📅 Dates 2026: every Wednesday from July 1st to August 26th, from 14pm to 16:30pm.
ℹ️ From 8 years old / Adult: €20 – Child: €15
📞 Reservations at 06 03 05 26 48 or 06 82 86 41 43
In fine weather, Véronique et Anne LaureIn partnership with the Rumilly-Albanais Tourist Office, they offer introductory gold panning sessions in the Fier and Chéran rivers. This fun activity provides a wonderful opportunity to connect with these alpine rivers, home to significant biodiversity.
It seems that metropolitan France still conceals more than 50 tons of gold in its basement! In fact geologists are categorical, the yellow metal is everywhere on the territory, but dispersed in very small quantities. The Cheran and the Iron, the two rivers that cross Rumilly - Albanian, this territory located between Aix-les-Bains and Annecy, carry tiny particles, torn upstream from the rocks by erosion and transported by the current.
But no need to rush on the spot to explore the vein, baited by the gain, you would be quickly disappointed! If gold panning has been practiced in these gold-bearing rivers since Roman times, extraction has always remained on an artisanal scale, formerly making it possible to make some jewelry or for the lucky ones who come across a nugget, to put butter in the spinach. It takes hours of effort to remove from the bottom of rivers a gram of alluvial gold, whose particularity is to be close to 24 carats, therefore very pure!
Today it is not exceptional to come across a few amateur gold miners, for whom looking for gold in the Fier or the Chéran is a leisure activity, just like picking mushrooms or blueberries! For them, this hobby, which requires knowing how to read the river and being patient, is a good way to be in harmony with nature.
It is in this spirit that... discovery outings of'gold panning are offered during the summer season, when the gold spots, sand or gravel banks, the "placers" in gold panning jargon, are very accessible.
A family outing par excellence because there is no age to catch yellow fever!
