Hi guys, Went up in to the hills for an afternoons detect last sunday. Managed 13 bits for just 1.8 grams. Two were just .04 of a gram & one at .06 of a gram. Thats pretty small in my humble opinion & I was impressed with the GPX 4500 & 12 x 7 nuggetfinder coil snagging those. Considering I gave my Whites GMT a blast beforehand & it missed these.
Today I headed back & the weather forecast wasnt looking good to go out for a detect. Snow down to 700 meters & probably the real start of winter for the ski fields to get their first big dump of snow.
I looked out the window & it didnt look all that bad so I decided to go for it before the cold fronts hit with a vengence & get in at least a few hours.
I rugged up real warm, beanny, bush jacket, fingerless gloves & rain coat. Drove the 1.5 hours to my chosen spot & then walked for an hour to get to the slope. I was going to back pack some gear in with me but the weather on the mountain top didnt look good so I wanted to go in light so if I had to bail in a hurry I didnt have to lumber the back pack as well.
It was nice & sunny as I drove to the fence line but the weather was not pretty coming over the mountain tops & was snowing up there. It could stay like that all day. Sunny on this side of the mountain range & crap up top....or it could spill over in a hurry & catch you out.
I rigged up & went off in a hurry to get in a bit of detecting before the weather hit. I had a couple of plastic shopping bags in my pocket so I could cover the detector should it start raining, hailing or snowing.
An hours walk got me to my spot where I left off last weekend. After a few minutes I got a sweet little signal in the shallow sheet schist bed rock slope.
Turned out to be a bit of rubbish. Bugger
I carried on detecting in the small water gutters that the old timers had created with their ground sluicing, when I got a very dodgey un gold like signal next to a briar rose bush. Very hollow & wishy washy signal. I almost walked away from it thinking it was a nail or bit of wire. But I ended up investigating it. I got down to the schist bed rock after a few scrapes & the signal suddenly improved. Another few scrapes & it was out. Not holding my breath I isolated the target & blow me down with a feather.
A sassy piece of gold. You beauty
It must have been up on edge to give the dodgey signal to start with.
After taking the two photos of it I turned & took a pic down in the gully of the old gully workings from the old timers. You will see the schist bed rock on the far bank & how that shallow schist carries on along that slope until it drops off into the next gully. There are shallow workings all the way through there with small gutters from the old timers water races to ground wash the schist.
I got a few little bits in those old gully workings
Here is a pic of one of the many shallow water race gutters.
I got a signal in a shallow pile from the digging dirt from one of these gutters & when on to the bed rock out popped a piece of gold
After digging that last bit I took this pic looking down the slope. The material in the foreground is the diggings from out of the gutter which is on the right with the briar rose bushes growing in it. Note the red rose hip berries on the bushes. It was these that the miners made there rose hip tea for vitaman C.
This next pic is the hole that I got 4 bits out of last weekend in the bottom of one of the gutters. The indent in the schist bed rock with the water in is where the 4 bits of gold were. I scanned to the left of this hole today & got a very poitive signal in amongst the digging dirt from the original gutter being dug. Thinking it was a bit too positive & going to be rubbish I wasnt very hopeful. I dug down on it & ended up having to pull out a slab of the schist bed rock. The signal was still there, & after a few more scrapes it was out & was a bit of gold. My last for the day.
All up 10 bits for 3.3 grams
Cheers all
Good luck out there
JW .
