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smarxist
Jul 26, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
This is just a kind of drive-by thread about something I've done off and on at various times in my life in the out of doors. Gem hunting and prospecting/gold panning are super chill activities you can easily blend into a hike or a fishing trip if you live near areas where it's feasible (national parks, public lands, mountains, etc)

As long as you keep your expectations and investments low, you can have a fun time with it, or who knows, you may get The Bug (which I think i'm starting to) and try to do something a bit more involved. Gem hunting and gold panning you can get started with a $20 investment and some googling about where it's legal to do for the public (don't try to do it guerrilla style with no guidance or on private property, you'll get a fine or some buckshot in your rear end, claim jumpin' is real poo poo)

Here are some youtubes and info to pique your interest:

Gem hunting
For something like this you just need a spade/small pick and a mineralogy book, some patience and luck. You can find all sorts of interesting gems quartz in most places, and with a little luck and effort, dig into some more interesting stuff. If your regular hiking spots have lots of stratified/exposed rock, congrats, you can probably put a little effort in and uncover crystals, gems, minerals, treasures that haven't ever seen the light of day before! Here's a couple pros on a typical hobbyist gem hunt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Q7a6OoI78

Gold panning
I've panned several times in Colorado and a few other places, it's a perfect tertiary activity to add on to camping/hiking/fishing. A plastic sluice pan only weighs a couple pounds and you'll probably have a spade or collapsible shovel with you anyways. If you do it on public land where it's allowed and there's known gold, you'll basically be poring over well extracted creek/river beds to find some flakes and dust. If you drag your rear end a good ways from the access points, you might find SOME type of undisturbed gravel with more interesting payout, but probably not! It's still a wonderful feeling to tap that pan and see the shinies though. Here's a video of a few pros working a real gold claim, this is not typical for amateurs, more of the serious hobbyist level working known paygravel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpOXjUqEkgU

Gold sniping
if you have some scuba/snorkel kit, like to swim in fast/cold water, and live near known gold bearing rivers, this might be something you could do. I'm mostly just linking it because I think it's neat and Pioneer Pauly is awesome, I doubt (m)any people here have the tools/equipment/access. Basically it's taking on extra work to find gold in known gold bearing rivers. 90% of it gets pushed into the gravel bedrock on the banks as it traverses, but some will get buried in gravels/silts in the actual river itself, places that are never dug/mined because they're always underwater. Add a few hundred/thousand years of that tiny bit of gold being deposited and its kinda interesting how much can be there. Anyway, watch Pioneer Pauly snipe gold and holler about it, because its fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dlkBl385d8

Metal Detecting
If you're hydrophobic and more about hiking, detecting can be a super fun day, however, you will probably have to hike in decidedly non-hikey areas to produce any type of interesting finds If there are old mines near you that are closed down, or known metal bearing hunks of land, you're pretty much free to go out with a detector and keeps whatever you finds, as long as it's public property. I've done detecting a few times and unless you find a really interesting spot, you're not going to find much of anything valuable, plenty of bullets, pellets, and boot nails though! Like it's absolutely insane how much tooled metal has been sprinkled over the wilderness by humans already lmao. You can find gold, and also silver ore, native silver hunting is super cool. Here's a video of some serious level guys doing some detecting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os80NQUSikU

That's kind of the entry level hobbyist stuff. As long as you're only expectation is to have a fun time digging in the dirt, you will probably enjoy these activities!

Just for fun, here are some of the more involved setups and videos about them (just in case your interest is piqued)

High Banking
High banking is taking a portable setup to a gold bearing river/stream, finding some gravel, and processing it on site into what's known as "concentrates", and then either panning them out there or at home (usually home, so you don't lose anything). High banking is where you kinda get into the "i want a decent return on my time" level of hobbyist gold, there are some places where you can set up a banker on public land as long as you follow laws/ordinances, but also you may need to buy an actual gold claim and try to get your money back over the year digging the poo poo out of the ground. You need a banker, a sluicebox, mats, pans, a generator, a pump, etc. It can be a super fun time, but is usually more work than leisure. I have a friend back in Colorado who does high banking on the reg and I want to make prospecting friends and tag along for some sessions. Here's a video of Vogus highbanking:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAsFEnuahDM

A Legit No poo poo Extraction Setup
For science, here's probably the lowest level of setup you could call professional, with the ability to process a ton per hour of just about anything, from gold / silver ore, to copper wire, to e-waste! The fundamentals are pretty much the same across the levels from panning to this type of setup; separate the heavies from the worthless material by using water and vibrations/shaking. I'm only talking about this because I find it interesting, and if you've gotten this far into the OP, you may as well. The Mount Baker channel on YouTube is an awesome look at a low level processing / smelting outfit. They work ores, circuit boards/computer chips and other e-waste, copper recovery, etc. and also usually do the recovery smelts, check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NBy_I2LqxY


One of the most interesting things to me about all of this is that there's lots of easy gold still out there that the old timers missed because they didn't have the technology to see it or the precision equipment to recover it (a serious hobbyist today has better fine gold capture capability than a professional outfit in the 1850's), so all you need to find a real paystreak is the knowledge/luck and fresh eyes to see where it may have been missed. Also a lot of the serious hobbyists recover decent amount of gold just grinding up the tailings the old timers left behind.

There's fabulous treasures in the earth waiting for you, just get your rear end outside!

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I. M. Gei
Jun 26, 2005

CHIEFS

BITCH



I’ve been wanting to do this for years, so I’m glad to see that somebody finally made a thread about it!

I’d like to check out that Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas one day. OP, do you have any tips for diamond prospecting?

Willfrey
Jul 20, 2007

Why don't the poors simply buy more money?
Fun Shoe
This is totally my wheelhouse.

I have done a moderate amount of Gem hunting in my area (smokey quartz, milk opal, corundum, and garnet/star garnet in my area) is pretty fun, but I strongly suggest you seek out and become a member of a Gem/Prospecting club. Initially I was just using online sources, but lots of sites are pretty hush-hush so they don't get overrun with mouth breathers. Put down your social anxiety, and actually meet people who know more than you it was pretty invaluable and saved me a lot of time and I started getting pretty decent finds.

But what I really love is finding GOLD. It is very dependant on what area you are in. My area tends to be more towards very fine flour gold. I have a specific spot that I crevice for gold (similar to Pioneer Pauly, but I just clean out bedrock cracks along the shoreline). I have a lot of friends who raft so I get to some remote inaccessible spots when we do overnight trips, and I've had a noticeable difference in yields. If you are going to metal detect they do make specialized detectors for it. I know some true miners who make a living off hard rock mining and they told me to stop loving with a gold pan and just use a water-proof metal detector in a specific river/creek near where I live. yet to put down the money for that but I'm strongly considering it.

I also enjoy a little bit of detecting too, I've found a few silver coins from old mining sites.

A good resource is the US Geological survey. I use my state's branch that has a pretty good interactive map that shows you anything from mineral zones, fault locations, mining history etc. I have pulled up awesome multi-page surveys from the mining history side, some of them have very detailed maps of old mines, or where ore bodies are located.

also https://www.mylandmatters.org is a decent resource for claim history. NOTE this is NOT 100% accurate by any means when it comes to present claims!!!

Also be careful about any highbanking/dredging as they are much more strictly regulated than just panning/sluicing. My state has the Department of Water Resources that controls which streams and when dredging equipment is allowed. Spoiler: Very loving few for very short periods. Though I can understand this as industrial dredging fucks up the river. Check google maps for Idaho's Crooked River near Elk City as an example.

If you just like seeing cool rocks, Check out the youtube of Blue Cap Productions https://www.youtube.com/user/bluecapproductions They are a great channel that showcases some of the best examples of valuable crystal minerals you've never even heard of. I came across this channel years ago and it really got me into gem-hunting.

Willfrey fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Jul 20, 2020

Hammockbottom
Apr 10, 2005

It was Hamhockbottom right?
I actually work at a prospecting shop, so I'll try to remember to check in on the thread. I talk about this stuff all the time, so I may have some useful information.


I. M. Gei posted:

I’ve been wanting to do this for years, so I’m glad to see that somebody finally made a thread about it!

I’d like to check out that Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas one day. OP, do you have any tips for diamond prospecting?

I actually hadn't heard of this until I started working at a Metal detector / prospecting shop. I took my GF on a weekend trip to this and we had a lot of fun. She was skeptical that people actually found diamonds, but then someone at a campsite near us found one. We only booked a cabin for 2 nights (we planned on getting in late on the first night) and as soon as she heard that someone found one, we seriously debated about trying to do it for a second day.

Tips: Be prepared to work. Let's be clear. It is work. Take a few 5gal buckets so you can haul material to the wash stations (and then keep anything you don't toss or get to check). I saw a lot of wagons that people would use with multiple buckets to keep near the wash stations to process a lot of material quickly. They (typically) rent out classifiers, but I don't believe that they are right now (COVID-19). You should double check and plan accordingly. If you need to take some, 1/4" 1/8" and if I am remembering correctly, 1/20". Most diamonds found there are about the size of a match stick, though larger have been found. She didn't get great cell reception, but found an area that she got service, so she volunteered to get dirt for me to classify. I stood around the wash station and just ran it all through the classifiers.

We didn't find any, but I have a much better idea of how to approach it when we go again. I'll probably buy or make a "Saruka" before we go. A guy next to me was using one and at the end of the day he saw my poor planning and taught me how to use one. It was easier and quicker than a box classifier when done right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26hQnXWcu0I


Edit: I'll also work up an OP for metal detecting at some point. I'm not sure what the interest level is, but there is a LOT of information to absorb when starting out.

Hammockbottom fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Aug 2, 2020

FEMA summer camp
Jan 22, 2006

Oh hey there is a hidden thread about one of my weird hobbies. Neat!

Hi everyone!

Those are some really interesting resources posted itt, thanks! And if anyone wants to trade info about say, the western US, I had a bunch of clues for stuff in Utah i'm probably never going to use as I no longer live there.

floppyspud
Jul 21, 2022

I did some gold panning around a lovely small town called Hill End about 4 years ago, does that count?

I wonder if magnet fishing would come under this thread, that's something that has always been interesting to me.

Verman
Jul 4, 2005
Third time is a charm right?
I've panned a few times around Washington but only ever found pyrite. Still cool though and a fun way to kill time sitting by a river.

floppyspud
Jul 21, 2022

Verman posted:

I've panned a few times around Washington but only ever found pyrite. Still cool though and a fun way to kill time sitting by a river.

I mostly see it the same way, even when I find nothing to barely anything (a flake is an overstatement) it’s still fun spending an afternoon sitting in some mud with bits of wet plastic at my side. Combined with the possibility of a picnic it’s a good way to spend a day, even if a big chunk of it is driving.

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Verman
Jul 4, 2005
Third time is a charm right?
Oh, I'll drive all day. I don't mind. I'll cruise forest roads on a weekend just to see where they go. That's how I get to know the areas around me and find excellent, non campground dispersed camping.

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