Searching in Rapids and Waterfalls

In many occasions potholes and depressions will become formed right underneath a rapid and often times they have enough depth so as to be able to retain a little pocket placer.

This is the way it works: When the stream reduces in speed, the rocks of the rapids have gold stored in them that they are not able to hold onto. In other words this means this gold has not settled and will usually stay in a state of agitation or close to the surface. Small changes in the speed of the water is able to move the gold down the rapids where it is deposited further down the stream. This type of pocket placer in most cases is grouped as a yearly accumulation to disappear every year and improve shortly afterwards. 

Looking in Waterfalls
Waterfalls are not the same as rapids because of the fact that the water has an almost perpendicular descent and the ones that are considered for transitory placers are different from bedrock placers because they are not as large.

For people that are prospecting there are two different types of waterfalls that can be looked into. One is the kind where the rock at the bottom is as solid as the material that is around and a very small amount of abrasion has occurred so that all the gravels that are deposited are quickly washed away. This kind of waterfall does not have a great amount of consequence and heavier material that is in the gravel needs to be prospected down stream in another and better location.

The other type of little waterfall is the one where the rock at the base has a softer material than the one that surrounds it. In this type of circumstance the water will wear away a depression that will hold on to sand. Once the bottom has matured it will hold as much as it allows to flow out and due to the fact that almost all the material is being moved around in turbulence, the materials that are heavier have a tendency of settling and remaining longer than the material that is lighter.

After awhile, this waterfall will have a deposit of heavier materials. There are a lot of rich placer pockets that have been recovered in these types of waterfalls however they are not that common though. The people that know where the special ones can be found go back every year and almost always obtain good results.

Looking in Car Bodies
Bet you never imagined this one huh? Well, we are actually only mentioning them as a description of all the items that have been made by men and that for one reason or another end up inside a stream bed. Any metal material in a car body that is exposed is definitely not the place to start looking for gold in. nonetheless iron products settle and accumulate the same way gold does and usually in the same areas. If you begin to dredge up bolts or nuts from a level of ten feet or if you come to find an old car body, it is not a bad idea to clean out a big area directly around the area where the items were found.