I'd postponed work to take the Advanced Placer Mining course offered by the Chamber of Mines in Nelson. May 28 - May 31, Thursday, Friday evenings, Saturday & Sunday days on field trips.
The course was a little more unstructured than the previous introduction to prospecting, the first day was reviewing placer techniques and various places to look, the second was an introduction to hard rock prospecting using placer techniques. Most of the time was spent watching the gold based "reality" tv shows, Yukon Gold and the like, and analyzing what they were doing wrong. And, above and beyond general incompetence and a remarkable lack of charisma, they were doing plenty wrong.
Now I'd written up about 10 pages of notes to share, but then it occurred to me that really, this post isn't about sharing my (or the instructors) knowledge. As he tells you when your taking the course, you're getting 30 years of his hard-won experience. So if your interested I'll recommend the course, cheap at double the price. The class, 8 people, 6 I recognized from the Introduction to Prospecting, the other 2 had been waiting a couple of years to get into this course. Washington had returned, as had one of the girls (she lived in her VW van), none from Nelson, most from the area, average age perhaps 60 years.
The first days field trip was to the instructors claim near the border, turn off cell phones as we're now being charged roaming. And digging our holes we get down to virgin ground, take it to the river in buckets, pan it out. Nothing remarkable, long day, but checking with the others I find one of the students had a cm long thin nugget, and Washington had a small jar full of pennyweight nuggets. Not bad for a couple of hours work, and he's had his epiphany, he looks off into the distance, misty eyed, and tells us how in his entire prospecting career he's never gotten this much gold out in a day...
I'm jealous, not a single nugget in my pan, but I didn't have a classifier, and some of it is going to be down to dumb luck. Only some, the remainder will have to be adjusted on my end...But you couldn't wish this luck on a better person, and I'm relieved there were nuggets recovered, I was beginning to get a little skeptical...
It's easy to see how the fever sets in.
Day 2, hard rock techniques, high up on another claim, swarmed by small flies, not black flies, but bigger, and I'm justly skeptical of their intentions, it doesn't take long, welts and trickles of blood begin to run down my arms, neck, I'd taken a ride up with a classmate and left my insect repellent in the car, I'm now a savory treat for every little winged nightmare that haunts the north woods. More techniques, sampling, then the end of class, informal goodbyes, I'm a good 8 hours drive from Calgary.
The class, very worthwhile, interesting people and a lot of good information. Now another 2 months in hell to replenish my finances and then it'll be time again to be off...