The flotation agents make the gold as hydrophobic as possible while wetting agents are used to make the gangue hydrophilic. The water wants to minimize the area in contact with the hydrophobic particle, so it forces the gold particle into the interface between the bubble and the water, and buoyancy forces the bubbles with the gold upwards. But because the water doesn’t care about the gangue material, there is no force pushing those particles onto the air bubbles, and so those particles fall off the bubble because the water isn’t holding them on. The particles that fall off stay at the bottom and can be thrown out.
I can remember being told at a tourist trap in California that the old prospectors would swipe a hunk of bacon fat around the bottom of their pans, and that small smear would adhere much of the gold. As long as you are not rubbing or using soap, a fat that is solid in cold will stick surprisingly well to a not-nonstick pan. Prospecting pans are usually cheap stamped iron, typically, aren’t they?
Floating, eh?
As long as you’re doing it for fun only, your basic methods will work fine. A portable dredge would work better, of course, and I’ve seen people using them in Alaska. We visited the old gold dredges in Dawson a few years ago, and the guide made it quite clear that the only way to make a living out of it (or even any significant money) was to either be exceedingly lucky or to work like a dog nearly 24/7 for years.
South Platte River near Fairplay Colorado.
Floating Gold is Mica. Any shiny flakes you see on mud is mica or a similar material.
Anyway, you could try joining a club, I gave Colorado Prospector $65 for an annual membership, and they provided UNTOLD amounts of info about rules, techniques and areas friendly to recreational prospectors. GPAA is hit-or-miss, I guess, as far as internet responses go, so that is an option, plus they have Club-claims members can go to.
Legislation has changed things in California, IIRC, because of damage to native trout spawning areas, so just be aware.
If you don’t have a plastic pan with riffles…, i’ll just say working with the old-style pan requires PRACTICE and shit. (I go old-school, but I am buying one of those this year.) You will need to pan the stuff you get from the sluice.
There are plans on the internet for building a sluice, the most important being the design of the riffle-trough. IMHO, I would not plan a trip with something designed in my spare time, and go afield without testing or some other back-up plan. Sluices can be difficult to set and handle, and the addition of unknowns without a Plan B could make your trip suck.
Scoop shit from under big rocks, and start your classification with that. If there is any fallen trees nearbly, scoop dirt from the hole and the root-ball of the tree. A crowbar can help remove slabs of bedrock, to expose trapped nuggets and placier deposits, but don’t get caught doing that in a State Park or recreational area.
The Tesoro Lobo Super-Trac is a great nugget finder, but I’ve only found mostly junk. Mostly.
Good Luck! I have to wait another 6 months before I can go.
Word.
There used to be a show on one of the high channels about panning for gold. I remember it because it had a HILARIOUS theme song along the lines of “Gold gold gold gold” - it was like a dwarven song from a Terry Pratchett book.
I’ve watched that show a few times. Seems kind of fun but if I’m going to San Gab, I might as well fish there!
We got off to a late start, we were supposed to leave at 0700 and she didnt’ show up to 0930, so by the time we got to the place there were fifty other people. Can’t blame them, it was a nice day. So by the time we hiked down and set up the sluice, it was after noon, and time for a little lunch. 
Got the sluice running ok, and ran a few homer buckets through from different areas within about 20 yards of the sluice. We may have had three or four hours of actual work time, but it got dark pretty fast and we dumped all the concentrates into a bucket and headed home.
I panned the stuff out and got a couple of very small pieces, less than 1/16", but very encouraging, because it means my homebuilt sluice is doing it’s thing and that I am panning correctly. I feel confident that if there were any bigger pieces, I would have gotten them!
Going to go up in mid week next week when we will have our pick of the best spots.
I’ll post some pics of the sluice I built, maybe tomorrow if I can do it.
Anything I have found has come from the trash piles around some of the old abandonded mines near Halifax. They would mine the gold bearing quartz and move it to crushers. The stuff that didn’t make to further processing is just laying around but usually needs to be crushed by hand and panned. It’s a lot of work for little return. Some folks have had good result with the tailings, which usually contains all sorts of goodies (Mg, arsenopyrites etc)
There are aluvial deposits around but I haven’t gone looking. I know someone who uses one of theose high-end metal detectors which are designed for gold hunting and he has had good results with it.
Mostly, it’s an excuse to get outdoors and explore some ghost towns.
Stan:
I hike those trails regularly, and I do trail maintenance on it as well. The walkways along the water, some of the cuts, and the new stone steps after the second crossing are some of the projects I have helped with on the trail to the Bridge to Nowhere for example.
A request to you, and other LA area gold bugs - PLEASE clean up your mess when you are done. I will admit when I see some of the people hiking by with huge shovels, I assume they are another group out to destroy the river bed without ever making up for it. I have come across nasty cuts made in the river bank, holes left in the river, and other signs of environmental damage that only volunteers clean up.
Destroy the riverbed? Are you joking? Have you ever seen the river at flood stage? One good rain and the river is pristine again. Like most granola eating types, you haven’t a clue. Here is a video shot a few weeks ago. Are you seriously contending that a few holes up and down nugget alley are any match for this? In some of the shots you can hear the giant boulders tumbling around below the raging water. Yeah, my 3’ hole is going to survive that. :rolleyes:
Most of the gold folks do pick after themselves. And they don’t spray all the rocks with grafitti tags, or leave piles of pampers and uneaten carnitas to attract the bears. It is the hispanics that are trashing the river. You know it, and I know it. The people going after gold were raised in this country with this country’s values. Whether in the city or the wilderness, blight has a name and it isn’t citizen.
The National Forest has a SIGN as you enter in many spots: LAND OF MANY USES. It is not a National Park or Monument. It is there to be managed for the public benefit including fishing, hunting, mining and forestry. Don’t like it? Tough. I refer you to the charter that allows these activities.
Huh. I was not expecting to see a racist rant in this thread.
Anywho, it sounds like a fun hobby to pan for gold on the weekend. What I find funny are the guys that go out there for their full time job looking to make it rich. If I remember my 4th grade California history correctly, the people that made it rich during the gold rush were all the merchants who sold shit to the miners.
I need to set up a business…
By a funny coincidence, I did a service call yesterday in the village of Waverly which is one of the old gold districts in the province. There are all sorts of shafts and trash piles around. Some have been remediated but mostly not.
When I asked the client about where some of the old workings were, he told me there were several on his property and until recently, he held the claims for them. He invited me back in the spring to do some exploration. YAY!
Well, it isn’t the gringos who are tagging every rock in sight. Maybe it was the UFO aliens! Lots of automobile break-ins up in the parking lot as well. Both times we were up there, there were piles of broken auto glass all around. But hey, I guess we have to learn to appreciate “Hispanic Culture”.
From what I can gather on the gold boards I have been reading, the Park Rangers seem to be more interested in harassing law abiding people than preventing crime, as is their charge.
There is talk of closing the whole river to prospecting, to protect the Santa Ana Sucker, a tiny fish that somehow survived the concrete channelization of most of the river system, the construction of two huge dams, and the major gold dredging operations that occurred on the river in the early part of the last century, but is now in danger of being wiped out by a few guys troweling gravel into their sluices on the weekends. :rolleyes: