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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Autumn Prospecting on the Similkameen River

PlacerGold Trip Reports October 16, 2015gold, gold pan, gold panning, placer, placer claim, pyramid pan, Similkameen, Tulameen 0 Comment

Earlier this week I traveled to the Similkameen to prospect a gold claim. I was joined by Bernie, who I met on the internet. The goal of the trip was to due some reconnaissance prospecting of this claim to determine where to focus our efforts in the future. We were prospecting using hand tools and gold pans. In addition to gold panning we took several large samples using a pyramid pan to concentrate the material on site.

This claim is located a short drive to the East of the town of Princeton. The weather in October is a bit of a gamble but we had great conditions for this two day trip. It was sunny both days and slightly below room temperature. The scenery is spectacular this time of year with the bright colors of the fall leaves contrasting the evergreen trees and the surrounding mountains.

The Similkameen river has a long history of placer mining and exploration. Prospectors began digging in the area soon after the Fraser River gold rush that began in 1858. By 1860 prospectors had found gold on the Similkameen and men were soon staking claims. The area experienced a gold rush and a town called Blackwood was created just South of present day Princeton. Prospectors descended on the Similkameen again during the Tulameen gold rush of 1885. People have been pulling gold and platinum out of the river ever since.

The first day we made the two and a half hour journey from Abbotsford early in the morning. There is a small farm between the highway and the claim. We stopped to talk to the land owner and the refused to allow us to access the claim through their property. This meant that we had to hike an extra 2km to access the claim without trespassing.

We began digging test holes right away focusing on the gravel bars and floodplain above the beach. It was easier digging than expected which allowed us to dig deeper holes to get closer to the bedrock. This area has numerous channels that show evidence of water flowing during the spring melt. The area close to the river is a bit of maze of channels and will take several trips to sample them all.

Usually I camp right near the work site on a claim but this time we went for the glamping approach due to the unexpected hike into the claim. We stayed in a historical cabin in Princeton that was built in 1937. The owners have upgraded the interior over the years with power, hot water and so on but the structure is original. These log cabins only cost $65/night, definitely worth it if you are staying in Princeton.

We were at it again the next day covering more ground. We managed to dig some big holes and take some volumetric samples and lots of gold panning. During the two days we did see some color but no platinum. This area has produced a significant amount of platinum in the past.

Hard Rock Prospecting near the Thompson River

PlacerGold Trip Reports October 4, 2015adit, gold, gold mining, lode gold, lost mine, Lytton, mother lode, quartz vein 4 Comments

In September I went out to check out a claim in the Thompson River area of Southern BC. This claim has an adit on it that was hand excavated prior to World War 1. A government report from the 1930s says that a sample from this adit assayed at 9.12 g/t Au. The report also claims that the adit extended 80m into the rock face and intersected several large quartz veins.

The claim was staked in 2006 by the previous owner who held it for several years. They were able to locate the adit in 2007 but were not willing to enter the portal because of its precarious position on a vertical rock face. It seems as though nobody has entered this lost mine since the 1930s era. Naturally I wanted to check it out.

I was accompanied by a guy that I met on the internet named Rob. He turned out to be a great partner, and took most of these photos. We geared up with some rock climbing gear as well as prospecting equipment and a camera.

The claim covers an area with a couple of narrow valleys with steep sides. Its beautiful country but tough to get around in. According to a prospecting report from the previous claim owner they were able to photograph the adit from the other side of the valley. Take a look at their photo below.

So we had a photo and even a coordinate from the report. We were ready to show up and heroically rappel into the adit. We did not know exactly what we would find in there but I wanted to verify the old assay and hopefully find some gold. Whoever put in the time and effort to dig an 80m tunnel into solid rock held a strong belief that there were riches in there. It was all looking good and as usual I remained skeptically optimistic.

Right off the bat we headed up the creek towards the coordinate from the 2007 report. It didn’t take long to reach the location. There were no signs of an adit or anything that matched the picture. It is difficult to tell though when looking straight up a rock face. We proceeded to hike along the bottom of the vertical wall trying to spot the entrance. Later we climbed to the top of the ridge to see if we could spot the adit from above and rappel down as planned.

We did not have any luck. We walked all over that ridge but were not able to spot the adit. We went around for one last look and managed to find a decent quartz vein. The vein was a decent size and seemed to continue in to the rock. I took a sample which will be sent to a lab for assay to see how much gold is in it. No gold was visible to the eye but it rarely is. The quartz looks pretty good though, some iron staining and nice crystals in part of it.

While taking the sample my camera fell out of my packpack and tumbled all the way down to the creek. It must have bounced down at least 100m. I scrambled after it expecting to find it in pieces to my surprise it was not shattered just soaking wet. I was able to dry it out several days later and it seems to be OK.

Having failed to find the old mine we climbed the opposing ridge across the valley. It was somewhat easier climbing since there wasn’t much vertical rock to deal with. It was mostly talus which poses its own challenges. We tried to recreate the photos from the report. Rob and I took lots of photos with the hope that we could later spot the adit using a computer. Sadly none of the photos turned out well because the sun was facing us straight on.

What started out as a plan to saunter up to a lost mine adit and rappel into it. It turned into an all day scouting adventure and climbing two different steep mountain ridges. It almost seems as if we were cursed, every attempt to locate the adit had failed. Fortunately nobody got hurt and we did manage to get a nice quartz sample, even my camera survived.

I’ll be back soon to find that adit. Our failure gives me even more enthusiasm to find this thing. I just refuse to be beat by the mountains.

Southern BC Prospecting Road Trip

PlacerGold Trip Reports August 25, 2015coalmont, ghost town, gold, gold mining, gold pan, hedley, placer, placer claim, pyramid pan, salmo, Tulameen, vancouver 0 Comment

Earlier this month I made a prospecting road trip to check out some of my claims in Southern BC. I was joined by my brother, Mike from Alberta and a couple friends met up with us in Salmo. We prospected three gold cliams in near Coalmont, Hedley and Salmo.

The Coalmont claim is close to the other Tulumeen claims that I checked out earlier this year on Granite Creek. This one is a few kilometers down river from the confluence of Granite Creek and the Tulumeen River. The old Kettle Valley railroad line actually passes right through the claim and the railbed gives excellent access. Its apparently a popular hiking and cycling route, I ran into a guy who walked all the way there from Princeton which is about 30 km.

There was evidence of previous work on the claim which is to be expected in an area with a rich placer mining history. There were some old dredge hoses, plastic pails, and machine dug pits. There were also signs indicating active mining. We sampled the banks of the Tulumeen river taking advantage of the extremely dry summer that BC has had this year. The river is so low that you could easily walk across it.

We test panned along the beach and took some volumetric samples with my pyramid pan. We saw some decent gold in the test pans, especially in one spot where we hit shallow bedrock. The drought also resulted in a province wide fire ban which makes for an unusual vibe when you are camping. Without a fire you are just sitting there in the dark, thank goodness for beer!

UseCoalmont — My brother panning the Tulumeen

The next stop was at a claim near Hedley, BC. Hedley has a long history of gold mining. The historic Nickel Plate and Mascot mines produced from the 1880’s till about 1950. Several smaller mines are in operation today. My claim is on the Similkameen river but is also covered by private land. In BC a claim gives you the rights to the minerals but you don’t own the land. Fortunately the land owner was there when we showed up and was pretty cool.

HedleyClaimLocation — Hedley Claim Location

The Similkameen like the Tulumeen is super low this year. This provided good access to the beach and areas that would usually be under water. We panned and sampled some promising locations. We saw some small gold in the pans and took some concentrated samples home to process later.

We went to Salmo next. This claim is very close to the site of the Shambhala music festival. There was no shortage of hitchhikers wearing animal print clothing and other bizarre outfits. Near the claim there were several hippies with signs up asking for tickets. I actually picked up a hitchhiker on the way there since I had an empty seat.

Some friends met me up there to help search for gold and work on their prospecting technique. This claim is known to have gemstones of the beryl variety. Emeralds are the green form of Beryl, caused by a chromium impurity. Aquamarine is the light blue/green form. Sadly we didn’t see any emeralds in our pans and we only saw trace amounts of gold. We took some larger samples which I haven’t processed yet so hopefully there are some gemstones there, and gold. I’ll head back there as soon as I get a chance the allure of beryl is just too strong.

After prospecting the Salmo claim my brother and I joined a group at Koocanusa Lake for a houseboat bachelor party adventure. That is another story though.

Search for Slumach’s Lost Gold Mine – Part 2 Expeditions

PlacerGold Trip Reports June 29, 2015gold, gold mining, gold panning, jackson, lost mine, Pitt lake gold, placer, quartz vein, rock climbing, slumach, stave glacier, terrarosa, vancouver, volcanic brown 14 Comments

Searching for a legendary lost gold mine is a little different from a typical prospecting trip. Instead of picking an area based solely on its mineral potential our clues were derived largely from literature and first person accounts from decades ago. It was half treasure hunt and half geological prospecting. Before the first trip we did a lot of research reading up on the legend and accounts of previous explorers of the area. Some background is mentioned in “Part 1 – The Legend”. We also consulted as many topo maps, aerial photos, geological reports and other information as we could get our hands on. It always blows me away how much different terrain can be than what it shows on the map. A topo map can show you several contours close together over 2 or 3 cm of paper but when you get out there it’s a different story.

We chose to check out the area around the Terrarosa and Stave glaciers in Southern BC. The legend says the mine is somewhere North of Pitt Lake, and Volcanic Brown’s last camp was found just below the Stave Glacier. In the early 20th century there was a lot activity on Fire Mountain which is just East of that area so we know that gold has been found close by. Geological maps show the boundary between several geological units at a large fault in the valley between the Stave and Terrarosa glaciers and we wanted to check that out. On both trips we took rock samples for lab assay and panned some of the best looking areas.

In 2012 we launched the first trip to the area with myself, my brother and a trusted friend. To access the area we travelled up the side of Harrison Lake and took the 4×4 roads up to Fire Lake which is beside Fire Mountain. Several historical high grade hard rock mines are located there. From the end of the road we began our trek to our planned campsite at Terrarosa Lake. The walking distance from the parking spot to Terrarosa Lake was about 17km. Right off the bat we had a very steep incline towards a ridge that would keep us in the alpine as we headed towards the lake. I much prefer alpine over bushwacking up creeks. Its a bit of a push to get up there but no real vegetation to deal with once you do. This ridge offers amazing views of Glacier Lake and the mountain peaks all around. You can see several large glaciers from up there. Non stop postcard quality views.

It took us two days to reach Terrarosa Lake. We took a pretty sketchy route to an unnamed lake above Terrarosa. We had to do some rock climbing to get up there which is not easy with backpacks loaded with gear. On the 2014 trip we took a much better route. The terrain up there is extremely rugged, you are either climbing a talus field, an insanely steep slope or descending on ice most of the time. Coming into Terrarosa Lake was an amazing sight, perhaps the greatest view I have ever been rewarded with. It kind of reminds me of a job I was on once near Atlin, BC. When the company sent me out there my boss told me it was going to be “scenic” and my co-workers all started snickering. I later found out what they meant. The camp had no showers, no floors in the canvas tents and no toilet, it was beautiful though.

Before we reached our main camp site at Terrarosa we had to cross the run off from the glacier. There was no way through without crossing a maze of alder bushes and several knee deep streams of ice cold glacial melt. I always hated alders but after the first trip they will forever be on top of my list of plants that I hate. It was quite a relief to reach the camp. We spent three days checking out the area around the lake and tried to make our way into the valley to the West. Unfortunately we were not able to make it into the valley on that trip. We did find some great samples of mineralized rock but not the placer that we had hoped for. After exploring as much of the area as we could we departed on the two day hike back to the logging road. Once we reached my SUV though we were unpleasantly surprised to find my battery dead. After several failed attempts to bump start it we had to make the 20km hike out to get a boost. It was pretty heartbreaking after 7 days of hiking in some of the roughest terrain there is.

On the return trip in 2014 our primary target was the valley to the West of Terrarosa Lake. On the way up we spent a night at the Sloquet hot springs and had our last real food and beer before the 9 day trek ahead. For backpacking we use the freeze dried astronaut food and other lightweight foods. The logging road up to Fire Lake had been fully deactivated since the 2012 trip. There were deep drainages to cross and pushed the limit of my SUV, I bent my hitch somewhere along the way. This time we were more confident in our hiking route as we had learned by trial and error on the previous trip. Instead of camping up above at the lake we moved our camp right down in the valley. It took three days to get in and another three days to get out of the valley and added some even uglier slopes. It also rained for five of the nine days that we were out there which only added to the difficulty. We did have a better planned route though.

The valley had some amazing rock with lots of quartz veins and signs of gold. There are several creeks down there that have potential for placer gold as well. We saw several waterfalls too. It was tough going and to reach one of our targets we had to wrestle our way through the worst alder bushes I hope I ever see. They have sideways branches the size of a human thigh filled in with smaller bushes. It was like some kind of cruel jungle gym on a steep mountain slope. We managed to reach all of our targeted spots this time with a few mishaps along the way. At one point my brother had to jump naked into a freezing creek because he dropped his rock hammer.

The climb out of the valley was very treaterous. It was almost too steep to walk up, we spent a lot of the time crawling and holding on to vegetation like a climbing rope. There were a couple of close calls but we made it up OK. We hiked back around the lake and set up a camp for the night. It took two more days to reach the SUV again. This time I disconnected the battery to prevent a repeat of the previous situation. After a couple of well deserved warm beers and some clean clothes we hit the road. We took the long way around and stopped in Whistler for one of the most rewarding hamburgers of our lives.

The trips we took up into Slumach country were some of the most memorable of my life. The scenery and sense of accomplishment from mastering that kind of terrain will forever be etched in my memory. Both expeditions had numerous challenges but we made it out alive and well. I have everything mapped out in GIS but because of the time, sweat and money investment I won’t post it publicly. Slumach’s curse did not take us yet. As for the gold? I’m not going to give away too much info on what we found up there. I have every reason to believe that the legends are true.

Search for Slumach’s Lost Gold Mine – Part 1 The Legend

PlacerGold History, Trip Reports June 9, 2015gold, jackson, lost mine, Pitt lake gold, quartz vein, rock climbing, slumach, stave glacier, terrarosa, volcanic brown 18 Comments

There are many legends on the West Coast of lost treasure, mines, and caches of precious metal. They are entertaining and spark our adult imagination the same way fantasy novels did when we were kids. I have to admit that I am fascinated with theses stories and the lure of stumbling upon a huge reserve of gold is hard to ignore. The closer to home the legends are the more tantalizing they become. One pervasive legend is the legend of Slumach’s lost gold mine. I have been part of two expeditions to find this mine in 2012 and 2014.

Mountain Panning — Panning Above Stave Valley

On the West coast this legend is well known. Books have been written about this legend so I’m not going to regurgitate the whole story here, this is about my own search for the treasure. I first read of the story in a book called “Lost Bonanzas of Western Canada”. There was a description of the legend and stories of historic attempts to find the mine. Another great book on the subject is “Slumach’s Gold: In Search of a Legend“. There is lots of info online as well.

The legend states that in the late 1800s a Coquitlam native named Slumach would occasionally come into New Westminster with a bag full of gold nuggets. He would blow the wealth on liquor and brothels and eventually return to his cabin on Pitt Lake. Slumach allegedly would never tell the location of his mine to anyone. In 1890 Slumach was found guilty of the murder of man named Louis Bee and hanged a year later for the crime. There is a lot of debate around the circumstances of the murder, it may have been self defence but that is irrelevant as far as the gold is concerned. It is said that prior to being hanged Slumach put a curse on the mine in the Chinook language “Nika memloose, mine memloose”. When translated into english the curse means “No man who finds the gold will live long enough to bring it out.”

There are all sorts of ideas about the facts surrounding Slumach’s trial, his life and so on. The truth is there isn’t much recorded history about the guy. Some say he took women up the mine to cook for him and murdered them to hide the location. Others believe their is no mine at all and he got his gold from robbing other miners in the area. None of that really matters as far as finding a rich gold deposit in the mountains North of Pitt Lake.

There are other characters in the ongoing story that hold much more compelling evidence. Not least of which is a prospector known only as “Jackson”. He left a letter vaguely describing the location of a creek rich with nuggets. Apparently Jackson found a very rich gold bearing stream somewhere North of Pitt Lake. He carried as much gold with him out and buried the rest due to the weight under a tent shaped rock. Jackson seemingly wrote the letter from his death bed in San Fransisco unable to return to claim his gold. Here is the text of the Jackson letter:

Dear Friend,
It will come to you as a surprise after all these years to hear from me for no doubt you have long since forgotten me. But you will remember the old man you so kindly grub staked with money and provisions at Guytos. Since then I have prospected with the varied success that usually goes with the life of a prospector.
In 1901 I went to B.C. and it is of this trip I want to tell, and hope you will gain by it untold thousands for your kindness to me. I heard you went broke like most everyone else at Guytos but had lost all trace of you since then except that you had gone to Washington. Well, I made a great discovery in New Westminster but after coming out for supplies and tools was taken down with a severe attack of rheumatism that ever since has left me almost bedfast until a short time ago, when I recovered sufficiently as though to make the trip again.
I made up my mind to hunt you up and take you with me. In hunting over a Seattle directory I found your name and address and concluded to come to Seattle and talk the matter over with you. A few days after arriving here from my little place in the hills, I was suddenly stricken down again and the Doctors say that I will never recover and may drop off any time for my heart is badly affected. So I will tell you of my trip and what I found and direct you to the best I can to find it. It is too great to be lost to the world and I know with you it will be in good hands.

Well, I arrived in Vancouver about the first of July and hired a couple of natives to take me to the headwaters of the ____ then dismissing the natives I struck out in the mountains, and they are rough ones. I prospected up beyond the lake but found nothing of importance. But the formation looked all right. I concluded to prospect back towards ____ Lake. I kept well up on the mountains but was often compelled to make long trips down before crossing could be found on the deep canyons.
I had been out about two months and found myself running short of grub. I lived mostly on fresh meat for one can’t carry much of a pack in those hills. Found a few very promising ledges and some color in the little creeks, but nothing I cared to stay with. I had almost made up my mind to light out the next day. I climbed to the top of a sharp ridge and looked down into a little canyon or valley about one mile and a half or two miles long, but what struck me as singular, it appeared to have no outlet for the little creek that flowed at the bottom. Afterwards I found the creek entered a ______ and is lost.
After some difficulty I found my way down to the creek. The water was almost white. The formation for the most had been slate and granite but there I found a kind of schist and slate formation. Now comes the interesting part. I had only a small prospecting pan, but I found colors at once right on the surface and such colors they were. I knew then I had struck it rich at last.
In going up stream I came to a place where the bedrock was bare and there you can hardly believe me, but the bedrock was yellow with gold. In a few days I gathered thousands and there were thousands more in sight. Some of the nuggets were as big as walnuts and there were many chunks carrying quartz. After sizing up carefully I saw that there were millions stowed away in the little cracks. On account of the weight I buried part of the gold at the foot of a large tent shaped rock facing the creek. You can’t miss it. There is a mark cut out in it. Taking with me what I supposed to be about $10,000 proved to be over $8,000. After three days of extreme hard traveling it would not be over 2 days of good going but the way was rough and I was not feeling well. I arrived at the lake and while resting there at the Indian Camp was taken sick and have never since been able to return and now I fear I never shall. I am alone in the world. No relations, no one to look to me for anything.
Of course I have never spoken of this find during all this time for fear of it being discovered. It has caused me many anxious hours but the place is so well guarded by surrounding ridges that it should not be found for many years unless someone knew its being there.
Oh, how I wish I could go with you and show you to the wonderful place for I find I can’t give any exact directions and it may take you a year or more to find it but don’t give it up. Keep at it and you will not fail and you will be repaid beyond your wildest dreams.
I believe any further directions only tend to confuse so I will only suggest further that you go alone or at least take one or two Indians to pack food and no one need to know but you were going on a hunting trip until you find the place and get everything fixed up to suit yourself.
When you find it, and I am sure you will, should you care to see me advertize in the “Frisco Examiner” and if I am living I will either come and see you or let you know where to find me but once more I say to you don’t fail to look this great property up and don’t give up till you find it. I am very sorry I can’t give you more definite instructions. Of course I expected to have gone back long since. I have drawn a rough sketch that will help you. Success and happiness.
Yours truly,
W. Jackson

Not much else is known about Jackson. There is another character called Volcanic Brown also known as R.A or “Doc” Brown. Unlike the previous two Volcanic was well known in BC in the early 1900s. Volcanic was a respected healer and prospector with many successes. There is even a ghost town from a mine that was discovered by Brown that is called Volcanic City. He discovered the large scale Copper Mountain mine outside of Princeton that is still operating today. Volcanic Brown is said to have gained a copy of the Jackson letter and started looking for the lost mine in the late 1920s. He would go each summer and stay out there for several months. In 1928 he got frostbite and amputated one of his toes and continued to hike out. I can tell you after hiking this area myself I would not have come back after that.

Volcanic Brown would check in at the small logging community of Alvin at the head of Pitt Lake at the end of his season. In 1931 he did not check in and soon after a search party went out looking for him. The search party trekked over the Stave glacier in November to find Volcanic (no small feat in itself). They didn’t find the man but they are said to have found a collapsible pup tent, some cooking utensils, a double barreled shotgun, a notebook containing herbal remedies, and a glass jar containing eleven ounces of course gold. The gold is said to have contained traces of quartz and was believed to have been hammered out of a solid vein. The rescue attempt was well recorded, it even made the newspaper. So Volcanic Brown definitely found some nice gold out there. His last camp was found in the valley at the beginning of the Stave river near Upper Stave Lake. My expeditions were in a similar area.

The final character is Stu Brown, no relation to Volcanic. For me the Stu Brown story is what made the Slumach legend believable. Brown had several science degrees and was a world war two air force veteran. He apparently used stereoscopic air photos to identify the area described in Jackson’s letter. The area that he identified was inside Garibaldi provincial park. Stu Brown wrote numerous letters to the government asking for permission to claim the site and extract the gold. He was unsuccessful in persuading them to allow him to mine, he even sent a letter to Teck mining corporation.

Stu described a 100′ high natural rock dam blocking a stream where water shoots out of a hole in the dam. He described a pool at the base of the dam that is ankle deep in gold. Stu was never able to give accurate directions to the spot however.

In 2012 I embarked on our first expedition to Terrarosa lake which is at the foot of the Terrarosa glacier and near the Stave glacier. We did some gold panning and sampling in the area of interest. This area was selected because it is near Volcanic’s last camp and vague clues that Stu Brown gave out seemed to fit in this area. The geology of the area is very favourable for epithermal gold as well with a huge fault passing through from Glacier lake marking the boundary between two geological units. In 2014 we reached a lower area in the valley between the Stave and Terrarosa Glaciers. 2012 took us 8 days and 2014 took 9 days of unsupported backpacking and rock climbing in very rugged terrain. My next post will describe the details of the expeditions.

Check out part two here:

Part 2: Expeditions

Tulameen Prospecting Trip

PlacerGold History, Trip Reports June 5, 2015ghost town, gold, gold mining, gold mining equipment, gold pan, gold panning, gold rush, Granite City, Kettle Valley, placer, placer claim, pyramid pan, Similkameen, Tulameen, Tunnels 0 Comment

Last weekend I went out to check out some claims on Granite Creek. This creek experienced a significant gold rush in 1885. The ghost town of Granite city is at the mouth of the creek, what’s left of it anyway. Our GPS track is below.

We took Highway 3 from Hope to Princeton then took the backroads through the Tulameen. The first stop was the Granite City ghost town, then up Granite Creek to my claims. Later we drove up through the town of Tulameen up the Forestry roads to see Tulameen falls. We camped nearby and exited the dirt roads at Britton Creek on the Coquihalla highway. We checked out the Othello tunnels on the way home. The whole trip was approximately 470km. My 8 year old son accompanied me on this trip because he had a geography report for school and decided to do it on the history of this area.

We passed through the hamlet of Coalmont on the way to Granite Creek. There’s not much there except for a couple of streets with some old buildings and these funny signs.

I had been waiting a long time to check out the Granite City ghost town. It was quite a large city at the height of the gold rush. There were over two hundred buildings, 13 of which were saloons. The bars in Granite ran flat out 24/7. This was a real frontier town with all the ingredients for a great western movie, gunslingers, gamblers and prospectors. With a population of over two thousand in 1885 Granite City was the third largest city in BC, even larger than Vancouver at the time.

There are many stories about Granite City, such as the lost platinum cache. It is interesting that the tributaries of the Tulameen, including Granite Creek, are one of two places in the world where both platinum and gold are found in the creeks. The other is the Amur river in Russia. At the beginning of the gold rush in this area the miners were collecting platinum in their gold pans and rockers but they didn’t know what it was. Platinum is very dense and will sit in the bottom a gold pan the same way gold does. I have found platinum in my pan before and it took me a couple seconds to realize what it was. Most miners kept their platinum but many threw it away with their black sands.

The lost cache legend states that a prospector named Johannson collected platinum from the miners and build up several tin cans full. He apparently buried his cache within sight of the front door of his cabin with the intention of returning to collect it. He was never heard from again. At any rate there is not much left of this gold rush town today. There are a handful of cabins in various states of decay, a monument and a graveyard.

My claims are about 17 kilometers up the road from the old townsite. We took the Arastra creek forest road up to the confluence of Arastra and Granite creeks. I met a local prospector while we were up there and he told me Arastra creek got its name because the chinese miners built a large water wheel crusher called and Arastra. The claims that I have are not directly on the water so we had to bring our samples to the creek to pan. It was very labor intensive.

One claim was right off the road so we were able to use my truck to drive the buckets of gravel to the creek. The second claim required that we hike along Granite creek on a very old trail. While hiking along the 2km section to my claim one can’t help but imagine what it would have been like out here in the 1880s. There was evidence of old camps and such all along the way. We even found an old miner’s cabin that had long since been deserted.

We managed to get a few samples of 20L each. I concentrated the samples on site with my pyramid pan so I only had to hike out with 1L bags. We did a few test pans around the area and saw some color. No platinum though. After finishing the work on my claims we packed up our camp and headed up the Tulameen to check out an awesome waterfall called Tulameen falls.

The waterfall is located approximately 30km up the river from the townsite of Tulameen. The Similkameen tourist pamphlet that we picked up in Princeton said the waterfall is accessed by a 1km moderate hiking trail with two river crossings. That doesn’t sound too bad. When we got to the trail head it looked like nothing was there it seems that a forestry operation has moved the road an piled banks of large rocks over the old recreation site. We found the trail marked by spray paint on a tree. The first part was not too bad, then we crossed the river in our bare feet to keep our boots dry. There were signs to only cross in low water but it seemed low enough. The water was up to my mid thigh but a lot higher on my son. After that the trail was pretty bad with some sections of no trail at all. It looked like it was a well maintained trail once but must have been hit with a flood or something. The waterfall is amazing, it has over 1400 feet of drop and a lot of water pouring over it.

We found a really nice free camp site a few kilometers up the road from the trailhead. It is called Sutter Creek Recreation Site. After staying the night we headed back to civilization with one more stop on the way. We checked out the Othello tunnels just North of Hope. These tunnels were part of the old Kettle Valley railroad. The KVR was a steam railroad the serviced the region from Hope to present day Kelowna. There are five tunnels close together and several bridges to make it possible to access this section of the Coquihalla canyon. Apparently the lead engineer was a Shakepeare nut and named several of the stations after characters from Shakepeare plays. There were Othello, Romeo, Juliet, Lear, Jessica, Shylock and Portia.

Overall it was a great trip. We did some initial sampling on two claims and saw some cool parts of Southern BC. I have other claims in the area and will be back soon. There’s something about the Tulameen that gives an eerie feeling when you are out there. It could be the remoteness or the history of the area. Maybe its the platinum, whatever it is I like it and can’t wait to explore the region in the future.

Where Does Placer Gold Come From? – Part 3 Placer

PlacerGold Science May 30, 2015alluvial, eluvial, gold, gold mining equipment, gold pan, gold panning, paleo-placer, placer, quartz vein, vancouver, Witwatersrand 4 Comments

Placer gold mining has been practiced for thousands of years with evidence dating back as far as 2600 BC in ancient Sumeria and Egypt. The technology required is minimal with only a gold pan you can refine gold in a placer deposit. The word “placer” comes from the spanish word meaning “pleasure”. Perhaps an allusion to the delight of finding precious metal in a river bank. The word was spread as gold bearing gravels were discovered in parts of North America colonized by Spain. In fact the discovery of gold the primary motivation for Spanish explorers to dig deeper and deeper into the newly discovered continent.

As we discussed in the part 1 and part2 gold is created in fantastic cosmic explosions. It has traveled across the universe and made up a small part of the material that the earth formed from. Tectonic and volcanic forces collected gold in concentrated lode deposits where it can be mined. The concept of how gold transfers from lode deposits to placer deposits is pretty straightforward. Rock holding the gold bearing veins or ore is slowly chiseled and broken by weathering and erosion. The erosive forces of water, wind, and ice transport rock fragments into drainage systems such as streams and rivers. Gold and other heavy minerals will settle out in areas in the stream where the water loses momentum or creates a trap. These traps form into placer deposits over time.

Placer deposition is driven by gravity. Gold is very dense, meaning that compared to another substance of the same volume it experiences a stronger pull of gravity. There are other principles of physics that apply to placer deposition. The property of inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion. Less dense objects require less force to move them and in the case of a stream will travel farther and faster than heavy objects. Gold has a density that is twenty times that of water and about 8 times the density of sand. Another factor in the formation of placer deposits is Archimedes’ principle which states that the force of buoyancy on an object is equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. This principle was historically used to measure density of gold by Archimedes himself. As gold is many times more dense than water the force of buoyancy on submerged gold particles is much less than the force of gravity. So gold in a stream is held in place by gravity and resists movement due to its weak buoyancy and strong inertia.

There are several types of placer deposits. There are alluvial placers, eluvial placers, beach placers, eloian placers and paleo-placers. For each type of deposit there are miners who specialize in that type of deposit. All placer deposits have concentrated gold from its source in some kind of trap. The vast majority of the placer gold that is mined in the world is of the alluvial variety.

Alluvial placer deposits are formed in watercourses such as creeks, rivers, streams and deltas. The gold is eroded from lode deposits and carried into the watercourse through rains and melt. Once into a stream it can be moved great distances. Gold does not move easily in a stream due to the inertia and buoyancy forces described above. It takes many years for gold to make its way into a stream and to travel within it. The gold will move along the bottom of the stream until it reaches a point where the water loses velocity or it is physically trapped. Typically gold will accumulate on the inside bends of a river where the water velocity is lower. Large rocks or outcrops can create a natural riffle or eddy where the water slows down and dense material will accumulate. Waterfalls are another great trap for gold.

Alluvial placers can be broken into several groups. Flood gold is placer gold that moves during annual floods or other flood events. Gravel bars and upper sections of stream sediment are where flood gold is usually found. This type of deposit generally consists of small flake and flour gold since they move more rapidly than nuggets. Flood gold is actively being deposited and will replenish year after year

Streambed placer deposits are essentially the same as flood deposits except that they no longer move. Streambed placers are found in a current watercourse. These deposits typically consist of gravel that is settled in the stream bed. To produce a streambed placer you have to mine under the water. Techniques that can be used are sniping, suction dredge, or diverting the water using a dam such as a wing dam.

The third type of alluvial placer deposit is a bench placer. Bench deposits are part of the old stream bed before it cut into a deeper channel. Benches can contain huge amounts of gold if the river carried gold at that time. A bench is typically flat on top and may appear like steps coming down the valley side. Benches can be mined using conventional mining equipment since they are usually high and dry above the current river.

Eluvial placer also known as residual placer deposits are formed before any water transportation has taken place. These deposits form close the source of hard rock gold. Eluvial placers will contain much large particles of gold than other types because it takes a lot of energy to move large nuggets. Often quartz will be found with gold still attached in Eluvial placers. These types of placers are formed by weathering and decay of the host rock that holds gold. Areas where there is a lot of iron can break down rapidly as the iron oxidizes. The lighter overburden is generally washed away and unsorted gravel and heavy material is left in place. These deposits are generally small and very attractive to small miners they also are close to gold bearing veins which can be very exciting.

Beach placers are deposits that occur on the edges of large lakes or the ocean. The wave action on the beach is the mechanism that concentrates gold and other dense minerals. Gold can either be carried to the beach by an alluvial system or eroded directly by waves. A famous beach placer is the deposit in Nome, Alaska which is featured in the TV reality show “Bering Sea Gold”.

Eolian placers form in areas where wind is the main mechanism of erosion and not water. Eolian placers are similar to Eluvial placers in some ways, they occur close to the hard rock source, and are poorly sorted. Wind does a terrible job of moving gold. In Eolian placers the overburden is swept away by strong winds and leave the heavy ore behind. They occur primarily in desert regions such as the arid regions of Australia.

The last type is paleo-placer deposits. These are any of the above placer types that happened a long time ago. By a long time we are talking about millions of years. Paleo-placers were once placer deposits but over time they have been hidden and covered in sediment. There is often no sign at the surface of ancient river systems below. Paleo-placers can be ancient river channels, benches or sedimentary rock formed from old placers such as quartz pebble conglomerate. This kind of deposit can amount to huge quantities of gold and make you very rich. The largest known gold deposit in the world in Witwatersrand, South Africa is one of these. Over 1.5 billion ounces of gold has been mined in Witwatersrand. Deposition occurred approximately 3 billion years ago in Witwatersrand, and it is estimated that 50% of all the gold mined on earth came from that deposit.

That’s the story of where placer gold came from. It was created in incredibly powerful explosions from dying stars. It made up the earth as it formed and was squeezed into concentrated deposits by volcanic processes. The veins eroded into river systems and hopefully made its way into your gold pan. Gold’s unique properties of density and its resistance to corrosion and most other chemical reactions allow it to build into the kind of deposits that we can find and mine.

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