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hey everyone my name is jason with mount baker mining and metals and on today's video we're
going on a little prospecting treasure hunting adventure so i got a i got a tip from a friend
that there's uh kind of a lost mine up here he marked it for me on a map and i couldn't find it
on any of the usgs maps or anything but he said that if i can get to where the vein outcrop is
and do a little prospecting on the vein
it's pretty rich and he gave me a few tips i want to look for so right now we're on our way up
and there's not really a trail to follow i'm just kind of bushwhacking my way up through you know
this stuff behind me um so hopefully we can get up there get to the mine or the prospect i i
actually don't know if there's any workings or not um and see if we can find some vein
and do a little prospecting but uh one of the first things i'm going to look for is uh
is some float the guy said it's a quartz vein and as i get closer up to the outcrop there's supposed
to be uh kind of a big talus slope underneath and he said that if you can start finding uh quartz
float on the talus then you're probably getting in the right direction so we'll keep going here
bushwhacking our way up through this junk and uh see if we can so we can find some treasure today
all right we've been going for quite a while now
trying to get kind of my bearings about you know where i'm at it's just it's just cliffy steep
rocky crap i've taken a few different uh falls false trails i guess
where you go up and you get cliffed out and it's just it's just really tough going
um but i haven't i haven't found any float yet we're getting pretty close
to where uh to where this place is supposed to be i don't know the tenacity of these old guys
i mean there's you know there's no trails there's no indication of anything's up here
and they were just these old-timers were just out here bushwhacking through the wilderness
hoping to find some gold and i even have a map i mean i i kind of i know where i'm supposed to go
and i'm still having trouble finding it so um yeah just these guys were these were tough all
right well we're up made it up into this little clearing and there's a little stream running
through here but uh let's see if i can get this look what i look what i found see that right there
that is a nice chunk of quartz float so i'll put the camera around so you guys can see
okay this is this is what's exciting this is what the old guys were looking for
this is uh like i said a piece of quartz float and float is um a piece of the vein
or the outcrop that is broken off and rolled down the hill
and this is what the old guys would follow up the hill to the mother lode essentially where
the the vein outcrops and is still in the rock i don't see anything really fantastic in this one
but that is certainly a piece of vein quartz looks really nice pretty big so you know the veins
at least a foot wide i'd say but this is our first indication here that we're on to something
and actually now that i'm looking around there's another piece right there
there's a little piece there a couple more little pieces back up in here
so we're uh we're getting we're getting on the on the trail here
that's a pretty good piece i might break this one open and take a look
let me get a hammer we'll knock this open and see uh see if we can get any gold out of it
hard stuff i'll tell you that
all right so what i'm looking for here is any any sort of mineralization any sulfides uh
or some other indicator mineral in here oftentimes the gold or the the precious
metals will hang out with other indicator minerals like you know pyrite or puritite galena
i don't see a whole lot of stuff in this one but this could have been laying out here for
a thousand years you know and all that stuff could have been leached out it gets weathered and
and uh you know here it's real wet it gets rained on all the time
and they oxidize out but man that's a that's a good find there i'm pretty excited now
so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to follow this i'm just going to go
uphill from here this stuff came from up above me
so we'll just keep on going and see we can find
one of the nice things about all the rain is we've got lots of water to drink
well there's there's uphill from me and there's
i snow it got pretty cold last night and hopefully i don't get into any of that
because if i'm looking for white rock in the snow that's gonna be a pretty good challenge oh
look at here a little bit of nature's bounty huh blueberries
oh there ah they're real sour i think they've been frozen too so they're kind of going mushy
oh yeah those are those aren't real great
okay
hold on let me catch my breath okay so we're
up above the tree line now you can see it's just rocks and talus and stuff behind me there
but uh i found this here this little guy a little piece of float another piece of float
so that's a good sign uh we're getting pretty close we got to be because i'm running out of
walking area i don't i mean there's only there's cliffs a couple hundred feet above me so this this
is on the map where it says it's supposed to be um and we got some float so it's it's got to be
above me somewhere so i'll just keep following the float up uphill and uh we'll see where it gets me
all right guys we found it a jackpot right here so i can do this in reverse is the vein
going right up there right up around oh isn't it there we go right around that corner it's a nice
white quartz vein it's uh i don't know anywhere from one to two feet and uh it comes down here
can you see that right here all up up there all that quartz
and i just i followed the i followed the float uphill and uh it led me right to the vein i
haven't seen one of the things um i haven't seen there's any workings or dump piles or anything
um but i think this is the vein we were looking for and uh like i said that that older guy
uh showed me how to map where this was and he actually found this when he's out goat hunting
and uh you know i'm i'm just surrounded by cliffs so probably a pretty good spot to look for goats
but uh well i'm gonna i'm gonna get set up take a look at this vein and then we'll start chipping
some stuff off and see if we can find any gold all right so we found our outcrop and one of the first
things that i like to do well the tendency is to just start hammering away on the vein and and do
a lot of hard work uh but what i like to do is there there's plenty of stuff just laying around
that is naturally falling off the vein and it's it's the same stuff so a lot of times the
surface is weathered it's brown it's you can't see anything but one of the first things i like to do
when i come prospect a vein is to just take some of the float that's real close up near the vein
and just break it open and see see what it looks like um we're in a a little bit of a precarious
spot here there's a there's a cliff right here on the left side of me and uh you know it goes
way up on the right side as well so i'm kind of perched here on this little shelf um but
as long as i don't fall off we should be fine so i'm just gonna start i got my three pound hammer
a five pound hammer and i just start breaking stuff open and and starting to look it uh
it really helps if you can get it wet i know a lot of places don't have water sitting around
but blowing off the surface always helps me
and again like what we saw down below what i'm looking for is uh some kind of indicator mineral
um if i can if i can see gold sitting right on the on the surface that'd be awesome um
but what i'm really looking for is some sort of sulfide mineral something shiny something shiny
that i can get excited about and hopefully it hasn't been sitting here in the weather too long
to uh oxidize all those those minerals away i'm just going to start working this
this vein here a little bit and see what we can find
so
well the the filming location here is a little bit difficult
um but here's our here's our vein and i i wanted to point out something on this spot
because uh when i'm high grading or when i'm prospecting the first thing i look for is the
indicator minerals but then the other thing is even though the gold is associated with this vein
it doesn't mean the gold spread evenly out throughout the vein and almost universally there
are some real high grade zones within the vein itself and so if you can identify the
high grade areas and not have to worry about you know breaking out the whole vein um that that is
really to your advantage and so i'm looking at this vein here and i see you know and and you
kind of got to use your imagination a little bit but football's down here hanging walls up here
and there's there's this band of quartz then there's this band of quartz and then there's
another little band right here along the hanging wall and it kind of comes over here you can see
it it's kind of maybe kind of hard to see but i'm going to look at those three different bands
and try and break away some of the quartz from those three different areas
and if i can find you know an indicator mineral or even some gold in one of those areas and not
in the other two i'm gonna i'm gonna laser focus on that one zone and uh because i got you know
real limited time real limited uh tools and stuff so i wanna i wanna make the most bang for my buck
so let me see if i can set the camera up here and see if i can get get some of this stuff out but
as you can see you know there's i'm kind of hanging out over nothing here so um i'll
try and get the shot as best i can but i'll if i find something i'll be sure to let you guys know
well i just put my glove under a waterfall while i was filming
and it's full of water now okay let's let's try this here
i haven't found anything in the float yet
okay let's see if i can get this on camera here
here is the quartz i just broke out of there and see how it's kind of rusty it's got rust
stains on it it's got um that's that's better looking stuff than the stuff that i was finding
on the on the surface and on as float so this is just you know there's a ton of it around it's
just white white quartz whereas this stuff is a little bit more iron stained a little rustier
so this is this is what i'm talking about when i'm talking about indicator stuff
this looks just like bull quartz to me whereas this stuff
has some mineralization it's got some metals in it so this is where i'm going to continue looking
and it seems to me that my eyes aren't as good as they once were so it's a little bit harder to
pick out what i'm looking for uh i don't wear glasses yet but apparently i might be shortly
um but let me get this stuff kind of broken up washed off and we're kind of in a good
zone here with the mineralization in this in this little band i'm working
awkward position really is what it is
i'm focusing right here on the hanging wall because it looks like that's where most of the
see that dark kind of dark reddish brown
stuff i don't really see
any gold yet but this lower band here
it's just it's just white quartz there's nothing there's nothing exciting in it there's no
mineralization it's just white fairly boring as far as the mineralogy is concerned all right
i'm working on getting this big chunk out here i've been striking out up here on the hanging
wall so if i can get this big old chunk out i can get a full cross-section of the vein
and we can look through the the cross-section of the vein but first i gotta get it out
all right well we're we're chunking her out piece by piece here i guess i think
oh yeah here we go
okay now we can actually take a look at pretty much the whole cross section of the vein
let's see what we got here
okay let me get you oriented here we took this rock from there and this this face went up there
so here's the hanging wall up here foot wall down here and uh you know you can see there's there's
a section of vein i don't know a zone or a an area where from the hanging wall down to about here it
looks like there's a zone and then there's maybe all the way through or maybe it separates here
but this is the foot wall down here and earlier i was talking about the hanging wall look good and
there was that section but now down here the foot wall is looking pretty interesting down here along
the foot wall so let me let me break some of this off and we'll see what's going on down in this
band i haven't been able to get to the foot wall before so let's uh let's work on this area here
okay guys jackpot found some see if i can show you it's right
right down there
there see a flash
oh yeah we're in the gold now
so this is this is the foot wall right here
and that gold is right i mean an inch less than an inch from the wall so um i got it right from
down under here on our big rock and so i'm gonna start concentrating right here along the foot wall
i'm gonna pry this big one out over here and i'm just gonna work work this little band on the foot
wall here pretty good and see if i can open up some more and and get some more gold showing
all right guys pretty exciting stuff here i want to show you
i don't know if you can see it can you see that big gold chunk sitting right there in the corner
big old yellow piece sticking out of there there you go and i can kind of see it
look at there and this is a really good example now there's the gold and then there's this gray
sulfide probably pyrite right there with it so that is a nice little piece and again it came
off the same spot about about half an inch from the foot wall so we found our our rich zone in
the vein or or a ridge zone um and so i'm just going to keep working it and getting more gold
and i was just looking at this piece some more here's that piece i just showed you with the gold
here in the corner but if you turn it over there's a piece of gold right there at my thumb see it
flash it's all it's all dirty but there's gold there might even be some more gold right there too
so this this spot is really really rich i mean when you can find free gold just by knocking
the quartz off this is this is a really good spot well don't hit your hand it hurts
but we're breaking our rock up here and we're getting some really good stuff
there's uh there's a section down here i don't know if you can see there there's a
piece of gold sticking out of the bottom of the rock right there or something here so
i'm working i'm working on this corner here see if i can get that exposed a little bit
anything in here we're up above the foot wall quite a ways now
in this section and i don't see much anything exciting so i'm going to let this whole piece go
or put it back over there or something oh there it goes
it seems like
this real white ball quartz stuff just doesn't have anything in it there's a few little bugs
and stuff little pockets or crystals but i don't see any really anything exciting in those
i really want to stay down here by the foot wall and uh
so let's see if we can get this little chunk off whoa
okay don't go over don't go over the hill
let's break this guy up in smaller pieces
oh yeah there's some
this piece is loaded here it's got
it's got gold all the way through here around this side and then
on this fresh face there's gold up in here even
yeah that's a good piece throw that in the bucket we've got another big rock here
i'm working along again that couple inches right above the the uh foot wall there and
i mean almost every rock has gold in it it's just amazing it's it's i mean i break one open
and i'll see a little bit on the face this is this is a pretty nice little piece here i don't
but i mean it is all laced through there about an inch above the hanging wall
and you know i got this rock i broke open there's there's gold in this half and then on the other
half of the rock there was gold too so you know it's it's going through this one pretty good
and then when i broke it open see all that shiny stuff in there holy cow it's just loaded with gold
all around that little pocket of black stuff and it's on it's on both sides it's just it's just
loaded with gold so i'm i'm in the right spot i'll have to take this back and crush some of the stuff
up see if we can get some more gold out of it than just what we can see on the surface
well we got our big rock busted apart and um i don't know if you can see but right along here
foot wall good stuff right here and then junk above it everything above its junk and
same thing here you kind of got a line in the courts
and everything from there down to the foot wall seems to be pretty good it has a lot of
gold in it and everything above it junk and then same thing over here
my shadow i guess good stuff to there everything above it junk all right so let me try this i'm
gonna try and break the the good stuff on the bottom off the junk stuff on the top
let's see if i can film it and hammer and not fall off the cliff at the same time
well that kind of worked got some separation there
let's see what's in here
so this is where the goal will be is in that piece so we'll save that up there with our good pieces
right here's the spot we've been working i'm gonna work my way down along here in the foot
wall as well and one of the important things when you're prospecting stuff like this is
you know don't get too hung up on getting in one spot and trying to find a bunch of gold and stuff
for me i mean yeah i found some some gold over here i got a good little spot there that i
found some but i want to i want to keep moving along and see if i can find some other stuff or
you know maybe i'm going to start looking in the hanging wall a little bit more here and so
um we're just going to keep moving along here and keep looking but i'm losing my sun my sun's about
to go off over the hill and i'm running out of light so i got to wrap it up pretty soon but
i've got a pile of rocks here i'm gonna take back with me i got all the stuff in my hat
and uh so we'll have a pretty nice little take with us
so let's see what i can find down here and uh and then we'll probably time to get going
all right guys well that wraps up for me today the shadows are getting long and it was a long
hike up here and even uh uh it's gonna be a longer hike back because i got a pack full of rocks now
um but once we get back down in another video i'll i'll run these this sample i got these gold rocks
through uh my little lab crusher and we'll grind them up take a look at what we can get
out of them for gold and uh we'll do a little uh analysis on them and figure out ounces per ton so
hope you guys enjoyed the video today thanks for watching and we'll see on the next one
