Geology Secrets to Finding Placer Gold and Lode Deposits

the heck is this danger blasting [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow how gorgeous is that you wouldn't think we're out in the middle of the desert but we are just add a little bit of water actually a lot of water and the desert transforms into this beautiful Oasis you wouldn't even think we're in the desert but we are that's why this place is so beautiful [Music] [Music] [Music] you guys see the flowers huh what are you guys doing I got one two otherwise there's nuggets in those nose that's a little baby three four gonna get some more oh they're all over the place look at that and look at the flowers up there on the hill what are you guys doing you look like you're gonna have babies hi and you look like a baby look at them all they're all over the place they're in the trail how am I supposed to go riding they're standing out here to drill you're just a baby I know baby I know he's such a cute one so if you're out here in the Oatman area you should know this by now hi you're gonna see lots of these guys these guys out here because they're the descendants of the original boroughs from the gold miners that were out here in the 1860s and up all right we're gonna let him go because I don't want them on the trail because if another side by side comes by they gonna spook them all right that must be the mother right there what oh I'm taking you home I'm taking you home come on baby oh you're so cute you almost look like Walter you're not Walter's brother are you you're such a pretty baby look at you you're such a baby oh are you gonna eat my finger he says I want lemon too baby I want some loving too they're all over the place look at that he's such a baby oh you're so pretty he says are you feeding us or not no I'm not gonna feed you but I'll give you some loving I'll give you some love and you're just a baby look how big those ears are holy cow you look just like Walter when he was a baby huh you got yourself a friend hi baby what don't worry they'll just make sure you don't put anything near his mouth because he'll he'll definitely Chomp on Mirror Mirror Mirror Mirror all right guys we have to go I don't think they're gonna let us go they got burls all over the place huh you're such a cute baby look at that how could you not love that I'm gonna take you home with me you're so pretty all right we gotta go we gotta go are you trying to take him home with you [Laughter] all right we gotta go I know you're saying Jeff get on with sampling we want to see some gold well I'm giving you gold yellow flower gold you gotta appreciate nature when she gives you stuff like this because you don't see it all the time enough jaw jacking let's get on and get it on yeah that's why you need to bring one of these foreign this is from an area down there so all right let's give it a shot oh this is nice I could do this all day yeah that's the neat thing about being in this area all right let me get my Spectacles on let me check it out real quick oh yeah yeah super fine so what we're gonna do is we're gonna drive around and look for more Bedrock exposures and that's what you should do too it's the easiest way to get gold if you're in a gold producing district and I recommend you get one of these see a lot of guys with their little dust brooms and stuff nope this guy right here save you so much time now when you come up to places like this see these waterfalls and these traps this Bedrock this is a perfect place to sample you can see that this is altered and aside that's a no-brainer chloridic anesite this is a really good place to sample and if you come down here you can see all this beautiful exposed bedrock and all these cracks and crannies it's another good place the sample here's some more of the andesite which is very prominent in this area all through here beautiful place to sample oh look at that now who could tell me what that is that's an oddball that shouldn't be here so we're going to take a little sample here and see what's in all this beautiful Bedrock goes all the way down there's another wash over there I'm going to sample him there is a huge operation on the hill here yeah look at that Monker isn't that nice huh that's what I'm talking about this is Brett shaded quartz see how the quartz has been fractured and then resubmitted this can be very rich in your hydrothermal systems where the original vein structure has been crushed because of the different fault planes shifting and then a new fluid assemblage has come up and resubmitted this again with A fine grain mass and a lot of times all these different episodes crushing and resubenting can have great gold values in there and you can see all the hematite in there see that and this is what a lot of Prospectors look for is this Brett shaded quartz with all this beautiful red fine-grained Mass cementing it all together look at this beautiful Dyke the solicified dike oh you see it this is and acidic it's got Quartz in it and you can see it's in this older chloritic endocyte so this is newer than this and you can see where the chill margins here where it actually cooled and baked the surrounding Rock isn't that amazing wow oh yeah the portal one of many look at that oh and the stumps are massive look at that oh and I didn't bring my gear with me and I'm not getting stuck in here again beautiful samples out here oh I gotta take a couple of them and see what's inside man and it's got its own Mill too now the mine has got its own Mill you know the dead mine was doing very good very rich material coming out of it very productive remember what I said about when you explore the desert you never know what you're gonna find well look what we found we found Fort Reds pretty cool huh yeah a good place to Wet My Whistle I wonder if anybody's there let's go check it out anybody here can I help you ah isn't this nice I can have lunch in here all day long fort red sits about three and a half miles Northwest of Oatman and it sits in a wash paralleling Silver Creek wash just to the north to get there from Oatman simply travel North the gold Road make a left on Silver Creek wash Road it's a dirt road so be careful make your first ride on Moss Mine Road and then make another right on Moss Back Road head up that wash take the road in the middle and it'll take you directly to Fort Rex and reds wants to thank these people right here that's right Reds retired extremely dangerous seniors I love it that's pretty cool huh enjoy but don't destroy so if you guys come out here make sure that there ain't no graffiti or junk out here and we're gonna do our best to make sure this area is clean too so remember always leave an area cleaner than when you found it oh what is this huh a lot of vegetation I see water tanks these are panning tubs I knew it they brought them out here for me it's the GoFundMe Pawnee Wildlife project please do not touch this is all for the wild animals of course they got their trail cam right there and that way they know if anybody comes out here and messes with it or maybe they just want to see the wildlife that comes out here but this particular attic right here see how they drove this down into this poffery and of course it's all watered down in there you see that and so what they're doing is they're pumping it out and putting it in these tanks that's really cool and here I thought it was for me so I would have a panning station so I wouldn't have to get into that Creek all right now you see these These are fantastic these are old Prospect pits from the old timers and of course it wasn't good enough for them but it could be enough for us and you can see the vein right there that they were following I always recommend that when you find these look for mineralization in the court if it's just plain white bowl quartz forget about it there's nothing in it but if you use your Jeweler's Loop like you should have when you're out here and you see any kind of mineralizations especially around the bugs then go ahead and grab those just do a grab sample crush it up pan it with a little Jet dry in the water and then inspect with your Jeweler's Loop that'll tell you if this is worth putting a claim on and Mining it these are perfect I love finding these because these are the ones that aren't on any Maps because they weren't big enough but it could get richer as you go down all right I'm going to check for any mineralization then I'll do a grab sample now you can see the silica vein right here you see it quartz and where does it go it goes right to that portal and then it goes right up there on the hill you can I can see it cut right there so this would be part of the vein system itself and if I had to guess the vein continues off that way that's why I always say if you find a rich vein or even if it's on another claim just draw a straight line out away from it trench it and see if you can find the rest of it because sometimes it'll pop up but it's only a few inches under the surface and you can have your own Gold Mine this is what I'm talking about on the mineralization blacks Browns Reds here's a better shot of the vein you can see it over there it's about three to four feet wide right there and you can see the foot wall in the hanging wall is very defined well I'm going to say most of the values are along the hanging wall which is very common and you can see the banding in the courts and that's typical as you have silicates and carbonates and silicates and carbonates Alternate as you have many episodes of the hydrothermal fluids coming up through this fissure forcing it open more and more deposition more movement here on the fault line and then of course more fluid being injected up through here now most the time on veins like this you will see that most the vein is Barren it's white we call it Bowl quartz but if you look on the outer margins you'll see banding and it's the banding where all the gold is going to be the reason why is because the first fluids to be injected into this fall system didn't have anything in it it was all bull courts the reason why is because of Bones reaction series as the chambers are cooling most of the lighter materials the felsic material is coming up has nothing in it all the gold is going to come up at a later episode so you look for the banding on the outer edges of these structures and in all my years of chasing these hydrothermal systems most of the values are always going to be in the hanging wall see the road right here this dirt road and look at this if you didn't know what you were doing this is pretty much gonna be it for you right here so what they did is they sunk the shaft here because they were trying to get up underneath this this quartz made and they did a really really good job do you see that so what they would typically do is they would find an outcropping like they did here up on the top of the hill then they would drop a shaft in either on the vein itself or right next to it get down as far as it can get up underneath it and then do a bunch of overhand stopping to the surface let gravity pull it all down into the Chutes and that's what they did here so my point is when you're out here and you're driving around you're side by side or your motorcycles be careful because some of these areas aren't fenced off you drive up over a hill into one of those ain't nobody going to pull you out and you can see where the overhand Stope comes up here to the surface which is why you got to be careful when you're running around these Hills because you might not see nothing and you slide right into this monkey and it's gonna hurt real bad and if you didn't know it was here you would think oh it's just a small little Prospect no that's the top of an overhand stop the Daylights you got to be careful with that so you know what I'm gonna say huh oh you better smash that like button no so come on let's go oh yeah here's the shaft it's seen better days again there's part of the head frame too yeah you can see the lagging and how they cut everything oh let's do it yeah he looks pretty good actually yeah he's got some depth to him that looks real good nice well it's in great shape you go down there no problem oh nice Timber wow look at this cut let's see if you guys got there can determine exactly what structure they're chasing okay wow look at this huge cut on the side of this oh and there's bighorn sheep up there see them way up there on the top there they are I think there's one two three four five six I can tell right away what they were following just by looking at this thing all right we're gonna get a closer look there can you see it do you see this huge chloridic and acidic Dyke right here that is what they were chasing this guy right here and they took down the rest of the mountain to get to it look at these chill margins look at this I want to show you these chill margins see this see these this black line this is part of the chill margin it came up really really fast it didn't have a lot of time to cook the surrounding host Rock but you have this beautiful looking rhyolite here and then you have this green chloritic andesite here you can see the chill margin right there you see it and right here you have a xenolith which was caught up in this material as it was coming up it brought it with it it is fine grained but I can see a lot of plagia class feldspar in there the daisy mine was started in 1984 when gold prices started to rise huge amounts of Labor and money were invested in removing millions of metric tons of rock which was the overburden necessary to be removed in order to gain access to this particular vein structure this mine was classified as a low-grade High tonnage strip mine evidence of weathering and oxidation can be seen in the vein structure as you travel further up the face the vein itself has a 75 to 80 degree dip dipping to the Northwest which is typical of vein structures in this area and has produced over 240 thousand and ounces of gold the mine was shut down in the late 80s due to the price of gold falling below the threshold of 800 an ounce you look carefully at the very top you'll see a family of bighorn sheep that seem to defy the laws of gravity as they maneuver around the top of this vein structure [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] look at this beautiful dike of rhyolite you see that and the host rock that it was in which was softer and older has weathered away leaving this guy exposed and this particular rhyolite has been solidified which means there's a lot of quartz veinless running through it they saw this on the hill and they sunk a very deep shaft to get down to the bottom of it because they wanted to see if there was any values below because a lot of times this outcropping will have leeched out a lot of its Minerals Well evidently they didn't find anything because I don't see an orb in here I don't even see hand stacking but I see a deep shaft would you like to see it now that's a deep one right there now if you look against this side here you can see where this rhyolytic dike travels down and they're following it down and you can see on both sides I've got more altered rhyolite and then I've got this newer rhyolite intrusion coming up through here and because this guy was injected later it probably has more mineralization in it than this rhyolite and here of course this is the rhyolytic Dome that is hosted it here you can see that solicified rhyolytic dike coming through here and this is what got them excited right here you can see where they blasted the heck out of it look at this black manganese oxide that is always a winner on these guys beautiful looking material but I will pull some samples and then we can crush them up later see what we got oh there's the Moss mine you can see a Haul truck see him going up the hill that's all waste material in the back of that huge Haul truck 40 ton in that Haul truck do you see what I see okay I got altered and decide on both sides hanging wall and foot wall it's altered a little bit I can see veinless a little bit of stock Works in there ladder veins but look what came right up what they were following down you see that see that basalt yeah now are you guys figuring this out and look see that you've got quartz on the left quartz on the right and in the middle you have what altered basalt see that that is really really tasty and that's why they dropped the shaft here although it don't look like it's too deep maybe about 50 feet okay it's deeper than 50 feet and the quartz fans on both sides if you look at them at a Jeweler's Loop they've got small inclusions of pyrite in it so that's why they're chasing this of course manganese oxide which is in the mix we're on the back side of fine obviously and look at this somebody shout to get down into it follow that vein down but look at this here's the original hoisting works right here you see that and look at the size of that marker part of the hoisting drum wow you imagine trying to get that thing up here yeah and then put it together because it comes in pieces you know that right and then here's the foundations where it all sat jeez it's a monster a monster I'm always amazed at the size and scale of the equipment they had back in the old days and it was always made out of cast iron obviously but man they got that thing up here put it together and that tells me that this shaft has got to be pretty deep the official Rock test all right here we go pay attention ah oh it's deep but there's water down there and that's no big surprise a lot of these mines have water in them the reason that is is because obviously the water table is really shallow here in fact you've got water coming up out of the ground right down here in some of these Arroyos never know what you're gonna find out in the desert when you're wandering around look at this old building here isn't this cool now I don't know if this was a Miner's cabin or if it was like a trading post or not sure what it was it's pretty good size and I don't see oh there was a front on this right here I don't see a fireplace you gotta have a fireplace out here so if any of you guys know what this building used to be leave me a comment down below because I would really like to know now anytime you see something like that corrugated metal with a bunch of rocks on it chances are that's a high grade pile miners would stack them up out here then they would bag them put them on pack meals send them into a mill to have them crushed like I say that's why it's always important to bring a Jeweler's Loop so that you can take an eyeballs peek into this stuff because it's going to be real hard for you to tell what's in here just using your eye now you see these purple flowers loving those purple flowers are all over the place toys everywhere out here look at that it's like a freeway of toys it's toy Paradise huh sweetie wow look at them all anyway we're gonna get on out of here because the sun's dropping low and it's getting cold out here but I know you enjoyed the video I'm not even gonna ask so you smash that like button smash it hard and if you know something about this area around Oatman that we don't maybe some secret places why don't you start up a conversation leave me a comment down below I'd love to hear it I'm sure everybody else down there would love to hear it too you'd love to hear it huh sweetie yeah so next time this is Jeff Williams and who that's right saying you like these outdoor exploring videos because they're so much fun well I'm teaching you how to find that Au so you can go get some so come on let's go [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Ask Jeff Williams

Views: 139,646

Keywords: Geology Secrets to Finding Placer Gold and Lode Deposits, high grade gold ore, placer gold, mining geology, geology degree, find placer gold, placer gold deposit, how to find placer gold, mineral exploration, placer prospecting, placer mining, jeff williams gold prospecting, jeff williams gold, ask jeff williams, ask jeff williams metal detector, ask jeff williams gold panning, ask jeff williams gold, placer gold deposits, flour gold, prospecting, jeff williams

Id: YrwR6uY_NeI

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 26 2023