Strike and Dip for the Prospector: Part 3

For part three of this series I want to discuss how the strike and dip of a bed or gold bearing vein can affect how the vein would show up on a map view and therefore how it also appears on the earth’s surface.  This has implications for us prospectors in the field who are source hunting, mainly being that the outcrop of the vein you are tracing across a hilltop may not continue straight through the valley that you’ve traced it up to.  

So for the first part I want to discuss how the strike and dip of a vein/bed will affect how it outcrops across the surface of varying terrains.  This is best exemplified in the following diagram: 

From the above diagram you can see that if a bed or vein is vertical its surface expression across terrain will be a straight line which is how I believe most people think that any vein or bed will present.  The main take away from this is that the strike and dip of a vein will affect how it outcrops across the surface.  So if you are chasing vein or bed on a hill top and you come to a large river valley that runs perpendicular to the vein don’t assume that the vein trends straight across that valley depending on the dip of the vein it may either jut up river or down river.  If you are planning to try and prospect the river where the vein crosses it this needs to be looked at, otherwise you could actually overshoot or undershoot the actual vein system.  

For nugget shooters this type of information can be vital as it can help with figuring out where the eluvial gold they are chasing is coming from.  If you are planning to detect a certain area for nuggets and you have done your research an found out how the beds of the area are dipping it can help you come up with the most efficient pattern to walk to hopefully intercept eluvial gold coming from an unknown vein system.  This can help you save time when in the field and once the source is found it will then be easier to understand how and if it will extend into surrounding valleys.  

I hope this little trick helps you find some more gold in the field.  

Thanks for reading!