My latest gold finding mission

I haven’t had much luck with finding gold on beaches lately, so I tried a trip up north – to find it the traditional way

Through my membership in a gold diggers’ association, I have access to some areas in Finnish Lapland for this purpose
This was just a quick four-day trip, with 3 days fully dedicated to gold panning. The sun never sets in the summer, so the only limitation was my own stamina.
It’s indeed quite a workout. After day 1 my back was killing me, but I got over that quite quickly (just took some getting used to). Towards the end, the main issue was my butt (should have brought along something better to sit on, argh!)

Here we go:

Reindeer were everywhere, and particularly on the road it seemed.
They also weren't in any hurry to get out of the way. The car in front is probably braking for the next one(s) further down the road



The weather was brilliant



I used a primitive system with buckets of soil initially filtered to get out rocks/stones, and the rest being panned. The very last stage of panning (getting rid of the last coffee cup or so of stuff in the pan) takes a long time, so I’ve found it useful to refill the pan a couple of times before you get to that stage, and only do the final stage every now and then. This of course increases the risk of something going ‘overboard’, but I’ve found it greatly helps overall productivity.

This one could be the one….



Hmmm.. well, at least there's a tiny one in there ..
The picture doesn’t capture the true look of gold in your pan. It stands out great, and it’s quite easy to spot even very tiny ones



The results?
Yes, I did find some gold. 20 pieces to be exact. Here they are:



The nuggets above look very nice. However, there's a small problem when we include another object for scale...
(Believe me, I was careful not to sneeze when I took the pictures! )



I tried to weigh them (on an electronic scale with 0.01g resolution) but with no success. It shows the same weight for an empty coin capsule vs. the one with the “nuggets” in it). Ho hum!
Quite unlucky trip, but it sure was great fun!

Totals:
Gold: 20 pieces. Total weight: not measureable
Flats on car: 1 (I should have taken pictures of some of those “roads”…jeez…)
Mosquito (and horsefly) bites: too many to count. I counted about 60 on the back of my right hand alone
Going back next year? Yep! With more heavy duty equipment this time (sluice box, pump, etc) and more time

Happy hunting!
-Z