Went on a couple gold-panning expeditions during my visit to Montana. First time trying this.

Hoping this pans out.

Montana 2021 - 8 by kpkina, on Flickr

The rock dam feeding the sluice pump I built by hand.

Montana 2021 - 9 copy by kpkina, on Flickr

Felt like I was being watched.

Montana 2021 - 5 copy by kpkina, on Flickr

quote:

Hoping this pans out.

You gonna leave us in suspense, or what?

Looks fun. If nothing else, you got out in some pretty country and got some fresh air and sunshine.

Well, I'm back in CA selling struts, so it couldn't have been much. We found about 40 nano-flakes, the kind serious panners don't even bother to pick out.

I won't go into the details. Gold fever is for-fucking-real. I was hiking in the Manzano Mountains in New Mexico and decided to shortcut over a ridge rather than follow the contour around. I dislodged a rock and under the rock was gold-yellow dirt with sparkling specks! It was not iron pyrite. Logically gold should have been discovered previously from hundreds of years of human habitation. So probably this was not gold. On the other hand... IF I FOUND GOLD THEN I WOULD BE FUCKING RICH! So I covered up the scarred earth with dirt and brush. A few days later I returned with some empty coffee cans and filled the cans with hand-sifted dirt. For about a week I was nearly as paranoid as Humphry Bogart in 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre'. I even panned the dirt way out in woods where I had scraped out an hidey-hole for the coffee cans. Gold or not-gold? Rich or not-rich?

As to who owned the land, fuck 'em. The plan was to plunder the gold and transport it hundreds of miles away. If the assayer inquired to the origin the answer would be that the cache was discovered under my grandfather's bed after he passed away. In retrospect, I would have been stealing. At the time I was thinking of this like finding money in a parking lot.

So I took the 'gold' to a mineral expert in ABQ. He said that the 'gold' was a formica that is mistaken for iron pyrite. Fearing that he was bullshitting me and trying to defraud me out of my gold I researched his information about the gold at the library.

Yep. Formica. It was pretty useful in WWII but not in the 1990s. Gold-fucking-fever.

I've panned these North GA hills for many years now. I have a sluice, dredge, rocker, pans and a nice place to prospect.

I've got around 2-1/2 ounces of gold and found it's almost impossible to sell around here.

In Alaska, it's easy to sell.