Prospecting along the Athabasca started around 1925. Several men did some panning and found a few grains of gold. It was enough to give them gold fever.
They build a large water wheel that as 12 feet in diameter and about 6 feet wide with nine buckets on it. They anchored it in the river where the water was deep enough for it to work freely. The current turned the wheel. The wheel as it came around was emptied into a trough which moved it to the sluice box on the bank. After all of this work there was not enough gold to make it pay so they abandoned the idea.
Another gentleman found gold at the top of the bank at the timber line. You pulled up the grass and shook it out into the gold pan. This was good for a while until they were digging into a 5 foot overburden to reach the gold. Wearing out a spade shovel a week again seemed like a lot of work for little pay so the claims were abandoned.
So yes, there is gold here. It is flour gold which means it is about the size of a grain of salt or smaller. We had tried panning and have gotten very little. Combining new environmental laws and a lot of hard work makes it not worth while.