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The area that I have been nugget hunting in the summer for the past three
years is known as Rattlesnake Canyon. Rattlesnake itself runs in a large
horseshoe shape for a length of about six miles. At the northern end of
the canyon are a series of springs where people had built homes at one
time but all are now abandoned. The area of Rattlesnake we have concentrated
on is one of about four square miles encompassing all the springs: Mound
Springs, Vaughn Springs and Viscera Springs. This area is roughly fifteen
miles due east of Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern
California. We enter the area from Yucca Valley, up through Pioneer Town,
which is a western style town that was built in the 1940's to film western
movies there, and on up to Rim Rock which is the end of pavement. From
Rim Rock it is about ten miles of fair dirt road back to our hunting site.
As the crow flies, it is about 20 miles northeast of Palm Springs.
The eastern slope of the San Bernardinos is in rain shadow much as is
the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains farther to the north.
It is semi-arid country known as high chaparral with lots of Joshua Trees,
Pinyon Pines, Manzanita and other brush with lots of open space in between
plants. Our hunting area is about half and half BLM (Bureau of Land Management)
land and National Forest. The NF was declared a wilderness area last year
for some strange reason. Go figure. Elevation is 5600 feet which makes
for ten to fifteen degrees cooler temperatures that those that prevail
in the lower desert in the summertime.
There are extensive placer workings scattered all over the four square
miles of our hunting area. The gold seems to have been lain down eons ago
on top of a layer of caliche (clay) and beneath a layer of cap rock. As
the cap rock eroded off the top of the ridges, the gold was released and
made its way down the slopes and into the washes. Last summer and this
year, we have been concentrating on an area that we named Gold Ridge because
a lot of nuggets have been found all along the sides and top of the ridges.
Last summer I lucked out and found a very nice one ounce nugget on the
ridge and this summer the largest piece found was a 290 grain nugget picked
up by my partner Jerry. We manage to find a couple or three pieces every
trip up there, most in the one to ten or fifteen grain category. Figure
1 is a pretty shot of Gold Ridge from the lower level looking towards
the Southwest. Figure 2 is the view from the highest part of Gold
Ridge looking to the Northwest. Most of the gold up there seems to be located
on the East side of the ridge with some nuggets found here and there on
the top. The gold is scattered widely and the only way to find it is to
walk and swing for hours on end and every once in a while we will hear
the sweet sound of a target and usually it will be a nugget. There is the
usual allotment of spent bullets and bits of foil to be found but not as
profusely as in some other hunting areas. |
