Welcome to the family Moustafa. If a claim is leased or owned by the GPAA you can prospect on it at any time as long as you bring your membership card and mining guide with you. If it belongs to one of the Chapters then you should contact that chapter. On the Community > Chapter part of this website there is contact information for al the chapters. I can not imagine any chapter saying a member of the GPAA was not welcome on there claims. And if you contact them you might get a member of that chapter to meet you and show you around. It has been my experience that GPAA and LDMA members and staff are always more than willing to teach and prospect with new people.

Tools is a good start. You are going to need a pan you like, so I recommend you try a few in your hands before your purchase one, and many of us have multiple we use. We will dump our black sands into one, our clean up in another, and do the body of work with another. You will need some buckets and classifiers and I recommend 3 gallon buckets so you are not forced to carry a lot of weight. Classifiers will all depend on the material you are working, so you might want a few different sizes from 1/4" to 1/8th". You of course need a snuffer bottle, a few collection bottles, and a shovel.

The debate is still out on whether Jet Dry or Dawn Dish Soap is better when panning in a tub, personally I think it depends on how it is used.

The last thing is knowing how to pan, and really getting good at it, it is the most important step. Whether or not you are using a pan and shovel, or have progressed to a dredge or sluice, in the end you are still going to pan your concentrates to extract the gold, so learning to pan well is paramount to any mining unless you have the money to invest in shaker tables or other means of doing it for you.

Welcome, and good prospecting.

thank you Tim thank you Benjamin for your quick reply i already made a list now pans classifier snuffer small bottles and shovel then call chapters in pa and go from there ,sounds like a plan thanks for help guys see you around and good luck for both of you

Depending on where you live in Pennsylvania, look at the surrounding states. The Buckeye Chapter in Ohio is very active and in addition to the GPAA claim in Ohiot hat chapter has others it works. The Frederick Maryland Chapter is also very active and they are finding gold in Northern and Western Maryland and Southwestern Pennsylvania. I have met folks from both chapters on common digs and they are great people and always willing to help out.