The Gold Basin is a very beautiful and majestic desert landscape, geologically ripe conditions for gold bearing dirt everywhere.
Unfortunately, the entire area has been pounded for years. Sadly, the entire landscape has been so dramatically altered due to all of mining and digging that it's more than evident that 99.9% of the measurable gold has long ago been taken out of there. I can't say that one couldn't get extremely lucky still and somehow swing over some nugget missed by the thousands to have swung over, dug and processed the dirt before but I actually believe that one's odds are better in discovering a new source of gold, prospecting in some public land area not already known for gold.
I covered approximately a quarter of Bahde #10 ( mostly the NW corner) with a PI detector over 3 long days and didn't hit on anything. Heck, I hardly found any trash for that matter, I mean hardly any. If it weren't for the occasional falsing, I may have thought something was wrong with my detector.
With that said, it's so beautiful and geologically perfect that it's hard to not want to try it again. I am guessing this location is probably still okay for dry washing or panning, some kind of dirt collection for processing powder gold, but even that might end up being dissapointing with a very low return for a ton of effort. I did find 5 rocks that somehow apparently hadn't been washed and had some gold speckles on them (not enough to set my detector off). I also collected a couple of beautiful pieces of quartz that weigh around 15 lbs a piece. If I return (which I most likely will at some point), I will probably try the Hoppy Claims which are situated more in the center of the Basin. Anyways, overnight camping was good and I felt safe. There are a ton of cutouts along the dirt roads for setting up a campsite.