Gold Panning Adventure in the Woods!

This week on the Road Hunter Podcast, we take a break from our usual adventures and try our hand at gold panning! Join us as we venture into the woods with nothing but pans and shovels, hoping to strike it rich. In this episode, we dive into the process of gold panning, discuss the essential equipment, and share our experience with this age-old method of treasure hunting.

Related: failed outdoors adventures.

The Basic Gold Panning Kit

You need a classifier/sifter, a ridged gold pan, a folding shovel, and a bucket to haul pay dirt home for finishing. Look for the inside of a creek bend, not the outside. Gold settles where current slows. That’s the inside of a turn, not the faster-moving outside edge.

Finishing Pay Dirt at Home

Soak collected material in a tub with a little dish soap. It breaks surface tension so gold settles instead of floating on debris. Pan it down further at home rather than only working it streamside. A magnet helps separate magnetite, the dark, magnetic “false gold” sparkle, from the real thing. Magnetite sticks to a magnet. Gold does not.

Don’t Toss the Magnetite Without Checking

Heavy magnetite concentration in your pan is actually a good sign, it tends to collect in the same spots gold does. Always run a magnet check before discarding anything; it’s easy to dump material that still has fine flakes mixed in with the magnetite.

• Pan the inside of creek bends, where slower current allows heavy material to settle
• A few drops of dish soap in your finishing water helps prevent fine gold from floating away
• Use a magnet to separate magnetite from real gold before deciding what to keep or discard

FAQ: Beginner Gold Panning

Where in a creek should I pan for gold?

Focus on the inside of bends, where the water moves slower and heavy material like gold settles out, rather than the faster outside edge of a turn.

How do I tell gold apart from magnetite or other shiny minerals?

Run a magnet over the material. Magnetite and similar minerals are attracted to a magnet; real gold is not, making this the simplest field test available.

A few real flakes on our first-ever try, not getting rich, but proof the gold is actually out there. Thanks for watching.