CLICHE - Brown or white material, usually containing rocks and gravel that are cemented together tightly with calcium carbonate. Commonly encountered in dry, desert placers.
COLORS - Small pieces or specks of gold.
CREVICING - Small-scale mining method in which tightly-packed sand and other material is removed from cracks and crevices in bedrock, usually with pry bars and/or thin scraping tools. Once removed, the material is washed to recover any gold content.
BEDROCK - A solid layer of the Earth's crust. Bedrock underlies streams and forms and impenetrable layer that traps gold and other heavy materials. "False bedrock" is any hard layer that acts like bedrock in trapping gold, Clay volcanic ash and caliche often serve as false bedrock.
BENCHES - Ancient depostis of river-borne sand and gravel that may now be quite some distance from the present waterway.
HIGHBANKING - Using a slucie box, possibly some distnce from a waterway, aided by a stream of pumped or diverted water. LODE - Refers to host rock that contains gold. Lode gold may be "free milling" and appear as stringers, thick sheets of fine wires; or it may be so minute that a microscope is required to see it.
MINING - The extraction and recovery of valuable minerals.
PLACER - An alluvial or fglacial deposit of sand and/or gravel containing particles of gold or other valuable mineral. Gold eroded from its host rock and now mixed with sand and/or gravel is considered "placer gold." PROSPECTING - Locating and evaluating the quantity and worth of potentially valuable minerals. Prospecting includes panning, which often is used to determine the gold content of placer and/or crushed lode materials.