Annual gold prospecting trip - 2010 edition

Zot · July 22, 2010 3:42AM

It’s been exceptionally warm the past few weeks, which has almost completely kept me away from metal detecting, but which fits perfectly with making a gold prospecting trip up north!
(I won’t tell you the temperature, as some of you from a warmer climate will laugh at me for sure… It’s tough for a Viking when it’s warm outside)

Some may remember my gold prospecting post from last year 2009 gold prospecting trip
I set out with a firm target to beat that result. Shouldn’t be too hard..

I’ll start off with a few scenic shots.
This is how northern Finland looks like in the summer (disclaimer: on a good day!). This is way north and the sun doesn't set at all in the summer.

The reindeer parade

These places will be sorely missed. Let's fast forward to summer of 2011 already, shall we?

OK, enough of that stuff. Towards the bush we go!

Funny how all the interesting gold prospecting places seem to be in the middle of nowhere.
I wish the road was like this all the way. And yes, reindeer here as well.

The monster has been assembled and is ready for action!

The water situation was excellent. This was a relief.

Let’s see some gold nuggets!

It didn’t take long before I got the urge to check if I was getting anything at all..
Won’t be long now..

Well, there’s one in there, which is even visible to the naked eye

This was probably already more than I got last year in total.

I was finding stuff at a fairly steady rate, but mostly it was very small.
You can see a dozen small ones at 12 o'clock.

Base camp..

..and Zot’s residence.
There wasn’t a single rain-free night during the five nights I spent in this thing.

Note to self: Next time, bring a larger tent. With the mountains of stuff one has to bring along for these trips, it doesn’t make any sense at all to try and save a bit of weight by bringing a mickey mouse tent like this. What the heck was I thinking!?

Time for a break.
I was digging approx. 12 hours a day, and a lot of the time it was hard work too, with lots of large rocks. Often times blue smoke will rise when you jam the iron bar into the ground.
By the way, those socks are poisonous, I assure you!

Whoa! What do we have here?
This bad boy was instantly visible through the stream of water.

At 0.39 grams it’s the largest nugget I’ve found to date.
I know this is nothing by some people’s standards (and for other locations), but it sure was a nice one for me.

The total haul was 0.70 grams (the large nugget is more than half of the total)

Did I hit my target (beat last year's result)? I sure did, as this picture quite clearly shows

Do it again next year? Absolutely! – and I believe/hope I picked up a trick or two that will be helpful.
Now I have a real target to beat as well.
Planning the next trip will be great fun during the cold winter months.

Happy hunting!

-Z