging with an excavator right away. With a combination of bulk sampling with the excavator and teams of local shaft diggers sampling was completed in less than a month. The gold grades within the channel were excellent and alluvial diamonds were also present.

Kono Bedrock Cross Section

Exploring a new area is always a welcome experience. As explorers, we are constantly striving to search different areas and locate mineable gold deposits. This exploration program in West Africa did not disappoint. It was quite a contrast to use the latest technologies in an area where people are still living in mud huts and cooking with charcoal. Some of the ancient techniques used in Sierra Leone are very efficient, such as the shaft digging technique. If we could get hundreds of workers to dig shafts in Canada for $10 per day imagine the ground that could be explored.

We managed to locate a very rich placer deposit containing minable quantities of gold and alluvial diamonds. This project was developed with the support and mutual benefit of the local chiefdom and communities. It was a great experience to share knowledge of different mining and exploration techniques and learn a few new ones as well.

Placer Exploration in the Yukon

Placer Exploration in the Yukon

In the spring 2016 I was hired to help on a large scale placer exploration program in the Yukon. The property is located in a part of the Yukon where very little placer activity has taken place. We had a small team of three guys and a lot of equipment.

HayesValleyYota

The Yukon, like BC and Alaska, was explored and settled by prospectors in the late 1800s.  The Klondike gold rush of 1896-1899 was the largest and most storied gold rush in history.  It is estimated that over 100,000 gold seekers migrated to the Arctic territory from places like San Fransico and Seattle.  The Yukon’s economy is still driven by mining and the local culture is completely saturated with gold rush era influences.  A great example is Yukon Gold, the flagship beer of the Yukon Brewing Company, has part the the famous poem “The Cremation of Sam Mcgee” on the label.

YukonGold

The Robert Service poem is part of Canadian heritage and is part of the school curriculum across the country.  After several trips prospecting in the Yukon it takes on different meaning than a quirky poem that you have to read out loud in grade three.

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

On a Monday night in early April at 9PM I received a phone call. “Your flight leaves Vancouver in the morning for Whitehorse. We’ll fill you in on the way.” Typical for this kind of job. I had been expecting the call for a few weeks but it still caught me a little off guard.

Approximate location of the camp
Approximate location of the camp

On arrival to Whitehorse I had been advised that one of our crew would meet me there. I had never met this guy before but I knew he was an old placer miner. The Whitehorse airport is small and we were the only flight. There were several people waiting for passengers so I had to guess. I noticed a guy wearing rubber boots and looked like a placer miner to me. I introduced myself and luckily he was the right guy.

Aerial shot of the placer claims
Aerial shot of the placer claims

We spent a couple hours rounding up additional gear before catching the charter to the camp. I was crammed in a Cessna 206 with the pilot and a bunch of gear. We had all the 5 gallon pails we could buy at the Whitehorse Home Hardware, drill bits, my gear, a 45 gallon drum of diesel, and a bunch of other stuff.

Soon after leaving Whitehorse we flew over Lake Lebarge which is the location where Sam Magee was famously cremated.

LakeLabarge
Lake Lebarge

The pilot warned me that the runway was a little rough. We took a couple passes and lined up to land. It was rough all right, made of gravel and ice, we bounced so hard that we almost took off again. My two crew members were waiting to greet me at the plane. They were excited to meet me, especially since I brought a 24 pack of Kokanee. The beer didn’t last the night.

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The two guys that I was working with had already been there for several weeks. It’s a rustic camp and there was no water available for showers or anything. I thought my team mates smelled pretty bad when I arrived but after a few days we all smelled the same. A few weeks later temperatures were high enough to rig up a pump system and a shower. This is not the first rustic camp that I’ve been to where we have satellite internet and no showers.  These are interesting times to be an explorer.
TheCamp

The camp consists of three canvas tents, a seacan and an outhouse.  The tents have “hippy killer” stoves that burn wood.  They work well most of the time but you have to chop wood every time you want heat.  Wood floors had been constructed which is certainly a luxury over dirt floors.  Our kitchen is in the same tent as the office.  There’s a propane stove/oven and plenty of food.  We used paper plates so we wouldn’t have to wash them, they worked great for starting the stoves when we were done with them.

InsideTent

The main goal of this program was to carry out a sampling over the property.  The drilling and sampling will allow us to find and evaluate economic placer deposits. Our primary tool was a Nodwell mounted drill with a 12″ auger. Some areas were sampled by excavator where the ground was not suitable to drill. Material was collected with the drill and excavator and processed on site with a small wash plant. In addition to gold values we developed an understanding of bedrock depth, characteristics and the distribution of placer gold.

Our Auger Drill
Our Auger Drill

Most of the gear was brought in on the winter trail. The trail is about 100km from the closest dirt road and requires the ground to be frozen and snow covered. Our two Nodwells, Toyota track truck, quads, fuel and everything was brought in over the trail. With a light load it can be travelled by snowmobile in about 4 hours each way. With the heavy equipment it takes 3-4 days. There are impromptu camps along the way but nothing with heat and very little shelter. The guys were prepared of course.

On the trail
On the trail

Nodwells are pretty cool machines.  They were invented in the 1950s to service the oilfields of Northern Alberta and the Arctic.  These beastly machines have super wide tracks to spread their weight on soft terrain.  They have a unique drive system that uses rubber tires on the track.  Operating one is similar to driving a tank.  You pull levers to brake the track on either side.  We had two of them, a big Nodwell for the drill and a smaller one for a support vehicle.  The Nodwells have a lot of character, check out the yellow plywood interior and gun rack.  The small one is named “Picasso”.  The photos will expand when clicked.

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We located and mapped several trenches that were used for ground sluicing dating back to the 1898 Yukon gold rush. The old timers diverted the creek to flow through hand cut trenches. The water was then controlled via a series of gates to strip away overburden. Sort of like hydraulicking. There’s not much left of the old workings today but it gives us an idea of where the pay streaks are.
Old Timer's Trenches
Old Timer’s Trenches

Sampling is key to any placer operation.  Sloppy or inadequate sampling spells the death of many mining operations.  After all you wouldn’t get married without going on a date first.  We collected samples with a rugged 12″ auger drill.  Each sample had a set depth interval and a measured volume.  With accurate measurements we can extrapolate the sample data to evaluate the deposit over large areas.  For example if we sample 500mg (1/2 gram) from 10 pails of material,  that equates to just over 3 grams per cubic yard.  We did have some just like that, and better.

Fresh Drill Samples
Fresh Drill Samples

After collection by the drill our samples were run through a mini wash plant.  We were using a cool machine called “The Prospector” by Goldfield Engineering.  The Prospector uses a water driven pelton wheel to create a vibration.  That’s awesome because all it needs is a 2″ pump to run.  The wheel rotates an eccentric weight similar to the way the a cell phone vibrates but on a larger scale.  Using this machine I processed over 15 cubic yards of samples over 7 weeks.

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The Prospector really eats through material.  The shaker screen breaks it up almost as fast as you can feed it. It struggles when there is a lot of clay though.  After each sample interval is run a cleanup is necessary.  With this machine it’s a quick procedure.  The concentrates from each sample are panned out with a gold pan.  The gold is then dried out and weighed to be used in grade estimates.

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As the summer solstice approaches the days get longer in the Yukon.  In the summer the sun does not set in the Arctic it is after all the land of the midnight sun.  The lack of darkness takes a little getting used to.  In early May we had a couple of Northern lights shows that were pretty good.  At that time there was about 2 hours of darkness where the Northern lights were visible.  A week later it would no longer be dark enough.

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

We encountered few animals on the trip.  This is described as a “hungry” part of the Yukon.  One bear tried to enter our camp.  It was a very large black bear, the electric fence slowed him down but it took a few bear bangers to scare him off.  A huge mangey wolf casually pranced right in front of us one night.  All the animals are big in the Yukon.  Even the mosquitoes.  They are so big that they often get up and fly away after you swat them.  Unless you are willing to really smack yourself in the face, they are not going to die.

Mosquito

For some samples we had to use the excavator.  The auger drill does not work well in areas where the permafrost has melted.  We tried a few spots and the mixture of water and loose gravel would not stay on the auger flights.  The excavator does not have that problem since it scoops up a bucket full of material, water and all.  We used a huge 4″ pump to drain the holes first then sampled the bedrock and regolith with the hoe.  The samples were of course put into pails and we measured the volume before processing.

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We had a few other machines to help out as well.  A couple of bulldozers, some quads, a side by side and a ’96 Toyota pickup with tracks instead of wheels.  We took the tracks off once the snow was all gone using the hoe to lift the truck.  Why bother with jacks when you have those Tonka toys kicking around.

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The winter trail conditions rapidly deteriorated as the weather warmed up.  The ground here is like muskeg with lots of water and mud.  Just about everything got stuck at some point, except for the Nodwells.  We had to cross a few creeks, mud and sometimes straight trough the trees.

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DrillTowDozer

The pursuit of gold will make men do strange things.  In our case it involved a ton of work travelling over unforgiving terrain to drill holes down to bedrock.  Our persistence and determination paid off though and we discovered a pay channel that extends over much of the drilled area.  It is going to take some more work to map out the full extent but we already have clear evidence of a great deposit.

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After 50 straight days it was time to go home.  Our ride out was a DHC-3 Turbo-Otter, an impressive aircraft designed by de Havilland, a Canadaian company, in the 1950s.  The Otter took our whole crew and all our gear without any issues.  The turbine engine gives it the STOL capabilities to takeoff and land in a rugged bush airstrip like the one in this camp.  We stopped along the way to drop off one of our guys and pick up some much needed beer before landing in Whitehorse.

I had a wild night in Whitehorse to close off the trip before heading home to BC.  It was a good time in the bush but it is nice to return to the comforts of modern civilization.

Introducing WCP Placer Mining Club

Introducing WCP Placer Mining Club

Hey guys, I am pleased to announce that West Coast Placer is starting a mining club.  There have been a number of inquiries from people who want to prospect and mine on WCP claims.  So we’re starting a club that will provide the opportunity for members to use our claims.

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Club members will have access to all of West Coast Placer’s claims.  Currently that includes 12 placer claims and two mineral claims in BC.  Access to some of my partner’s claims is also available.  We have claims all over BC including the Tulameen, Similkameen, Fraser River, Cariboo and Kootenays.
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Members will be able to work the claims as if they own them.  You can run a sluice, pans or whatever you want.  Of course members can keep all the gold that they find.
You will be able to camp on the claims in tents or with an RV (where accessible).  Family members are automatically included in your membership.  Gold panning is a great activity for the whole family, kids love it.  You can bring your friends too, the more the merrier.
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There are a few obligations that will have to be met.

  • The first rule of prospecting club is you do not talk about prospecting club.  Just kidding I had to throw that in there.
  • Members must follow all the regulations regarding placer mining in BC.  If you don’t know all the regs don’t worry, information will be provided.
  • Activities will have to be recorded.  This will help with our reports to the MTO.  It’s not much work, just keep some notes on the work that you do.  Keep track of things like, hours spent working, size and location of holes, and take pictures.  This information will also be shared with the group.
  • If you plan on running a sluice or highbanker you will need to have a Free Miner’s Certificate.  If you need help getting one, just ask.

There will be an annual fee of $50.  Why a fee?  That is required to limit club membership to people who are truly interested.  $50 is pretty much free compared to similar clubs.  The others are looking for $300 and up.  We’re not interested in making money off of memberships.

As a member you will also have the opportunity for instruction in the art of gold prospecting.  This is great for novice miners.  You can join myself and more experienced members on prospecting trips.  That is the best way to learn, you can watch youtube videos and read books all day but nothing beats hands on training.

The Map Lies

Members will have support from experienced miners.  You can even get help with your own MTO reports for your own personal claims.  You can ask advice at any time and we’ll try our best to get back to you as soon as possible.

As a member you will be entitled to a discount on the purchase any of West Coast Placer’s claims.  There will be more perks as the club grows.

Update 2021
The club has been active for 5 years, we have a good group of recreational miners. We are still accepting applications for new members.

If you are interested please send an email through the WCP contact form on this link, Contact Form. Explain why you want to join the club and we will consider your application. Not all applications will be approved.

We will not accept applications made through the comments section. See instructions above.

Top Ten Gold Rushes of BC – Part 1

Top Ten Gold Rushes of BC – Part 1

Prior to the gold rushes in BC this part of the country remained almost entirely unexplored.  The Clovis people and their descendants the North American Indians were the first settlers of North America.  The Clovis crossed the Beringia Land Bridge from Siberia to present day Alaska approximately 13,500 years ago.  When Europeans began exploring the area, first by sea in the late 1700s and later by canoe, they encountered aboriginal groups covering much of the province.  Many Indians had seen gold in creeks but had little use for it.  They did not have the knowledge or motivation to mine gold until they came into contact with Europeans.  After learning the value of gold to the British they began to mine it and trade for goods.

Map of British Columbia Goldfields circa 1858
Map of British Columbia Goldfields circa 1858, click for larger image

The Spanish explorers on the other hand were completely obsessed with the yellow metal.  Spanish explorers were motivated primarily by legends of “El Dorado” in their search of the Americas.  Each Spanish explorer had the ultimate goal of returning to Spain with a ship full of gold.  Most of their attention was focussed in South America where their superior weaponry, armour and small pox allowed them to quickly decimate tribal empires and steal their gold.  There is evidence of Spanish gold exploration in BC as well.  Most of the Spanish exploration took place on Vancouver Island and other coastal areas such as Haida Gwaii.  One Spanish expedition travelled inland as far as the Okanagan and Similkameen regions.

Fur trading is what led to the first European settlement of British Colombia but the impact remained relatively small.  The first settlements were established by early explorers such as Simon Fraser, Alexander Mackenzie, and David Thompson.  Early forts were established along the river routes that these explorers used as well as along the coast.  The area became a recognized fur trading district called New Caledonia and it held that name until it became a British Colony in 1858.

Fort St. James was founded in 1806 and was the first major inland fur trading post in BC and still bears that name.  Other notable early forts are Ft. George (now Prince George), Ft. Kamloops, Ft. Langley and Ft. Victoria (1844).  During the fur trade the European population slowly grew to a few hundred people but little effort was put into exploring new ground outside of the established trade routes.

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1851 Haida Gwaii Gold Rush

The Haida Gwaii gold rush was the first recorded gold rush in BC but was very short lived due to hostilities with the local natives.  The rush began in 1851 when a Haida man traded a 27 ounce nugget for 1500 blankets in Fort Victoria.  A Hudson’s Bay Company ship was sent up there soon after and discovered a very high grade lode deposit.

The HBC crew began mining the lode deposit but the Haida Indians soon turned against them and prevented further mining.  In 1852 a ship with 35 adventurers from San Francisco set out for the islands.  They arrived at “Gold Harbour” in the Tasu Sound but did not have much luck finding gold.  They did however manage to trade with the Haida Indians for gold.

1857 Gold Found At the Nicoamen River

Placer gold was discovered in Nicoamen River which is a tributary to the Thompson River.  The Nicoamen enters the Thompson about 12 kilometers up stream from the confluence with the Fraser River at Lytton.  A local Indian discovered gold there by chance and soon the majority of the tribe was mining the area.  This discovery is credited with igniting the Fraser River gold rush.

1858 Fraser River Gold Rush

The Fraser River gold rush involved one of the largest populations of migrant prospectors in history.  It is estimated that around 30,000 people rushed to the lower Fraser River in 1858.  The rush began after an 800 ounce gold sample was sent from Fort Victoria to San Francisco for assay.

Yale in 1868
Yale in 1868

Soon after a shipload of 800 American prospectors from California arrived in Victoria to hunt for gold on the Fraser River.  The influx of American prospectors overwhelmed the small government that managed the territory.  HBC Governor James Douglas requested immediate help from Britain to control this massive foreign population .  The British Government responded by formally claiming BC as sovereign British Colony in 1858.  The new government quickly enacted mining laws to prevent the mayhem that took place in the California goldfields.  Along with the declaration came British military support and the Royal Engineers who went on to build several major road systems including the Cariboo Wagon road and Dewdney Trail.

The early work centred around the community of Hope where steamboats allowed for easy access.  The majority of the gold rushers were participants in the California gold rush that fizzled out a few years earlier.  As a result the population of Yale was largely american and the town was modelled after San Francisco.

Lower Fraser River Circa 1862
Lower Fraser River Circa 1862

A story in the San Francisco Bulletin is credited with igniting the rush.  According to the newspaper:

“In one month the Hudson’s Bay Company fort in Victoria had received 110 pounds of gold dust from the Indians … (prospected) without aid of anything more than … pans and willow baskets.”

Numerous bars were prospected and mined between Hope and Lytton.  Some communities along the Fraser are still named after the bars that were mined such as “Boston Bar”.  Like most gold rushes the men who arrived first snapped up the good claims and the the majority of the adventurers ended up working for them.

Cariboo Wagon Road in Fraser Canyon 1867
Cariboo Wagon Road in Fraser Canyon 1867

The British Royal engineers developed a route from Port Douglas at the head of Harrison Lake to Lillooet to accommodate the influx of miners.  Many new communities popped up and some are still settled today.

The Fraser rush brought people from all over the world but the bulk of the miners came from California.  At the peak of the rush there were over 10,000 miners operating on the section of river form Hope to Lillooet.  The bars depleted rapidly and by 1860 most of the miners continued on the other gold rushes in BC.

1858 Rock Creek Gold Rush

Gold was discovered in Rock Creek in 1858 soon after miners rushed in from the United States and the rest of the world.  The Rock Creek rush was also instrumental in the development of British Columbia.  The discovery was made by two American soldiers who were chased North of the boarder by a band of Indians.  Just 5km from the border where an unnammed creek entered the Kettle River they found gold.

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This photo is actually from Rock Creek in Alaska, not BC. Still a good photo though.

At the time of the discovery the colony of British Columbia was only a year old.  American miners tried to claim the area as part of the United States due to the high grades and the fact that it was discovered by Americans.  The Rock Creek claim issues prompted the construction of the Dewdney Trail as a means to separate the new colony from the United States.  The Dewdney Trail snaked its way from New Westminster all the way to Wild Horse in the Kootenay region staying just North of the Canada-US border.

Soon after the discovery an estimated 5,000 prospectors migrated to the newly established town of Rock Creek.  In the beginning there were two saloons, a butcher’s shop, a hotel and five stores.  Within the first year a revolt broke out due to tensions between Chinese and American miners and refusal to pay for mining licences.  The incident became known as the Rock Creek War.  The governor of British Columbia Sir James Douglas travelled there from Victoria to straighten out the miners.  He threatened to send in 500 British soldiers if they couldn’t behave themselves.  Sir Douglas was successful and soon the miners paid their claim fees and mined the creeks in peace.

There were some amazing claims on Rock Creek.  Adam Beame’s claim on Soldier’s Bar  in 1859 allegedly netted $1,000 in six weeks.  That gold would be worth $70,500 today!  Other bars such as Denver Bar and White’s Bar produced similar results.

1859 Cariboo Gold Rush

Gold was discovered on the Horsefly River in 1859 by prospectors who participated in the Fraser River rush.  They were guided by a local Indian and shown a spot on the Horsefly River with abundant gold and nuggets the size of wheat kernels.  The rush was on as more miners from the Fraser River rush migrated North to the Cariboo.  Soon a town was erected near the strike that exists today.

Cariboo Map Circa 1862
Cariboo Map Circa 1862

In 1860 gold was discovered on Keithly and Antler creeks to the North of Horsefly.  Other notable creeks of the region are Lightning, Lowhee, and Williams Creeks, the Quesnel River and Parsnip River.  Towns popped up all over the place with the most exciting being Barkerville.  That town was named after a British prospector named Billy Barker and had a popluaton of 10,000 at its peak.  His claim on Willams Creek was one of the greatest gold producers in history yielding an estimated 37,500 ounces of gold.  Barkerville was restored in 1997 as a tourist historic town that is a popular attraction in the area.

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Barkerville circa 1868

The Cariboo gold rush saw 100,000 people flood into the area during 1862-70 from all over the world.  By 1864 the Cariboo Wagon Road was completed from New Westminster all the way to Barkerville.  This allowed for easy travel of people and supplies, wich substantially brought down the costs.  It also allowed for stage coaches to securely move gold from the mines.  The stagecoaches operated on this road from 1863 to 1917 carrying people, mail, express packages and of course gold.  The stagecoaches saw surprisingly few hold ups, even though they carried literally tons of gold.  There are only five hold ups on record, two of which were successful.

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By 1870 the gold rush had largely fizzled out.  The good claims were now owned by mining companies who could gather the money needed to undertake underground drift mining.  Those who didn’t stick around to work in underground mines spread around other parts of BC’s North and some sparked gold rushes in new areas.  Others settled in and started up cattle ranches or logging companies.  Gold mining in the Cariboo is still active today, as a matter of fact I have a couple claims near Keithly Creek.

Cariboo Drift Mine
Cariboo Drift Mine

1863 Wild Horse River Gold Rush

Gold was discovered on the Wild Horse River in the Kootenay region in 1863 once again by American prospectors.  The Wild Horse held great gold reserves and still does today.  Early in the rush huge nuggets were found with the biggest tipping the scale at 36 ounces.  The first town that was built was called Fisherville.  Apparently after one resident found a nugget under his house the size of his fist the whole town burned their houses down to dig underneath.

A town was erected named Galbraith’s Ferry, named after John Galbraith who operated a ferry across Kootenay lake.  Later the town was re-named Fort Steele after the legendary Sam Steele.  A second gold rush broke out in the same area in 1885.  Later hard rock silver rushes spread around the region.

The Wild Horse River is estimated to have produced over $7,000,000 in the initial gold rush which would be worth about $490,000,000 today.  There is a very well preserved historic town at Fort Steel that is a popular tourist spot with many actors playing the roles of old time blacksmiths, prospectors, sheriffs and so on.  It is located North of Cranbrook at the intersection between Highway 93 and 95.

The initial gold rush ended after about 6 years but soon the great silver rush would flood the region.  Places like Nelson, Kaslo, Slocan grew out of the silver rushes that blanketed the Kootenay region.

 

1864 Leech River Gold Rush

The Leech River gold rush started with a letter from Robert Brown who was Commander of the Vancouver Island Exploring Expedition.  Yes that was the correct name of the VIEE expedition.  The expedition was launched by the British government in Victoria.

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1880 map depicting the locaton of Leechtown

A letter from Brown published in the British Colonist newspaper on July 29, 1864 ignited the rush.  Here are some exerpts from the letter:

..the intelligence I have to communicate is of too important a nature to bear delay in forwarding to you, even for one hour…

The discovery which I have to communicate is the finding of gold on the banks of one of the Forks of the Sooke River, about 12 miles from the sea in a straight line, and in a locality never hitherto reached by white men, in all probability never even by natives. I forward anquarter eighth of an ounce (or thereabouts) of the coarse scale gold, washed out of twelve pans of dirt, in many places 20 feet above the river, and with no tools but a shovel and a gold pan. The lowest prospect obtained was 3 cents to the pan, the highest $1 to the pan, and work like that with a rocker would yield what pay you can better calculate than I can, and the development of which, with what results to the Colony you may imagine.

Leechtown - Berks Hotel
Leechtown – Berks Hotel

A town called Leechtown was built near the discovery.  By November that year there were an estimated 6 general stores, 3 hotels and over 1,200 miners at work in the area.  By 1866 an estimated 200,000 ounces of gold had been produced in the area and the gold rush had passed its peak.  It was over in a flash as the Leech and Sooke river placer deposits, although high grade, were limited in size.

In the span of one decade gold rushes turned the vast unexplored fur trading district of New Caledonia into a sovereign British Colony.  By the end of the 1860’s the new region had gone from a population of under one thousand people to a colony with several major wagon roads and towns covering much of the Southern half of BC.  The gold rushes continued and led to more development in British Columbia.  Stay tuned for part 2.

Check out part two here:

Part 2: Top 10 Gold Rushes

Late Season Prospecting on the Fraser

Late Season Prospecting on the Fraser

This claim is located in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region of BC.  The location is fairly remote and there are no paved roads for quite a distance in any direction.  When you are out there you are definitely alone.  It has sort of an eerie feeling all day and night, it feels deserted.  There is a ghost town near the claim and some signs of a more active human presence from a distant time.  Check out this post for pics on of the ghost town, Southern Cariboo Prospecting Trip.

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The hike down to the river is pretty tough.  There is about a 1000 foot elevation change from the access road to the river.  We went down there the first day to sample the beach.  We came across a couple of bedrock outcrops which prevented us from travelling any further.  The bedrock had some gold stored in the cracks and we were able to get some of it out.  Near the river we saw some decent colour in our test pans.  We marked the locations on my GPS and made our way back up to the camp.

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We had some great burgers cooked on the campfire and a couple of beers.  It is getting pretty cold up there this time of year.  Once the sun goes down the temperature quickly falls below freezing.  We had a nice big fire and enjoyed the stars for the evening.  It was pretty tough to get out of our tents in the morning.  The moment when you unzip your sleeping bag and start putting on cold clothing is the worst.  I’d like to stay in my nice warm bag for a couple more hours but we came up here for a reason.
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We found an old claim post with tags from 1989/90 right in the center of the claim.  The post was actually carved out of a tree trunk and is the most creative claim post I have ever seen.  As far as industrial markers go this is a work of art.  I hope to find out more about this G. Johnson and what he had discovered on the claim.

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As we were making our way down to the river for day two of prospecting we came across a creek that seemed to appear out of nowhere.  My partner noticed some gravel near the surface and we thought we might as well pan it.  In that pan we saw a small coarse chunk of gold.  This was pretty exciting since it was located several hundred feet above the river.  We took several more pans in that spot and found a little bit of gold in each one.  Now we have to find out where that mysterious little creek is getting the gold from.

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My partner had a Bazooka Gold Trap and we tried it out on this little creek.  The gold trap seemed to work pretty well.  It’s an interesting design that has a chamber at the back and a water scoop underneath that forces water into the trap.


That was our last trip of the season to this area.  The weather forecast says snow is coming this week and it will probably stick until the spring.

7 Common Mistakes Made by New Placer Miners

7 Common Mistakes Made by New Placer Miners

Placer mining is an exciting activity.  It brings us out into the wilderness often to the road less traveled.  There is a certain charm associated with the hunt for gold.  In some ways it feels like an exclusive club where the only entry requirements are the knowledge, skills and the will to take on the challenge of finding precious metal on the earth’s surface.  For those starting out there is a lot to learn and all too often a novice miner’s decisions are influenced by greed or the infamous gold fever.  Here’s a list of some of the most common mistakes made by new gold miners.

  1. Buying too much equipment too early

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    Photo Source: www.tambang.id

    Placer miners are total gear nuts, myself included.  To run even a small operation you need a fair amount of gear.  Pans, sluices, digging tools, camping equipment, 4×4 truck, etc.  And there is plenty of gear on the market to spend your money on.

    However more equipment will not necessarily make you more money.  Often its quite the opposite.  In our fast paced consumer focused economy it is tempting to look for a quick fix.  There is no substitute for hard work though. You need to put in the time and effort to find that gold.  I have met several people who have purchased a brand new floating dredge with nowhere to use it.  Fortunately their equipment quickly finds its way onto craigslist at a discounted price.

    Prospecting starts with a gold pan, other tools that help are classifiers, snuffer bottles, and an accurate scale.  Once you have proven gold in an area you can look at moving on to something that can move more material.  The next progression would be a highbanker or a small diameter dredge (if they’re legal in your area).  If you have found enough gold and can’t move material fast enough the next steps are moving to a larger wash plant and possibly heavy equipment.  At each step along the way you need to assess the quantity of gold on your claim and the costs of getting it out.

  2. Buying the first claim that’s available

    ClaimPostIts pretty exciting to have the rights to your first claim.  You start dreaming of all the riches that are now yours for the taking.  Its tempting to snap up the first claim that is available.  Especially in areas with online staking, its a lot like buying concert tickets.  Unlike concert tickets though gold claims are usually available for a reason.  Perhaps the claim has poor access, little to no gold, or has already been mined to death.

    Do some research before you pull the trigger.  Read up on the history of the area to make sure it hasn’t been thoroughly mined already.  Make sure it has good access roads or trails.  Find info on previous production in the area and if possible sample the claim before you buy it.  Check some maps to make sure the claim is not on a park, reserve or private land.

  3. Poor or No Sampling

    SamplesApril

    Effective sampling is absolutely essential to run a profitable placer mining operation. You wouldn’t buy a car without taking it for a test drive.  It is tempting to show up at a claim and start running a highbanker on the first gravel that you see.  Even some larger operations forgo proper sampling in the rush to get mining and lose a lot of money because of it.

    Sampling is not glamorous and you won’t get a lot of nuggets to show your friends but you need to know how much an area will pay before you spend time and money to produce it.Once you have thoroughly sampled an area and have calculated the pay per yard you will know how much you can spend to produce the gold.  For example if an area pays $100 to the cubic yard and your cost is $40/yd to produce it you will certainly make a profit.  Your proven reserve is sort of like a bank account.  You don’t want to spend more money on equipment than your reserves will justify.

  4. Not digging deep enough

    IMG_2420 Almost every novice prospector will sample surface gravels and expect to see flakes of gold.  Placer prospecting and mining hinges on the fact that gold is very dense.  Being heavy, gold will settle deep as it can in a gravel bed.  When digging a test hole you basically want to dig as deep as you can.  You want to reach compacted gravel before you start sampling.  In most cases your best gold will be on the bedrock.  In some areas there are clay layers or river armour layers that will trap the gold.  It will always travel down until something prevents it from sinking any further.

    There are areas where flood gold can be found near the surface.  It is important to know the history of your area.  Even if there is surface flood gold though the real paystreak will always be deeper down.

  5. Lack of knowledge of local mining regulations

    regs Just like other laws it is your responsibility to know the mining regulations for your area.  I have heard too many stories of guys panning or running river sluices in areas that they didn’t even know were claimed.  That is called claim jumping and is illegal.  In the gold rush days it was perfectly legal and acceptable to shoot a claim jumper.  Today claim jumpers can face a criminal record and imprisonment. Check out our post on claimjumping for more info.

    The rules are not the same everywhere.  A suction dredge might be perfectly acceptable in one area and completely outlawed in another.  Dredges and highbankers area also regulated by water intake hose diameter and type of creek that you are working on.  Other regulations to look out for are environmental rules for drawing water and working in riparian zones.

    Laws regarding exploration on private land, provincial parks or first nations land must also be obeyed.  You have certain rights by holding a claim but that does not guarantee your right to dig in every situation.

  6. Unrealistic expectations

    Nuggets These days with the recent flood of gold mining TV shows it seems so easy.  They give the impression that all you have to do is show up with an excavator and a wash plant and you’ll start pulling out nuggets.  Often these shows have some arbitrary budget that the miner needs to reach by the end of the season.  Just seeing numbers like $500,000 per season will get anyone excited.  You may be thinking if they can get that I can at least get $1000 on a random claim.  Spending an hour per night watching guys pour jars full of gold flakes on shows like Yukon Gold or Gold Rush Alaska will fuel unrealistic expectations.

    The fact is gold is valuable because it is incredibly rare.  The value is largely due to the sweat equity of prospectors and miners who have spent lifetimes searching for the yellow metal.  It will be a long road to get your first jar full of gold or even a vial for that matter.  Prospecting for gold has an incredibly poor success rate.  You will put in hard work, digging, hiking and panning for long hours and won’t see more than a color.  Some days you won’t even see that.  Gold is defiantly out there but don’t expect to see any in your first pan.

  7. Improper technique with equipment

    Indian River Yukon
    Most placer mining and prospecting equipment requires skill and knowledge to operate effectively.  That is part of the appeal to prospecting, its a skill just like any other and takes time to develop.  There are a lot of people out there who are not using their gold pans properly and washing gold right out of the pan.  Likewise with highbankers, its a common mistake to mine all day with the wrong angle on your sluice.  There is a lot of info out there on proper techniques don’t just buy equipment and try to figure it out on your own.

    The best thing to do is go out with someone who is experienced with the equipment that you want to use.  You can watch Youtube videos all day but nothing beats hands on experience.  Most placer miners will welcome an extra hand to help work the claim, in the process you will learn everything you need to know.

    If you’re looking for some experienced miners to hang out with, check out the WCP Mining Club.

Gear Review: Pyramid Pro Pan

Gear Review: Pyramid Pro Pan

Placer mining and exploration breeds innovation like no other activity.  Virtually every prospector that you talk to has their own idea of what the best tool, product or technique is.  If you ask three different miners what the best sluice is you’ll get three different answers.  Much of the innovation comes from the trial and error learning process of placer mining.  What works at one claim might not work at the next.  You just have to experiment until everything works the way you want it to.

PyramidPro

The history of placer mining has a long list of innovations and miners benefited with increased yields at each step along the way.  The gold pan was one of the first inventions, then followed the rocker box, sluice, variations of the sluice such as the long tom, hydraulicking water jets, dragline dredges and so on.  The miners in the Klondike gold rush learned to melt the permafrost using fires to reach the bedrock below.  Now they use modern excavators and bulldozers but it had to start somewhere.

Old Time Placer Tools
Old Time Placer Tools

Every inventor claims that their product is the best.  It can be hard to distinguish the good from the not so good.  In the case of the Pyramid Pro pan developed by Dennis Katz at Fossickers.com it is a game changer.  I am not affiliated in any way with the manufacturer of this pan I just really appreciate the technology.  Fossicker is an unusual word, according to their website it is the Australian word for gold prospector.

There are other pyramid shaped pans on the market but this one has some very unique features.  First off it has insane riffles!  These riffles do two things.  They break up clay or hardpack along with the violent action of the pyramid panning motion.  And they prevent any dense material (ie.gold) from escaping.  The violent action must be emphasized.  In conventional gold panning you want to avoid too much force and splashing because you will force your gold right out of your pan but that is the essence of the Pyramid Pro.  The action is hard to describe and best seen in person.  Check out the developer’s own instruction video below to see how it works.

It is a little funny how the Fossicker keeps saying to “stratisfy” the material.  What he really means is stratify, maybe its an Australian thing too.  You hold the pan with those big handles almost like you’re holding a gas powered ice auger.  It is a bit of an arm workout when you are going through a lot of material but the Pyramid Pro is designed to do exactly that.  The experience is very unique and has little to do with conventional gold panning.  The Fossicker calls the neck of the pan a pre-mix chamber.  Once you get the technique down nothing will escape that chamber.

GranitePPan

The most important benefit for prospectors is that this pan is a lightweight unit that can concentrate a lot of material.  It can essentially replace a small sluice or highbanker for a similar amount of material.  Where it pays off the most is in places where you need to hike in to access a claim.  You are not going to hike with a trash pump, sluice and hose for any considerable distance.  With the Pyramid Pro there is no need to.  I’m not saying its going to replace a highbanker or dredge when it comes to production.  Technically it could but you would need forearms like Popeye.

Where this pan really shines is in volumetric sampling.  That means taking a sample of a set volume and using the gold values to estimate the pay over a larger area.  For example you can take a sample of 50 liters of raw gravel.  Concentrate it with the pyramid pan and then separate and dry your gold.  You can then weigh that gold and extrapolate that number to a cubic meter or yard.  As an example if you had 0.025 grams of gold recovered from your 50L sample that would equal 25g per cubic meter or almost an ounce.   With careful sampling you can be confident that the area is worth the time and money to mine it.

SamplesApril

The pressure plug at the bottom makes taking samples super easy.  Once you have concentrated your sample down, you just pull the plug and dump it into a container.  If you were doing the same thing with a highbanker you would have to do a full clean up for each location.  With this tool you can rapidly sample a large area in no time flat.  The plug can be easily replaced if you damage or lose it.  The plug is just a 1.5″ plumbing plug which is available at any hardware store.

The plastic is surprisingly tough.  I had my pyramid pan on the back of my pack on a particularly perilous prospecting mission.  I wiped out on a jagged rock outcrop and landed with my full weight on the pan.  I thought it was going to be toast but was relieved to see that no damage at all had occurred.  Likewise with my other plastic pans.  I don’t know what kind of plastic they use but it is unbelievably durable.  The Fossickers website claims that it has a lifetime guarantee just in case you did manage to break it.

The Pyramid Pro pan is the center of my sampling technique.  The fact that it is ultra-portable and can concentrate a lot of material makes it an indispensable tool for the modern prospector.  They are not cheap though, I paid $120 for mine and its worth every penny.

You can pick up a Pyramid Pro pan at:

SMI Electronics in Vancouver, BC
or
Motherlode Prospecting in Kelowna. BC