Hey Rocky, I’m excited for you and your family. You’re a good man to plan an adventure for the family that all of you will remember. I live in Huntsville, Texas and have claims (30 hours one way) in Northern California, but love prospecting Colorado! I’ve never been to the Pinion Bridge claim but briefly (30 minutes) poked around on SMR #2 and #3 and found great surface indicators south of the center of the claims/Saltado Creek. My gold sample photo is included on the website prospecting review for the claim. I believe strategic bench digging could be productive. Camping sites are located north and south of the claim (North Beaver and Caddis Flats), and Norwood, Colorado is not too far away for gas, groceries, and a meal. This is still a beautifully pristine/wild area that hasn’t been ruined by developers 🤫. Be mindful of rattlesnakes in warm weather.

The location is over 1000 miles from Kentucky and one week is not a lot of time for settling in and mining. Virginia I’m learning has a gold belt and is friendly to respectful miners on public lands or with permission from private property owners.?? Then there’s North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Haven’t poked around there yet but there’s plenty of gold to be found there as well.

Good luck and God’s blessings to you and your family 🤝.

Brian Williams

Hey Brian, very much appreciate the input. I did see your comment and very nice pic of pan. When I came across your post it inspired me actually to start planning for this summer. I know the distance and short turn around time is not ideal but, all I have right are bunch of pans and a couple of cheap 2' long plastic sluices to lay in a creek. That's basically it besides most all the working tools I've already gathered up. I'm not confident yet how I'll go about retrieving the gold from prospecting the bench since motorized equipment isn't allowed. My thoughts were to just pan & sluice the creek and maybe surrounding banks learning to identify potential locations to prospect. Figured I process as much material as I can onsite and bring the concentrated con's home to go through. Best use of the time I could come up with for the time allowed. When I retire shortly it will be for much longer periods (season)!

For our very first extended trip (1 week) this year I kicked around the idea of hanging out at Loud Mine in GA at the LDMA Dirt Fest. But to be honest it felt more to me like panning paydirt home at home except on a larger scale. I want move on from paydirts and just get on a promising claim and learn hands on at my own speed. It would be great to have someone with me with more experience to point out sluicing and prospecting mistakes to avoid or advice to give but, just simply being there experiencing the whole process I feel will give me a better understanding what & how I need to proceed to the next step of mining like, purchasing larger equipment and more gear etc....

I know I'm probably over thinking it and the wise move would probably be take the family to GA instead, but I can't explain the draw I have to want to go out and do it on my own. Perhaps I need to give this a little more thought. I could use this time as a classroom experience instead. Sorry, didn't mean to go back down the rabbit hole.

I just learned about the glacial melt deposits around my State but it seemed to be mostly North and West and Not KY. There's a chapter in Indiana and for their 2024 season they will be going on a once a month weekend digs. I don't know much more then that but we are wanting to go to a couple of these. Not sure about any creeks or benches or what is even workable but I figured if I went to a few of these then what's the point in going to Loud Mine? As you can probably tell my minds rounding around here like a dog trying to catch his tail. Spring is almost here and I need to decide on either practicality or instinct. Please keep any inputs coming. I need to get back and finish watching the YouTube video utilizing Google Earth plug-ins for miners. Good Stuff!

You know what Brian, after writing and re-reading my reply to you, I answered my question. I'll take the fam camping to the GA Mine Camp this summer for a learning experience. Next year I'll be better prepared for CO and maybe little better equipment too. I'm keeping these correspondence's to refer back to next summer. It'll be cool to run into you at one these claims!

Welcome Egner family,

I think your decision to do a learning trip is a great idea, let the family experience lead the way
You dont say the ages of the children, they love playing in the dirt too
The advise I would give, DONT spend alot of money on equipments until you figure out the type of prospecting/mining your going to do
If possible hit a gold show, so much stuff to look at and talk to people
Do the research on rules and regs in the area's you plan to visit if your out on your own not in a "mining camp", keeps you more out of trouble if LEO shows up
Slow and easy, the gold aint goin no where
Enjoy the time out there n good luck
I remember my first picker, man o man

Bill

We have three grandchildren (girls 8 to 12) staying with us for the foreseeable future. One loves dirt, one loves her phone and the oldest wants to be by herself. Figured time away from electronics and do some mine camping will do us all good! I thought about all 3 of them in a car for a dozen hours and the joy got sucked out of me. Next year, CO. Any maybe by then they'll take an interest in it. Just trying to keep everyone involved to build interest.

I'm interested in prospecting and placer mining. My dream is to have my claim when I retire and do this fulltime seasonally instead of a few weekends a year and on vacation. We went to our first gold and treasure show this past weekend in IN. and meet a lot of good people and got to meet up Mike Pung and hang out with him for little. The chapter has some outings schedule in IN. for one weekend a month this summer, so we're looking forward to this. It's glacial gold that unfortunately didn't make it all the down to KY.

Hey Roger, you’re a lot like me 20 + years ago…suffering from gold fever with adult man responsibilities. I commend your gold passion and respect your commitments. I can think of no better way to spend quality time with those youngsters! Let’em get dirty digging paydirt, building dams for your sluice in the creek, and feeding your sluice. Just keep a close eye on them and don’t get too distracted by the gold. I’ve never been to an outing, but it might be a great idea to meet some good people and share information. I learned (and am still learning) from reading, watching Tom Massie, Two Toes (UTube!), and a lot of trial and error. A simple must read is Gold Fever by Lois De Lorenzo if you can find it!!!
The good Lord knows your passion and will reward your commitment and faithfulness. If you want your own claim, you might consider reviewing the Advanced Geologic website. I purchased two claims in Northern California through AG, and my sister/brother in law purchased three claims on the same creek…couldn’t be happier except that the claims are 30 hours away. My sister and BILaw (retired Lt. Colonel and was an absolute prospecting novice) moved from TX to be near our claims…fell in love with it! Geologist and owner Charlie Watson gave us great advice and sold us some great claims. Spend some time researching the website and available claims, discuss what you’re looking for with him and make an offer if you’re so inclined. I recommend using their filing service to ensure your filings are done correctly and timely. Panning BB’s out of gravel is a good way for those girls to practice their skills.

Dag gone Brian your dropping some real gold nuggets of knowledge on my path here! I really appreciate you taking the to share from your experience and give sound advise. I've made notes on what you said and will continue my research. I'll locate the book by Lois De Lorenzo and will definitely read it and watch some of Two Toes too. Yes, the ultimate goal is buying and working a couple claims of our own. I have no fear of failure, I learn from failure and mistakes, it's how my mind works in understanding a situation. One of my favorite verses from the Bible is paraphrased: If God is with you, who can stand against you? These are a life altering decisions not to be taken likely. With a lot of prayers and support from friends how can we not succeed brother.

I forgot to mention a couple of semi-secret recommendations to you. I often use a post hole digger to test BENCH material, and the Seymour Buckeye post hole digger is the best for around $90. I also use a six foot homemade pry bar made from heavy duty oilfield sucker rod that I flattened on one end and heat tempered for strength. I often have to use it to pry rocks out of my bench test holes while using my post hole digger. I’ll try and dig down as deep as possible while testing for productive layers. Test holes can be expanded if you locate a target zone or can be easily backfilled afterwards. Gold Hog is my preferred sluice equipment. The Raptor is incredible but heavy/cumbersome, and requires several people to feed it. The Piglet is the perfect size and will process a lot of material. High pressure pumps are a must and Honda is the best. If you make your own sluice, I recommend using the Gold Hog matting. It’s excellent for capturing even the micro dots of gold…which I have LOTS of in stored buckets of rainy day concentrates or when gold hits $3000 ounce.!? I have a backpack sluice with a removable flare that I replaced all the riffles and matting with straight Gold Hog matting…highly effective.

Man oh man, I'm gonna have to send you a Christmas card this year :). I wondered to myself how I was going to test bench areas, it didn't dawn on me to use a post hole digger. Thanks to you, you given me a lot of super great ideas and new/different ways to approach and assess. I cant wait to get out and try everything I've learned. I believe we'll see that $3000 in less than 10 years.

Hey Rocky, As you can tell, I like benches where a lot of people pass over heading to the water’s edge to prospect. Here’s more info from trial and error tips I’ve learned that may help your gold quest.? You’re a nice fellow and I want you to be successful. I remember past golden GPAA members I’ve met on the trail over the years, and I am a better miner because of many of them. There are some really good people in our association!

Assess your streams from the perspective of 100+ years ago. Where was the likely water flow, and where did the heavier/lazy gold sink and come to rest? Answer: Benches, bedrock crevices and deep pockets. I’ve got a large three+ acre bench 30+ feet above the current stream, where the ancient stream made a big S through a canyon. The old timers worked it a long time ago, but their equipment was not as efficient as today’s. At 30-40 feet above the stream my Air Force son and I dug down through large boulders five feet into beautiful golden/rusty rounded washed gravels that had been worked probably over 100 years ago. The material was still rich with large flakes, small pickers, and abundant micro dot fines. My wife ran the Gold Hog Raptor highbanker on the bench on that expedition, which is why I recommend the Honda high pressure pumps. I thoroughly swept the exposed bedrock with a broom/paint brush and ran that rich material through the sluice. Out of curiosity, I then ran the metal detector over the exposed bedrock crevices and was amazed at all the faint targets beeping through the headphones! We covered the hole for another time because we were spent and out of time. Last year we moved downstream and below that bench and beside the stream. My son, his wingman, wife and I dug, pried, and hand winched 500+ lb. boulders to expose compacted gravels in deep crevices. Of course, there was nice gold showing up in the Raptor, but I was surprised to see LOTS of silver material appearing in the bottom of my pans after clean ups…mercury amalgamated gold! After panning all of the visible gold and amalgamated gold from my pan, I would continue to swirl the black sands around and noticed that very small dots of silver would magically appear 🤔. The microscopic mercury was continually picking up microscopic gold, creating literal BB sized balls of amalgamated mercury gold. Lesson, the old timers unfortunately used a lot of mercury to extract their gold from the black sands. So be respectful of it. If you ever hit a pocket like that, you can pull a lot of gold out, but wear rubber gloves and don’t be rubbing your eyes/picking your nose, etc. I haven’t worked those rich amalgamated cons yet, again,…waiting for $3000 ounce gold.