Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
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Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by Admin Sat May 21, 2016 9:26 am
Greetings Gold Adventurers...
I recently had the great opportunity to head out of state............to prospect the high desert of Nevada............and metal detect for gold with 2 good friends, Bill & John. Bill owns some claims in the Rye Patch area of Nevada, a well-known gold area. We all decided to meet at Rye Patch and hunt for gold.....for about a week on location.....from 10 thru 17 May.
Bill & I drove out in his truck, pulling his pop-up trailer and John, having limited time, flew into Reno and rented a Jeep and drove out to meet us. We brought all of John’s camping stuff with us in our truck. Bill & I left Colorado on 9 May, laid over in Salt Lake City and arrived at Rye Patch the afternoon of 10 May. It was about 840 miles each way and 13 hours of driving w/o stops, so a serious hike to say the least thru Wyoming, Utah and into middle Nevada (and later back).
Bill had his pop up trailer and John & I would tent camp. We found a good spot on his claim, set up camp, all the time dreaming of getting’ our metal detectors fired up, go out lookin’ for nuggets. The landscape was typical Nevada desert.....no trees, sage and various brush & plants, about 50% of the ground barren dirt. We were setup under the watchful eye of Mt. Majuba to the West.
Here’s a look of our camp first setup, before John arrived. I put my tent on the leeward side of bill’s trailer, as it acted like a good windbreak:
After dinner Bill got his MineLabs 7000 detector out and started tuning and playing with it...........and within 30 minutes or so had his first little gold nugget! Way to go Bill. I just ran around with my Gold Bug Pro for a while, looking to see how it worked in the rocky, volcanic ashy/silty soil. There were lots of areas of visible salt that gave me elevated noise and effectively cut the depth my detector could go. Lots of broken shale too:
A look at some of the terrain and old “push piles” from a dozer back in the days past scraping off the overburden and folk’s obviously looking for gold on the shaly bedrock:
Fun, fun, fun.... But, after 2 long, hard days on the road, it was time for an early turn in, get some much needed sleep. My sleeping bag felt surprisingly good and it wasn’t long before I was sawing logs. At 5:15 AM I awoke to the sun rising in the East, and it was cool..........real cool. Made it hard to crawl out of that warm bag, put on cold clothes. Breakfast was scrambled egg burritos and hot salsa and 2 cups of Joe served up by Bill.
With the sun as hot as it was, we put up John’s canopy to create a shady space to enjoy:
The landscape was wide open, treeless and windswept. A view looking Northeast and Rye Patch Reservoir in the distance:
A view way across the valley to the East where Barrick Gold has a HUGE open pit gold mine on the far mountain:
Our game plan for his claims over the week was to 1). Remark the claims and 2). Detect the heck out of them.
So, goal one was, by the time we left, effectively put up all new monuments, signage, and use GPS to validate all the corners & boundaries. Bill brought out a dozen 5-foot 4X4 treated wood posts and signs and we’d go back into Winnemucca in a couple days to get 12 bags of concrete to permanently erect his monuments & markers.
Here’s just one of 12 monuments we erected. 4 Had larger signs too:
Goal two was to hit the high ground, middle ground, low ground and ridges and washes and see what was productive, what wasn’t and get a real good idea of the lay of the land.
The high desert was a land of extremes... At night almost freezing, by 3PM we had 86 & 87 degrees and blazing sun 2 days. Other days we had clouds, thunderstorms, high winds, rain falling sideways and always dusty.
John showed up about noon on Friday the 13th, and so we setup his tent, creating a nice “C” shape to our camp with his pop up canopy overhead our cooking/congregation area. Now that John was here, it was high time to get out all the detectors, really do some walking and hunting for gold.
Because of the sun & heat, we decided a plan of attack was breakfast, get out early for about 3 hours detecting and head back, have lunch, rest. In the later afternoon we’d walk off the claims with GPS and carry posts, cement and water, setup monuments and signage. Then, late in the afternoon before dinner, do a little more detecting as the sun set to the West behind Mt. Majuba.
For the most part, Bill ran his deep-seeking MineLabs 7000, John ran a MineLabs 5000 and I detected with my Gold Bug Pro or Bill’s Gold Bug 2. I’d try to focus on the shallow dry washes, the tops of ridges where the bedrock was shallow. Here’s the GB 2 setup I used mostly:
Out walking around I came across a fair number of Horned Toads (really a horned lizard) and fast moving Great Basin Collard lizards. Here’s one of the Horned Toads I easily caught, Very cool animal:
Here’s a panoramic view of the Rye Patch area from some higher ground:
One thing for sure.......there was a LOT of broken and fractures quartz and many huge quartz outcroppings all over the area. I detected there a bunch, hoping for a nice gold in quartz specimen, but no luck on that goal.
This Rye Patch area has been worked on & off since the late 1800s I am guessing and probably saw a resurgence back in the 1930s when the famed Depression Era prospectors hit the hills, reworked a lot of old mining areas. This old, handmade dry washer is a relic probably from the 1930s. Very cool!
I heard the area was worked hard again in the 1970s & 1980s.
Each morning was a new day to enjoy a new sunrise. We’d normally get up either just before or just as the sun was rising over the hills in the Northeast:
Always cool early, BUT it would warm fast once the sun was up...
Here’s John out playing around with the Gold Bug 2:
Afternoons could be either hot & sunny, cloudy & cool, stormy & windy/rainy.....no telling. Here’s a pic of our campsite with Mt. Majuba in the background, watching over us:
A closer view of Mt. Majuba:
Tried as we did, we weren’t finding much gold. Large areas either didn’t have a target to be had/dug, or it was part of the old mining camps and areas where old timers left a lot of trash. Here’s john diggin’ a target:
I took a little time to simply walk, wander around the vast area......exploring, but not detecting. You could see that in other areas some folks got REAL busy in the with heavy equipment doing “scrapes” to expose bedrock, pushed up “push piles” and pits & trenches. Maybe some of the 1970s & 1980s effort I heard about? This one excavation was big/deep:
Beside this pit was an old wash plant sitting lost & forlorn, with it’s sluice box removed. So, some day in the past someone must have had a pond, water trucked out to run it:
Later in the week a cold front pushed thru, changing the weather from hot & dry to windy, cold and wet. We got thunder stormed on several times and the rain fell sideways and the wind threatened to blow out canopy and tents away. We ended up tying off the canopy to first Bill’s truck and the 2nd time to John’s rental Jeep to keep it from blowing away:
You gotta’ do what you gotta do!
One afternoon, after one of these big wind/rain thunderstorm events passed on, we were rewarded with a double rainbow. I told John to quick, get his detector and run to the end of the rainbow, get filthy, stinkin’ rich with gold. Ha. He didn’t bite off on that one:
Even if we weren’t finding a lot of gold, we sure ate well... Breakfasts, lunches & dinners were great. Normally scrambled eggs & coffee in the mornings, sandwiches & chips/salsa for lunch and grilled rib eye or NY strip steaks of pulled pork or smoked sausages. This was our last breakfast where we piled in all the leftover sandwich meat, smoked sausage. Yum!
Back to the gold... Neither John or I got a nugget. Bill got a 2nd nugget the day before we left. Here’s a pic of Bill’s 2 gold nuggets:
So, all in all, it was a great “Gold Adventure” and bill scored some gold and we all had a fun time out, camping in the high desert of Nevada. We broke camp on Tuesday, 17 May. Bill & I drove reverse route back to Salt Lake City, then to Colorado on Wednesday, 19 May. John headed back to Reno, then over the Sierra Nevada hills to Auburn, California. He toured the Sutter’s Mill State Park, checked out the SF American River and made it back to Oklahoma the following day.
SO, another adventure for the record books! Hope you too get off the couch, do what the old timers did, create a “hard fun” memory and maybe even find some gold.
God bless,
Randy C-17A
P.S. After I got home I crushed up several reddish sandstone looking rocks that made my detector "sound off" and panned the material. Well, I got maybe 6 to 8 TINY little micro specks of gold! Ha. SO, technically I didn't get skunked.
I recently had the great opportunity to head out of state............to prospect the high desert of Nevada............and metal detect for gold with 2 good friends, Bill & John. Bill owns some claims in the Rye Patch area of Nevada, a well-known gold area. We all decided to meet at Rye Patch and hunt for gold.....for about a week on location.....from 10 thru 17 May.
Bill & I drove out in his truck, pulling his pop-up trailer and John, having limited time, flew into Reno and rented a Jeep and drove out to meet us. We brought all of John’s camping stuff with us in our truck. Bill & I left Colorado on 9 May, laid over in Salt Lake City and arrived at Rye Patch the afternoon of 10 May. It was about 840 miles each way and 13 hours of driving w/o stops, so a serious hike to say the least thru Wyoming, Utah and into middle Nevada (and later back).
Bill had his pop up trailer and John & I would tent camp. We found a good spot on his claim, set up camp, all the time dreaming of getting’ our metal detectors fired up, go out lookin’ for nuggets. The landscape was typical Nevada desert.....no trees, sage and various brush & plants, about 50% of the ground barren dirt. We were setup under the watchful eye of Mt. Majuba to the West.
Here’s a look of our camp first setup, before John arrived. I put my tent on the leeward side of bill’s trailer, as it acted like a good windbreak:
After dinner Bill got his MineLabs 7000 detector out and started tuning and playing with it...........and within 30 minutes or so had his first little gold nugget! Way to go Bill. I just ran around with my Gold Bug Pro for a while, looking to see how it worked in the rocky, volcanic ashy/silty soil. There were lots of areas of visible salt that gave me elevated noise and effectively cut the depth my detector could go. Lots of broken shale too:
A look at some of the terrain and old “push piles” from a dozer back in the days past scraping off the overburden and folk’s obviously looking for gold on the shaly bedrock:
Fun, fun, fun.... But, after 2 long, hard days on the road, it was time for an early turn in, get some much needed sleep. My sleeping bag felt surprisingly good and it wasn’t long before I was sawing logs. At 5:15 AM I awoke to the sun rising in the East, and it was cool..........real cool. Made it hard to crawl out of that warm bag, put on cold clothes. Breakfast was scrambled egg burritos and hot salsa and 2 cups of Joe served up by Bill.
With the sun as hot as it was, we put up John’s canopy to create a shady space to enjoy:
The landscape was wide open, treeless and windswept. A view looking Northeast and Rye Patch Reservoir in the distance:
A view way across the valley to the East where Barrick Gold has a HUGE open pit gold mine on the far mountain:
Our game plan for his claims over the week was to 1). Remark the claims and 2). Detect the heck out of them.
So, goal one was, by the time we left, effectively put up all new monuments, signage, and use GPS to validate all the corners & boundaries. Bill brought out a dozen 5-foot 4X4 treated wood posts and signs and we’d go back into Winnemucca in a couple days to get 12 bags of concrete to permanently erect his monuments & markers.
Here’s just one of 12 monuments we erected. 4 Had larger signs too:
Goal two was to hit the high ground, middle ground, low ground and ridges and washes and see what was productive, what wasn’t and get a real good idea of the lay of the land.
The high desert was a land of extremes... At night almost freezing, by 3PM we had 86 & 87 degrees and blazing sun 2 days. Other days we had clouds, thunderstorms, high winds, rain falling sideways and always dusty.
John showed up about noon on Friday the 13th, and so we setup his tent, creating a nice “C” shape to our camp with his pop up canopy overhead our cooking/congregation area. Now that John was here, it was high time to get out all the detectors, really do some walking and hunting for gold.
Because of the sun & heat, we decided a plan of attack was breakfast, get out early for about 3 hours detecting and head back, have lunch, rest. In the later afternoon we’d walk off the claims with GPS and carry posts, cement and water, setup monuments and signage. Then, late in the afternoon before dinner, do a little more detecting as the sun set to the West behind Mt. Majuba.
For the most part, Bill ran his deep-seeking MineLabs 7000, John ran a MineLabs 5000 and I detected with my Gold Bug Pro or Bill’s Gold Bug 2. I’d try to focus on the shallow dry washes, the tops of ridges where the bedrock was shallow. Here’s the GB 2 setup I used mostly:
Out walking around I came across a fair number of Horned Toads (really a horned lizard) and fast moving Great Basin Collard lizards. Here’s one of the Horned Toads I easily caught, Very cool animal:
Here’s a panoramic view of the Rye Patch area from some higher ground:
One thing for sure.......there was a LOT of broken and fractures quartz and many huge quartz outcroppings all over the area. I detected there a bunch, hoping for a nice gold in quartz specimen, but no luck on that goal.
This Rye Patch area has been worked on & off since the late 1800s I am guessing and probably saw a resurgence back in the 1930s when the famed Depression Era prospectors hit the hills, reworked a lot of old mining areas. This old, handmade dry washer is a relic probably from the 1930s. Very cool!
I heard the area was worked hard again in the 1970s & 1980s.
Each morning was a new day to enjoy a new sunrise. We’d normally get up either just before or just as the sun was rising over the hills in the Northeast:
Always cool early, BUT it would warm fast once the sun was up...
Here’s John out playing around with the Gold Bug 2:
Afternoons could be either hot & sunny, cloudy & cool, stormy & windy/rainy.....no telling. Here’s a pic of our campsite with Mt. Majuba in the background, watching over us:
A closer view of Mt. Majuba:
Tried as we did, we weren’t finding much gold. Large areas either didn’t have a target to be had/dug, or it was part of the old mining camps and areas where old timers left a lot of trash. Here’s john diggin’ a target:
I took a little time to simply walk, wander around the vast area......exploring, but not detecting. You could see that in other areas some folks got REAL busy in the with heavy equipment doing “scrapes” to expose bedrock, pushed up “push piles” and pits & trenches. Maybe some of the 1970s & 1980s effort I heard about? This one excavation was big/deep:
Beside this pit was an old wash plant sitting lost & forlorn, with it’s sluice box removed. So, some day in the past someone must have had a pond, water trucked out to run it:
Later in the week a cold front pushed thru, changing the weather from hot & dry to windy, cold and wet. We got thunder stormed on several times and the rain fell sideways and the wind threatened to blow out canopy and tents away. We ended up tying off the canopy to first Bill’s truck and the 2nd time to John’s rental Jeep to keep it from blowing away:
You gotta’ do what you gotta do!
One afternoon, after one of these big wind/rain thunderstorm events passed on, we were rewarded with a double rainbow. I told John to quick, get his detector and run to the end of the rainbow, get filthy, stinkin’ rich with gold. Ha. He didn’t bite off on that one:
Even if we weren’t finding a lot of gold, we sure ate well... Breakfasts, lunches & dinners were great. Normally scrambled eggs & coffee in the mornings, sandwiches & chips/salsa for lunch and grilled rib eye or NY strip steaks of pulled pork or smoked sausages. This was our last breakfast where we piled in all the leftover sandwich meat, smoked sausage. Yum!
Back to the gold... Neither John or I got a nugget. Bill got a 2nd nugget the day before we left. Here’s a pic of Bill’s 2 gold nuggets:
So, all in all, it was a great “Gold Adventure” and bill scored some gold and we all had a fun time out, camping in the high desert of Nevada. We broke camp on Tuesday, 17 May. Bill & I drove reverse route back to Salt Lake City, then to Colorado on Wednesday, 19 May. John headed back to Reno, then over the Sierra Nevada hills to Auburn, California. He toured the Sutter’s Mill State Park, checked out the SF American River and made it back to Oklahoma the following day.
SO, another adventure for the record books! Hope you too get off the couch, do what the old timers did, create a “hard fun” memory and maybe even find some gold.
God bless,
Randy C-17A
P.S. After I got home I crushed up several reddish sandstone looking rocks that made my detector "sound off" and panned the material. Well, I got maybe 6 to 8 TINY little micro specks of gold! Ha. SO, technically I didn't get skunked.
Last edited by Admin on Fri May 27, 2016 8:08 am; edited 1 time in total
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 647
Join date : 2015-11-29
Age : 64
Location : Buena Vista, Colorado -
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by Chief05 Sat May 21, 2016 10:38 am
Sir:
Ahhh only an ugly baby a mother could love, the end of the earth. Sorry I was unable to make it, NOT! Think this is the only time Randy has been skunked. Great pictures thanks for the update.
Ron
Ahhh only an ugly baby a mother could love, the end of the earth. Sorry I was unable to make it, NOT! Think this is the only time Randy has been skunked. Great pictures thanks for the update.
Ron
Chief05- Posts : 36
Join date : 2015-12-03
Age : 69
Location : Falcon, CO
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by Admin Sat May 21, 2016 5:55 pm
Chief,
Ha. Well............definitely one of the very FEW times couldn't conjure up even a little gold...
Oh well.........it sure wasn't from a lack of trying!
Randy C-17A
Ha. Well............definitely one of the very FEW times couldn't conjure up even a little gold...
Oh well.........it sure wasn't from a lack of trying!
Randy C-17A
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 647
Join date : 2015-11-29
Age : 64
Location : Buena Vista, Colorado -
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by russau Sun May 22, 2016 3:55 am
The treasure was in the trip with friends! and the memories!!
russau- Posts : 486
Join date : 2015-11-30
Age : 77
Location : St. Louis , Misery
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by jloyd Wed May 25, 2016 8:57 pm
Sounds like some fun in the making and some great memories in that trip.
jloyd- Posts : 53
Join date : 2015-12-02
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by Admin Thu May 26, 2016 6:13 am
Hey Chief, everyone...
Some late breaking news...
I was curious about some of the reddish, sandstone looking rocks that I saved that made my GB 2 sound off...........so I crushed a couple with my mortar & pestle and then panned the dust.
Guess what? A few tiny specks of gold! Ha. So, I guess I didn't get TOTALLY skunked after all.
I have a few more pieces of that red rock to crush and pan...........maybe today..........and I'll try and post a pic of "all" my gold I got from Rye Patch.
Randy C-17A
Some late breaking news...
I was curious about some of the reddish, sandstone looking rocks that I saved that made my GB 2 sound off...........so I crushed a couple with my mortar & pestle and then panned the dust.
Guess what? A few tiny specks of gold! Ha. So, I guess I didn't get TOTALLY skunked after all.
I have a few more pieces of that red rock to crush and pan...........maybe today..........and I'll try and post a pic of "all" my gold I got from Rye Patch.
Randy C-17A
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 647
Join date : 2015-11-29
Age : 64
Location : Buena Vista, Colorado -
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by Chief05 Thu May 26, 2016 5:52 pm
Sir:
Just got back from Cache Creek, the trip home was a trip; rain, sleet, hail, snow and sunshine only Spring in the Rockies. Got to Falcon and we had 6 - 8 of hail on the roads, guess no apples or peaches this year all were in bloom. Will send you an update tomorrow....
Ron
Just got back from Cache Creek, the trip home was a trip; rain, sleet, hail, snow and sunshine only Spring in the Rockies. Got to Falcon and we had 6 - 8 of hail on the roads, guess no apples or peaches this year all were in bloom. Will send you an update tomorrow....
Ron
Chief05- Posts : 36
Join date : 2015-12-03
Age : 69
Location : Falcon, CO
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by Admin Thu May 26, 2016 6:15 pm
Chief,
Ha. Yep... One mixed up weather day today for sure...
It was nice, sunny & warm this morning early..............BUT.............then clouded up, got cooler, we had rain, sleet & popcorn snow here for about an hour. I can see a very light dusting now up on the twin Buffalo Peaks.
Wow. That's a LOT of hail on the roads! Did CDOT have to send out the snow plows like last time there in C. Springs?
Was Miner Matt up there?
Did you stay in the gulch or venture up to our old stompin' grounds?
Standing by your Trip Report.
Randy C-17A
Ha. Yep... One mixed up weather day today for sure...
It was nice, sunny & warm this morning early..............BUT.............then clouded up, got cooler, we had rain, sleet & popcorn snow here for about an hour. I can see a very light dusting now up on the twin Buffalo Peaks.
Wow. That's a LOT of hail on the roads! Did CDOT have to send out the snow plows like last time there in C. Springs?
Was Miner Matt up there?
Did you stay in the gulch or venture up to our old stompin' grounds?
Standing by your Trip Report.
Randy C-17A
Admin- Admin
- Posts : 647
Join date : 2015-11-29
Age : 64
Location : Buena Vista, Colorado -
Re: Nevada -- Rye Patch Detecting -- May 2016
by NFREYTAG Wed Jun 01, 2016 12:06 pm
Very nice trip report Randy! Looks like you guys had a great time.
We got some much hail in Colorado Springs at Powers and Carefree last Thursday that it looked like it snowed. I almost went to Cache creek on the 26th but I ran out of time and decided to just go to Clear creek. My spot on the east side of Denver was under a few feet of water
. So I headed out to Clear creek west of Golden and did a little sluicing a mile or so past tunnel one. The water was high and surging but I was able to get the sluice set up on some boulders. I found a little gold but I haven't had a chance to clean it up.
Chief05 I live in North Colorado Springs. Let me know if you want to get together to do some prospecting. My next trip out will definitely be Cache Creek.
We got some much hail in Colorado Springs at Powers and Carefree last Thursday that it looked like it snowed. I almost went to Cache creek on the 26th but I ran out of time and decided to just go to Clear creek. My spot on the east side of Denver was under a few feet of water
. So I headed out to Clear creek west of Golden and did a little sluicing a mile or so past tunnel one. The water was high and surging but I was able to get the sluice set up on some boulders. I found a little gold but I haven't had a chance to clean it up. Chief05 I live in North Colorado Springs. Let me know if you want to get together to do some prospecting. My next trip out will definitely be Cache Creek.
NFREYTAG- Posts : 19
Join date : 2015-12-28
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