clear creek adventure, went to clear creek to test pan Options

[panner13]

had an hour to kill so I went to clear creek just west of tunnel one and through down a few test pans. got some small garnets. coulpe cool lokking stones and saw what looked like micro fine gold in my pan. not really sure but it moved last. anyway I was wondering, I hit mainly light sandy material and some small light gravel and I went about seven to eight inches deep behind a small boulder. or large rock I guess lol. how far down before descent black sand? can anyone say a rough guess.

[CP]

A nice quick tester trip, gotta' love those. Sounds like it was a fun time too.
If that is an actual blue garnet that would be a really sweet find for sure! Blue garnets are the rarest ones and are blue because of vanadium inclusions when the garnet is formed if I remember it correctly.
Unfortunately I believe Swizz is correct though, your find appears to be a piece of glass that's been tumbled in the creek polishing off the rough edges. An easy test would be the hardness test Swizz also suggested, you could use a piece of steel (file, knife or nail?) to carefully scratch at the surface (watch the fingers though).
If one of those can scratch the piece then it's more than likely for sure glass. If it's a garnet the steel will not scratch it since it's hardness would be harder than the steel.

Would be super sweet if it does turn out to be a garnet, looks very gemmy blue for cutting! Best of luck on it being one too, bet the ol' timers would be rolling over in their graves to find out they missed something like that back then even.

On digging depths behind the boulder, like the others said, depends on where and how big etc. but you'll generally want to be deeper than 7-8 inches most anytime along Clear creek. Especially in the water flow area as that top layer gets turned over with good turbulence nearly daily this time of year with melt off water flows. Where that soil has a chance to move that much is normally going to be just above where you'd find the gold settling out spot.
Make sense?

Keep us posted on blue find id too, would love to hear it is garnet.