Anxious to check out my hand dredge, crevassing tool, I head out. A favorite river south of Salmo, beautiful spot, and as luck would have it the river's low, passable, and I can get into all sorts of spots I wouldn't otherwise be able to with my tools.
(right click on images and open in new tab to embiggen)
In theory it should be good, the hand dredge sucks up the material from the bottom of the waterfall and pools, works well (the lid keeps popping off, but I can fix this), and I scrape the crevices in the bedrock, gather the material up and pan it out.
And when I'm done, out of about 6 small buckets of material I've got 6 small flakes of gold. Tiny flakes, flour, hardly the showing I was expecting or hoping for.
Such a great location though...
When I get home I put the final concentrates under the microscope, a handful of fine gravel, and see what I've got.
Lots of quartz, peridot, some garnet, the amber colored material is definitely gemmy, don't know what that is, ...
some dark pyramidal crystals, similar in shape (but nothing else) to what diamonds would look like. Lots of these.
pyrites (gold colored upper right)
Good crystal shape, haven't a clue as to what it is.
More of the double pyramids, pyrites, peridot & quarts. Sparkly bit is probably mica.
Pinkish crystal in center is definitely a gem, don't know what, have to check crystal habits, not too many of these but might be worth working with a Saruca for a while to see what comes up...
Perfect black rectangular crystal. ???.
Some curious quartz shapes, that - really, do for all the world resemble diamonds - the left one especially with it's vaguely pyramidal shape.
