Going for the Gold

There's lodes of fun in Washington's rivers and streams

By Greg Johnston
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Crouching in a stream bent over a pan of "concentrate," you understand and appreciate the forty-niners and other fools who rushed all over the Western United States decades ago.

Hidden in the sand and gravel you are swishing and swirling are flakes of the gleaming, precious metal that kings coveted, pirates plundered, and countless miners and mules pursued (many perishing in the process).

And who knows? Just maybe there's a nugget. Perhaps you've located a lode. Could the bottom of the pan sparkle with enough dust and flakes to line a small pouch?

You've got the fever. Gold fever.

"When I found a nugget last year, I was just overwhelmed," says Chuck Cox, secretary of the Washington Prospectors Mining Association, a club of some 700 mostly recreational gold miners in Washington.

"Everybody in our club knows they're not going to get rich, but there's this sense, just maybe ..."

Adds Jack Hausner, club vice president: "A few flakes will keep your interest. But you're always hoping you're going to hit the pocket."

Recreational gold mining is a growing outdoor activity that combines a sense of history with adventure, and produces at least tiny treasures. It is, however, an increasingly contentious activity, pitting hobbyists against state environmental officials who are overhauling gold-mining rules.

"There's a lot of unanswered questions as to the effect of mineral prospecting on fish and wildlife habitat," says Millard Deusen, a Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist in charge of developing the new rules. "I want to be the first to admit there are two sides to these concerns, and we want to look at the issue before we over-regulate.

"Yet we don't want to under-regulate. Our mandate is to protect fish and wildlife."

Most recreational miners acknowledge that the activity can damage stream environments. "Three or four people with shovels can do a lot of damage if they don't know what they're doing or if they don't follow the rules," says Cox. "Pretty soon you can have the river running through a campground."

At the same time, Cox and other prospectors insist that -- done properly -- small-scale gold mining can actually benefit spawning habitat by cleaning sedimented or "concreted" gravels.

And it is definitely fascinating and fun.

"Almost every river and stream in this state has gold in it to some degree," says Cox, who regularly works some of the 14 claims the association maintains. "You have to kind of read a stream, looking for the path gold takes as it washes downstream."

Floods and high-water flows continually replenish pockets in rivers and along gravel bars with gold that crumbles and is washed out of quartz deposits in the mountains. In Western Washington, most of the gold found is just such "placer" or "flood" gold, almost all of it flakes. Recreational miners sometimes find nuggets in Eastern Washington.

Most of the best rivers and streams are in historic mining districts, such as along the Mountain Loop Highway outside Darrington and Granite Falls, the Blewitt Pass-Swauk Creek region, the Lake Wenatchee area, the Entiat-Chelan region, the Okanogan, and spots just west in the North Cascades.

The inside of bends in a river, where flows are slower, are usually where gold settles during floods, as well as in the slack pools behind large rocks and boulders.

Hobby miners use three main methods to render these riches, however small, from the earth. The most basic is the time-honored and still essential technique of panning. Gold pans are used to find areas with potential, and to finally isolate gold from the concentrates produced by the other two methods.

One of them is a simple sluice box -- aluminum models can be had for as little as $50 -- set in the river so water flows over it. Potentially gold-bearing gravels and sediments are first shoveled through screens into buckets, to remove the larger rocks. Then they are slowly poured or lifted by hand into the wide, upstream end of the sluice box.

The other method is a "suction dredge," which is a floating contraption -- the cheapest models are about $2,500 -- that uses a small gas-powered motor to suck sediments from the riverbed and wash them over a sluice box.

The sluice box is designed to wash gold-bearing sediments over its riffled bottom, into which is placed a synthetic fibrous material called "miner's moss." Gold being a heavy mineral -- 19 times the weight of an equal volume of water -- the flushing action allows it to drop into the riffles and become trapped in the moss, while most of the other sediments wash out the end of the sluice box.

The gold and heavy sediments that become trapped are then panned, to separate out the gold even further.

Cox set up a small sluice box for his reporter guest during a recent outing on the South Fork Stillaguamish River outside Granite Falls. Screening and hauling sediments from a likely spot on a gravel bar to the sluice box proved to be serious physical labor -- for which we envisioned rich rewards.

After about an hour, Cox panned out its concentrate.

"This is the fun part, because this is super-concentrated," Cox said while beginning a rhythmic circular motion with the pan.

A second batch of concentrate was slowly and methodically panned out by club member Clark Chase of Snohomish.

"It's a good teacher of patience," he said. "You've got to have water. You agitate it to settle the gold to the bottom of the pan, then wash the top layers of sediment off, just in graduations."

The result of both efforts was a small concentration of honest-to-goodness gold flakes, mixed with "black sand," or magnetic iron.

A "sniffer" bottle with a narrow spout was filled with water and used to suck up the flakes, which were then carefully placed in a small glass vial.

If you're fortunate enough to find a nugget -- defined as any piece of gold large enough to go "thunk" when dropped into a pan -- it is removed with tweezers.

"I'd always been interested a little bit in (gold mining) because of history," says Dick Thomsen of Snohomish, another club member. "Miners and trappers settled the West. And one of the reasons I like it is because you can combine it with other activities. I hunt, fish. It's just beautiful up here."

By most accounts, recreational gold mining isn't a popular activity but its numbers are increasing.

"More and more every day, people from all walks of life" are participating, says Eddie Barrat, operator of International Prospecting Supply in Seattle. "But the state is legislating it so much, it's getting difficult."

Most federal and state lands are open to gold mining, except in state and national parks and except on lands where mineral rights have already been claimed, which must be posted as such at the route of entry.

However, the state prohibits mining on streams that host sensitive species, and on others during critical times of the year for fish, such as spawning periods.

Operators of suction dredges and larger sluice boxes are also required to obtain a "hydraulics project approval" permit, or HPA, from the state Department of Ecology. Panning and the use of sluice boxes no larger than 1-by-3 feet do not require a permit, but hobby miners must carry with them a state pamphlet called "Gold and Fish."

The pamphlet lists stream seasons and closures, and all the other rules. These include prohibitions against removal of gravel from spawning areas and the excavation of stream banks (charts show what parts of streams these include).

When the state recently began revising these rules for the third time since 1980 -- each time with increasing restrictions -- small-scale miners vented their frustration with the fervor of a full-scale gold rush.

The state backed off and asked miners' clubs and groups to help revise the regulations. "We want to try to develop a means to have both a recreational opportunity for these people and protection for fish life and habitat," says Fish and Wildlife's Deusen.

The miners welcomed the chance. Most figure it will pan out.

"We think good things will come out of this," Cox says. "Although I think the regulations are overly protective, with a little more thoughtfulness I think we can all live with them."

Prospecting notes
"Gold and Fish," a pamphlet published by the state, lists gold-mining rules as well as open streams and their seasons. For a free copy, write to: Department of Fish and Wildlife, 600 Capitol Way N., Olympia, WA 98501-1091. It also is available at the agency's regional offices in Mill Creek, Aberdeen, Vancouver, Wenatchee, Ephrata, Yakima and Spokane.

A great way to learn the basics of recreational mining is to join a group such as the Washington Prospectors Mining Association. Membership ($30) includes a monthly newsletter. Call 784-6039.