{"id":959,"date":"2007-06-15T19:31:40","date_gmt":"2007-06-16T02:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=959"},"modified":"2020-07-20T09:41:03","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T16:41:03","slug":"gold-prospecting-the-east-fork-of-the-san-gabriel-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/?p=959","title":{"rendered":"Gold Prospecting The East Fork Of The San Gabriel River"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My wetsuit is getting pretty threadbare and I just lost all my money at the racetrack, so I decided to strike it rich in Gold country again.<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t rain much last Winter and this place has been heavily worked for the last 150 years, so I was hoping just to collect some flakes; a teaspoon full of Gold flakes today is worth $600.<\/p>\n<p>My digging compatriot Ron, aka &#8220;Mr. Know It All&#8221; did his traditional job of carrying the beer and sluice box for our hike up in to the hills.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/wp-content\/11830006.JPG\" alt=\"The almost dry river bed of the East Fork Of The San Gabriel River.\"><\/p>\n<p>We found a spot where we were hoping Gold would have collected.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/wp-content\/11830007.JPG\" alt=\"I dig under a rock.\"><\/p>\n<p>I dig under a rock.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/wp-content\/11830005.JPG\" alt=\"Ron digs under a rock he just wenched aside.\"><\/p>\n<p>Ron brought some wenches to move large rocks, which worked really well.<\/p>\n<p>We over turned a few rocks that shined with specs of a nice Gold color!<\/p>\n<p>We collected these rocks to scrape the Gold flakes off once at home.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/wp-content\/11830002.JPG\" alt=\"I gave Ron one beer for every foot of ground he could dig.\"><\/p>\n<p>I gave Ron one beer for every foot of ground he could dig.<\/p>\n<p>If he had the strength, he would probably have dug to China.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/wp-content\/11830004.JPG\" alt=\"I feed the sluice box.\"><\/p>\n<p>I calculated that we must have moved 30 to 40 gallons of heavy black sand &#8211; digging, classifying and running it through the sluice box.<\/p>\n<p>I picked out a few Gold flakes, so I had some hope for when we panned the concentrate.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/wp-content\/11830001.JPG\" alt=\"Ron pans the concentrate.\"><\/p>\n<p>Without falling over, Ron did a good job of panning the concentrate;  he took out a heavy magnet and picked up every last spec of everything that was in the pan&#8230; 40 gallons of black sand netted us nothing, but at least we had the rocks to scrape!<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the rocks ended up being covered with pyrite &#8211; fools Gold!<\/p>\n<p>So, $20 in gas and a case of beer later, my Gold take was probably four small flakes &#8211; not even enough to buy any neoprene cement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My wetsuit is getting pretty threadbare and I just lost all my money at the racetrack, so I decided to strike it rich in Gold country again. It didn&#8217;t rain much last Winter and this place has been heavily worked for the last 150 years, so I was hoping just to collect some flakes; a [&hellip;]<\/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\/959"}],"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=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5336,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions\/5336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychosolodiver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}