Powys Welsh gold lake

I have found a Welsh gold lake in Powys. Anyone want to volunteer to climb into this Shangri-la? I'd not be able to take responsibility for your risks, so you'd have to sign a disclaimer.
Powys is a bleak county in Wales, but beautiful and full of hidden gems. I found one hidden gem last year, but it is a hard place to explore. On my rounds, if I am feeling especially brave, I get into this hard place and dig another couple of buckets into the sharp slate scree. There is a mountain of scree above this place, looks stable, but I could be buried if there is a sudden shift. Usually I find some small flakes, but I've not got down to the hillside bedrock just yet. There could be a massive slug of quartz with gold down there, maybe twenty or fifty feet into this chasm, or maybe only a few feet, a nugget of massive proportions, resting on a ledge.
It is a general principle in prospecting that streams on steep hillsides do not retain gold in great quantities, especially in Wales where the quantities are rare enough already.
However, I love to hike and climb and slash my way through dense pine forests to get to hidden places, waterfalls, where deer, mountain otters, eagles and mythical creatures take time out, relax and stare at us stupid humans, wandering in the mists. One day, in the Welsh sunshine, I will find the horsehead nugget. But I will need help to get it down, into a truck and then where? I have a precious place to prospect, on public access land, where even the farmers or commoners don't know who owns the minerals. In large areas across Wales, the deeds to ancient estates have been lost by various means, carelessness, moths, lack of accurate plans on sale, and a failure to fence, control or assert ownership.
My precious hidden gem seems to be such a place. The stream cascades down a steep hillside, then flattens out for about fifty yards, before plunging down again about two hundred feet. All hidden in a mix of trees, scrub, dense moss and rough scree. What a lovely place to some, but a shard of hell to others.
I'll dig here now and then, probably at risk to life and limb. No-one here will probably volunteer, but I'll post pics of my flakes from this site, and, oh, someday, a pic of the biggest nugget ever found in Wales. It has to be down in this chasm.


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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26573.msg186936.html#msg186936

You are a brave volunteer. I'll sign you up for the next assault on the suicide Scree dig.
Here is a list of equipment to bring.
1. Campervan, with every comfort you want, or need, or can afford, or just a basic survival kit, because you/we could be dead anyway if the mountain falls on us.
2. Impregnable Boots, with feet which love pain sweat and 50%.
3. Midge net. It won't help, Welsh midges love midge nets, because they know they don't work for more than ten seconds. They get into your trousers and work up your bloodstream into your brain. Never mind, the itch is part of the pleasure of Welsh prospecting anyway, so get used to it. I love midges, they taste like Marmite if you get enough on your toast.
4. Back pack with equipment. Make sure you can hardly walk before you set off up the mountain of your choice. If you get past the toilet block next to the Mawdacch on a test walk, you didn't pass. Trainee prospectors must always collapse and get taken to the Dolgellau hospital, otherwise they weren't carrying enough kit for a real exercise. The Dolgellau hospital has a special ward for gold prospectors, but with the cuts and all that they got lost in the system and were transferred to the Leadhills in Scotland. Up there it is like a scene from the Walking Dead, limbs flailing about and moaning, Michael Jackson impersonations aside.
5. Several Henderson pumps of different lengths. Biggest three metres, with the secret special pump action booster humper sludge separator, which has yet to be perfected. Yet another stupid experimental mountain demolishing tool to hike up the hill, which will probablyh turn out to the unoperational if the wind turns 5% to the north.
Never mind, it will probably all work out in the end, we can send up a flare for the free rescue copter and get our stupid faces in the press for being oh so silly to risk our lives on a bleak Powys mountain. Or maybe, just possibly, we will one day be smiling on our yachts, basking in the gold-plated cups made from the horsehead nugget we found in our chasm.
Or, we could give it away to charity.
We can't live forever, but as long as we live we can live.
6. More equipment, we will take in next time.


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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26573.msg186944.html#msg186944

Bri please be exremely carefull, make sure your tie off is secure, make your equipment is in tip-top condition.  Watch out for overhangs that could collapse and give you one of those "oh sh****t" moments.  Also make sure you wear proper head gear, a rock sticking out of your head wouldn't look cool and I imagine wouldn't feel terribly good either.

Hope you find your El Dorado.

Dennis,
in Rainy Oregon

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26573.msg186972.html#msg186972

Brian,

That shale might harbor the long dead bodies of some prehistoric critters, it might be worth splitting some chunks of that shale with a good sharp rock chisel.  Who knows you might come up with something that'll put a little jingle in your pocket that is if the government types don't try and put the nab on you for defacing the land. 

Do take care,
Gramps

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26573.msg187071.html#msg187071

Yup that clears things a bit, but as always give a bureaucrat a 25 page rule book and he find a rule on page 50 that applies to the situation at hand.

Take care,
Gramps, aka Dennis

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