Alaska Gold Rush Diary

Smelling the sweet aroma from the mud and sand, Zhou Xin was overjoyed.

He took out his gold pan, poured the mud and sand into it, and began panning following the instructional video he had watched earlier.

The water was icy cold, but he didn't care.

Gold mining isn't difficult; what's needed is experience and patience.

Submerge the mud and sand in the gold pan underwater, and shake it to wash away the floating mud and sand.

Gold particles are dense and will sink to the bottom of the pan, where they will be blocked by the grooves on the pan.

While shaking and washing, pick out the large stones.

Finally, lift the gold pan out of the water, fill it with water and shake it. The gold will quickly sink to the bottom of the pan, and the murky water can be poured out.

This process was repeated until the mud and impurities were gradually washed away, leaving the gold in the dish.

This was Zhou Xin's first time officially panning for gold, and he wasn't very skilled at it. It took him more than half an hour to finally see a few golden spots at the bottom of the pan.

It's gold, it really is gold!

Although there were only a few grains of gold smaller than sesame seeds, he had already achieved his goal.

Under the sunlight, the gold dust in the dish looked particularly dazzling.

He picked up some gold dust with his fingers and brought it to his nose.

It has a wonderful aroma; it smells like pure gold.

My abilities are indeed capable of finding gold!

Next, with careful searching, we will surely find a layer of soil rich in gold.

This gold rush gave him tremendous confidence.

He carefully placed the few grains of gold into a prepared glass bottle as a souvenir.

After packing his things, he continued his search for gold.

He planned to follow the stream downstream to find a river with a larger flow, and then search along that river.

Gold accumulates in the gentler inner bends of rivers due to the erosion caused by water flow.

Of course, there are also many ancient riverbeds buried in the soil that may contain even richer gold, but that would require digging out the thick covering layer, which is not something he can do now.

Now he's all alone, panning for gold by the stream.

After walking along the stream for more than two hours, we arrived at the confluence of another stream, where the current became stronger.

However, by this time the sun had already begun to set in the west, and the temperature had started to drop.

He checked the time; it was already past seven in the afternoon.

The sun will set around 8 p.m.

Night falls very quickly in the mountains; less than an hour after sunset, the surroundings are plunged into darkness.

As time goes on, the duration of darkness will become shorter and shorter.

By June or July, it will hardly be completely dark anymore, only getting a little dark around midnight.

However, the night is still quite long, so we can only stop here for today.

We'll camp here tonight.

He found a flat spot by the stream, tamped down the snow in that area, and thus the foundation was formed.

Set up the tent and secure it firmly around the perimeter with tent pegs and guy lines, so you don't have to worry even in a blizzard.

The tent was weighed down with snow, making it airtight inside.

He then laid an insulating mat on the ground where the chimney hole was inside the tent and installed the folding stove, with the chimney extending out from the hole at the top of the tent.

The temperature at night can drop to below minus ten degrees Celsius, and it's impossible to get through without a stove.

Next, he laid a moisture-proof mat on the other side of the stove inside the tent and then inflated the heating pad, creating a comfortable and soft bed.

After finishing all that, the sun had already set, and he knew that he didn't have much time left.

Fortunately, firewood is plentiful in the forest. He searched around the camp for half an hour and collected enough firewood.

He stacked the firewood next to the stove, and immediately felt much more at ease.

At least I can get a warm and restful sleep at night.

After finishing these tasks, as dusk approached, he filled a large pot with water, went inside the tent, and lit a fire.

A moment later, a faint light appeared in the darkness of the snowy forest.

The firewood crackled and burned, and the temperature inside the tent rose rapidly to twenty degrees Celsius.

Zhou Xin started to feel hot, so he took off his thick windproof and cold-proof clothes, leaving only a short-sleeved shirt.

Light up the small chandelier, set up the small table, and today's home is complete.

Place the iron cup on the stove and pour in a cup of water.

After the water boiled, he poured in a packet of instant coffee, stirred it, and took a sip of the steaming coffee.

Warm and comfortable, the fatigue of a long day finally dissipates.

He exercised a lot today and sweated a lot, but there's no way to take a shower yet.

He wet a towel and carefully wiped his body, feeling even more comfortable.

He put the coffee aside, then took out a portable frying pan, poured in water and brought it to a boil, then tore open a packet of Thai Tom Yum soup instant noodles and started cooking.

There are also a few bags of pickled cabbage and spicy beef flavored ones, but they are too expensive, so I can't bear to eat them for now.

He was too tired today to cook anything else, so he could only eat something simple.

Soon, the tent was filled with the aroma of instant noodles.

After the instant noodles had been cooking for a while, he took out a few slices of bacon and put them on top of the noodles to cook together.

Once the noodles were cooked, he carried the pan and all to the small table and began to eat heartily.

It has to be said that eating a pot of hot instant noodles in a warm tent in the snowy wilderness where the temperature is below -10 degrees Celsius is simply the most pleasant feeling.

He opened a pre-cache video about gold mining on his phone and ate noodles while watching it.

There was naturally no cell phone signal here, which he had already taken into account. Before setting off, he had already cached a lot of movies, variety shows, and gold panning-related videos on his phone.

After all, you'll be living in the wilderness for several months, so you need some basic entertainment, otherwise you might die of loneliness.

He ate with slurping sounds, and soon sweat beaded on his forehead.

After finishing the last mouthful of hot noodle soup, he continued to look at his phone while drinking the rest of his coffee.

All around was quiet, except for the sound of burning firewood.

After letting out a satisfied burp, he added a few larger pieces of firewood to the stove, took the food bag off the side of his backpack and put it outside the tent, then contentedly crawled into his sleeping bag.

Snuggled in his sleeping bag, he opened the Ovi Maps app on his phone to check his current location.

He is currently located southeast of Livinggood. Satellite maps show that there is a larger river about five kilometers further along the current stream.

This river is formed by the confluence of countless forest streams, making it highly likely to contain gold.

Moreover, the river has many bends, creating conditions conducive to gold deposition.

The gold beneath Alaska's earth is a gift from nature's millions of years of geological activity.

Volcanic eruptions carry gold from the mantle to the crust, where glaciers and rivers then sculpt it into placer gold.

Over the long course of time, countless rivers have changed course, disappeared, and countless new rivers have formed.

The gold was thus dispersed into the underground soil of Alaska.

These gold particles buried in the soil will gradually gather with the water flow and accumulate in the river bends, forming new gold veins.

What Zhou Xin needs to do now is to find these undeveloped gold veins.

Those professional and experienced gold-mining teams disdain searching for gold in these places.

They tend to prefer to find gold veins that have already formed buried in the soil through exploration, then use large machinery to cultivate the mine, collect all the surrounding soil, and then use a washing machine to extract the gold.

That way, you would find more gold, but the investment would also be enormous.

Zhou Xin doesn't have that kind of strength yet, so he can only start small and accumulate funds.

Small gold veins in river bends are naturally the best option at present.