Asking for collective advice from those well versed in the arcane art of moving one bit of river to another bit…
Situation: Ring lost in creek, location nailed down to one corner under a bluff where all the gravels move around with each heavy rain.
The guy has had me back there three times on scuba after each new flood but the novelty of meeting the decomposing cow and a very large aggressive eel each time is wearing off.
Need to work smarter.
Can’t get any machinery close to it, even with a long boom so looking at a dredge setup to make some serious hole and hopefully get down to and/or lift the ring to the surface…
Looking at around 50m³ of 20-50mm average gravel size, very mobile well rounded soft rock with a lot of fines, and a few big goolies for good measure.
Plenty of water, good current and maximum lift would be 2m.
In all seriousness, what would you guys recommend as a sheer bulk lifting configuration? Not worried about the minutiae and optimisation needed for maximum gold recovery - just looking to blow several tonnes of gravel to the surface into the shallows downstream.
Is it doable at this scale with portable gear?
Appreciate any advice
This guy is serious about recovering his ring.