How To Find Gold: Ten Natural Geologic Indicator Hacks

hi I'm Chris Ralph the professional prospector and I'm bringing you along today because I've got some special gold indicator hacks that I want to show to you and want to teach you about I'm doing a series on indicator hacks and the series that I'm going to do today is about natural gold indicator hacks this is things that our geology and other changes things that you would see as you are going along in the field that don't necessarily don't necessarily show what some other guy has done in the past but shows what nature has done in the past and how that will help you find more gold so my first gold indicator hack in today's discussion is Rock contact zones we're gonna show you that you see behind me right over here is a slate rock you can see it naturally breaks into little flat slabby pieces and well these are pretty weathered so they break easily this is unweathered a gray slate and gray slate is very common in the motherlode of california and we're up in the california mother lode country and i'm going to show you in just a second that just a hundred yards down the road you get into a different kind of rock called serpentine and the contact of slate like we have right here and serpentine like we have a little bit down the road is a very productive gold-bearing Zone in California now there are other different kinds of rock contacts and it isn't always slate and serpentine sometimes it's other kinds of rocks but very often contacts of different kinds of rocks and sometimes it's just a dike that's you know inserted into a larger area of another rock and set just two kinds of rocks that come together but that zone where the two rocks come together is often very productive here in California almost all those zones where the two rocks come together whether if it's slate and serpentine or a fault zone and they're very deep seated fault zones that bring heated rock and hot water and gold bearing mineralization up from deep in the earth to deposit up here and actually that's why this is a productive gold bearing area because of this slate and serpentine contact now hang on with me I'm going to show you the serpentine because I've shown you the slate now let's look at the serpentine okay so here this grayish greenish colored rock that's behind me this is the serpentine and only a little bit ago we were there up in the slate and this is the other rock that's contacted and in the slate there's a lot of quartz veins now in this particular area the gold is in the slate with the quartz veins but the serpentine is actually the source of the gold it's come up from deep within the earth this rock is a rock that that actually forms deep in the mantle of the earth and comes up close to the surface through deep-seated fault zones and that's what's brought this up and the heat that this brought up with it is what form these quartz veins and led to the mineralization of the gold in the slate that's just a little bit up the road that I was telling you about just a minute ago so remember that important gold indicator hack contacts of different kinds of rock types and if you know what area you're in some types of rock types the rock contacts are famous for their gold production and in the California mother lode country the serpentine slate contact is a very productive one so this is a geologic map of the mother lode country in Amador and Calaveras County and the purple line that you see drawn through there is that serpentine that I mentioned just previously and you can show or I can show you that this line of serpentine it well it stretches from one end to the other on this map and it stretches far beyond on either end there's actually a couple hundred miles of this contact and there's some some parallel contacts as well some parallel bodies of serpentine and for almost all the length for most of the length this is a productive area or a productive source of gold mineralization so it shows you that learning to read geologic maps can be very beneficial and helpful for you as a prospector another important gold indicator hac natural one his color changes in the ground you can see here this is kind of a brown color this rock is one kind of rock it's a brown color and over here you have a gray color and basically a lot of times when you see an in contact that you have a color change in difficult sometimes it's different kinds of rock sometimes it's just rock that's more mineralized so you may have a unman relized rock and then you kind of color change and you have mineralized rock so in this particular case that is the situation the irony colored the reddish more brownish kind of color is the mineralized rock so this is a color change contact that you want to see as an indicator hack for the presence of gold here's an area that you can see in the foreground that the that the area is red and it's been bulldozed you can see and in the background the hills are kind of gray and this is an area where even though it's all the same rock it's an area where it's been mineralized that's why the area in the foreground has the red and iron yellow the kind of rusty colors that you'd expect and it's why they bulldoze it because surprise surprise there's gold there and the guy that you can see in the middle of the picture there without metal detecting and indeed he was finding gold nuggets here's another map from California this is the randsburg area and the area I've kind of colored with a reddish color it's the same Rock except some of the rock to the east is different but it's the same rock of it as the whole mountain range but the area that's colored red has been productive for gold whereas once you get outside this mineralized area or much outside it then the rock doesn't yield much gold you can see that where you cover color change like this it can be real important you've either you're in the gold not all gold comes from quartz veins sometimes there are things called Dawson's that are very productive and they're basically an iron rich deposit and I'm going to show you a little bit more about these iron rich deposits that form mostly from the oxidation of the mineral pyrite which is iron sulfide I'm going to show you a little bit more about that right now now Goss ins are an unusual kind of material that well they're they're rich in iron basically they're formed by the oxidation of pyrite and they look just like rust this is a mind that the ore there is gossin and I'll show you a close-up picture of what the aura looks like here you can see it it's mostly like rusty almost like a rusty powder as a lot of the ore and others bits and chunks of rock that are not broken down that still had that rusty color but the fine material that that has a lot of gold in it and it's obviously a lot of iron but I will tell you that not all Goss uns produce much in the way of gold there are a lot of gases that are very low or almost barren in gold just some of them so remember that when you're out prospecting another important natural gold indicator hack is the President of accumulations of fortune AIDS I just said that not everything comes from courts mains which is true but there are also a lot of bits of gold that come out of quartz veins and so you want to be aware when you see accumulations of gold or of a quartz vein matter on the ground that that's a favorable indication for the potential for there to be gold there now accumulations of quartz and that sort of thing can mark a vein like this this there's a vein cutting from one side of the picture to the other and you see the little bit of quartz that's kind of broken off and spilled down the hill but that's the concept when you see accumulations of quartz it's oftentimes from a vein now the main can actually be buried you may not see it outcrop on the surface like this one it may just be a scattering of quartz cobbles that you would see on the ground here's an example this is from the Sierra and there's a scattering of quartz cobbles on the ground somewhere here there's probably a vein it didn't outcrop so it couldn't be seen but the quartz cobbles were you know the white quartz was obviously visible and sure enough there was gold here here's an example from Australia I went to Australia some years ago and spent six weeks prospecting there and you can see the white chunks of quartz just scattered around on the surface again there was no vein that was obvious as a source of gold but sure enough in these gravels on the surface among the white quartz cobbles there were nuggets that we were finding with our metal detector actually I found quite a few nuggets here and originally the guy who first found this was very successful and found many ounces of gold here another important natural gold indicator hack is favorable rock types now here I am that's some slate this stop has been very oxidized and weathered but you can see that this is rock that naturally breaks into flat slabs and rocks like this this rock did what geologists called foliated rock is a very important natural thing that hosts gold in a lot of mining districts in fact years ago I read an old report it was about the 20 largest producing placer gold districts on the planet okay and now 20 19 of them had this kind of what they call foliated rock that naturally breaks into flat slabby pieces here in the motherlode country slate and changed rocks to break into flat slabby pieces are very important sources of hosting gold and gold mineralization and as a result placer as well so don't forget about the favorable rock types because even though I said that foliated rock is a very common one there are different productive rock types for a lot of different kinds of districts in Montana and Alaska a lot of the productive rock types are bodies of granitic rock and around the edges of those rare Natick rocks that's where you're gonna get your favorable environment for forming gold but here in California it's this slate and schist that's the main rock type so what I'll tell you though is wherever you are learn about your area and what is the positive and good hosts of gold deposits in your area now there's a lot of different kinds of favorable rock types it really is something that's different for every area but there are some things that you know go from different areas to different areas now here I've got pictured four pieces of green stone from very different locations and I want to make sure that you understand that every green colored stone is not a green stone that's actually why geologists don't like this term and don't use it much anymore because people can fused a green colored stone with what was called green stone and what this rock is is basically a metamorphose basalt so it's a basalt which is a black lava type rock that's been exposed to a lot of heat and pressure and the heat and pressure have changed it into this kind of rock but these four rocks are from four very different and very widely scattered gold fields the upper to the one on the right is from California the upper one on the left is from West Africa the lower to the lower one on the left is from Australia and the lower one on the right is from Arizona now all four these rocks are the same kind of rocks and they're all closely associated with gold there was gold at each of the four sites that I found these rocks so it just goes to show that there are some consistencies although it does vary from district to district about rocks that are associated with gold deposits now here's some rocks from Nevada and one of the things I talked about in the video was just this kind of rock that has a tendency to split into flat slabs and you can see that here in this picture well not every rock that splits into flat slabs is associated with gold but in areas where there are is gold oftentimes this kind of rock is closely associated with it so remembering what is the favorable rock type for your area is very important another important gold indicator hack is the correct topography you know in a lot of places if it's too steep the gold just isn't going to accumulate in other places especially deserts where a lot of the gold concentration occurs because of wind or minor amounts of rain you want the gold-bearing areas to be flattish so know what the correct Apocrypha is in your area because topography really does make a difference to steep gold can accumulate in flatter in in desert areas you want flat but actually in the mountains you know flatter areas may be too deep the gold may be not too deep so learn the secrets of your own area as to what the correct topography is now one of the things I want to talk about with respect to topography is the difference that it makes from different kinds of placer now this is what would be considered like a desert or Aeolian type windblown placer this is a placer that basically the wind and a little bit of water washes off material off the surface and materials that don't weather in other words materials that are resistant to them the effect of wind and rain and water and that sort of thing over long periods of time those rocks accumulate on the surface well you can see it's a white rock here that's quartz quartz resists weathering the black colored rock the dark colored rock can a blackish reddish is iron stone that's another rock that resists the weathering effects of rain and wind but also another kind of material that resists any kind of weathering is gold and so in and among these rocks there was gold to be found and so these kind of plasters concentrate at near the surface by gentle washing away by water or blowing by wind and they're well known in in desert types of areas although this like I say is in Australia here's one that's similar though in Nevada and this is another windblown or yo lien type of placer this is Northern Nevada known called the Rye patch area has produced a lot of nuggets now if you're in the mountains and you're working streams and stuff then you don't want it to be perfectly flat because well it won't make for a good placer but you also don't want it to be too steep now I'm looking down a really steep little gully here and you can see by looking at it that the bedrock is just about washed and polished clean and there's hardly anything exposed just a little bit of dirt here and there and basically what that shows you is that if it's too steep then placer gold won't accumulate it'll just get blown on down the side of the hill and actually this little stretch up steep hillside it even has waterfalls there's about a 10 15 foot waterfall in there that comes down the side and then just drop so fast that everything gets blown right on through so remember in areas where you're talking about River drainage that the steepest steepest part a lot of the gold tends to be blown on through but when you get down to a more moderate grades then placer gold will accumulate and that's what this little diagram is intended to show going along with that going along with the idea of productive rock types is the extension of those rock types into adjoining areas so a lot of times you'll have a situation where you have a gold bearing area with a certain type of positive rock type that you recognize well maybe a couple miles away that same Rock occurs well those are areas that you might want to check out because a lot of times little known and poorly documented gold deposits will occur where that same productive rock type is found but maybe a few miles away maybe five months maybe even ten miles away so know about the extension of this productive rock type or the or whatever the productive Rock type is in your area know about that and check out geologic maps to see where that same rock type extends to different areas here's a map of historic gold mines in California and you can see that they're not just scattered you know randomly across the whole state in every area but concentrated in clumps here and there with of course the largest clump being the mother lode bearing part the mother lode zone area on the west side of the Sierra Nevada range and then the Klamath Trinity area up in the northwest part of the state those are the two most intense groupings of gold mines but you know pursuing these mines outside or pursuing the periphery the favorable rock types outside the periphery of most intense mining areas can be a real productive strategy this is a geologic map of the Julian district in San Diego County and it shows a blue a blue rock type marked em it's a metamorphic rock and it's associated with two different pink types that it's shown one is labeled KGB and the other kgr and GB is gabbro and then gr is granite those are both intrusive type rocks and they look similar except the gabbro will be a lot darker overall than the granite which will be a lot lighter overall but there's a number of mines in and around this M the the metamorphic rock and pursuing these areas outside of the the main julian district there are places outside of that and and placer is well worth pursuing so it's interesting that yes there were a lot of words a lot of gold mined in the main district but pursuing favorable rock types outside the district you know past the edge of it we couldn't be a productive strata for finding some good gold this is a map of basically what is north western Arizona and there's a number of different rock types here one if you look close it's a kind of a light green color marked X M X M is basically what it means is Precambrian metamorphic rocks and it's interesting to note that all over this area not in every you know in every single place but all over this map which is maybe 30 miles or more north south and a good 15 or so east-west all over that area that X M in scatter places has produced gold nuggets to prospectors most prospectors would be familiar Arizona prospectors would be familiar with the gold Basin white elephant wash plasters that are located to the west or under the east of the main highway that runs through there but there's gold to the west of the main highway too and I know some people who've done really well working in the same type of rock to the east of the highway so again knowing what the favorable rock type is and tracing it around and following it to the right areas can be very productive still another special gold indicator hack that I want to talk to you about is extension of mining districts so a lot of times you'll know that a mining area has been productive and this kind of goes along with the last point I made is that you know around the periphery of a known district is often little documented extensions or sub districts that you might want to call them where there's been gold found and you might not see those little areas mentioned in reports and so you want to be able to check the periphery of known gold areas whether it be hard rock or placer that sort of thing adjoining streams especially if they have similar geometry oh gee you want to check out those extensions okay so here's an area called the st. Louis area it's part of the Laporte [Music] Howland flat region and there are just little placer mines scattered all over here and although a number of them are shown the area of placer diggings is huge and there's large areas that have been worked in the past and produced a lot of good gold so you know pursuing the periphery of known districts to some of these little areas outside the main focus where the miners were working you'll get smaller workings but you'll get areas that people tend to ignore and may produce more gold for you this is an area in the Bradshaw mountains and actually the the darker lines that go across here are actually veins of gold and silver bearing veins that were mined in the early days and tracing them outside of their main area of mining may be productive for you this is a map called from what's called the MRDs mind map and basically it shows that most of the mines are you know intensely in in certain areas but they are scattered outside and that's again this point of pursuing gold deposits that are a little bit scattered a little bit beyond the main focus of a mining district another important gold indicator hack of that natural variety is accumulations of gold or of quartz vein matter in desert pavement so a lot of times in the desert the wind and the minimal amount of rain will literally wash the surface such that you get this cumulation of small to medium sized rocks on the surface with little or no actual dirt or soil a lot of times plants won't growing in sometimes they're pretty salty to these areas where they have significant amounts of quartz main material in the desert areas they're good places to prospecting good places to check out quartz is actually an interesting mineral because a lot of minerals will decompose you know I showed you here this slate and how its decomposed you can easily just break pieces of it it almost crumbles into little bits but quartz on the other hand quartz is a very durable mineral and it won't erode and fall apart and decompose and that sort of thing in fact it lasts and lasts and lasts and so it becomes a good indicator because of its durability on the surface indicates and Council because it hosts gold a lot of times durable and hosting gold it's a good indicator keep your eyes out for court today in materials I had mentioned accumulation of quartz and sometimes you get these desert pavement type of accumulations and you can see behind me a little bit in front there's an area of white a patch of white ground and that is basically an area of desert pavement that's rich in quartz and indeed there was gold in this area so that is a good strategy another important natural gold indicator hack is the benches alongside gold bearing streams now what happens as a stream erodes down any gully or Canyon or whatever it naturally cuts into the bedrock and the roads material out and what happens is a lot of times some of the gravel along the sides of the stream will get stranded as the stream cuts down and you know originally it was here and it keeps cutting down this piece will get stranded up above and that is called bench gravel these bench gravels a lot of times they haven't been worked and are a great place to prospect to dig along the bedrock to use your metal detector because they're essentially virgin gravels that have never been disturbed and so you want to be able to recognize those in the field so I'm going to show you some more pictures of those right now one of the most important things for prospectors to understand is hillside bench gravels as a river cuts down or stream any kind of drainage way it will leave behind often on one side mostly but sometimes on both sides of the stream patches of gravel that were once in the river and part of the river but are now stranded high and dry above it and these gravels if they haven't been mine they're basically virgin gravels that will have all the gold they originally had in them and so they can be an attractive thing for prospectors to seek out here's a picture of some gravel and just shows you you can see it looks like river gravel and you can see the bedrock underneath it but it's now stranded high and dry above the river up on a hillside and this is probably 30 feet or so above the the highest the river ever gets and you can see people have poked around and done a little bit of a bit of mining and indeed there is some nice gold here here's another shot that shows old gravel resting on bedrock you see the bedrock underneath the old gravels are perched on it they've been left behind by the river another area this is a desert area where people go out and mined and you can see the river gravels they're grounded they look just like a stream and they've been left behind and so modern prospectors seek out these kinds of things and they're very productive sometimes they're not very big I mean this is an example of a perch River gravel you can see the Round Rock's it's only just a small area I mean literally the the little bench of river gravel is not more than 10 or 15 feet long and probably six eight feet wide and and so it's not very big but hey that's big enough to hide a good cache of nuggets another example along the modern stream can you spot the the bench gravel here well it's up on the left side of the screen up above the river you can see a scattering of river gravel in a reddish-brown colored soil that's a bench that's been stranded by this river as it cuts down and indeed the old miners mined some of that but there's still a lot of it left behind and so it's a good and productive spot to check out here's a spot in Alaska that I worked it was an old river gravel you can see some of the the rounded rocks behind my head in the background there and a partner and I shoveled off all this material and dug it all out and ran it through a high banker and I think we got about two and a half ounces out of this little area I wasn't very big but it was very productive now if you want to be a better prospector and find more gold maybe even some spectacular stuff like this then I wrote a whole book about prospecting it's called this full of gold because well that's the goal is to find this full of gold and I'd like to tell you a little bit more about my book right now okay so I wanted to tell you a little bit more about my book I wanted to be able to share the knowledge that I've gained about finding gold and and how to be successful and so I spent years literally writing this book Fistful of gold it's more than 350 pages long and which is why I say it's an encyclopedia of everything you need to know about finding your own gold I've sold more than eight thousand copies and I've got a lot of really great feedback on it it just is the most complete book on the market it has information about finding gold that literally is not available in any other book that you're gonna find four prospectors because I took technical stuff from geologists and other mineral scientists and translated that in to language that the average guy can understand you don't need a PhD to go out and find gold but the information that scientists have learned over recent decades can can be of a lot of help to people so it's in this book if you're interested about finding gold panning sluicing nugget detecting a dry washing the geology of gold deposits and how they form it's all in here and like I say it's more than 350 pages long so if you'll just go to the description underneath this video you can take a look I've got a link in there to take you to Amazon to the site where the book is sold and I think you'll you'll really enjoy it take a look at all the people who have commented on this and have really liked the book it has a very very high rating for a book and also I have a website my own free website that you can take a look at I've got all kinds of information on here about doing research and how to find gold a lot of good information stuff that basically couldn't fit into my book and so I put it on this website and I have a link also for that in the video description so take a look in the description and you can click on the link and it'll take you to my website and finally if you like this presentation I've got a lot more coming out here's a three and a half ounces of gold that I found a couple of years back in one area I've got a lot more of these videos coming on gold gemstones hardrock placer a lot of metal detecting there'll be lots of metal detecting stuff so if you really enjoyed this click the subscribe button and then take the notification bell off and YouTube will let you know when I publish new stuff and hit the like button as well and please comment on these videos because I'm interested in what you have to say and I promise to answer any questions you have so if you are wondering about anything or think maybe I didn't cover something thoroughly enough in a video then let me know and I'll be happy to try and help you out and give you whatever information you need so thanks a lot and I hope you enjoyed this and we'll see you again real soon

Channel: Chris Ralph, Professional Prospector

Views: 281,924

Rating: 4.8750486 out of 5

Keywords: Gold geology, gold indicators, how to find gold, signs of gold

Id: lA9d-8KNUoU

Length: 35min 27sec (2127 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 03 2019