The Midas Touch : Hobbies: “Thar’s gold in them thar hills!” Or at least, that’s what many modern Southern California prospectors believe.

Before loading up the mini-van with a gold pan, shovel and sluice box and driving up to California’s Mother Lode for a weekend of gold prospecting, remember that the precious yellow metal is as close as the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, above Azusa in the San Gabriel Mountains.

“When I tell people there’s still gold in California, they look at me kind of strange,” said Judy Shaw, owner of California Prospecting Co. in Buena Park. “When I tell them it’s right here in Southern California, they think I’m crazy.”

Dan Burress, manager of Camp Williams, a trailer park and campground about four miles up the East Fork, has no delusions about the gold he’s recovered from the often intemperate river.

“It’s funny you should have called,” Burress said, “but right now I’m looking at two pennyweight nuggets I took from the river this morning.”

While that amounts to only 1/10 of one troy ounce, it’s more than enough to give Burress, and scores of other rainbow-chasers like him, that common foothill malady known as “gold fever.”

One who has never quite shaken its grip is John Klein, actor and author of “How to Find Gold in Southern California” (Gem Press).

“Don’t tell me it’s not out there,” Klein said. “Any geologist worth the boots he’s wearing will tell you that 90% of the world’s gold remains in the ground.”

“Sure, it’s not like 100 years ago when you could practically bend over and pick it up. But when you get back into some of the gold-bearing canyons, you realize there’s no way miners could have got it all. Their recovery methods were too primitive.”

The gold may no longer glitter along the river banks of the East Fork, but for the gold seeker who can read dozens of books on the subject and learns how to leap past the dead ends and dry holes of his prospecting predecessors there is precious bounty yet to be discovered. Moreover, there are several prospecting clubs and mining supply stores in the Los Angeles area willing to share their most treasured secrets.

Panning for pay dirt doesn’t come without a price, however. Beginners will quickly learn that chapped knuckles, chipped fingernails, skinned knees and icy feet are all part of the prospecting experience.

Exacting an even heavier toll is the mental game Mother Nature plays with each miner.

“It becomes a competition between you and her,” Klein said. “She’s hiding it, and you’re trying to find it. I even find myself talking to the rocks.”

One thing Klein won’t discuss is how much gold he’s recovered in the last 30 years.

“No one is going to tell you that,” he said. “Sometimes it’s bacon and beans, and other times it’s steak.”

The historical and geographic center of the East Fork is Follows Camp, exactly halfway up the 6-mile East Fork road. Founded in 1862, it has been witness to the constant ravages of flood and fire and an endless succession of fortune hunters, hydraulic miners, outlaws and squatters. During the Depression years of the ‘30s, hundreds of unemployed men and their families moved into the area to pan, wash and dig for gold, rather than accept government charity.

Today its 80 acres are home to 230 permanent residents, eight mines, a restaurant, a volunteer fire department, a chapel, and, of course, the gold-producing East Fork.

“Our little world up here is a little better than your flatlands, in our opinion,” said Joe Davison, a former luxury-car dealer who now owns the resort.

The East Fork Mining & Supply store, run by Jim and Janice Marconi, is also on the grounds. On weekends, Jim takes small parties of beginning prospectors just south of the camp and teaches them basic gold-panning techniques. The session generally runs about three hours and costs $15 a person.

“Prospecting is one of the few hobbies that pays for itself,” said Janice, who works for one of the major airlines during the week. “You can start up for less than $100, which covers the cost of your gold pans, buckets, sluice box, shovels and pick.”

Another familiar face at Follows Camp is Murray Hirota, a champion gold panner who could take gold out of a stream using a Frisbee or a hubcap. A resident of Azusa for most of his 69 years, he often leads civic or church groups to a favorite nook or bend in the river, where he thinks the gold is hiding.

“When the kids see the first speck of gold in their pan, they’re hooked,” Hirota said.

At the same time, he counsels beginners that panning and sluicing for gold is an art requiring both patience and practice.

“First, you have to understand the properties of gold,” Hirota told a combined group of Indian Guides and Girl Scouts. “It’s a heavy, lazy mineral that looks for the easiest and most convenient place to settle or drop out along the stream. So, look for the gold where there are natural obstacles along the river, such as large rocks or boulders, tree roots, clumps of river grass or sand bars.”

He had another solid-gold tip: “Watch for crevices and depressions along the river that contain tin cans, rusty iron nails and lead fishing weights.”

He explained that such debris often provides a clue to the action of an earlier current and is a sign of a natural receptacle for the gold.

Once the placer (gold that is mixed with concentrations of sand, gravel, silt, rocks and boulders) has been located and retrieved, the overburden has to be washed or panned out.

There are several techniques in use, but they all aim to wash the lighter blond sand and pebbles over the lip of the pan, leaving only the heavier black sand and gold behind.

“Beginners are always afraid that they’re going to wash away all their gold,” Hirota said. “What they often forget is that gold is three times heavier than the black sand it’s found with.”

Lois Bolin, author of “Gold Fever and the Art of Panning and Sluicing” (Gem Guides), recommends that beginners practice at home by “salting” some sand and gravel with fishing weights and then washing away the debris until only the sinkers remain in the pan.

“When you can do this, you’re ready for the river and its gold,” she said.

An expert panner will be able to work 40 to 50 pans a day; a novice may grow arm-weary after handling a couple of pans.

“I like to break up my routine,” said Marshall Iwason, a fourth-grade teacher at Victoria Elementary School in South Gate who was working the north end of the river at Follows Camp. “I dig awhile, run some material through the sluice and then pan.”

Iwason struck gold on his first trip to Follows Camp. “I was working the bedrock over there,” he said, pointing to a large escarpment on the canyon’s south wall.

He didn’t mumble a word about his lucky strike and eagerly returned to the same location a week later.

“I dug into the mountain about three feet when I found an Army flashlight that looked like it just came off the store shelf,” he said. “Instead of having made a new find, I was probably just sifting through someone’s old tailings.”

To maximize his recovery of gold along the river, Iwason relies primarily on his sluice box, which can process 5 to 10 times more material than conventional gold-panning methods. The sluice acts like a miniature river, with metal lath, carpeting and riffles serving as man-made obstacles to imprison the gold.

“The trick is to angle the sluice on the river’s edge so that the current doesn’t move too fast, washing all your gold away, or too slow, which will clog the riffles and allow the tailings to pile up,” said Iwason, only two weeks removed from the one-day prospecting class he took at Golden West College in Huntington Beach.

Another gold mining operation popular at Follows Camp is high banking, which uses a motor and suction hose to siphon water and minerals from the river before sending the material through a sluice box. The sluice is usually located on a high bank, and the overburden is trapped in a shallow earthen dam to keep the river from silting up.

A resident of Follows Camp, who identifies himself simply as Maverick, typically moves about four to eight tons of rock, sand and gravel a day and usually recovers some plinkers and plunkers (small and large nuggets) for his labor.

Be warned that while Maverick may show you some of his gold if he’s out working on the river, don’t ask to hold or handle it.

“Never pick up another miner’s vial of gold, or stick your finger in his pan,” Maverick said. “He worked too hard to get it.”

One who probably knows more about the ebb and flow of the East Fork, as well as the course of human history along its banks, is Flo Flo Peck, who serves as curator of the Sedley Peck Memorial Museum at Follows Camp.

Her husband, Sedley, born in 1889, was often called the “mayor of Azusa Canyon” in deference to his popularity among canyon residents and his trunk full of notes, mementos, newspaper clippings and photographs that recounted the rich saga of the San Gabriel Canyon from Indian days to modern times.

Today, Flo Flo, who speaks seven languages and served as Gen. Eisenhower’s personal cook in Africa, where she met her journalist husband, carries on her spouse’s legacy by opening the museum on weekends from 2 to 4 p.m.

The museum, which displays many items from Sedley’s personal collection and a raffle full of mining memorabilia, is housed in the Henry C. Roberts store, the oldest structure in the San Gabriel Mountains. Admission is free.

Use of Follows Camp facilities is $3 for day visitors and $14 a couple for campers. Civic groups receive a special rate. For more information, call (818) 910-1100.

Follows Camp is 17 miles from the Azusa turnoff on the 210 Freeway. Proceed 14 miles north on Azusa Avenue (Highway 39), slowly winding up the canyon, until East Fork Road. Make a right, crossing the East Fork Bridge, and continue three miles to the camp.

Camp Williams, one mile farther up the road, is a thriving settlement with restaurant, store, trailer park and camping and picnic areas. Rates are $2 a person for day use, $12.50 a couple per night to camp. For more information, call (818) 910-1126.

For free access to the river, travel another mile to Oaks Picnic Grounds, a pine and cedar-shaded cove that is a favorite destination of prospectors, fishermen and hikers. Facilities include stoves and picnic tables.

About half a mile beyond Oaks Picnic Grounds is Cattle Canyon Bridge. To the left of the north bank of the river is Eldoradoville Picnic Grounds. Here the storied mining town of Eldoradoville, which boasted three stores and a half dozen saloons, was washed away in the great flood of 1862.

If you feel uneasy about searching for gold in unfamiliar surroundings, join a prospecting club first.

“For beginners, it may be best to go out with people who already know their way around,” said Bill Smillie, a member of the Prospecting Club of Southern California (PCSC) and editor of its newsletter, “Treasure News.”

PCSC, which bills itself as the oldest prospecting club in the world, has more than 400 members and a dozen claims for them to use.

Meetings are held the third Friday night of each month at 8 p.m. at the Woman’s Club of Downey, 9813 Paramount Blvd. in Downey.

Call Chris Carfrae, PCSC membership chairman, at (213) 869-8028, for a membership packet.

The Orange County Fortyniners meet the third Wednesday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at the Women’s Club of Garden Grove, at 9501 Chapman Ave. in Garden Grove. For more information, call club vice president John Sasser at (714) 960-6902.

The West End Prospectors Club meets the second Wednesday of each month at 7:25 p.m. at the Central Valley Fire District headquarters at 15380 San Bernardino Ave. in Fontana. For additional information, call Hy McCall at (714) 350-8131.

Membership fees for a club generally run about $25 a year, which helps defray expenses for monthly field trips, guest lecturers and staking out new claims.

Several mining and supply stores in town routinely offer field trips or panning demonstrations, while other outlets may simply point out a dozen or so reliable locations to go prospecting for gold.

What’s claimed to be the world’s largest mining supply and manufacturing outlet is Keene Engineering at 9330 Corbin Ave., Northridge, (818) 993-0411.

Some other area retail stores include Allied Services, 966 N. Main St., Orange, (714) 532-4300; Cal-Gold, 2569 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (818) 792-6161; California Prospecting Co., 9706 La Palma Ave., Buena Park, (714) 761-1846; and Fortyniner Mining Supply, 16238 Lakewood Blvd., Bellflower, (213) 925-2271.

Klein, who spends his weekends working a claim in the Mojave Desert’s El Paso Mountains near Randsburg, shrugged off his lifelong battle with gold fever.

“It’s a pleasant disease,” he said. “If all fevers were like that, it would be a wonderful world.”