VIRGIN PAY AND PLACER REDEPOSITS

Whether you're on the hunt for a rich placer redeposit or after virgin ground, it takes testing. The onis is on you, the prospector, to make that happen. To be successful, sediments must be sampled i.e. the dirt, sand, clay, caliche, whatever type of gravel has been deposited in the area. If gold occurs only as fine particles, the quickest way to know is to break out your gold pan. Metal detectors also make a useful prospecting tool especially if gold is coarse enough i.e. in large enough particles to give off a conductive signal. For general, all-around prospecting purposes, however, a gold pan remains one of a prospector's most important tools.  In creeks, drywashes, canyons, etc., pay-streaks tend to be irregular. They meander. They're found at different elevations. Some lie hidden in ancient terraces stranded high above the valley floor. Others are entombed far below in rivers and creek-bottoms down amongst mobs of massive, tightly-packed boulders. To the average pick and shovel miner, these are destined to remain untouched in perpetuity. In some regions, paystreaks lie in old channel alluvial deposits at upper elevations high above a region's creek and riverbottoms. In spite of one's best guesses about where they may be, paystreaks are easy to miss. One prospecting technique is to cut a trench all the way across the drainage. This exposes all the unconsolidated sediments where they contact with hard, resistant, true bedrock. Different types of false, conglomerated bedrock also act as a basement upon which paystreaks rest. If paystreaks exist, thorough sampling inside your trenches at this bedrock/gravel interface should reveal them. Incomplete sampling is the bane of the impatient prospector. Placer deposits can hide almost anywhere. Sometimes, your best chance of finding virgin ground is to search alongside major drainage systems. Oftimes, it's hidden in the first, second, and third level terraces. Several creeks I've worked yielded gold mainly from benches running alongside hydrologically-active drainages. Gold might also be moving downhill from high-elevation channel remnants. In these cases, clip zones become attractive areas for MDers and miners to focus their searches on. Uprooted from it's original deposit, gold may be re-mobilized, in-transit, traveling downhill. Over time, it will wash into a river or creek looking for it’s next honey hole or bedrock crevice to settle into. Another entirely different type of placer model is the massive, surficial gold deposits of Australia and Alaska. In the flat outback country Down Under, nuggets seem randomly scattered across the landscape. What rhyme or reason would cause so much gold to be buried this close to the surface? It's become obvious that much of this placer comes from an enormous multitude of reefs which have been exposed at the earth's surface. Much the same could be said for the enormous Bering Sea gold deposit spread over hundreds of square miles of seabed. Here, we know glaciers were instrumental, but one almost needs to witness such dramatic processes via time capsule to comprehend such forces at work. In other regions, intermediate level alluvial deposits carry fabulous amounts of gold. Research the famous blue leads of Canada's western provinces. During a summer of prospecting in B.C., I saw stratified blue clays in the Monashee and the Cariboo goldfields giving up impressive amounts of oro. There were second and third generation high channel deposits. In desert country, including here in the states, it's possible to find similar deposits high up in the alluvial column. What and where it's found depends on how much and for how long gold was being released from local lodes over the epochs. It also depends on how hard those deposits were hammered by miners in relatively-recent times. Millenial climate change is now causing increasingly-irregular water flows. Through the ages, water has always played the most important role in placer deposition as it transports and drops gold during the ever-changing sedimentary cycles of an active watershed.  

 

Moving northward into Canada and the western states, one encounters lengthy river systems where seasonal flooding leaves behind rich surface redeposits on gravel bars. One wonders, if the ground pays this well up close to the surface, what would a prospector find on bedrock at those sites? There's no set cut and dried rules about gold's haunts. Mining districts tend to be highly nuanced. Only sampling can tell where the gold is. Problem is, at many locations, there's no way to reach bedrock for testing. I worked beneath a six inch suction dredge for many years. Only rarely were attempts made to mine deeper alluvial deposits containing more than five feet of overburden. Dredgers in the Bering Sea only mine the top two or three feet. If gold's in the area, they don't need to go any deeper. What a luxury, mate. In mountainous terrain containing canyon systems, comprehensive sampling is a tall order. Most of the time, it's virtually impossible. Only operators outfitted with monster excavators, cats, front-end loaders, and such can open up such deep alluvial masses to test the ground effectively. I'm referring, of course, to dry-land, above-water gravel deposits. If ground as side pay lies adjacent to active watersheds and sits at the same elevation as the running water, good luck keeping it out of your excavation pit. In geoexploration, little is certain without analysis and nothing comes easy in this gold-finding business. Generally, the best pay-dirt will be concentrated on, in, and just above bedrock of rivers and creek channels. In other regions, excellent flood gold re-deposits exist in the uppermost strata of the most recently-deposited stream/river gravels. Anything goes in desert and pediment-type deposits. In drier climes and areas where shallow-seated lode deposits continue to shed gold, placer gold is found lying very close to the surface. These present readily-available targets to MDers hunting the many dry regions of the world.