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| Gold Rush: Gold fever still burns among modern prospectors |
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By Steve Werblow
Gold fever still burns among modern prospectors
Watching flakes of gold tumble around the broad pan, winking amid a palm full of black sand,
charges a group of prospectors with electricity. There, on the edge of northern California's Klamath River, color in the pan touches the same raw nerve that it had 150 years ago, on the same bank of the same river. Gold fever strikes again.
"There are few things that feel better than
that," says Dave McCracken, founder of the
New 49ers Prospecting Club in Happy Camp,
Calif. "Falling in love, for that first week. Really finding religion. Or in the casino, back
in the days when money would come pouring
out of the machine when you hit the jackpot.
There's something about gold, pure gold, that
when you see it, just lights you up inside."
A new Gold Rush is sweeping the nation.
Armed with picks and pans, buckets and gold-sorting sluices called high-bankers, and even floating dredges (imagine a supercharged,
catamaran-mounted shop vacuum with a hose big enough to swallow your fist), modern prospectors are finding fun, adventure, and gold around the country.
It doesn't hurt that gold spent 2008 trading
above $800 per ounce. But likely the biggest
driver is a generation of active Baby Boomers
who expect more from their vacations or retirement than a beach chair or a game of bingo.
With the bearing of the world's most cheerful
drill instructor, Rich Krimm of Castro
Valley, Calif., says digging gravel and feeding
the gold sorting machines are a great workout.
"We sleep very well at night," Krimm
says. "Work the gravel bar for a day. You
could be a marathon runner or a triathlete,
you'll still feel it. It works different muscles."
Outdoor fun. A few yards away, Gerry and Laurie Dahlund of Martinez, Calif., say
they've spent many vacations at a long list
of prospecting sites around the West.
"I don't fish, I don't hunt, but I like to be
outside," says Gerry. "This gives me a chance
to be here, a reason to be outdoors." Adds
Laurie, "It's more fun than going to a gym."
After Gary Price of Apache Junction, Ariz.
lost an arm to a botched carpal tunnel operation,
his wife encouraged him to find a hobby.
"Prospecting is one of the few things
where a grown man can play in the dirt and
it's socially acceptable," he chuckles. "Mining
sure ain't paying the bills, but it's a lot
of fun. And for a desert rat to get to play in
the water, that’s pretty cool."
A day's work for Price includes chipping
away at a sandbar, collecting dirt from the
bottom of a flood deposit. Using a classifier—
like an industrial-strength sandbox sifter, he
separates rocks and gravel from the pay dirt.
Then he washes the sifted sand through his
high-banker, which catches the heavy gold
while letting lighter sediments float by. He
found a good streak: seven 5-gallon buckets'
worth of dirt yielded about a pennyweight
of gold—one-twentieth of an ounce.
From the site of the first U.S. gold strike
in North Carolina to the rich rivers of
Alaska, finding gold is a matter of physics.
There are some things about gold you can count on, says McCracken, who's written five books on mining.
Gold weighs 20 times more than water and about six times more than most minerals and other metals. That means gold will fall to the bottom of a river wherever the water starts losing energy. The downstream sides of boulders, areas where rivers widen, and the insides of river bends are great places to find gold. Nuggets fall into cracks in bedrock; flakes, flecks, and specks drift down to the lowest layer of flood deposits.
The trick is not looking at a river the way
it runs today, winding in its banks. It's imagining the river during the raging floods that scour the hillsides and drag gold down from
upland veins, swirling in torrents of dirt and
debris, recharging rivers that miners have
worked for generations. It's envisioning the
line of gold that traces the floodplain, not
today’s channel. That’s where the "luck" is.
"The learning curve is slow, but learning is
as much fun as getting the gold," says Krimm.
Learning starts on Saturday morning for
a group of prospectors in Happy Camp's
Lion’s Club hall. Several are Happy
Camp locals simmering with gold fever.
A prospector from Georgia wants to
try his hand in the West. A Floridian who's
prospected commercially on and off for 30
years is hoping his new bride catches gold
fever, too. A pair of buddies from Las Vegas is
taking time off from building custom motorcycles
to try a new adventure.
McCracken delivers a half-day lesson on
geology, prospecting rules, and club etiquette
to an enthusiastic group of New 49ers from around the country. In a couple of hours,
they’ll sample a claim and determine the most
promising site to mine. On Sunday, they'll
team up to harvest its hidden treasure.
"By the end of the weekend, you will know
more than most prospectors think they know,"
he promises. "We don't sell the gold. We find
it together and develop it together. Then we'll
clean it up and split it into equal shares."
Join the club. Weekend adventures are a great way for new prospectors to learn the ropes, says McCracken. A $100-per-year membership in his club allows members to
spend a week working their choice of 60
miles of claims along the Klamath. A $2,500,
transferable lifetime membership offers unlimited
camping and mining on club claims.
Many New 49ers, like Leonard Sears of
Mountain Home, Idaho, also belong to the
Gold Prospectors Association of America
(GPAA) and Lost Dutchman’s Mining Association (LDMA), which means that they can
dip their pans on claims across the country.
That access is especially important nowadays,
because most gold is on private property
or in areas that have already been claimed.
Sears, who also has four claims of his
own in Idaho and Oregon, is a big fan of
club membership. It offers camaraderie and
ground to work," he says. "And it's far more
convenient for me as a recreational miner to
go where the gold is known to be."
He adds that some of the best times he's
had mining are moments shared with his
granddaughters, ages 4 to 20.
"It’s more exciting for me to see them find
it than it is for me to find it," he smiles.
Sears' own finds have paid for many
Christmas presents, he says, and he recently
had a jeweler craft a ring for his wife from
dust, nuggets, and a garnet he's found. It's not
about getting rich, he says. It's about fun.
McCracken says that's the appeal for most
of his group's 2,000 members from around the
world. "The great outdoors, the recreation,
the camping—we just add the gold aspect,
the treasure hunt," he says.
The treasure hunt can be exciting, notes
Krimm, but he says he and his wife Connie started having even more fun when they got his gold fever under control. "The problem I had was I’d say, 'we're getting gold—we've got to keep
going!'" he confesses. "But the wife says, 'it'll
be here tomorrow, and if not, it wasn't meant
to be.' Now we spend an hour or an hour and a
half having fun, then grab our gold and run."
Hikes, four-wheeling, bronco games, and potlucks
around Happy Camp keep them plenty busy while they're away from the claims.
Real treasure. At a Saturday night potluck back at the Lion's Club, prospectors Wayne and Sandi Van Soest of La Center, Wash., chat with the oldest living New 49er, 89-year-old James Smith of Montague, Calif.
"Our friends say, 'isn't looking for gold
hard work?'" says Wayne. "I just tell them,
'you find it in these people.'"
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