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This Weeks Adventure!!!

This week takes us to another hydrolic mine. Only this time we're going with a metal detector.

Ah yes.. The warm sun was shining bright this afternoon. It was not a time to be indoors. This visit was to the same hydrolic mine that we spotted on the way to "Turtle Rock".I just couldn't pass up the opprotunity to take the detector down and see what we could find. Although my detector isn't a very good one, it can still pick up a dime about 5 inches deep. Besides the chewing gum wrappers and a couple of nails the day wasn't a total waste. The quiet of a saturday afternoon spent in the middle of nowhere is totally relaxing. No t.v., telephone, or wife made the day very enjoyable.

At the mouth of this cut is where a sluice box was once held down. It was placed at about the same point that I am standing while taking this picture. The old timers would take a water cannon and wash the hillside down through the box. The box would have riffles that would create eddys for the gold to fall into. Although the method was creud, it did capture a lot of gold.

At the mouth is where I focused my attention with the detector. It was a slow process but a ton of fun. The shadows had started to get long and I was worried that I wasn't goning to find anything to show you guys when all of a sudden my detector gave a sign. I continued to work slowly, pinpointing the exact area, then I began to dig. Low and behold I found a spike. It was probably put here to hold the sluice box in place while the hillside was washed through it. I continued to roam the area and pinpointed another sure sign. Another spike, placed about two feet below the other in a straight line. This assured me that my assumption was correct. They did hold down the box.