The Map Loop

The working loop for turning a district into a short list of stops: dots → heat → bare earth → streams → roads. Watch the 84 seconds of video, or read the same walk-through below it.

— or read it —

STEP 1

Start where you're going — dots and heat on

Pull up your ground with the gold occurrences and the favorability heat both on. You know this part from Reading the Heat: the dots say where gold was found, the glow says where the ground looks right.

A gold district on the topo with occurrence dots and the favorability heat glowing

STEP 2

Flip the base to bare earth

In Base, pick Bare earth. That's LiDAR — it strips the forest off, and the heat rides along on top of the naked ground.

The same district on bare-earth LiDAR with the heat still glowing

STEP 3

Read the old diggings

Zoom in on the hot ground. Those scratches, pits and benched cuts are the old-timers' diggings, still sitting there under the trees. Where they dug is where they found reason to dig.

Bare-earth close-up: a benched cut and rows of old prospect pits in the terrain

STEP 4

The power move: open it in 3D

Tap View in 3D and flip to bare earth there too. On the real mountain, the diggings stand up out of the hillside — members have picked out shafts cut straight into the side of a mountain this way.

3D bare-earth terrain of the district — the hot bowl glowing on the mountain with gold dots riding the ridges

STEP 5

Water: click a source, watch the drainage light up

Turn on Streams and click a gold source — the drainage below it lights up blue. That's the water that carried the gold downhill. Pick the creek you'd actually work.

The drainage below a clicked spot lit up bright blue over the heat

STEP 6

Roads: the way in

Flip on Roads and see how you'd get there — right down to the Forest Service road numbers.

Forest Service roads over the hot ground — NFS RD numbers readable

STEP 7

Navigate on the plain topo

When it's time to go, drop back to the topo. The elevation lines tell you what the drive and the walk really are, and the roads are marked plain. The topo is your navigating map — the heat already did its job.

The plain USGS topo with roads — the navigation view

Run the loop on your ground → More lessons