Just thought I’d share this example of how the virgin wash layer looks around Lisle which the old timers were chasing. The layers are quite clearly defined, on the bottom you have the light coloured decomposed granite which is very soft and easy to dig almost like chalky sand. Right on top of that you can see the thin stained red gravel layer and this is where the richest gold lies. It’s very hard packed almost cemented together.
Sometimes you can expose these layers in the bottom of old leads and faces or excavator test holes but in my experience they always contain pretty poor gold which is probably why it’s still there. One day i’ll find a good one…
I like the way you are investigating the wash. I don’t know where the original reefs were located that shed the Lisle gold. Maybe they are now weathered away?
From watching Yukon Gold I would say look for the old streams and river banks, now above and away from the present day streams. A reddish ‘iron layer’ is a good sign apparently.
Very few gold bearing reefs found in Lisle either by the old timers or modern prospecting. It’s almost exclusively an alluvial gold field and I believe the dominant theory on the origin of the gold is by way of ‘secondary enrichment’.
The leads I have found are quite variable, some with large cobbles and full of quartz and some almost devoid of quartz, but they all have that red band sitting directly on the old granite.
Just saw this photo. Maybe 30 years ago we found similar in the next gully at Tobbacco creek digging down till the fine grey seddiment .
The theroy was in Lisle it had to come out off the hill . Which hill no one knows .. I am trying to use my resources to find some of the adits in the valley . I still believe theres gold in them there hills .
I went into lisle today to look for the titmus adit . A 120 adit up the hill above the main mining area of the bonanza and donnely face ,also watts’s face i found the adit which was full of water and a redish broken rock in the walls and floor . Also 20 m away in a digging solid large rock with a quartz vein visible . Might be for another trip
Been years since I was at Lisle, been meaning to go back again. Last trip I was trying to rediscover an old miners camp I found by accident once, complete with a fallen down hut and old bus used as a shack. Spent ages bashing around in the bush exactly where I remembered it to be but just couldn’t find it again.
