Sampling for gold.

  For the best chance of success, you will need to understand a little about how gold acts as it is carried downhill, so here’s a few tips to help you find the most likely spot to sample.

  Gold is heavy.
  It will crawl along the bottom of rivers, streams or dry washes during floods. Because it is so heavy it tends to try to do its best to travel in a straight line downhill wile the water tends to bounce from side to side with every bend as it flows. This fact leads seasoned prospectors to work the inside bends of a stream bed. It can also give you a good tip on how to pick a good spot to test sample.

  Gold hates to travel uphill.
  It takes a lot of water to push gold up a slope as it tries to travel downhill. As the ground slopes downhill, the bedrock or false bedrock (caliche) will rise and fall. One of the ways to view bedrock as it lifts and drops is to find a place on the stream or dry wash where you can look up and down the area and see the rapids and pools. Rapids are places where the bedrock slopes downhill the most and the pools are places that the bedrock starts to slope back up. Gold will drop out of the current where the water starts to fan out or slow down.

  Rocks in the rapids.
  Rapids normally don’t hold much gold because the fast moving water tends to carry the gold farther down hill but, a well shaped rock in the right place in the stream can sometimes act as a natural riffle and hold a nice little pocket of gold.

  Ruff bedrock or caliche.
  Gold likes to fill any cracks and crevices it finds. Look for ruff bedrock with lots of cracks and crevices or dry caliche with rocks embedded in it can hold gold. Use a dust broom and dust pan or vacuum to get your sample material.

  You will learn even more facts about gold as you prospect for gold and swap stories with other prospectors.

Author: Prospector Jim.

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