Anyone here do any Gold Panning?

[professionalcoyotehunter]

Those are some nice pickings. I have a lot of vials with black sand mixed in them but there is a lot of fine gold in there also.

[Dark&Good]

Did anybody here follow up on where the gold gets in a creek, and actually found a vein?

[rolo]

In California, practically all gold found in loose soil/water comes from alluvial deposits laid down during the early Tertiary period in rivers that ran from north to south along the combined Americas.

There are hard rock deposits in some of the same areas, but are from different geological events, namely the granitic intrusions (like Half Dome) that poked their way through the sedimentary layers bringing dissolved gold, quartz, etc. into the now metamorphic boundary zones. If you can find the edges of the serpentine layers, you may find gold and will definitely find semi-precious and precious minerals, should you know what to look for. It is possible to find "new" gold in geologically active areas as well, like the steam vents and hot springs, but now we're talking so much work no one has developed methods to mine them commercially.

I'm going to stop right here, I think I've gone on a bit of a tangent, but the information helps understand where to find hard rock deposits even though they are really only exploitable commercially.