Gold Diggin'

I want to do this so bad!

 

Grab yourself a shovel and a pan and head for the hills!

 

Just need a pan and a spot. I keep seeing folks talk about the Pinecrest area. Anyone run up to the Mono Hot Springs area for Prospecting??

 

I wouldn't. It's to high for my liking and way to much granite.
Area near shaver lake or lower looks decent though.

 

The pinecrest area is just convenient by the sounds of it for the Bay Area guys. Just straight east and we are there with plenty of options. I’ve read people on here mention the whole range of the sierras. Just grab a pan and get out there. I can’t wait for the weather to warm up a bit more to get out there for a few solid days of exploring along a few creeks.

 

If it's early in the year use wetsuit gloves (cheap ones and silicone the finger tips) and those will keep hands happy in the snow melt water.

 

Hey! I'm in sac and go up into the hills 2-3 times a month to pan.

If anyone is around there and wants a buddy let me know.

I've prosected a few spots and can manage to get a pinch of gold per shovel in my current sweet spot, and I'm not at bedrock yet so I'm excited.

I just got back from gathering concentrate (I don't pan down in the hills) so once I pan it down I'll show what I was able to find.

I'm going to try and go out again tomorrow and spend a good chunk of time and see what I can pull.

 

I am interested. Do you camp out there or just go for a day trip?

 

It's a short drive for me so I just do day trips, but I will probably do weekend camping / prospecting trips once the weather is more friendly.

The water wasn't too cold to be in, but once you lose sunlight it's gets cold quick.

Also some of the areas I wanted to prospect around had some snow, while fun to 4wd in, isn't too fun to prospect in.

 

I used to teach a PADI-certified SCUBA class for gold diving in northern CA, mostly in the Sacramento river. On average we would find at least enough gold to pay for air (a few dollars a dive) and occasionally would find nuggets. The trick is by scuba diving you can access areas others haven't searched, and with some strategic thinking where to collect, we would collect the bottoms into a container then pan them later when done. I still have a bag of keeper nuggets at my folks house, should go try to find it in the attic. The biggest find was actually when teaching an Open Water class at Whiskeytown lake. We would start where an old road entered the shore like paved beach for easy skills teaching. We had been sitting on the 2' tall white rock for a couple years to put on booties/fins, and this one guy in the class said hey there is a vein in this rock! He split it open and got several kilobucks from it. There is still a lot of gold around CA if you know where to find it, a very fun sport.

 

Anyone try panning up around humbolt area? I have a job coming up That is just a bit north of there. I will most likely be fishing on the eel river and hanging out around there for a few days. Haven’t ever really looked at the geology out there but it looks soft and haven’t seen much bedrock while driving around the area.

 

Im in the San Jose area. where would you guys go for some panning? Up for long hikes too. Im recovering from a shoulder repair and am able to start light use out of the norm but still not able to work so iv got time to get into something non destructive.

 

how far north do you go? I know folks do not like to give too much info but i ask because i really would love to head up and learn a thing or two. Above Tahoe or below? Any place to start east of San Jose? Im thinking North Fork area of the American River.

 

Due east of SJ, the Truckee and Yuba rivers still produce. To some degree, the closer to the base of the mtns you go the more chance that good stuff has collected there. The challenge is to find the less-worked areas. I could barely make it through the drama of Bering Sea Gold, but seeing their strategies for ocean dredging and dive mining was interesting. Also the sacto river has a lot of options.

I never heard of gold coming from Humboldt but the upper end of the Sacto river just a few miles south of Shasta Dam had hotspots. Also right before the river gets shallow on the NW border of Redding city limits.

 

Broadly speaking the Mother Load of California stretches from Quincy in the north to Mariposa in the south along highway 49.
Having said that, I have only prospected (detected) in this area twice: once near Coulterville and then near Portola.

If I were in your shoes, I would do a bit of research and figure out areas with high concentrations of gold mining claims (historical and current). I would then look for adjacent accessible lands to search on.

 

A quick way to get started: In the river and ocean, gold tends to collect in the backflow of the wake behind rocks. In the river look for rocks at least a foot in diameter that have gravel directly behind them in the downstream direction. Collect that gravel and pan it for better chances. Snorkeling if you don’t have tanks opens up more options.

 

I like to go prospecting on the various American river forks.

So, south of 80 and west of Tahoe.

North of 80 is the Bear River (I think?) And it's a producer as well.

 

How far do you have to walk after you 4WD in? I'm definitely down to go sometime if it's mostly driving as I have trouble getting around on foot some days.

 

Depends on where you go. It is mostly driving.

Honestly it would be fun to get a little group together because theres tons of (ORV) trails up in that area, with various difficulties.

I've scouted a few areas that have a 1/4 to 1 mile hike. The place I like to go for fun is a maybe 3-500 feet of a hike, so not too bad

Im thinking of going up this weekend

 

IM SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO IN! Im trying to get a little scouting trip in real soon. like during the week soon.