Serious Gold Panning

My father and I went north-east from Stockton, over the first mountains of the Sierras, north-west of Lake Tahoe. High high up. There was snow on the ground, all we could see for miles was mountains and valleys with thousands of pines. We drove down down into a valley, to a town on the edge of nowhere, Washington California, population about 200. They all stared at us. We continued on to the one lane road that serves two way travel, it hugged the mountain side, and believe me, that's fantastically exciting on its own. Hairpin turns with no guarantee there isn't another car coming your direction on this one lane road next to a steep cliff with no rails. We came to a fork of the Yuba River and parked the car. We had to walk from there. Down down, to the river's edge. There had been water shooting out of the sides of the rock everywhere we drove, but now, up close, scaling this steep edge to the river below, it was much more fascinating. We could see where springs had come and gone, leaving loose rocks all roughly pointing riverwards. At the top, there were giant, maybe 15 foot high, hundreds of feet wide piles of stones, remnants of the 1849 gold rush. It was only a couple years after the gold rush that these massive piles of rocks were made, left over from the massive industrial operations on these mountains and rivers extracting gold. It was only a few years after that that California banned massive gold mining tactics like blasting and dredging, preserving the Sierras (unlike some now much uglier parts of America) and ending the gold rush. Yeah, I bet you didn't know that, the government ended the gold rush, they didn't run out of gold.

Finally we came to the river's edge. Just for the hell of it, I grabbed some loose rocks, and I panned them, using a spring that was shooting out perfect clean/clear water. I planned on just diving in the river. This water was crystal clear, and I thought the better panning area might be on the other side. Some parts of the river were about 10 feet deep, and I could clearly see the bottom. But caution got the better of me, and I checked the water first. It was ludicrously cold. I started panning close to the bank. I found gold in nearly every pan. Although it was very very little gold. Fingerprinters I called them, because they could fit between the ridges of my fingerprint when I picked them up. I came up with various names to call my gold if I should find anything larger.

Bill-payer: about $100 worth of gold. It would be enough to pay a bill.
Pay-checker: about $1200 worth of gold. This much could survive me a month.
Year-wager: $35-38K this was the first value I came up with, 1 Kilogram of gold is about $35-38,000 and would be about a year's wage.

After an hour of panning, I ate some lunch out of my pan. My lunch was a Lunchable.

I cooled off my Capri-Sun in the ice-cold river.

So at some point I was thinking, this river is too cold for frogs. If there was a frog that could tolerate this river, it'd be one hardcore fucking frog. Then I looked over and saw a small pool near the river made by one of the springs. Because it was much more shallow it was obviously a bit warmer, and it was full of moss and mold etc. I thought, now there's a place for a frog. Then I saw a frog, so I grabbed it.

Anyway, back to the river, I decided to cross it. By the time I had explored the other side and come back I was relatively wet from the waist down. I decided why not go all the way? So I jumped in the river and let it carry me downstream. I reached a broad area, where it branched. The river was shallow here, but slow, one part of the river took an extremely sharp turn, becoming very rapid, and the other part just went to a pool of moss with a couple very beautiful waterfalls coming out of the rocks.

Ice cold, and probably dying, I started swimming back. I finnally came out and warmed up a bit. Then I went back to panning. I found a rock that had gold color in it. I thought it was gold. My dad wasn't so sure.

After another hour, we were fairly worn out and unlucky. We packed up and climbed out of there.

When we got home, my father tried further techniques to identify the gold color, and couldn't. I still think it's gold. I stated that if it is gold, it would be a Sam's Breakfaster: about $3-4 worth of gold, enough for a Sam's Cafe' ham and eggs breakfast.


So altogether, we had a great time. I brought home snow and threw some at my brother, we brought home gold. I'm convinced I have a little nugget of gold. I have an unidentified species of frog. We got some photos, so I'll be putting them up here.