{"id":892,"date":"2007-05-25T13:11:14","date_gmt":"2007-05-25T20:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=892"},"modified":"2020-07-20T09:42:21","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T16:42:21","slug":"quest-for-new-diving-equipment-prospecting-the-east-fork-of-the-san-gabriel-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=892","title":{"rendered":"Quest For New Diving Equipment! Prospecting The East Fork Of The San Gabriel River"},"content":{"rendered":"

While strolling through a used book store, I came across a $1 book entitled, “Exact Southern California Gold Locations.”<\/p>\n

Being only a dollar, I figured that I couldn’t go wrong.<\/p>\n

One of the known Gold locations was the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, a 90 minutes drive from where I live.<\/p>\n

With Gold now trading at over $600 a troy ounce – the equivalent of a teaspoon full of Gold dust, I decided to recruit help and venture off to collect a few ounces or more.<\/p>\n

Two ounces of Gold would buy me a very nice dive computer and even a dry suit!<\/p>\n

I called my brother and diving buddy Nick and asked them if they wanted to help with the prospecting in return for a share of the Gold.<\/p>\n

One of my potential constituents asked something along the lines of, “Gold prospecting? Is that where you drive up in to the mountains, hike for a couple hours to dig holes, separate gravel and pan sand while standing in a cold stream of water?”<\/p>\n

“Uh, I will bring the beer,” I said.<\/p>\n

Having nobody taking my offer, I stopped by Home Depot and talked to some day laborers.<\/p>\n

“\u00bfUsted tiene gusto de cavar para el oro?” I asked as best I could.<\/p>\n

They just laughed.<\/p>\n

But I soon noticed that a lot of them already had more Gold on their teeth than we could hope to find in one afternoon.<\/p>\n

Sitting at a local pub, drinking a beer and pondering how I could manage the prospecting operation alone, I ran in to one of my neighbors, Ron – aka “Mr. Know It All.”<\/p>\n

Ron said, “Sure I would love to go dig for some Gold, especially if you bring the beer.”<\/p>\n

With the help of a few bar patrons, we pried Ron’s ass off the bar stool and sent him home to rest.<\/p>\n

At 5 AM I picked him up and we were off to the East Fork of the San Gabriel River.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

There’s nothing like mountain air in the early morning.<\/p>\n

We parked at the end of the road, scratched my daily “Adventure Parking Pass” and shouldered the gear.<\/p>\n

\"Carrying<\/p>\n

Ron carried the sluice box and bag of beer that kept dripping ice water down his leg.<\/p>\n

We hiked an hour up river.<\/p>\n

\"Carrying<\/p>\n

I carried the buckets, classifiers, shovels, pick, pans, metal detector and refining kit.<\/p>\n

We hiked until Ron couldn’t walk anymore.<\/p>\n

We found a part of the river that had receded a bit and was surrounded be trees and roots.<\/p>\n

From what I understood about where Gold settles, this was the perfect place.<\/p>\n

\"Ron<\/p>\n

Ron started digging around a rock.<\/p>\n

\"I<\/p>\n

…as I set up and fed the sluice box.<\/p>\n

We must have dug, classified and shoveled about 40 gallons of gravel through the sluice box that morning.<\/p>\n

The many beer breaks relieved the back fatigue.<\/p>\n

But next time, I’m going to bring gloves.<\/p>\n

I think the gravel wore away several layers of the skin on my hand.<\/p>\n

Also, this kind of gravel is heavy with iron, quartz and hopefully Gold.<\/p>\n

After four hours of dig-shovel-classify-sluice-beer break, we had a good amount of concentrate to pan.<\/p>\n

I think the last time I panned for Gold was as a kid at Knott’s Berry Farm.<\/p>\n

Everyone has their own unique style to twirling a pan; I just had to find mine.<\/p>\n

\"Panning<\/p>\n

The concentrate is pretty heavy, but the Gold is heavier.<\/p>\n

After a few minutes of twirling the pan – my pan has ridges on it to make the task easier – I was down to about a cup of concentrate with what looked to be some Gold color.<\/p>\n

I bottled what was left in the pan to separate later at home with tweezers.<\/p>\n

\"We<\/p>\n

We made it back to the truck to rest and drink the last cold beer.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Once home, I took a magnet and lifted the iron filings away and picked out the Gold with tweezers.<\/p>\n

We didn’t get much and what we did get had a high quartz concentration – Ron didn’t even care about splitting the Gold.<\/p>\n

Even so, what I had, wouldn’t even cover the gas for the trip.<\/p>\n

But I guess I am psycho, because I really did enjoy the trip.<\/p>\n

I’ll find the mother load, one day.<\/p>\n

From this day forward, Ron and I greet each other by saying, “What up digga’?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While strolling through a used book store, I came across a $1 book entitled, “Exact Southern California Gold Locations.” Being only a dollar, I figured that I couldn’t go wrong. One of the known Gold locations was the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, a 90 minutes drive from where I live. With Gold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,64,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=892"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5338,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892\/revisions\/5338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}