My Bear Story

This article has nothing to do with running, but as I said in the preface to my blog I will occasionally write about gold prospecting so here is one of my prospecting stories.

Early one fall, about 12 years ago, I decide to do a little gold prospecting. I drove out the 15fwy, north to Hwy 138 and headed east toward Silverwood Lake. I turned off at Little Horse Thief Canyon to the north of the highway. The road was fairly rough and driving it was a slow task. About 10 minutes later I got to the claim and started scouting it out.

I had been here a few times before so I had a place in mind up one of the side tributaries of the small creek. I took off on foot walking up the creek bed looking for just the right spot. I soon spotted a place where the bench material was clearly sitting on top of a layer of caliche. And I knew, from pervious experience, that the best gold would be lying right on top of the caliche because it acts as false bedrock. The gold in this area is pretty fine although a few nuggets have been found, most of them have been pretty small. There is however, quite a bit of fine gold, and I was looking forward to seeing that color in the bottom of my pan.

I decided to walk back to the truck from the bank above the creek bed, just to get a little different view of the surrounding area. As I walked along I saw some fresh berries on some bushes and could tell that someone or something had already picked or eaten most of them. A little farther down I saw bear scat and could tell that he or she had enjoyed quite a meal from the berry bush. Not only that but the scat was fairly fresh, probably not more than two hours old.

I got back to the truck and made several trips back and forth carrying my equipment and buckets. I had six 5gallon buckets that I wanted to fill with screened material, and later run it through my small Gold Buddy at home in my spare time. There was no water in the creek at all and I did not have a dry washer or I would have used that.

I had gotten a late start and knew I only had about 2 hours to work before dusk. I was working with my back to the creek and my face to the bank. I had worked a fairly large opening into the bank and had quite a bit of material to screen through into buckets. Since the gold was really fine I was using a screen of ¼ inch. I wore gloves with rubber coating on the palms and fingers so as not to scrape up my hands too much. I was working mostly on my hands and knees as worked the material out from the bank.

The time passed quickly and I noticed that it was starting to get dark. I needed to start carrying things back to my truck before it turned to dark to see my way. I began to hurry a little more as I was not quite done. All of a sudden I felt a hot breath on the back of my neck and knew that some kind of animal was behind me. I could not see what it was without backing my body out of the small cave I had dug into the bank. I reached for my 38 Smith & Wesson revolver from my holster, holding my breath, my heart pounding I slowly removed it. My mind flashed back to having seen the bear scat earlier and I was really thinking that it could be a bear. The hair was standing up on the back of my head as I slowly turned to see a dog wagging his tail and licking my face knocking off my hat in the process. Where he had come from and how he found me I will never know for sure, but I was extremely relieved to know that it was a dog and not a bear. He did have tags and I figured he must have just wandered of from someone else hiking in the area. Then I remembered having seen a building that could have been a living quarters about a mile farther down the road once before. I then figured he must have come from there and did not try and take him back with me as he looked well fed and cared for.

I had just enough time to get everything in my truck and leave before it turned really dark, then I heard a voice calling, “Rusty, Rusty” which must have been the dogs name as he took off running in the direction of the voice. I got everything into my truck just before dark and then headed back home with a great story to tell.

Latter that weekend I ran my material and did find some pretty good gold. It was nothing to get excited about but still worth it just to see that yellow gold in bottom of my pan.