Gold Prospecting When Hiking – A Good Idea?

You may be wondering; is gold prospecting a good idea when hiking? Well, we asked ourselves the same question – so we gave it a try!

Many people believe gold prospecting is way too hard and it’s impossible to find gold, but it really isn’t. If you know where to look and how to extract it, it won’t be that difficult. Just bring the right tools with you and you should be good to go.

We only brought a pan and a small shovel with us because we didn’t want our entire hike to consist of prospecting. We’re also amateurs, so of course we don’t want to spend a lot of money. We watched some YouTube videos on the subject, and what methods to use. According to the gold community, a mountain nearby would be the perfect spot.

Where Did We Find Gold In the Mountains?

You see, gold can be hundreds of years old, still running down the stream of the mountains. It usually gets picked up by creeks and rocks along the way down the stream. The rocks in the stream actually acts as a kind of sluice box! The best part about it is the fact that the sluice box has collected gold throughout tens of years, if not hundreds. Sometimes you can even see the small nuggets if you lift a couple rocks.

We walked up the mountain, following the stream. After our hike was completed, we decided to go from the top to the bottom, prospecting all the way down. Well… not really all the way down as that would take a really long time, but still!

Did We Actually Find Gold Though?

As a matter of fact – we did! Of course, it was minuscule amounts, but the process was so cool! Every pan of sand was exciting, almost like gambling. After a couple of pans, and countless hours later, we finally saw a little gold in that black sand. If you’re a hiker like us, our best tip is to look for black sand, that means you’re closing in on the shiny stuff. This tip we got from watching a couple YouTube videos and it was honestly the most helpful one. Otherwise we would probably still be out there with pan after pan of nothingness.

Is It Fun to Gold Prospect In the Mountains?

Both me and my hiking partner found the whole adventure very fun. The excitement you get along the way – maybe this spot, maybe that spot, isn’t this one better? Then when you finally see that shiny stuff in the bottom of the pan a spurt of endorphins get released in the entire body. It might not look like fun, but it sure is!

Mixing it with hiking is a really good idea, you sure won’t make any money doing it, so why not mix it with another outdoor activity? Combining hiking with gold prospecting was one of our best ideas to date in all honesty, and we will surely do it again. Perhaps the prospecting part will make you want to travel to other parts of the country for new panning spots? We will surely hit up more mountains in the local area to see if we can find any gold.

Is Gold Prospecting Hard?

When we gave the idea to a couple of our hiking buddies, the responsive was very negative. “You won’t find anything”, “it’s not worth the effort” and so on. We asked ourselves – why not? Once you actually watch some videos on the subject, the picture becomes a lot clearer, and you really don’t need any experience to find gold. Sure, the actual panning part requires some skill, and I’m guessing we let a lot of micro-gold go back in the stream, but we still found some! If we can do it on our first trip, why couldn’t you?