Colorado -- Metal Detecting Cache Creek -- 24 Mar 2016

Hey Gold Adventurers...

O.K. I heard a new winter storm was moving in and so I wanted to get out of the house. I decided to take my trusty new Gold Bug Pro metal detector back up to Cache Creek and walk around, do a little detecting, so I did...

The day was basically real nice for March... Started off at 15F here at the house for the morning low. But, by 10:30AM it warmed up to 31F and it didn't seem very windy, so I hopped into my Jeep, drove to Cache Creek.

Here's a view of Mt/ Elbert, the tallest 14er in all of Kolorado at 14,433 feet.



Here's Mt. Massive, only about 10 feet lower:



A nice pic of both Elbert and Massive further North:



I drove to the West end of the property, parked, started walking the old water ditches detecting. However, still a LOT of snow in the shade, under the trees and in the ditches. So, I was forced to detect out in the open, on top where the sage brush and weeds were. Not exactly where I wanted to look for gold, but hey.........if it's under snow it's under snow.

I got some signals here and there. Most turned out to be rusty square nails, bits of iron wire or a piece of rusty tin can. I did dig up one loaded 12-gauge shotgun shell and 2 loaded .22LR cartridges. How they got dropped, lost WAY out in the middle of friggin' nowhere Cache Creek is beyond me.

I got tired of walking and digging in the mostly frozen ground after about 1 1/2 hours. I got back in my Jeep, headed home. On the way I saw where some total idiot had dumped 5 BIG plastic bags of garbage on the side of the road. So, I stopped, picked them and the surrounding mess up, put it in the back of my Jeep to throw away back at the house. The animals had just started to tear holes and scatter the trash. If it had stayed there much longer the animals & strong winds would have scattered all the trash ALL over Cache Creek. I mean......what an idiot to dump their garbage!

Then, on the way out I decided to detect a little bit more, so I stopped at a spot where the old timers just started booming and walked the cut in the hill and around the rock/cobble piles. Here's a couple pics of my second detecting area:




I worked my way up the cut, found several small metal staples and several lead bullet fragments. Dang it, no gold. Up at the top of the ridge I was surprised to see that not one but actually 2 old water ditches, dug all the way from the base of Quail Mountain, came together there and the remains on an old wooden water head gate still existed!




Mining ended in 1912, so this was at least 100 years old. Very cool to see it still standing up after all this time.

Well, another hour well spent. Again, no gold...........but I did have fun.

Here's a few of my finds for the day:



Interesting too is that the big, all lead bullet mics out at .35 Caliber and one of the 2 .22 LR cartridges has a "PETERS HV" head stamp, so it's probably between 1931 and the early 1960s. Man, you just NEVER know what you'll dig up at Cache Creek. It was mined from 1860 to 1912 and camped on and hunted since the olden days...

Anyways, so far I just love that super light Gold Bug Pro detector.....just 2 1/2 lbs and when you come across something worth digging you really get a good "zip, zip" alert.

Hope you too get out, go for some gold, post a Trip Report here on the Forum for all to enjoy.

Randy "C-17A"

P.S. Glad I got out as today we got 2 more inches of snow...

I know Colorado isn't known for nuggets, but I also picked up a detector this last fall. Huge learning curve, but if I find anything this summer I'll brag it up here...lol.

Plainsprospector,

Yep... Of the millions of ounces of gold MOST was all hard rock mined.

Not a lot of placering places across the state if you look at the state as a whole. Most the gold I've found and seen found at Cache Creek is all fine to very fine. Pickers are a infrequent treat.

I have only seen one legit "nugget" probably close to 1 gram in size, found by a guy diggin' in a big ass pit up in the trees/rocks near the placering area parking lot. Sadly, that feeder creek that used to run by the parking lot has been mostly dry since the summer of 2014. It still flows O.K. during peak snow melt from about late May into early June, then it peters out. That "illegal water diversion" up the hill that ran some of the real Cache Creek water into that feeder creek to keep it running all year was removed, so it dried up.

Good luck detecting! NO end to the old mining trash/debris, hunter's garbage out there....

Randy C-17A

Randy a BIG SALUTE goes to you for picking up someone elses trash and hauling it away. I do that myself whenever I run into it. ESSPECIALLY when im out dredgeing which hasn't been for awhile (sorry to say)!!

Russ,

No thanks required... It was my civic...........er, prospector duty to show I care for the land, clean up things as much as the next outdoorsman...

BLM and the eco-Nazis think we ONLY destroy the planet, torture puppies and pull wings off butterflies...

They are so self-righteous, they think only THEY are "good" for Mother Earth by telling everyone else what they can and can't do.

Yeah. I simply couldn't believe some A-Hole dumped 5 bags of trash there, beside the road.





The really ODD thing was it was full of Modelo Beer cans, lots of King Crab leg shells (not the cheaper snow crab, but King Crab), plastic store bought party trays, etc. I mean, high end stuff... Not the Budweiser beer and cans of pork-n-beans you'd expect from a person out primitive camping at Cache Creek...

Randy C-17A

you were fortunate that you got there before most of it as scattered all over the place. To bad there wasn't a address on a letter or something to identify that jerk!

Russ,

Ha. I never thought of that.... It was leaking gook, old stale beer, cigarette butts/ashes and such... Smelled pretty sorry. No reason to dig into it any further than I did to pack it all up.

Yep. VERY glad I got to it before the animals & howling wind scattered it ALL over the valley... It would have been a mess of Biblical proportions for sure...

Just did my part to "save" Cache Creek.

Randy C-17A

THANKS RANDY!