Lanny

That's a beautiful nugget. They just don't grow them that size where I'm at. 

Thanks for posting the picture, and all the best,

Lanny

Absolutely beautiful find!

Nicely done, and all the best,

Lanny

Can you smell the rice cooking?

I recall being far to the north in a historic gold field, and I had the opportunity to have a chat with a Sourdough (a seasoned miner from the area) about his claim. He took me to a spot one day and told me a most interesting tale.

However, before I relate his story, I’ll describe its location. It was far down in the bottom of a secluded valley. Steep, black-walled mountains rose on either side, and courageous growths of spruce and fur clung to the steep slopes, with birch, poplar and aspen peppering the evergreens lower down. Dark draws inhabited by deeper areas of gloom gave birth to swiftly flowing streams that emptied into the valley. From these gulches, the icy, ghostly breath of unseen currents of air rushed forth to randomly lift the hair, before chilling the neck and spine. Indeed, an eerie atmosphere pervaded that sullen spot of murky shadows where the long dead miners of some 150-years past had chased the gold to make their fortunes, or to lose their lives.

On a gentle slop above long rows and piles of cobble stacks, the remnants of a massive hand-workings, the miner’s cabin was situated. It was an ancient cabin, one in continual use since the original gold rush, the cabin perpetually maintained and rebuilt until it was later used by a member of the North West Mounted police as a retirement refuge. Later, it was acquired by Glen the miner. Heavy logs formed the base of the walls, with smaller logs progressing up the sides, and there were only two windows, one big enough to allow light to enter, and one small one which served as a lookout. The log ends were all beautifully axe cut to fit and lock together, and there was an addition on the back of the main cabin that housed a food storage and washing area. The doors were heavy and sturdily built as grizzly and black bears frequently visited the area. (I have a story somewhere about the attack on Glen’s cabin by an enraged grizzly, quite the hair-raising tale he told me of his experience that truly made my blood run cold.)

A path led down from the slope to a long draw that then led to a bedrock rise, with the draw, or gulch, continuing upward. On the other side of the bedrock rise a fast-flowing creek could be heard. The bedrock rise continued to climb as it joined the shoulder of the mountain. There was a trail that led up the non-creek side of that shoulder, and I headed off on foot to look the area over.

The first thing I noticed, as I looked down into the draw from the trail, were the sunken places. There were five large areas where the earth had slumped, with smaller areas running perpendicular to the gulch that were still at the original level. This of course spiked my curiosity.

When I returned from my hike, Glen the miner was at his cabin, and we had a chat.

He started in with a bit of history of the area. That the place had been extensively hand-mined I had already seen; that it was shallow to bedrock in many places was also obvious. What he filled me in on was that the early miners were after the easy, shallow gold, and they had done very well, with many ounces of coarse gold quickly gathered from the shallow diggings. But, as was the common case in the 1800’s, there was always the news of new gold rush farther to the north where the gold was equally shallow, easier to get to, so the miners that loved the quick gold soon left to chase other strikes. That left the deeper gold that required organized groups of people with the necessary capital to start up larger operations.

Then, he told me about the arrival of the Chinese miners in the area. They followed the gold rushes and came in after the other miners had had creamed the shallow gold and had either abandoned their claims or were looking to sell cheaply. The Chinese, he said, were not afraid of hard work, and moreover, many of them did not have a choice of whether they liked hard work or not due to being indentured laborers, a form of slavery so to speak, until they had paid off the Tong for their debt to the organization. Glen went on to explain how the Chinese used a lot of opium during their miserable existence, and he told me of bottle hunters that had come a few years before my arrival and of their efforts in trash dumps to recover the precious little bottles. He also told me of the tiny log huts the miners lived in, short-walled on purpose as they were easier to heat during the brutal winters. In addition, he told me of the superstitions the Chinese were bound to, mysterious ones that propelled their efforts.

Then, he took me on a walk.

The bedrock rise that I’ve already mentioned was where he took me, but he walked me over closer to the face where there was a bit of a fold, and that fold hid from view the entrance to a tunnel, but one that he had caved in with is heavy equipment as it led to a large area of unsafe underground workings, ones the Chinese had excavated by hand. I then told him about my upslope hike, and of seeing the collapsed areas, and he confirmed that all of that long draw was a continuation of the original Chinese workings. He elaborated that the Chinese had struck an ancient channel by cutting below it through the solid rock so they could hit the base of the channel where the coarse gold was trapped. A lot of trapped water had flowed when they punched through the last of the bedrock, but they had cut the tunnel on purpose so it would drain the ancient water down and away before they went to work.

The gold was coarse, and they took out a lot of good gold over several years, but then one day the horrific happened, the roof of the tunnel, off on one side excavation of the gulch, collapsed, killing several Chinese. They left the area . . . (This is not an isolated incident, and I have read about this in other gold rush accounts, bad Josh/Joss [bad luck] was something they didn’t mess with, and the area was forever cursed to them.)

When Glen first acquired the claim, he had gone into the tunnel mouth, and he’d taken samples from the floor of the tunnel. The buckets of dirt he’d recovered were full of pickers! To prove this, he gave a jar of the dirt for later panning, and it was indeed loaded with gold!!

So, his interesting tale had answered my questions about the sunken areas I’d seen on my walk, and I could see just how extensive the underground workings were that the Chinese had driven up that gulch from the size of the collapsed areas. Those determined miners had really got the job done, regardless of their motivations.

As we were leaving the tunnel mouth, Glen turned to me and said, “Can you smell the rice cooking?”

I said, “What?”

He said again, “Can you smell the rice cooking?”

I answered, “No, can you?”

He then told me that on certain days, when the wind was just right, he could smell the scent of rice cooking as it drifted down to the cabin from the gulch. He didn’t smile or joke in any way, and the gloomy setting of the area, with its accompanying tragedy, put nothing but a large punctuation mark on his story.

All the best,

Lanny

This is great information to know as when I finally quit my day job so I can chase the gold on my own terms, I'll be visiting Yuma in the wintertime to get away from our northern cold.

Thanks for the information, for the pictures as well, and all the best,

Lanny

Hi Fred, always great to hear from you, and thanks for the question.

The main reason, right now, is that I'm on good gold as well as gold in quantity where I'm at. In addition, the gold is much closer, which is always a good thing, six times closer in fact.

Another reason is the nature of the trip to get to that remote gold field: brutal roads, the need to dodge logging trucks that in no way can stop if I wander into their path or suddenly emerge from the choking dust (after a tight curve, or a dip or rise in the road, for instance) that constantly covers the roads in the summer, and then there's the numerous flat tires caused by the razor sharp bits of grader blade added to the road's surface from maintaining the roads. In addition there's the bears and the bugs: the deadly B's. 

However, the gold is very coarse in that area, and believe it or not, I will be making a return trip one day when I retire and get the opportunity to mount another expedition as I know of several places (other than the one I wrote about) where there's good gold to be found with the detectors, ones shown to me by my mining friends as they pried the pickers from the bedrock cracks with screwdrivers! (Now, that's low tech. gold gettin' equipment!) They showed me some great draws and gulches (screwdriver gold) where the old-timers worked by hand, places that are now overgrown, ones shallow to bedrock, and with what I've learned about detecting since I left that area, and with the advancements in detecting technology since I left the region, I'll have a good time chasing that sassy northern gold.

Oh, and on a side note, I saw the gold the river snipers (floating the water with snorkel, mask, and sniping tools) were getting from bedrock cracks, and that's something I'm much better at now too. (The truly great thing to keep that gold safe up there is that there's only a tiny resident population, perhaps 30 people in many hundreds of square miles.)

Hope the answer wasn't too long, and thanks for your question,

Lanny

One of King Midas' tears? Didn't know he was in Australia, but the proof is in his golden tear you've recovered.

Cool find, and all the best,

Lanny

This post falls into the category of things that haunt us, the lost opportunities, the unknowns that make us wish we'd have done something different, that we’d have paid more attention at the time, or that we’d have made a return trip . . .

I know of a spot that I have to get back to one day where they were running the material so fast they were pushing nuggets over the end of the sluice boxes, and all of that material ran under a road across jagged bedrock, so those nuggets will still be there.

That same outfit had a hopper that had a leak, and it used to ooze out material from one side. These guys were getting so much gold, they knew about the leak, and they knew they were pushing gold over the end of the sluices, but the season up north is short, and the material was incredibly rich, so they were running flat out to get as much as quickly as they could. Furthermore, because they were getting so much gold, they wound up not caring about what they’d lost.

From my own experience, I know the gold was left at the site after they pulled their equipment out as I panned a few spots, and talk about pickers! That country is known for coarse gold. I gathered up a couple of five-gallon buckets for my son to pan, and what a party he had running those buckets through a little river sluice. There was lots of dirt left at the site of that hopper too. But, once again, a person would have to know exactly where to look, and to the casual observer, they'd never have a clue as to what had taken place there in the past.
However, I’ll add a few more details about that abandoned area, and the wash-plant, as well as a bit about the crew and the deposition of gold in their mining cut.

After removing about forty feet of overburden (boulder clay: thick glacial clay salted with boulders), the ancient channel was finally exposed, with lots of orange material (orange is a good sign of the heavy mineralization that runs with the gold in ancient channels) in the bottom six feet of material that was sitting tight on bedrock. Moreover, getting to the bedrock had exposed a large section of tunnel where the old-timers had worked extensively, and as those Sourdoughs did all of that underground, back-breaking work by hand, it was a good sign that we might have a great chance to hit some good gold as well, and we sure did.

After the modern miners used the excavator to take the orange material out, and there was only bare bedrock left, I got invited into the pit to have a look at the side-wall of the channel, the area composing the ancient stream material that was still buried under all of the previously mentioned overburden. It was a sight I'll never forget.

The excavator operator (who was also the mine owner) walked me in from the north end of the cut, and he said, "I've never seen this before. Come take a look."

He walked me over to where the cleaned bedrock met the wall, and then he started pointing out nuggets in the wall! You just can't make this stuff up!!

About a foot off of the bedrock, and all along the length of the cut, we walked along flicking out multi-gram nuggets from the side wall into a pan!! I'd certainly never seen anything like it before, and I haven't seen anything remotely close to that amazing sight since.

The owner had to go to town for machinery parts, and the second-in-command wanted to yard as much through the wash-plant as quickly as possible, but not having been in the game as long as the owner, he overfed the plant, because when they shut it down, the twin sluices were yellow from top to bottom with nuggets!! That's another sight I haven't seen since, and one you should never see if you're running the plant properly. Furthermore, that's why the nuggets went over the end of the sluice with the discharge water, getting trapped on the broken bedrock as the water rushed under the road to fall into the waiting settling pond, and nobody ever tried to recover them as the whole outfit left at the end of the season and none of them returned (me included).

However, as I said earlier, they got so much gold everyone was happy regardless. Now, that’s the kind of gold mining problem I’d love to have in the future, the issue of pushing nuggets over the end of the sluice but not bothering to recover them because the overall take was so rich!

All the best,

Lanny

Entertaining little thread. 

Thanks guys, and all the best,

Lanny

On 4/4/2019 at 9:02 AM, Mark Gillespie said:

I wonder if that would apply to huge pieces of quartz's too?

Most of the hills in area have outcrops of quartz.

 

If it's the right kind of quartz, that for the area is known to hold detectable gold, then yes.

All the best,

Lanny

Thanks for dropping in Mark, and if I'm in gold country whenever I find previously worked bedrock (from the 1800's, the 1930's, or later, right up until yesterday), I always check it with the detector. Almost always, something seems to get left behind.

All the best,

Lanny

3 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

Nice nugget Bob! Ah, the good old days... from my last visit to Ganes Creek...

36 nuggets and 2.86 ounces total

Wow! Beautiful haul!!

All the best,

Lanny

4 hours ago, Lunk said:

I’ve purchased from Gerry’s Metal Detectors for many years before he asked me to join his team of detector training staff, and he always went above and beyond with exceptional customer service. No matter what type of detecting you have in mind, whether it be coin, relic, jewelry, cache, beach, gold nuggets or meteorites, Gerry will quickly find the detector that’s right for you...he’s like the custom tailor of metal detecting!?

Nice tribute to Gerry, seems like a great guy, and from what I've seen, he's very willing to help people out too.

I'd love to meet him some day.

All the best,

Lanny

7 hours ago, AllenJ said:

I'm thinking I need to return my Nugget scoops and get new ones, to date they have only scoop one nugget between them.  They must be defective, right? ?

Yes, that must be it. I'd order some new ones that are guaranteed for at least ten finds, then go from there when you decide to reorder or not.?

All the best, 

Lanny

Nothing better to be addicted to.

Welcome to the bug or the virus that drives us.

All the best,

Lanny

Scoops most of the time, sometimes just sift and sort by hand.

However, when detecting an area with lots of nuggets, scoops only and the dirt gets tossed into the gold pans to save time by panning everything down at the end of the day, or if I have a gold panner along (like, my wife), she just keeps panning the scoop's contents for me, and that saves even more time. (This scoop to the pan system happens infrequently compared to scoop only or sift and sort; the scoop to pan only happens when I'm in a previously minded section of bedrock and I have a limited amount of time to cover as much bedrock as quickly as I can.)

All the best,

Lanny

All the best on your entire adventure. I can only wish . . .

However, having said that, diving the Great Barrier Reef is still on the bucket list, and so is swinging a coil to chase some Aussie gold, so I'll not say never.

All the best, truly, 

Lanny

Looks like a keeper to me.

Nice find, and all the best,

Lanny

Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Finale

Well, I know it’s hard to believe, but it took us a while to get back to sleep after the wild horse encounter. So, we bucked up our spirits by telling far less scary stories about real bear encounters, most-likely due to shock, and eventually we went back to sleep.

We awoke the next morning to a beautiful, clear day.

After breakfast, we went to the truck and took out our metal detectors. We connected the batteries and then walked a few steps away to conduct some tests. My machine worked flawlessly. So, I tossed me test nugget on the ground (glued to an old Golden Nugget poker chip) and got a nice low-high-low sound.

All at once I heard the most awful screeching. I figured my partner passed his coil too close to the truck, all of that metal overloading his circuits, the noise blasting from his speaker . . . However, as I turned to look, I saw a blur disappear into the tent. Nope, not the detector at all, my partner simply forgot his bug spray.

Well, we went out that day and dug all kinds of square nails (factory ones and hand-made ones too), bits of lead, pieces of tin, iron wire, copper wire, shell casings, bullet lead, but no nuggets. We came home dog-tired and ready for bed. Up north, it’s possible to get in fourteen or more hours of detecting in a day if the weather’s good, and we’d put in lots of hours of swinging the coils that day.

I actually fell asleep before my partner that night, as he was updating his little spiral-bound notebook he always carries in his front pocket (a hold-over from his ranching days). Anyway, around midnight (I sleep with my watch on), something woke me. At first, all I heard was a faint scuffing noise, off in the distance, accompanied by a human voice, and then the words started to sink in.

Someone approaching from downstream was weaving a tapestry of obscenity unlike anything I’d ever heard. He was a true master of the art. As he got closer, his cussing intensified, but then he sped past the tent. Swearing like a sailor the entire time, he faded away in the distance to be heard no more.

My partner slept through the entire event, blissfully unaware of the fine performance he’d missed. On the other hand, I was quite astounded by the profane sermon, but eventually I fell asleep.

Several hours later, I woke again to familiar sounds in the darkness.

The same scuffing noise, the same colorful language returned from the opposite direction! The volume increased until the midnight cusser sped by the tent, the words drifting off in the distance. Other than being annoyed at losing some sleep, I was ready to write it off as an odd, once-in-a-lifetime performance.

It was not!

(The next morning, I could clearly see bicycle tracks in the dust on the road. That explained the hurried arrival and departure speed of our midnight caller.)

The next night, at the same time, the northern preacher repeated his sermon in all its glory. Hearing his approach, I woke my buddy so he could witness the event. Several hours later, I woke my partner to enjoy the return soliloquy. (However, he seemed a bit cranky I’d woke him up.)

The next night, I was sound asleep, yet my partner woke me to listen to those midnight verses. (I wonder why he did that?) Moreover, for the return performance, my partner woke me yet again. (Karma? Or, was it only revenge?)

The next morning, we followed the preacher’s bicycle tracks for miles up the road until they crossed a bridge over a stream. We quit following them at that point, as it was obvious he traveled extensively at night, spreading his wilderness sermon far and wide.

That night, he returned again, with renewed energy and volume in his delivery, but I was ready to do something about it.

(Remember that halogen flashlight, the one that could turn bears into horses? Well, I devised a plan to use its blazing white light to full advantage.)

As he approached, I quietly unzipped the front of the tent, and when he was alongside the tent, I gave him the full halogen blast! He jerked on his bike as if he’d been pole-axed!! His head snapped up, his one hand clawed the air to fend off the impending blindness, but it was too late.

Losing control as he raised his hand, the gravel hooked his front tire, and off he shot at right angles to the road, launching gloriously into the crisp night air, shooting down the embankment, flying through a dense thicket of alders, to plunge into the knee deep water of the creek.

My partner wondered if the bicyclist might need some help. However, I assured him that anyone that could swear like that didn’t need any help with their cussing . . .

To prove my point, we heard some strangled cries, some renewed cussing that surpassed anything we’d heard to date, followed by a great deal of splashing water, the sound of many branches breaking, and then, by the halogen beam, we spotted him emerging from the gloom. Mounting his metallic steed, and with many squishy sounds, he rode off down the road, utterly speechless, but likely thoughtful.

We crawled back under the blankets, and were not awakened by a return performance later that night, or any other night.


Somehow, I’d found a solution to those midnight sermons.

Somehow, indeed.

All the best,

Lanny

(Alder Gulch, Virginia City Montana is where I first got bit! I wrote these lines in memory of that fateful day.)


The Alder Gulch Virus, or, Why I Chase The Gold

In days gone by, when just a lad
My sister’s spouse did somethin’ bad
A ghostly town we went to see,
That lit a fire within me . . .

Virginia City’s driving force
Was mining gold. You knew of course
That Henry Plummer ruled that town
‘Til vigilantes brought him down.

But his demise is not my goal,
A bug bit me to take its toll.
It bred a fever inside me,
Away down south, in Montanny.

What plague is that, you’ll likely say,
That sickened me that fateful day?
A golden fever, spread in me
And since that day, I ain’t been free.

The bug that bit that special day,
Infected me in every way.
Just let me say, there ain’t no pill,
To cure that sassy fever’s ill.

I’ve tried to lick it, ain’t no fun
That potent fever’s always won.
It’s driven me around the bend,
Up mountain streams, to canyon’s end.

It’s made me search in arctic climes
And in the desert many times.
But nothin’ ever seems to kill
My golden fever’s iron will.

But should I cure it? What the heck?
There’s tougher ways to stretch one’s neck!
There’s booze and parties, speed and weed;
There’s lust and pride. There’s crime and greed.

But blast it all, it seems to me 
It ain’t the gold that’s drivin’ me.
The lookin’ for it’s got me hooked
That’s why my fevered brain is cooked.

All the best,

Lanny

Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Part 3

Confronting the terror.

During this paralytic horror, my only comfort was the assailants were on the same side of the tent as my dozing partner. However, my shameless security in using my partner as a human shield vanished when one of the snorting monsters shifted itself to the back of the tent (right where our heads were) as it began to tear at the grass! I was no longer safe. A two-pronged attack is always harder to defend against. Imagine my heightened distress when another one started ripping up grass at the front of the tent! These attackers were definitely not browsing deer. The weight of these assassins caused the ground to shudder as they moved. Whatever they were, they were huge.

Having nothing to lose now, I reached over and shook my partner. He came awake with a slurping gurgle, and he asked me if he’d been snoring again. I shook my head, but at the sound of his voice, the snorting, snuffling, and tearing of grass immediately halted. The night was deathly still. Using agitated hand signs, I relayed my concerns.

From under my pillow, I flicked on a tiny penlight, then made my way to the front of the tent where I kept a large, halogen flashlight. As I picked it up, the snorting, snuffling and tearing started again. Turning around to check on my partner’s progress, my light lit his panicked, bulging eyes. His hair stood on end! (It didn’t matter it always looked that way; it was perfect for the mood at that moment.) Rushing past me, he flew to the foot of the bed and yanked his 30-30 from its scabbard. The new noises he made caused the outside noises to stop once more.

Gathering all of my courage, then nodding to each other to be ready, I unzipped the front of the tent, and we stepped outside.

I quickly panned my bright halogen beam left and right. Multiple, malevolent eyes were instantly lit in the darkness. I was thunderstruck by their number. We were besieged by an invasion force; evil eyes blazed hotly in the boreal darkness. And then, those demonic eyes, in those huge heads, jerked up from the ground. Massive blasts of exhaled, steamy breath, fogged, and then filled the air.

Regardless of the horror, and somehow finding a reserve of inner strength, I continued moving the light and fully illuminated that host of bodies. I watched in transformed terror as the nocturnal beasts’ claws turned to hooves, their imagined humps to manes, until as one, with a great blowing and snorting, off they all ran.

I have never been so terrified by a herd of wild horses.

We found out the next day that throughout the summer there was a herd that worked its way up and down the connected series of canyons above and below where we were camped.

Of course we both had a good laugh (a hysterical, counterfeit kind of a laugh for sure), and we both uttered macho statements about how silly it was to get all worked up about bears, when in reality it was only horses after all. Clearly, it was the kind of jittery conversation that accompanies the complete and utter loss of every shred of manly dignity.

Oh, the everlasting shame . . .

All the best,

Lanny

(P.S. In the last instalment of this “Tales From The Flats” series, I will relate another disturbing black and midnight event that plagued our seemingly cursed sleep.)

Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Part 2

Things that go “snort” in the night.


After our largely sleepless night, the next day we set about cutting firewood, and we went off in search of drinking water (we even located a local spring of pure water whose taste finished with a little buzz on the tongue, great stuff indeed).

Returning to camp and firing up the stove to get rid of the chill in the tent (there was ice on the fire bucket water in the corner), and after cooking grub on the stove, we ate a hearty breakfast, layered ourselves with bug-dope, then took the quad for a ride to wind our way along the twisting, bumpy road that headed up the canyon. The day was calm, the sky a pristine blue. Yellow and purple flowers grew thickly along the sides of the road. Lazy bumblebees went from flower to flower performing their unpredictable aerobatics. Butterflies and humming birds busily fed among the same blossoms. In addition, the ageless melodies of colourful songbirds filled the crisp mountain air. As a punctuation mark to all of this, the invigorating smell of new-growth pine was everywhere.

Steadily climbing in elevation, we worked our way toward the upstream placer workings, ancient and modern. When we saw a current site, we took the time to introduce ourselves to the miners. In this way, we discovered two operations just off the main logging road, with a total of eight crew members working at each. Both operations exposed old drift mines from the 1800’s and the 1930’s, revealing a fascinating series of dark tunnels and opened rooms.

The larger of the two placer operations struck pay running six grams of gold to the yard, with that amount increasing to eight grams to the yard on bedrock (the old rule about gold being on bedrock held true at these operations). The gold was coarse, nuggets in the half ounce to ounce and a half range were retrieved. Being bumpy and rough, the gold had lots of character, and with the channel material removed, it was bedded in graphite schist or slate formations.

The other operation was a bit smaller, their equipment was older, so they spent a lot of time repairing their equipment we were told. However, they were located where several ancient channels intertwined and intersected, and this formation produced gorgeous gold from their mine as well. They were very friendly and even shut down their wash-plant and excavation machinery to chat with us (not a lot of visitors in that remote area).

Both mining ventures invited us to detect their claims whenever we wished! What a shock, but a good one. We only had to inform them of our finds, and if we honoured their show-and-tell request, they didn't want any of the gold, very nice neighbors indeed! (We went home with fantastic, chunky nuggets from that trip thanks to them.)

Later, on a branch leading off from the main logging road, we came across a fellow in his late 70’s patiently working a small-scale operation. The old-timer was working a pay zone, dark gray in colour, six feet thick above a lighter-coloured layer of dirt resting on the bedrock (Strangely there was no gold on the bedrock whatsoever!). However, the gold he was getting was magnificent; some of it was crystalline, and all of it was coarse.

We learned quickly in that new region that the pay-layers had to be found and worked where they were, not where we thought they should be. We had to forget some of our previous learning, open our minds, and accept new inputs, strategies, and gold-deposition thinking. The old notion that the best gold was found on bedrock only was tossed out, and new facts were accepted.

That night before closing our eyes, my partner, probably still suffering from post-traumatic whistle-shock, told me, “You know, my wife always makes me turn on my side when I snore at home. She says it stops me cold.” And, with that, he turned on his side. (I did wonder why he’d kept this from me the night before.) With all quiet, I drifted peacefully off to sleep . . .

Later however, my conscious mind alerted my ever-alert subconscious that all was not right with the world. Something was once more amiss. Listening carefully, I noted that my partner was still as quiet as a sleeping newborn. Because of this, I was somewhat puzzled as to why I was awake. Thinking perhaps my subconscious was a bit overactive from the previous night’s debacle, I was just drifting off when I clearly heard what my subconscious had heard.

“Snort—snuffle!”

Icy fingers skittered up my spine; my body began to contract itself into its smallest form. Visions of Timothy Treadwell danced in my head. (Tent walls offer no protection from large, apex predators.) Then something big struck one of the tent’s guy ropes, and it reverberated with a loud twang. This contact with the rope produced an alarmed snort, followed quickly by several others. My brain’s alert level shot to the top of the scale, as we were in remote country filled with blacks and grizzlies. To complicate matters, it was certain there were multiple somethings out there in the dark.

To be continued:

All the best,

Lanny

Flashback Series: Tales From The Flat, Part 1

Oh, the things we discover when we camp with someone for the first time . . .

In the 1990’s, I used to chase the gold a long, long ways north and west of where I currently live, and the last section of the journey was a series of rough logging roads that was hard on vehicles and on nerves (if you’ve ever almost been killed by a logging truck, you know of what I speak).

After our arduous journey, we selected a spot where some of the original gold rush miners from the 1870’s had camped. It was a nice level spot with a creek on one side and the river on the other, the river about 30 feet down on the left, the creek located in a gentle draw on the right.

We went through the tiring process of unloading everything from the back of the truck, so that we could set up the outfitter’s wall tent. Once we’d put together a portion of the steel inner-frame, we hauled the white canvas up over the sidewall and roof supports. Next, I ran inside to lift up the remaining sidewall struts and poles, in order to set up, adjust, and stabilize the wall legs while my partner steadied the tent. After our canvas home was up, we covered the whole thing with a massive silver tarp as extra protection from the sudden downpours that frequently occur in those remote mountains. Then, we secured the tarp and the tent walls with ropes and stakes, and lastly, set up our mattresses, bedding, and the wood-burning stove my partner had manufactured himself (he used to supply the GPAA with stoves for their Alaska trips).

We set up our base-camp on the flat treed area of older growth spruce, fur, white-barked birch, aspen, complimented by (along the banks of the bordering creek) thick stands of green-leafed willows and alders. Nestled amongst the trees, here and there, were several old log cabins, none of them inhabited, and an abandoned Hudson’s Bay store. However, all possessed great character. Likely each structure had many tales to tell, being located in such a rich, storied goldfield, one where the Argonauts had chased the gold for well over a hundred and twenty years. On a related note, the old road we had journeyed in on ran right through our camping flat, and was still in use by the locals to get to the upper lakes for fishing, and to get upstream to their mining claims.

With the camp set up, I finally felt how truly hammered I was from lack of sleep, adrenaline drop, and road exhaustion, brought on by sixteen straight hours of night and day travel on terrible roads, plus near-death encounters with logging trucks! As the long summer night was beginning to wane, all I wanted to do was crawl into my sleeping bag and drift off to blissful sleep. That is what I wanted, but that is not what happened . . .

A long, restful sleep was not to be that first night. Even though I fell asleep easily, I was soon jarred from my dreams to discover something shocking about my partner: his snoring alternated somewhere between the noise of a fully-revved chainsaw, to that of a fully engaged Jake-Brake (engine ******er brake) on a semi-trailer! I tried pushing on his air mattress to interrupt his screeching midnight symphony, but he only snorted, made puckering and slurping sounds, and then hurried on to compose whole new measures to his masterpiece.

Mercifully, my brain came to my rescue: I remembered hearing somewhere that a sudden, loud noise could jar a person from their deep-sleep snoring, leaving them in a lighter state of sleep with no snoring. In desperation, I whistled as loud as I could. (I can perform a loud, ear-splitting whistle on command, call my horses in from half a mile) My partner shot bolt upright in his sleeping bag, wildly scanning every corner of the tent, completely unaware of what had torn him from his sleep. I lay there as quiet and motionless as death, eyes closed, the perfect picture of an unconscious tent mate. As nothing was amiss in the tent, he quickly settled down to drift off to a soundless sleep.

For about fifteen minutes . . .

After that short reprieve, he launched into a whole new musical composition whose noise surpassed his former cruel and unnatural level! I genuinely felt he would wake the long-dead miners in the historic cemetery two blocks away. So, I whistled again, with a renewed, desperate effort. Once more, he sat bolt upright, and again, I remained motionless and silent. This time, the snoring ceased for the night, and I slept like the dead in the cemetery two blocks distant.

Upon waking the next morning, my partner was in a reflective mood. It took him a bit of time to come out and state what was perplexing him so deeply. After fidgeting a bit, he said, “Do you realize you whistle in your sleep? You woke me up last night, and I just couldn’t get back to sleep!”

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

All the best,

Lanny

7 hours ago, fredmason said:

I don't think you are exaggerating at all- well maybe a little.

Your story reminded me of my only trip to Moore Creek in 2005 , when Steve had opened it...

I had brand new prescription eye glasses on that day as I wandered down the trail.  As I was detecting along and looking down, I ran smack into a nest of paper-wasps.  They are not nearly as fierce as meat-bees, but bad enough. When I realized what the buzzing and stinging was all about I started slapping and moving somewhere...away. I got away in one direction but my new glasses went some where else-I know not where. I never did find them...I don't think any one else did either.

Thanks for the entertaining stories

fred

 

Fred, thanks for sharing your story. I recall an ear-swatting, mad dash away from wasps one day. It was my partner that got nailed by them, and I was standing right beside him when he tore out a rotten stump that was full of the nasty little beasts. For some reason, they only had the hate on for him, so I kept swatting them off his ears with my gloves, but they sure had a scent trail painted on him, and his ears were mighty sore after all of the action died down.

All the best, and thanks for your kind words too,

Lanny

On 3/22/2019 at 2:25 PM, kiwijw said:

Lanny....is that chunk of sassy yellow gold still there?? 

JW 

JW, I sure couldn't get to it, and after my kite imitation, I had no desire to try for it again. Plus, after I finished dredging that spot to the right of the chute (we hit the boards from an old collapsed wing dam and the flake gold had settled on it in a nice layer, pretty fun dredging that!), we moved upstream to what I can only describe as a short waterfall where I hit some nuggets, but then the force of the water coming over the fall started to skip boulders into the hole, so had to stop working there as well, but I sure was working an interesting crack with nuggets in it right before the rocks started skipping in, and the last place I worked before I abandoned the hole there were like steps in the bedrock with pockets of compacted material, and there was a beautiful nugget in one of those little pockets; I've still got it.

I really miss dredging, miss seeing the trout feed, miss the clear water, miss pulling nuggets and pickers out of the bedrock with hemostats (like surgical pliers that lock, great way to make sure you don't lose your grip on a nugget) and tweezers. Nothing like having the sun over your shoulder, being down about ten feet, vacuuming off the overburden close on bedrock to then expose the bedrock, and all at once to see that gold winking back at you, nothing like it!!

All the best,

Lanny

Bugs, Blood and Gold: Tales from the North. 

(This is prospecting humour, with mild fiction, but sadly, based in reality.)

I have to talk about a perplexing, maddening phenomenon that occurs ever year in the summertime: hundreds of prospectors line up to donate blood! On the surface, this appears to be quite humanitarian. However, this is no lineup at a medical facility to give blood, but a gathering that happens only in northern forests, far from the soft, cultured masses of pampered urban dwellers. 

This annual, rather insane event must serve as a ritual cleansing, one rooted in superstition and myth, for it is part of the pilgrimage that gold-seekers make during the warmer months. The cost of the trek is not tallied in cash however, but it is paid in blood, donated so to speak to the winged vampires of the north.

In contrast to this savage blood-letting, try to imagine an area of consummate beauty, a peaceful, tranquil region where pine, cedar, tamarack, fir, birch, aspen and balsam trees flourish. Imagine as well a forest floor lush with the softness of mosses and undergrowth. In the mountain meadows try to see hummingbirds and butterflies flitting from flower to flower, try to hear a choir of songbirds singing their age-old symphonies. In addition, visualize a place where crystal streams run free and unhindered, where lakes teem with trout, grayling, and arctic char. Moreover, by gazing into the distance, try to comprehend the endless rolling carpet of mountain greenness that undulates until it blends with a perfect blue horizon. 

Against this dreamy backdrop however, a dark, dizzying cloud forms the minute anyone exits their rugged 4x4’s. This previously pristine setting is marred by an evil cloud that hides the Great Northern Horde. (Gengis Kahn’s horde, by comparison, was a puny force.)

When I was a rookie, I often wondered about bugs. How bad could they be? Well, any northern prospector worth his salt has tangled with the “threshold vampire” (so named because it sounds like the buzz of your detector’s threshold), aka, the mosquito. And what prospector has never had an encounter with a galloping horse fly, or a prancing deer fly? Or, how about getting bit by the teeth that fly? (No-see-ums, nothing but flying teeth) Yes, bugs indeed . . . 

Well, I stepped forth into just such a cloud of bugs, but luckily my survival instinct overrode my dim brain. Without thinking, my arms began a furious wind-milling action as I carelessly launched my detector through the air, the astronomical price I’d paid, an insignificant, annoying memory. As I ran back to open the truck door to escape the winged-bullies, I was horrified to find my partner had locked the vehicle! Moreover, he had the only can of bug spray outside of the truck. (Later, he swore up and down that he never used the stuff, didn’t even need it that day he said. Then he carried on with some nonsense about how a real man would never fear such tiny creatures, some back-handed comment to me about insect repellent being a wussy cop-out, something not worthy of the northern prospector’s stripe.)

So there I was, stranded, and somewhat bug-eyed (no pun intended). Frantically, I pressed my sweaty face against the glass, hoping perhaps the other door was unlocked, but defeated, I then saw what I’d left on the seat, my first line of defense, my ultimate weapon: the potent, DEET-laced concoction known as Bug Dope! Impotent rage filled me as I ineffectively swatted and slashed at my attackers.

Then, relentless panic filled every cell of my entire organism, accompanied by merciless, shredding terror. The panic’s sheer volume widened into a chasm of unspeakable horror. Sensing disaster, while icy fingers of doom clawed the back of my neck, I turned to face my agonizing fate, a living cloud forming a rising black wall of the famished, northern horde.

Instantly, I was engulfed by a buzzing, hissing mass of wings and slashing teeth, ones perfectly adapted for blood-letting. (Vampires, by comparison, are thousands of years behind on the evolutionary scale.) Next, I conquered some of my tormentors by cleverly breathing in an entire squadron. (Or, was that simply a reflexive gasp of stricken terror?) 

Nevertheless, by reducing their numbers, I’d dealt the beggars a costly blow. (I wish!) Next, some of the stealthier bug ascended my pant legs, on the inside where their malicious intent was hidden. This, assault was led by the black demons from some cursed other-world. They were indeed the dreaded blackfly, casually referred to in Webster’s dictionary as “any of various small dark-colored insects; esp.: any of a family of bloodsucking dipteran flies”. Dipteran?! (What a gentle misnomer for such incarnate evil.)

Updating their tactics of savagery, some blackflies even practice camouflage now, by dressing in orange, yellow and red. Moreover, they’re getting bigger now. For example, I saw a cloud the other day packing intravenous poles for easier blood transfusion as they assaulted and overwhelmed some wretch trying to bathe in the river!! Am I using hyperbole, a form of extreme exaggeration? Well, in all honesty, I am exaggerating as the person had only gone to the river for a drink, and when he saw the horde, he dove head-first into the river. So, yes, guilty of exaggeration as he was never there for a bath at all. 

So, what happened to me, the dope caught without his bug dope? (Which reminds me, I’ve often pondered on that puzzling name given for that powerful spray, but the answer came to me with lightning clarity as the name refers to the idiot that leaves his locked in the truck! [Any resemblance to the story’s protagonist, or to myself, is purely coincidental.]) 

(To digress a bit, the blackflies’ march up my pant-legs would not be discovered that day, for they carry anesthetic in their toothy kit of devilry. I discovered the bites later that night, while trying to sleep, but, sleep never came, as the bites itched longer than it took the dinosaurs to go extinct. Moreover, scratching the bites was much like taking a sharp knife to my throat, because after I’d scratched them, I wished I’d had a sharp knife to take to my throat for being such a jack-wagon to scratch them in the first place!)

To return to my tale of being bitten by the horde, my ears started to itch, but not on the outside, no, deep down on the eardrum. Some of the little beggars do not follow the rules of war (The Marquess of Queensberry rules of engagement for war? Why, they only revere him as a possible blood donor!). Moreover, the flying sadists have the power to attack in unmentionable places, enough said!

To digress a bit more, I referred to horseflies earlier, and on that trip I went after some of them with a rope, but not to try to drive them off. I wanted to try my hand at lassoing them as some of the resident sourdoughs had bragged to me of saddling the smaller ones, then using them in their bizarre northern rodeos. These rodeos consist of letting the mosquitoes out of a cattle shoot, hazing them with the horsefly, then hog-tying them to try for the fastest time. (On a different note, not related to rodeo at all, some of those blowhards tried to trick me into believing I could shoot the mosquitoes up there with a shotgun. This is absolute nonsense! A shotgun will absolutely not bring them down. However, a lucky burst from a 20mm cannon has been known to blow off a wing, or part of a leg now and again.) 

Regardless of my digression, in my mad dash from the bugs, I finally saw my friend. He was leisurely swinging his detector over a patch of exposed graphite-schist. However, my friend’s head suddenly snapped up when he heard a low moan, followed by a screeching sound, followed by yet another low moan. Perhaps he thought I was hunting with an external speaker and had stumbled on a good target? 

However, imagine his shock when he realized the sound was coming from me, his partner, squealing and moaning as I burst forth from the swarming wall of insatiable northern vampires. 

With the flies in deadly pursuit, I raced toward my partner, but slowing before I reached him, the cloud-like wall outstripped me. (On a side note, that was one thick wall of bugs. How thick? Well, I took out my Bowie knife and cut a square hole right through those bugs to be able to see my partner.) After my Bowie knife tactic, and with a wild, glazed look in my eye, I dove through the hole, knife outstretched. By way of reflection, I think my partner thought I’d lunged straight for his throat with my knife. However, I only wanted to shred the pocket of his jacket, to quickly get at the Bug Dope. Then, I disappeared into the trees.

Now, this whole tale may seem farfetched, perhaps light-hearted, and somewhat unbelievable. Indeed, I confess to having invented more than a few details. However, I assure you, it was quite a serious matter, most stressing in fact. 

But, what happened to the protagonist of this tale after he fled the scene with the can of bug spray? Why, it’s rumored he’s still holed up somewhere deep in an abandoned placer mine, a location that is dark and cold. A place far too cold for bugs, but not too cold for dopes.

All the best,

Lanny