Detecting Under Ski Lifts

[mh9162013]

12 minutes ago, kac said:

Not sure about that, many of the new cell phones cost as much or more than a diamond ring 🙂

And it's not just the phone itself. It's all the pictures (uh oh...) passwords, music, pay apps, social media apps (and their login info), etc. on the phone.

I think most people have password protected lockscreens, but there's also the hassle of having to call your mobile carrier, redownload all the apps, reconfigure your settings, etc. Or maybe most people use cloud-based services that negates that hassle? Don't look at me, I'm using a smartphone that was like $20 and it runs a version of Android from like 8 years ago...

[phrunt]

Well, you may remember some time ago I said I was going to go back and see what the girl lost, she did spend virtually a full day at this spot under the ski lift trying to find whatever it was she lost, by half way through the day she had an army of helpers trying to help her find whatever it is.  She must have lost it the day before as she came back armed with a metal detector.  Well today was the day I finally decided to go see what it was she lost.  I waited until the snow had melted enough to get up there in the first place and I picked a day where it was overcast as I hate heat and climbing that far up the mountain I'd overheat, I'd be like some guy trying to drive a little mini car up the mountain full of people, the thing would explode from overheating before it gets to the ski fields base building, well that would be me walking up to this spot on a sunny day 😛

This is the poor girl during winter trying to find whatever it was she lost.  She dug a huge hole.

I never did work out what detector she was using but at the time it was making a hell of a racket, I think I know why as now when I had my Nox up there it was going crazy too, it turns out on that lift directly between each of the lift poles is an underground high voltage power line, it goes up into each lift pole.  It was making my Nox go crazy.  I had to run the sensitivity really low in a frequency of 10kHz for the Nox to even be usable.   No idea what her detector was but it was likely confusing her completely as she seemed very frustrated with it and I think she'd borrowed it off someone for the task and had no idea how to use it.

Her recruits, just people that saw her there all morning and by afternoon felt compelled to help, there ended up way more than that by the end of the day. 🙂

My wife and daughter decided to tag along as they wanted to go for a walk to the lake, there is a cool lake up on the mountain, this lake is about 1800 meters (5905 feet) above sea level so remains frozen all winter and well into summer, in winter you ski across it, people even camp on it that are climbing to the top of the mountain as it's nice level ground.

She took some happy snaps of us walking up to the lake area.

We are walking a cross a creek here, the creek disappeared under the snow, was a bit scary as I wouldn't really want to fall into the creek, the snow was still thick and firm enough it wasn't an issue.

and the lake....

slowly starting to melt

A lot of it was still thick enough to walk on, one side must get more sun and melted sooner.

Anyway, after that I had my mission to find the spot the girl was searching, I knew she didn't find whatever it was as she was there until the ski field closed.

This was taken from half way up the walk, I had to get to where I've marked in the photo.  A lot harder without ski lifts 🙂

It's a lot steeper than it looks in the photos.

Off in the distance there is the base building where my car is parked.

I got to the spot, you'll notice in the earlier photos with her doing it she was just past a lift pole.  Now to find whatever it was, I expected a ring or something with her motivation to try find it, something very important to her anyway.

And I found it, a phone!  It's sitting just above the center of my shaft in the photo, to the right of that is a little bit of a creek, and the phone was in-between those grasses in the creek, hard to eyeball, easy to find with the detector screaming on it.  I doubt if I went up without the detector that I would have found it.

A couple of photos of the area from up there

Looking up from where I found it.

The lake is straight ahead in this photo, you can't see it in the photo though as the little grassy ridge line is blocking it.

I did a little more detecting on the way back down, mostly just under the lift cable and found another phone much lower down.  People drop phones on the lifts all the time as they rip them out to take photos and drop them and they instantly sink into the soft snow under the lift never to be seen again, until it melts 🙂

I found a couple of $1 coins, ended up giving them to my daughter who bought a block of chocolate with them.

So my tally for the day wasn't all that good, it was mostly hiking and climbing in the end, only about an hour on the detector I'd guess and we left at lunch time as the ladies wanted to go shopping 😛

The Nugget Finder solid skid plate was awesome on the 11" coil for sliding on the snow, perfect for the job.  It just glides along.

I think that's a bit of broken gold jewellery, 2 NZ $1 coins and a weird Asian coin of sometype.

At first I thought it was a washer.

The phones....

hers is the black one to the right.

Inside a secret compartment was her credit card and drivers license, so we'll be able to track her down and give it back, a girl in her 20's, she has a NZ drivers license so must live in NZ, I doubt a Queenstown local or she'd likely have gone back up to try and find it by now.  My wife's going to track her down on Facebook to get it back to her, it might have important photos on it's SD Card as she was obviously desperate to try find it.  If not we will hand it into the boys in blue or ski field and they can track her down.  The ski field will have her details from her buying a pass.

Well, all in all a bit of fun, and at least now I'm not constantly wondering what was so important that she lost that she'd spend an entire day trying to find.

[Joe D.]

Thanks Simon,

   You and the family are good people!! I was really hoping that you would take a wack at finding whatever she lost, when the time was right! The hidden compartment was a bonus! And very cool scenery, as usual, from NZ; beautiful there!!

   I hope the Good Carma generated nets you some good finds! A gold coin, ring, or decent sized nugget will do nicely! 

   Anyway, thanks for taking us along, and may Good Luck follow, and catch you!!🍀👍👍

[CPT_GhostLight]

A great end to a great story!

[phrunt]

Well, my wife found her on Facebook and has sent her a message about it, no reply yet but she hasn't seen the message at this stage.  I bet she'll be surprised, she lives in Auckland on the North Island so another unfortunate thing is she spent an entire day of her holiday down here looking for it with no success, and her access to the ski field would have been around about $130 for that day for her to look for it.  At least we have found her now so if there is important stuff on the phone I'll ship it up to her, I'm sure the SD Card will still work, those things can handle a lot.  The phone may even work when it dries out, I've found phones at the ski field before that came to life after drying out. 

This is a photo of the front of the mountain range where the ski field is that I took yesterday, you'd never even know the ski field is there, or all that stuff like the lake and so on as it's all on the back side of the range.

[Valens Legacy]

I have been waiting to hear the end of this story for a while, and am glad that you were the person to find it for the person who lost it.

Good luck on your next hunt and hope you find some great things out there.

Almost time to start gold hunting again isn't it?

[strick]

Nice story and good on you for taking a day to do  a good deed for a stranger. I think a gold ring or nugget is in your future as karma payment. 

strick

[Gold Catcher]

15 hours ago, phrunt said:

Well, my wife found her on Facebook and has sent her a message about it, no reply yet but she hasn't seen the message at this stage.  I bet she'll be surprised, she lives in Auckland on the North Island so another unfortunate thing is she spent an entire day of her holiday down here looking for it with no success, and her access to the ski field would have been around about $130 for that day for her to look for it.  At least we have found her now so if there is important stuff on the phone I'll ship it up to her, I'm sure the SD Card will still work, those things can handle a lot.  The phone may even work when it dries out, I've found phones at the ski field before that came to life after drying out. 

This is a photo of the front of the mountain range where the ski field is that I took yesterday, you'd never even know the ski field is there, or all that stuff like the lake and so on as it's all on the back side of the range.

 

Simon, what a great story and thanks for the wonderful pics. Such a beautiful area. I bet there must be some really important things on her SD card. Please keep us posted  and let us know when she hears the news. Also, she might be thrilled to read "her" story on DP. I would send her the link so she can see how this story was shared with prospectors around the world. I actually thought of this story every now and then since you first posted it and wondered what ever happened to this saga. You are a good man Simon, may the Gold Goddess reward you handsomely 🙂.

GC

[F350Platinum]

That's a really great end to a really great story! Probably one of the best I've read in a while. Thanks for showing everyone what someone can do in these situations. Must have been fun and taught your child something too.

Good on ya. 👍

[rvpopeye]

Well done ! 👍

Great ending, ! well , almost.  

(She'll probably turn out to be a princess 'er something and reward you with a bag of gold.)

Major karma points.🖖