Chris hails from Nevada, a state with a rich history of gold mining in the western USA. He has more than 35 years of prospecting experience, panning his first little 3/16 inch flake from the historic mother lode country of California way back in 1975. He’s been staking mining claims and digging for gold all over the western USA ever since. Chris followed his interests on a more formal level and obtained a degree in Mine Engineering from the Mackey School of Mines in Reno, Nevada and then worked in the gold mining industry.
Chris Ralph prospecting for gold with a Minelab metal detector in the forests of California
Currently, Chris serves as the assistant editor of the ICMJ Prospecting and Mining Journal, an American magazine devoted to individual prospectors and small scale mining. He writes about various aspects of prospecting for gold, and his articles regularly address techniques and methods for detecting nuggets, especially the use of geologic knowledge to increase the quantity of gold prospectors can recover from their efforts. He has also appeared on various television programs, including “How the Earth Was Made” on cable TV’s History Channel, and once served as an expert witness on small scale mining, in court proceedings.
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| ICMJ Prospecting and Mining Journal | Fists Full of Gold by Chris Ralph |
Chris purchased his first metal detector in 1987, and his first Minelab metal detector, a GP extreme, in 2004. This pulse induction gold detector quickly became his “weapon of choice” for extracting nuggets from the rocky soils of Nevada and Northern California. He has discovered his own patches and recovered nuggets from known locations all across the Western US from Alaska through California and Nevada down into Arizona. Chris is currently swinging a GPX 5000 on all his prospecting journeys.
Gold Chris has found with his Minelab detector from one of his favorite patches in California’s mother lode country.
In 2010, Chris released “Fists Full of Gold” an encyclopedic book about gold prospecting that is meant to cover the knowledge prospectors need to go beyond the beginner level and succeed at finding their own gold. The book focuses on the skills a prospector needs to be successful in detecting nuggets time and time again. He also has his own website – Chris Ralph’s Prospecting Encyclopedia.
Chris says that he is looking forward to sharing with Treasure Talk blog readers the methods, techniques and knowledge they need to get their coil over a detectable nugget of natural gold.
Welcome to Treasure Talk Chris!
Brenton O’Brien
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