I’m ready.  I have my $5 pan from Fred Meyer and am secure in the proven panning technique fresh off a U-tube video.  I hustle across the cobble stone beach at Nome Creek. Alaska geologists claim that I have a “real chance” of finding gold flake or something bigger here.

First hurdle, where do I find paydirt?  Still water?  Fast moving?  Under a boulder?  I choose my spot carefully and shovel a big pile into my pan.  Shake.  Pour.  Wave.  Just like on the video.  It separates gravel and sand and leaves the gold.  Wrong.  Nothing.

A anxiously shovel another pan load.  Shake.  Pour.  Wave.  Nothing

I question my location.  We gather paydirt from across the creek…its got to be better.

Pan 3.  Nothing.

Pans 4,5,6,7  nothing

My enthusiasm is waning.

My butt hurts from the sitting rock and my back aches from the terrible posture.  It would all be fine though if we just found even a single flake.

We head 1 ½ miles downstream and collect THE paydirt.

Pans 8, 9, 10……you guessed it.  Nothing.

Over the course of 2 days we washed a lot of gravel without a flake of gold to show for it.

Fortunately it was a lovely place to camp.There are a number of recreational gold panning areas on BLM land.  They have all been commercially mined in the past but supposedly have various levels of residual gold for the taking.  The issue of course is the finding.  We had fun though entirely unsuccessful. Kent’s technique was a little different and he used a larger pan.  The results were the same though, just lots of clean gravel.  We plan a technique tutorial somewhere before we try it again.