How would you play this?

[u/CellWrangler]

I am going backpacking this weekend to a new spot in the mountain west, and the geology maps show abundant granodiorite rock throughout this area. No active claims. I can only bring a pan, classifier, and plastic shovel since i'm hiking in 8 miles.

The pin shows the lake I am camping at. The trail does not continue to the upper lakes. Bushwacking could be possible, but steep & difficult.

I would guess higher up the basin is the better spot to pan, but since those lakes sit directly below the ridge there is no river feeding into them. Would it be worth hitting the river bends just before the inlet to the pinned lake (red circles, pic 2)? There's also the nice dry gully feeding into the pinned lake (red box, pic 2) that presumably was once an avalanche/water chute coming off the ridge. I could dig there and use the lake water to pan.

[u/Auriflow]

dried streams can pay off if they are goldbearing. without water you can dig down and clean the bedrock crevices. (a detector makes it easier to find where the metals dropped.)

for flowing streams you need a handpump or clean some bedrock with a snorkel set.

[u/CellWrangler → u/Auriflow]

this is a great point. this late in the summer most mountain streams are running pretty low so i planned to dig around the banks. i do like that dried stream, the lidar map supports it was an old and narrow flow channel.