hey I'm Chris Ralph the professional prospector and I'm here today with my friend Alex Dahl bear and Alex's tell me about a really hot little spot of gold that he found by looming and so I want to talk about taking samples and using the method called low Ming and we're gonna talk about it and Alex was telling me as we were walking over here that he you know has found some gold in this area we're in a gold bearing area and of course we're not gonna say where it is but we're in a gold bearing area and he took some samples of dirt and he got a little bit of gold and he just followed the gold where it led him well using the old as Australians would say low mean right to find the gold yeah I mean basically all you did was you just took a small amount of dirt you screened the rocks out of it right yep Green demand panda and then just panned it with with water and see how much gold and and that's a sample and you can you said you labeled the senior you up little flags out to see where you were yeah I flagged the the area a big broad area and labeled them and then had corresponding bags to each of those flags and then I would take them and in Panem out and the the dirt doesn't lie the the pans tell you where to go and where to follow the gold to so you just went when you had a sample if you had a sample here that was not so good and maybe a couple samples over here that wasn't so good but you got a couple samples here that were really good you would just kind of follow them up the hill that's exactly right I followed it it was a pretty clear line and I lost it for a little bit but but and not sure why that was but I picked it right back up and and the line was remained on course and I followed it right up to a gold-bearing quartz vein one of the things about roaming is that it if you're following up to a single source it makes like a cone you know the further downhill you are the more spread out it is and lower the grade and as you get closer and closer and closer to the source then it gets better and better grade but it's harder to follow because now instead of being 50 feet wide now it's only 20 feet wide and if you don't take your samples in the 20 feet you've got to take more samples til you find it again yeah and then it can actually even get down to where it's 5 feet wide or 2 feet exactly when you get down to the source notice this here is what maybe 10 feet right this is about the N feet wide and this is actually a structural intersection to quartz veins that meet up with each other and they tend to be pretty good hotspots for forming gold and you told me that you took a pan out of this little hole here and one of your pans actually had a whole gram of gold yeah about one gram of gold from one pan sample and it's not a standard sized pan it was one of the little 10 inch pans that's amazing really small sizes like dust and so you're thinking maybe that just like there's a vein here and it's kind of like decomposed by weathering and the weathering of the vein has left some of the gold behind and that's what you're digging up and panning absolutely in fact when it weather's out like that it actually kind of can reach right on top of the vein and weather down and follow the structure down where you have you can have pretty significant enrichment so you may have a really nice pocket here with you know multiple ounces of gold by the time you dig it all out potentially so yeah that's amazing why I'm doing the sampling process now is trying to define the full extent of of what's going on what's mineralized here right how wide it is oh why kind of stuff well you know that that loading method where you take samples of the dirt and if there's gold you kind of trace it back up the hill to the source that's a classic way of finding hardrock things and and with little deposits like this you know because this is not huge you know this is the kind of stuff that the old-timers could have missed in fact obviously they did miss this I think if they'd have known this was here they did doggone oh absolutely they they mined several little areas writers general area around here yeah but they seem to miss this one and didn't there's no signs of sampling or trenching from the old-timers at all yeah that's amazing well best of luck to you and I'm gonna talk a little bit more with you guys back at the house with my white board we'll talk a little bit more about the method of loaning to find hardrock names so yesterday we were out there out in the field with Alex and taking a look at a rich spot that he's found he's already probably taken I'm not close to a half an ounce out of there and he's just getting started he's gonna end up with some real nice gold out of that spot and I wanted to show that to you guys because I want to talk to you a little bit about low mning now you know this tracing or low mning process prospectors have known about that for a long time in the gold rush days miners were using that and they would use it to find rich spots pockets like Alex had of gold and miners would be mining in creeks or wherever and they would get really coarse gold they would know and I coarse gold I mean really sharp angular pointy that kind of gold they would know that they were close to the source let me show you a picture of some sharp angular gold that basically has not gone anywhere from Arizona here's some gold like I say that just is very angular if you look at this there's not a smooth surface on this the only sort of smooth faces are those where the crystals of the gold originally grew but this shows that there's not any angular rounding from rolling around in a river these pieces were taken right up out of the ground and literally taken by metal detector from places where they had formed in the side of the hill and when miners found gold like that they knew that they were close to the source they knew that that material hadn't traveled far because as gold wanders down down the slope of a hill and gets into a stream it gets rounded and smooth and it doesn't it loses that angular character to it so when you find that stuff you know you're pretty close pretty close to the original source and so the miners developed a technique to find the source because they would know that there was a rich place where the gold was coming from and this is the pocket hunting or low Ming or tracing technique that they use for gold now gold usually comes out of some sort of deposit in place in the ground sometimes a rich spot in a quartz vein and you know I got to tell you quartz veins this is one of the things you should know is that quartz veins vary all over the map quartz Danes you go along quartz vein and have it have nothing nothing nothing and that's super rich and then nothing nothing nothing that's not unusual at all for a vein to be really rich in one area and and a lung along the strike of the vein and beyond the rich but it have little or nothing that's really not unusual and the miners developed this technique to trace the gold and find the original source and sometimes these original sources were tremendously rich literally thousands of ounces of gold imagine how much that would be in today's dollars and the fact where Alex was that we were yesterday there's a spot hmm a few hundred yards away from where he was where in the early days they took out over a thousand ounces of gold in a pocket pretty impressive huh I don't think alex is gonna give a thousand ounces or or even a hundred but I wouldn't be surprised if he got ten he's got that a real good spot there and if you want to be able to find spots like that then let me teach you how to do that so what miners developed was this they learned that they could take samples along a hill slope so let's figure this is a this is a hill see I put hillside there and along the slope of the hill going down they might take a sample here here here here here here here here here here here well if they took a sample at these two places that were outside where the gold was going they would get little or nothing little or nothing and then they would get definitely more gold as they traced through here and then eventually they got back to little or nothing okay now that kind of defined at least at this level that the goal is within these brackets so what you do is you move up the hill and each time really all they're doing we talked about this with Alex yesterday they're taking a pan full of material out of the ground just just a soil that's all they're taking just some soil and they screen it to get out the pebbles and the rocks because the gold is gonna be in the sand and smaller pieces if you get pieces of gold that are big enough that they go with the pebbles and rocks boy you're really into some hot territory but normally it's just a matter of screening the material and then panning the sand they would have water maybe there would be a stream down here that they could use or if you're in the desert they would bring water with them and they would categorize these samples you know one two three four or five whatever and they would know that the gold was between sample 2 and sample 1 up 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and then between 8 & 9 okay that between 3 & 7 they were doing good so they move up the hill a little bit more and they take a sample again going across and they would find that the gold was between 2 & 6 okay so then they would go up the hill a little bit more and take some more samples and then they would know it was between 1 & 7 okay are 2 & 7 & and so on and so on they would get to where they were taking samples further up and they had a better idea and eventually it would lead them to the source ok by taking samples across there now you can see it could take a lot of samples and you really don't have to necessarily take 15 or 20 samples on every line especially as you get closer and closer to the top you can see that you can get by with fewer and fewer samples as you take it as you're going across and tracing it up now I'm going to show you where the gold would be you know the gold is going to be you know in some of these areas like this it'll be between these things right I mean this is the the cone shaped pattern because as the gold disperses down the hill it kind of goes in a comm pattern and the steeper the hill the narrower the cone and then more gradual the hillside the wider the cone that forms but even in a cone like this down the centerline is going to be the richest material so as you take your samples here you might find that the couple of samples closest to the center line show better go so that gives you a basic idea of how it works let's take a look at an image in another image that I drew that will help you see what the process is this is just another illustration of the same sort of thing give you a little bit of more close-up view where you've got a gold pocket from a quartz vein rich with gold and it's coming out and you've got what's a dispersion fan basically the gold as it tumbles its way downhill tends to spread out and in this diagram I drew stream at the bottom and as you went up the stream you might get the highest gold concentrations the best gold right below the pocket you'd still find some gold in the stream up to a certain point and eventually when you got above the the dispersion fan of the pocket as it was going downhill you'd reach a point on the upstream where you just didn't get much of any gold anymore and those two things the center line and the upper line kind of mark where the pocket is and you would take samples going up the hill and tell you down the pocket like Alex did the other day now the first step in doing this and actually going out in the field once you've figured out the basics of the technique when you go out in the field you're gonna give this a try now the first thing you need to do is identify an area that has produced pockets of gold in the past now your chances of just going out randomly and finding a rich pocket probably not that great if you're out in an area where other people and the old-timers have found rich pockets hmm you might have a good chance to stumble it on to something that's basically what Alex did he's in an area like see we said yesterday it's a gold bearing area unless I said a few minutes ago it's an area that has yielded some pockets a few hundred yards away from where he found that goal back in the early days some guys found pocket that yielded more than a thousand ounces so no question that's an area that yields some pretty good pocket goal so now that you've figured out an area that has some good pocket gold what's your next step the next step before you actually even go out there is you want to select areas with smaller drainages one of the things about this technique is that in in big stream and River drainage areas the chances for there to be multiple sources that are contributing are much harder and so if you had a hillside instead of having one really rich pocket you had several small pockets scattered all over the hill it would be hard to find one because you'd be keeping getting a little bit from other ones and it'd be kind of like going to a party where everybody was talking real loud and then trying to listen for just one voice you know they're big with it there's a whole bunch of sources saying gold over here Gold over here Gold over here but you know you can't you have a hard time following just one that's why an area that has just a few pockets is really the best so you select an area that's small drainages okay and that's that's what you're looking for then so that you're just probably getting one source in that drainage maybe two but you know not a whole bunch of then you go out to the field if you're just scouting around in the field one of the things you might look for is pieces of vein quartz and especially ones that maybe have a little bit of signs of pyrite or the rusted pyrite limonite or Goethe you know you find those kinds of signs or other sulfides he that's up maybe a little bit better indication of that the thing might be mineralized but finding some quartz will help you hone in maybe on some of these I gotta tell you and this is one things that you really need to know is that quartz is a super common mineral okay it's made of the two most abundant things in the Earth's crust and actually something like sixty percent of the Earth's crust consists of silicon and oxygen and if you put silicon and oxygen together now you can get a lot of other things combined with them and make other minerals too but just silicon and oxygen make quartz okay and so it is one of the most comfort if not the most common element on the Earth's surface corpse so just because you found some quartz oh luck people say I found some quartz that means I found gold right no that doesn't mean that but signs of quartz on the hillside can indicate that there may be a vein that has some decent gold up above now by no means guaranteed if that's why it's prospecting because and that's why gold is so expensive because it's rare alright so you know you might find the court stand on the hillside that's shedding a little quartz but there's no goldrich pocket up there there's no big gold source up there you know it's just a matter of hunting and and giving it a try you know go along downside the bottom of the hill and take a number of samples see if you don't get some gold now if you take a number of samples and none of them are any good well gotta find another hillside to test and keep testing keep testing and maybe you'll eventually make it really good find it really is a good technique I've used this technique myself and showed you a spot that Alex was working on it just getting started and he's gonna get some good gold I've got good gold doing this I've got good gold doing this with a metal detector and I'll tell you a little bit more about that before we're finished so if you going along here and you take a series of samples and you get two or three in a row that come out good that's a great sign for wanting to move up hill but this is just is a technique that doesn't work everywhere it works in some places it works well in some places but it doesn't work everywhere so although it's a great opportunity I can't tell you this is a guaranteed thing that'll always work because in the world of prospecting and gold mining there is no guaranteed thing that always works finding gold having gold in your hand that's that's the only guarantee thing that works is once you have the gold you've known you know it's work so prospecting is about a lot of testing and figuring things out and this is a great technique for figuring things out now I mentioned to you that you can do this with a metal detector and sure enough I've done this on hillsides in Nevada where found it a few nuggets and we were able actually to trace this whole line up and down and take nuggets all the way up to the top but not just the top all the way down to there this this area had some real nice coarse Nuggets and me and a friend of mine got some really nice gold going up and down just following the center line of the the gold I think the biggest nugget I got was 2/3 of an ounce 20 grams and the biggest nugget that he got was over an ounce so it's it's a great technique and even if you find the spot with a metal detector it's worth it to go around and look in the center line for pieces that have shed off this pocket because there may be a lot of pieces down the side of the hill one of the things about taking these samples too is you want to take them across the slope of the hill the hill is doing sloping down this way you want to cut your samples across because that's how the cone of dispersion is gonna be is gonna be going down the side of the hill so that gives you another hint about how it's done now just one thing before we finish because this is a great area or a great technique for areas that have a limited amount of vegetation you can use this in a forest but the problem is if you've got lots of undergrowth and and layers of houmous you know of leaves and twigs and branches and stuff that have built up it becomes a lot harder to take these samples and you're on the desert pretty easy so talking about doubt in the desert thing I wanted to bring up was some people may ask about dry panning it's like I don't really recommend dry panning just because it's a tricky technique it works okay in some places and not so good in others and it's way better to haul some water take a number of samples number them Alex put out little flags where he took his samples and then he went back to his car with the samples and pin them all out and like say he would find out well this one this one this one these three in the row were good and so he wouldn't move up the hill that's that's really how you want to do it you wanna you know numbering your samples and know where they are so you can go back to them maybe you use a GPS or something and so you can go back and retest these and move up the hill and follow the ones that are good follow follow where the dirt tells you to go that's that's this is one of the secrets of finding gold go where the dirt tells you to go so anyway I hope that this bit about roaming has been helpful for you and I hope that it will lead you to find rich pockets out in the field so that you can find you know dozens if not hundreds of ounces of gold it's a technique that can do that you know it really can if you want to become a better prospector and learn all the techniques of prospecting I've written a book about prospecting it's it's an encyclopedia it has all the information you need to know from basic geology to minerals to techniques of finding gold like this and I think you'll really enjoy it and I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about it right now so let me tell you a little bit more about my book it's called this full of gold and I wrote it because I want you to be able to go out and find for yourself this full of gold and you can see that it's an encyclopedia with all kinds of information pictures and that sort of thing it's not in color but the color would have cost me a lot more to have printed and so the book would have cost a lot more it's for sale on Amazon and you can pick it up I'll put a link in the description below I also serve as the editor for a prospecting magazine it's I see MJ's prospecting and mining journal and honestly you should check that out we've got stories and information legal stuff everything you know to increase your skills as a prospector I write articles in this every month and a lot of other very experienced prospectors contribute to the magazine as well so check the magazine now also I have a website and the website is at Nevada outback Gems calm I'll put a link for it in the description below but there's gobs of information there that you will find useful in your prospecting efforts finally I want to say that I really appreciate your comments and thoughts and even positive criticism don't come on there and just toss out insults because I'll just delete your comments but if you've got helpful things to say and questions to ask do write and and put those in the comments because I answer my comments to people and you'll hear from me in you know in responding to you so if you've enjoyed this video and you like what you see and you're interested in finding out more well then sign up subscribe and hit the the notification bell so they'll let you know when I post new videos and you know like it and share it if you again you see stuff that you really are excited about and I'll be coming out with lots more new videos and so we'll see it again real soon