If you're familiar with the East Fork river of the San Gabriels, then you should know this area is somewhat of a narrow working canyon. Millions of years of erosion have cut its way down and through out this beautiful mountain range. Mother nature's natural workings have exposed ancient bedrock from time to time and with its once every hundred flood just occuring back in the beginning of 2005. If you hike up the canyon, newly exposed bedrock seems to around every bend. Being a good prospector, bedrock should raise an inspection flag! Your keen 'goldhawk eye' should be on the lookout for any cracks , crevices, fissures, bowls (low spots) in the bedrock. These areas become natural traps for the downward migration of gold. So don't be afraid to move some material around the bedrock area to expose even more bedrock in hence more crevices. Usually if the gravel material in this cracks are wedged in very tightly, chances are its been in there for a mighty long, long time. A very good chance for some gold recovery. But don't get me wrong, I have found flakes and fines in loose material as well! I chalk it up to freshly deposited gold by way of a recent flood.

Crevicing is a pretty simple form of prospecting that doesn't required alot of expensive tools. Tools can vary widely from the simple toolbox screwdriver to specialized crevice busting hammers. But basically anything you can used to loosen and extract the 'richer' material up from these hiding traps. A few other prospectors (myself included) add a few homemade tools to our prospecting arsenal. So let your imagination tweek your tool inventory.

I have even used a metal detector to refine my target areas. Usually when I get a couple of hits on my GoldBug2, it usually tells me I'm probably in an area when heavy concentrates have flowed at one time. And this area could be 20 to 30 yards away from the present river flow. So if you decide to work a promising crevice (with the aide of a detector or not), try your best to clean out that crevice thoroughly! There have been a few times that I have come across a 'supposedly cleaned out crevice' only to find more gold flakes and fines to add to my poke! There are many ways to thoroughly clean out the material. But the deeper you go into the crevice the better recovery you'll get! The more you practice in the field the more efficient you will become!

Good Luck Prospecting! - Max