Gold Prospecting Adventures - How I Caught Gold Fever

So as many of my followers already know, I love gold prospecting!

You can see my previous prospecting posts here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

For as long as I can remember I have always loved hiking and backpacking in the mountains. As a child my parents started taking me out into the mountains at a real young age and the effect it had on me was very prolific.

Me, my mom (@doverland), and my brother. Backpacking back in the 1990's

As an adult I took my love for the mountains to a whole new level. In my early 20's I read the book Into the Wild and I was absolutely enthralled by the story of Chris McCandless. I could really relate to his attitude and his ideas about life.

From then on I spent as much time as I could hiking, camping, and exploring the mountains of California. I spent the next years climbing any mountain I could find and spending as much time as possible as far out into the wild as I possibly could. Including a life changing 32 day backpacking trip on the JMT(John Muir Trail) which I will tell you guys all about in a future post.

Relaxing in the High Sierra on my JMT hike

So in the process of all my mountain escapades I did a solo backpacking trip up the East Fork of the San Gabriel river. This was early 2009 and the water levels were really high making the trek quite difficult and even dangerous, but I managed to get up into the Narrows and spent a few days up there trying to fish. I didn't catch many fish, but I did see lots of gold prospectors. This was my first encounter with prospecting, but it didn't really effect me.

East Fork of the San Gabriel river

Small Rainbow trout from the East fork

Then in fall 2010 me and a friend did a great backpacking trip where we climbed up and over Mt. Baden Powell, dropped down into the top of the canyon and hiked down the East fork river all the way through to the bottom trailhead. On this trip I really fell in love with the canyon. It is such a big beautiful canyon, full of so much life. But although we saw more prospectors, it still did not have any real effect on me. I was still just completely clueless about prospecting.

View from the summit of Mt. Baden Powell

Bighorn Sheep

Wildflowers in the Canyon

The lush beauty of the East Fork

Then in early 2012 I made a trip up north to visit an old friend of mine who had moved to a small town called Grass Valley right in the middle of the mother lode country where the 1849 California gold rush took place. We had a fun week hanging out exploring the area, but on one of the days my buddy took me down to the Yuba river with a sluice box. I was more interested in swimming and fishing, but we did a bit of prospecting and got some small flakes. Seemed like a fun little hobby, but yet still no gold fever.

Yuba river near Grass Valley, CA

Then near the end of the same year another good friend of mine invited me on a backpacking trip up the East fork San Gabriel river passed the Bridge to Nowhere to the split with the Iron fork so we could campout at the old Iron fork camp, which is where the old timer George Trogden lived until his death in 1929. To this day there are still some of the ruins from his cabin and his gardens there.

(Photo source) George Trogden's old cabin circa early 1930's

We had a great hike and along the way as usual we saw lots of prospectors including meeting one of the most knowledgeable long time East fork prospectors. Who I still see up there often. But on our trip it was actually a group of young adults (a few guys and a few gals, late teens - early twenties) that we passed. I watched them dig for a few minutes from the trail and I could just tell they were having so much fun. I was suddenly enchanted with the idea. I thought to myself... "hey I did that before with my buddy in Grass Valley. It was easy"... and it was a hobby that would let me spend time in the mountains! And who knows I might even find some gold!! And after camping at the Iron fork camp I fell in love with the spot, so in my mind it was decided. After the trip I immediately started my research into gold prospecting with the plan to return to the Iron fork camp and start my prospecting career.

The Bridge to Nowhere

Iron Fork camp

Overlooking the East fork

Bighorn sheep

My first trip or 2 I only had a pan and shovel... maybe a few other small tools, and I honestly spent more time hiking around exploring the canyon than I did digging. So I didn't really find much gold at all. But shortly I got myself a Keene A51 sluice box and more equipment and before long I had found my first real flakes of gold!

Devils Gulch falls

Wildflowers

Hiking through the Narrows

Falls Gulch falls

Sluicing on the Iron fork

Going through a couple pans of concentrates at Iron Fork camp

Getting down deep in one of my first holes

My first year I only made few trips and found a few specks. The second year I started going more and I finally got a few friends to join me on a trip and we found the first 2 pickers! I kept researching prospecting and each trip I met prospectors and talked with them and learned from what they said. One prospector who I had become good friends with, when I was telling him how I was getting a bit discouraged, suggested a spot for me to dig. So I tried it out. On that trip I had a group of other young prospectors show up at the camp and I let them camp there with me. We all made friends and I told them where I was digging so they setup just down the river from me and we had a real good time digging together, helping each other move big rocks etc... and on that trip I found my first gold nugget!!

...The fever set in deep...

So the next trip (now late 2014) I moved my camp from the Iron fork to near my new found digging location. I built a real nice camp (which I still use today) and commenced digging my bend on the river.

The new location

My first gold nugget

Digging the inside bend

The new camp

East fork scenery

Wildflowers at camp

Sluicing the new location

I kept going up there digging that bend and kept finding a decent amount of gold each time, but I still felt I could do better. Each trip I kept talking with other prospectors and I learned more and more. On one of these trips I learned about a sluice box called the Cal-Sluice that uses a double layer sluice with a classification screen built on the top. Which would eliminate the need for pre-classifying all my buckets of dirt, saving lots of time and work, allowing me to process a much larger amount of material. When I got home from that trip I immediately bought myself one. It is an expensive and a heavy sluice, but it's so worth it. And from then on... IT WAS ON! I became a digging machine and the larger amounts of gold I was finding was really exciting. Then in summer 2015, I got a good buddy to join me for a week up there and we hit it real hard... and we found the second (and still my largest to date) gold nugget!!

Me at the Iron fork junction

Hiking in with the kids

Digging

Sunset glow above camp

Gold Nugget!

East fork Gold

So since then I have been going back to this same spot multiple times a year usually for a week or 2 at a time, camping at my now "home away from home" camp and digging that bend just below my camp, the one at my camp, and even just above my camp. All have produced good gold including lots of pickers and even 2 more nuggets! I've continued to learn and improve my skills and upgrade my equipment. Like getting a blue bowl to get the flour gold from my concentrated black sands. And recently my fever has even expanded beyond just the East fork. Last year I acquired a Keene 151 drywasher and I joined the GPAA and started dry washing some GPAA claims and some unclaimed areas in places like Holcomb Valley and the Cajon Pass. Also my buddy @csusbgeochem1 and I built a badass chain mill rock crusher so we could start crushing and sampling hard rock. Although so far the few samples we've tried have produced no gold... but we have other spots we want to test, we just gotta get out there and collect the ore.

"Home away from home" Camp

More wildflowers by camp

Utilizing big boulders to clean out underneath a bigger boulder

Getting a couple pickers

East fork gold

Digging with my buddy @artopium

East fork gold

Night Digging

Working in the river, cleaning off some bedrock

Bighorn Sheep checking me out

Standing in the hole with my GPAA hat on

East fork gold

More East fork gold

At home gold recovery. Panning tub, classifiers, gold pans, and my Blue bowl

Dry washing in Holcomb valley

Camping in Holcomb valley

More dry washing in Holcomb valley

The rock crusher

The inside of the crusher

Gold, gold nuggets, and some garnets, all from the East fork

So I think that pretty much brings you up to date on the story of my gold fever. There will be many more posts to come about my prospecting adventures and even just prospecting in general so I hope you have all enjoyed this post. And with that I will leave you with two youtube videos that I've made. First one is from my very first two or three trips prospecting in the East fork, the next video is from prospecting the East fork about two years ago and you can clearly see my improvement (both in prospecting and video making, lol). So until next time...

Thanks for reading!!

Youtube videos -

Thanks for watching!

* All photos and videos are taken by @derekrichardson unless otherwise noted

Map - !steemitworldmap 34.237113 lat -117.765241 long 'East Fork of the San Gabriel River' D3SCR
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