It was a chilly, windy day in the canyon...

... but I finally did find some gold... well, I think (and hope) I did. In total, I worked for about three hours, just with shovels, a sief and my pans - no sluice, as I don't have one yet. Let me tell you, my back was killing me . It was pretty rough to get to the spots, too - lots of climbing and almost-falling-in-the-icy-water. But it also was really beautiful:

I took the concentrate of about 5-6 pans home with me. There, I tried to separate any gold from the heavy minerals and black sand, but it didn't work. Either, I'm too clumsy or the gold was just too tiny and light. Probably both. However, I did manage to sort some suspicious little flakes out with tweezers. Today, I figured out how to take good makro-shots and - I see gold! What a confidence boost!

All pictures taken by N.N.

The cold and the mica slate...

So, last weekend, my dad and I went goldwashing together for the first time. We drove to a little river about 40 kilometres away. It was freezing and there was snow! The river itself flows into another river in the area, which is known to have gold, but we couldn't access this other river (only in the middle of a village or down in the valley next to the road), so we chose this one instead.

We worked for over two hours and took home a bucket of fine material to work through, but apart from tons of mica slate and mini garnets, we didn't find a thing. This was demotivating and it surpised me, because although the area lies in the middle of a huge limestone mountain-range, there are many eroded quartz lines - and alas, many, many slate pieces.

So, no success. Again. However, my dad seemed to quite enjoy gold-hunting. He didn't try panning, but he was wandering around with his shovel, digging and getting excited when he thought he found something. It would be nice if he stayed this enthousiastic and we could share this hobby together... He is planning to build a sluice over the winter to make looking for gold a bit easier. He is an excellent craftsman and I am sure it will be fun doing this together.

Two rivers, no gold, but silver specks...

Today, I got up really early because I wanted to pan for gold in another river near where I live. I therefore drove to a place where the river meets with the other river (where I had no luck apart from many garnets). This "new" river is said to have quite a bit of gold and people have panned it in former times. This is, what it looked like: on the right, you see the river where I have tried it before, on the left is today's river.

I put my gear down near some big stones, which stuck out of the water and dug behind them, where I had seen some big gravels under the rocks and in the crevices. Alas, there was no gold in my first pan, but it was literally full with garnets - my collection of these is growing fast. Also further panning brought no success gold-wise and after about 1,5 hours, (with icy hands and an achy back) I accidentally poured freezing cold water over my pants and had to pack up and take the next bus home to warm up again. I did, however, find silvery, shiny stones. No idea, what this is, but I hope, next time I find gold instead. I must admit, I was a little disappointed to find nothing again...

Precious stones... but where's the gold?

In the meantime, my other two gold pans for fine-washing arrived. They were delivered together with a tiny sniffer-bottle (which doesn't quite work) a handy pair of tweezers, a magnifying glass and a little jar. The weather cleared up quite a bit again and yesterday, I went down to the river to try my luck again. It turned out that the little specks I found last time were probably no gold, but just some flitters from iron pyrites, which we have a lot of in the area. So what did I find this time? Alas, no gold but some pretty garnets (in the picture above). If you click on the picture, you can see that on the left, there's also some tiny light green stones. Finding all these shows that my method of panning is at least not totally wrong: in the end, only the heavy black and red sand remained - mixed with these heavy semi-precious stones and a small piece of a rusty nail. This weekend, I plan to finally try the most promising river in the area.

The first attempt

Today, I finally received my first gold-pan in the mail. am still waiting for some black pans (for finer gold) and some accessories... but even with only one pan, I could finally try prospecting for some gold at the river (I did try it before, but lids and flowerpot-saucers just don't work). It was freezing outside - tonight the first snow fell on the hills and mountains. But the landscape looked beautiful:

I have to take a sief next time, because it was a drag picking out the bigger stones. I don't expect big nuggets anyway, so a sief will really help getting rid of useless gravel. I also did not bring a shovel, which made scraping together material really hard. However, I did end up with some tiny little flitters in the end. I have no idea, if they are real gold or not. I did do research about rivers with gold in the area - and the river where I washed today does have gold, but not really where I tried it, so yeah... But they shimmer in a pretty way and make me wanna try some more promising rivers soon. I just hope, the weather gets a bit warmer still!