Learn to find gold — the short course
10 pieces, about 66 minutes in total: how to read a gravel bar, where gold actually sits, how to pan, how to tell gold from pyrite, what gear is legal where, and how to stay safe on cold water. Written for Canada, with sources.
Reading a gravel bar
Why the gold is at the top of the bar and not the bottom, what black sand is telling you, and how to test a bar in an hour instead of a day.
6 min read →Where gold sits: bedrock traps, inside bends and pay streaks
Gold moves like a heavy stone and stops like one. Once you know the handful of places a river lets it stop, you stop digging blind.
7 min read →Glacial vs placer geology in Canada
Ice sheets bulldozed most of this country’s ancient placers into oblivion. Where they didn’t — and where rivers have rebuilt them since …
7 min read →How to pan for gold
The whole technique in nine steps, with the two mistakes that send most beginners’ gold back into the creek.
6 min read →Classifying and clean-up: snuffer, vials, drying, weighing
Most Canadian gold is fine. The difference between a full vial and an empty one is what happens to the last spoonful of black sand.
6 min read →Is this gold? Fool’s gold tests you can do at the creek
Pyrite, mica and chalcopyrite fool everyone once. Five tests — none of them needing acid — settle it in a minute.
5 min read →Sluice vs highbanker vs detector — what’s legal where
The moment you put down the pan, every province calls you something different. Province by province, what each piece of kit costs you in…
8 min read →Staking a placer claim in B.C. (MTO) and in Yukon
One province stakes with a mouse, the other with an axe and two posts. What each costs, what it gets you, and what it obliges you to do…
8 min read →Gold panning with kids: tourist pans and first creeks
Where a family can legally pan in Canada without a claim, what to bring, and how to make sure the first trip isn’t the last.
6 min read →River safety, cold water and bears
The three things that actually hurt prospectors in Canada, and the small habits that stop each of them.
7 min read →Start here
If you have never panned, read the pieces in order: geology first (why the gold is where it is), then technique, then the rules. Every page links the official sources it leans on. When you are ready to go, the public panning spots and the province guides tell you where it is legal — and the gold value calculator tells you what the vial is worth.
Reading done? Go get colour.
Log the first outing in LocalKarat — private by default, badges for every milestone.