A Golden Discovery on the Hillside

Detecting on the side of a hill, I stumbled upon a very water-worn ½-ounce nugget, which turned out to be the start of an incredible discovery. Using a Minelab detector with a larger coil, I continued searching and found gold roughly every 10 feet. By the time I reached the top of the hill, I’d collected about 3 ounces. The nuggets became rougher and sharper as I progressed. Within just half a metre, I uncovered three jagged pieces of gold, but above that spot, there was nothing.

To validate my theory, I showed a local prospector, who confirmed I was right on the source. The ground was decomposed slate, easy to work with, so I started a 4x4ft hole. After digging just a foot down, I switched to a smaller coil on the detector to scan the loose dirt I’d removed. The machine went wild—signals everywhere! Tiny gold fragments were scattered throughout, and I carefully collected them all before digging deeper.

At 3 feet, I hit another pocket of gold. Then, at 5 feet, another rich deposit surfaced. I dug down to 6 feet, but the hole became too deep and unsafe to continue. The dirt was so rich I took a few shovels home to pan, before filling the hole in. My panning yielded 12 grams of gold.

I planned to return the following year with a trailer to move more dirt, but by then, a mining company had staked the area, blocking access. Despite that, the effort was more than worthwhile—out of that hole alone, I recovered 8 ounces of gold, along with another 3 ounces from nearby.