Great Animations About Geology of Gold - Including Benches

April 18, 2013
I found a well-done video animation about the way benches are formed. Not only did I want to refer you to it if interested, but it also reminded me of something to caution.
I have found from my own eagerness that looking up from a canyon to high benches is a way to get you "dreaming". When I say this, my experience has been that I look up, discover a bench area, and then think, "I bet I could get up there." And of course, since you think others think that that bench is so high everyone would avoid it (hence, once again, the tantalizing thought of newly discovered flakes and nuggets) you get even more eager.
It does no good for me to dissuade you since I am advertising free plans for gold equipment and the readership depends on an avid, energetic, somewhat fearless group, but my conscience harkens to me to say a word.
There are plenty of benches in Arizona. We have streams and rivers that have cut for millennia through thousands of feet of rock - witness the Salt River Canyon and the Grand Canyon. But please be careful and don't over reach. I have over reached on occasion and have mostly bad tales about it. Here is another one.
North and east of my home in Superior, Arizona are the mountains of the Tonto National Forest. Within this area are some pretty steep canyons, and it isn't  hard to stop on State Route 6o and look down where there are lots of benches. I got an idea that I thought an area might have gold (even though my county Pinal has produced less gold than most counties in Arizona). The slope was steep, but I thought from the way the rock looked that I could get down to a particular bench. So off I went.
There was some slipping involved, but I was able to minimize my slipping speed by digging in pretty deep before every step. I got to the top of the bench and sure enough, that is where my foot triggered a little rock slide.
A chunk broke off and my leg slipped down. I clung to the mountain and did not fall, but cut my leg on some stone. I lowered myself gingerly and found that once I was on the bench it felt much more narrow and harrowing than from the top?
There was no quartz - which I thought I saw- and I swept up some material and put it in a bag I could put around my neck. Then, after dealing with nervousness, I got back up to the edge of the bench and started to make my way back up. That, of course, again, was much harder and I had to be very careful after scaring myself. When I got back up to where I could move up to the road and my truck, I just shook my head. I was just plain stupid and convinced myself that something potentially dangerous was a piece of cake - and who on God's earth knows what going down a canyon on foot will result in? None of us does.

Benches can lure you into something you don't really want. Be careful that you really can climb the distance and that you will have good footing. It just takes a single piece of loose stuff and away you go. Ere on the side of conservatism - let the mountain climbers go for the high stuff. Oh, there was no gold in my sample. And a poor sample it was.
Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Gfe_-UCIuGk