Hit the west coast for an extended stay at Julia Hut, up the source of the Taipo on a mission to check out the area for gold.
One of the guys I was with had been told that some old timers had been doing well pulling nuggets out of the roots of trees up
Gold Creek.
Was areal mission getting up there - most of the track is simply lightly cut back bush with markers tied along the route to show where to go. Did loose the path a few times and had to re-trace steps to find it again. When the track runs out were were literally forcing our way through the bush to get down to the creek. All good fun. /think I'll take a PLB if I get in to that sort of terrain again!
Gold Creek itself rises steeply up the mountain side and didn't actually even have a trickle of water at the bottom. Didn't find any bedrock at all on the way up (got 1/2/ way up). All boulders, and probably easy to dislodge stuff above you if you start to dig a hole I guess.
Didn't find gold, but we didn't spend as much time detecting as we should have as it was a miserable weekend to be in there. Soaked to the skin every day and coming back with a wee swimming pool collected in the ruck sack :P So who knows - might be gold there if you look harder, but wasn't jumping out at us and not the easiest spot to get to.
Whole area seems a little light on exposed bedrock. Mainly big boulders and lots of overburden.
Always an adventure though :)
WWW
