It was an evening of rest and recuperation within the circle of a welcome fire. We rotated our damp clothes on a line within the range of the heat until they were dry then made an early retreat to our sleeping bags. It wasn’t really dark, but there was not much to be seen except cloudy skies. A mist shrouded Trib 1 Valley just below our camp.
Chapter 13
Trib 1 at Last
Sunday dawned bright through a thin, high cloud overcast. Great blankets of mist swirled in the valleys. It was cool, damp, with a hint of a breeze. The promise of fine weather was in the air and we hoped for a warm day.
I stretched and suggested to Hagen, “Let’s make our way down to the supplies and find a good place to make camp.” Whatever we did now might be temporary. Permanency depended on results of our prospecting.
We started a small fire and had a good breakfast which included beautiful juicy blueberries collected around our campsite. We rounded off the meal with a second pot of coffee and were ready to go by nine o’clock.
Hagen shrugged into his pack and said, “We can set up camp near Trib 1. Exciting being this close, huh? Our planning and preparations, and hard work, are about to pay off. Let’s go.”
We knew everything could look very different from the sky so we studied our maps and photos and identified a few land marks. I pointed, “Let’s stick to our original plan and take advantage of the bald ridge, maybe three miles. Close to the southern end, we can take the shortest route.”
Hagen concentrated on a photo. “Looks to be really steep.”
“You lead out.” I said, “We can do it. Trib 1, here we come.”
As we walked, the weather brightened and the sun came out. It was instantly more pleasant. The spine of the ridge sloped gradually and finally supported a growth of willows and stunted spruce trees. The ridge seemed to lengthen but we eventually made to the point where we needed to strike off to the airdrop site.
We took a minute’s breather and eagerly drank the last of our morning’s Koolaid. “Hagen, let’s dump the water.” I suggested. “We’ll be near the stream soon. It’ll lighten our load too.” With lighter backpacks, we set off down the slope. At first it wasn’t too bad. We began beating our way through increasingly dense foliage. It was pretty too, with a southwestern sunny exposure, the upper hillside was covered with a plethora of wild flowers, fireweed, arctic forget-me-nots, alpine azalea, and rounded clumps of flowering moss campion.
As the slope steepened, we came to eroded rock and shale slides, difficult to negotiate. With our packs and rifles hampering us, we were hard pressed to keep our footing.
It was eight hundred feet from the top of the ridge down to the level of the stream and was hard going most of the way. We just picked our way slowly and carefully downward. We both lost our footing several times which resulted in scrapes and bruises. The butt of my 30-06 picked up more scars on this stretch than at any other time so far.
Finally the slope eased and we could hear the soft, babbling sound of Trib I as it made its way south. Fifty yards of dense willow and alder thickets, some ferocious thorny devils club, and we found ourselves on the bank of the stream, twenty yards away. We emerged to the north of our supplies.
Trib 1 at last. We slapped each other on the arm, then just stood, lost in individual thoughts. The stream was larger at this point than it seemed from the air. We figured it averaged eight feet wide and ten inches deep. Trib 1 was sparkling clear and coursed along at a healthy clip over a clean bed of sand and gravel. The gravel and earthen banks were four feet high. Since the stream followed a serpentine course, there were wider and deeper pools in the bends—sandbars, on the inside of the bends, undercut eroded banks on the outside. The stream was, we thought, just large enough to support grayling or trout.
We walked alongside the stream just a little way and found a place which we thought would make a good campsite. At least it would do for the time being until we had explored the valley. The site was elevated a few feet above the stream. It afforded an extensive view out over the Ladue Valley and was also far enough away from the stream for the sound of running water to be muted.
Dumping our packs, we took only one rifle and set off in search of the supplies. We had an aerial photo marked with an X. I guess Hagen spotted the bright streamers first, but there they were, all four packages. The packages had landed on firm ground. Externally, they seemed to have survived. The spade and pickax had cut through the burlap once again, but that didn’t matter, the burlap was only intended to keep the contents in a manageable bundle.
We lugged the packages up to the campsite and set about unwrapping everything. It was a bit like Christmas, except we were careful to untie the bundles and save every bit of string, bungee cord, burlap, and tarpaulin. Out here we never knew when, or for what, these items might come in handy. We were really delighted to find the only damage was dents in a couple of the cans. Again, there was too much bow in the saw.
Now we had plenty of subsistence for the next few days. Also, we had our tools if we decided to get into serious digging during our prospecting.
Looking at our food stock reminded us it was lunch time. An energetic morning left us ready for a snack and a kettle of tea. We gathered stones, made ourselves a hearth, and soon had a small cooking fire cheerily crackling.
Browsing around, with a mug of tea and a granola bar in hand, Hagen commented. “It might be best if we keep our gear out of sight of any planes. After all we really didn’t want to advertise our presence any more than was necessary.”
I agreed. After some discussion, we decided not to build anything more than our ponchos until we scouted upstream. If we found a likely place to prospect, we’d want to relocate our camp.
After a little while, we tidied up our bits and pieces and with only our rifles, aluminum shovel, gold pans, snack and drink in the nylon day-pack, we set off to explore upstream.
At first, we held to the east side of the stream. There was no suitable place to cross without getting our feet wet. For the first half mile, the stream ran through open land. There were patches of aspens and spruce ahead on rising land. The drainage was obviously a little better there.
Sure enough, we found a small escarpment where the stream tumbled down a series of rapids. It was quite a picturesque spot and we figured there might be connection between it and the sheer cliff close to our right. Perhaps at some time there had been a landslide which formed the cliff and the escarpment.
In any case, the terrain was entirely different at the escarpment. Downstream the land was swampy with dry land close by the stream where drainage was better. Upstream the land had the appearance of a meadow, well drained, with a variety of silver and paper birch, aspens, and large spruce.
Here also the stream was not so deeply eroded and the bed was a mixture of larger rocks and gravel. There was a total absence of algae on any of the rocks and pebbles. It was as if they had been scrubbed clean.
It was a good place to dabble with the gold pans to see if there was any color. We looked into the clear water. No obvious flakes or even nuggets leaping out at us—too much to hope for—so we dug down and found fine gravel and sand. It was an interesting colorful blend of material, well laced with black sand, flakes of mica, and shards of quartz, always a good sign. After reaching a depth of eighteen inches we started washing the material in our gold pans and worked to get down to the heavier fines.
Hagen was the first to find gold. In his second pan he had a couple of tiny flakes mixed with heavy black sand remaining in his pan. The flakes were large enough to pick up on a damp finger. I did and peered at them with a ten power glass I had in my waist pouch. It was gold all right, rounded edges, soft in appearance under the glass and coppery, rather than yellow, in color.
Granted, the flakes were small, and small flakes, like these, were in many Alaska streams, if one looked hard enough. However, we were excited because we had only scratched the surface and panned just a very small sampling of material to find these flakes.
It was an exciting find too, because we had invested so much in; research, exploration by air, and hiking to reach this place. It would have been disappointing to have come away completely empty. Well, this was after all, just the start. There was still two miles of stream to go and undoubtedly it would get more interesting as we moved north to the end of the valley.
On the premise that “every little bit helps,” I placed the two tiny flakes of Trib 1 gold in a vial inside a little Ziplock bag.
We tried to stay close to the course of the stream, but in some places it was impossible to penetrate dense thickets of alders and willows which flourished on the well drained land. The growth and the shelter provided by the patches of trees, sure seemed like just the place for a bear to call home. We went carefully, but not quietly. Give them a chance to go the other way, was my motto.
There were animal trails in all directions, but we suspected many of these were made by caribou passing this way during annual migration. It didn’t help our feelings very much, however, and we were still apprehensive.
We had only traveled a quarter mile further when we spotted a pile of fresh moose droppings. This was moose country too, and we could expect to see one or two. In the wilds however, they were not so used to people and they were apt to lope away long before you got very close to them.
The ridge to the west of Trib 1 was much lower and rounded than the one to the east. Being much larger in surface area, it formed the major collection area for the tributary. Our aerial surveys showed several minor tributaries converged into a main stream, fishhook shaped at the head of the valley. The area was almost completely forested and we recognized stands of large Sitka spruce.
As we walked further north, the way became more difficult. The valley sides were closing in on us and the trees and undergrowth combined to block our path. Where there were no trees, low growing shrubs and brambles snagged our clothing and scratched our legs.
The ground underfoot changed and we came across jumbled out crops of bedrock. Now this was a bit more like it. Gold could not percolate downward, if there was bed rock. There was a good chance of finding gold at bedrock, if we could get down to the low points. All the signs were in our favor. There was color in the stream and now some bedrock. Perhaps a good combination.
The trees on our side of the stream were large, and one, about a foot in diameter, had bridged the stream. Although the stream was now small, we used the bridge and crossed over to clearer ground. We found ourselves on a level area, a gravel bar, on the inside a sharp bend in the stream. The outer side of the bend was formed by a low protruding shelf of bedrock.
The stream made a turn here. Its convergence was with bedrock on the east side while the west bank was a crescent filled with an overburden of materials washed from higher elevations. It was the kind of entrapment area prospectors dream about. It made us shiver with excitement at having found, so early in our search, a place with such appeal.
We rested for a few minutes, caught our breath, and contemplated the scene before us. On the west side, upstream, there was a steady incline caused by the low ridge and a cascading stream, over, and between, a jumble of large boulders and the protruding ledges of bedrock. We would explore a little more upstream later, but this level place by the bend was the most promising.
We came prepared to stake out several forty acre claims if necessary, but all we needed was a one acre parcel of productive claim. Anything more would be just a buffer zone around the active work area. This place by the bedrock might just turn out to be the “glory hole” we needed and we wouldn’t have to search further.
Satisfied, we decided to carry out sampling as close to the bedrock as possible. There were a few fissures in the cliff and these formed V shaped miniature valleys which were filled with gravel and silt. These niches formed a natural entrapment for any heavier metals and would be an excellent place to start. Unfortunately, it entailed our wading around in the cold water and we had no rubber boots. Well, no one promised it would be easy on the last frontier. We took off our socks put our boots back on, rolled up our pant legs and, grimacing, waded into the cold water.
Hurriedly, not to prolong the agony, we dug down below water line, filled our gold pans with material and tipped the material into an accumulation on the bank. We repeated this several times at different places until we had quite a collection to work. After five minutes of hopping around on cold aching feet we put our socks and boots back on again and set about some serious panning. We each took small amounts of the material and, finding a convenient place by the stream, where we didn’t have to wade the icy cold, began panning, separating heavy and light material.
Gold is about seven times heavier, size for size, than any common rock, gravel, or sand, it’s not too difficult to wash away the lighter materials and keep the heavier material in the pan. The difficulty is to separate the heavier sands from the even heavier gold. Panning technique is important. We had panned for gold many times and were proficient so we speedily got down to having just a little heavy material remaining in the bottom of our pans.
Wahoo! Lots of fine gold dust, along with flakes gleamed in the bottom of our pans. Every sample we panned yielded more fine gold and eventually one flake, rounded enough to be classified as a nugget. We began jumping around screaming and laughing with excitement. Underneath Hagen’s usually stern veneer, he was exuberant and it took just a hint of success—or was it gold —to open the flood gates. He was ecstatic. I think he was willing, almost, to hike out and in again just to get a sluice box. A sluice box is what we needed to process this material in any quantity.
We panned through the first pile, and more, over the next few hours and were rewarded with quite a bit of gold. It tinkled in the vial by the time we finished. We found a good place to start. How lucky can you get?
It was great! In some ways it took the wind out of our sails and made us rethink what to do next. We hiked out here intending to explore at least Trib 1 and Trib 2, maybe even Trib 3 and then make a choice. However, here we were already, with what looked like a very promising claim. Could we expect to find better? We doubted it but, after some deliberation, we decided to have a look around anyway.
Hagen said, “I don’t think I will be really satisfied until we look over Trib 2 and Trib 3. Knowing we didn’t while we had the chance would give me nightmares.” There are stories of people still finding thumb-sized nuggets in areas and we would hate to have missed the chance. Besides, we were curious about tracks we saw leading to Trib 3.
While we had a snack and a drink of Koolaid, we mulled over our options and decided to hike from our camp around the southern tip of a ridge and take a look at Trib 2. Next we’d move our camp to the Glory Hole and spend a couple of days taking samples. We’d attempt to find out how widely the gold was spread. Next we’d hike from the Trib 1 Valley to the main trail by the shortest route. It might be a very difficult climb but we were determined to give it a try. It would cut a lot of miles off our journey. Once at the main trail we would hike to a point nearest to Trib 3 and see if it was practical to hike down into the valley. It would keep us busy for a week. Finally, of course, we would hike back out along the main trail.
It was five o’clock so we decided to return downstream to our camp. Back at camp, we started our cooking fire and had a good meal of canned beef and vegetable stew and lots of hot tea. We were careful to boil the water before using it. Being careful of the water was good. Planning ahead, we boiled enough water to prepare Koolaid for our hike to Trib 2.
There weren’t too many mosquitoes yet, so we had a good refreshing wash in the cold stream water. Pity however, we had to spoil it by applying insect repellent when the beasts decided to emerge.
Gauging the weather, we figured it wasn’t going to rain but we decided to set up our ponchos and stow all of our gear for the night. At the very least, we’d benefit from having the mosquito netting. This done we sat around the campfire, sipped hot tea and talked until we saw the stars come
out. Only then did we prepare to retire for the night. Finally, snuggled in our sleeping bags, our tired bodies relaxed.
We must have been thirty-five miles from the nearest human being during our first night at Trib 1 and the only sound was the muted babbling passing of the stream a few yards away. I fell asleep thinking about how lucky we had been to find color on our first attempt. I’m sure Hagen was already spending his share.
Chapter 14
Trib 2
Monday morning, our second day on Trib 1, was misty and dew-laden. When we arose, the sun was already high and beginning to burn off the haze. Our first activity was a shower down in the stream. It was exhilarating in the clear cold water, and just for a few minutes, our camp resembled a nudist colony. We also laundered a few items of clothing and hung them on a line to dry. Only then did we set about preparing breakfast.
After breakfast, we rounded up items we wanted to take and packed smaller items in the nylon day pack. The Koolaid, a few snacks, the folding shovel, a gold pan, maps, and photos of the valley. Rifles of course, a must, and belts with waist pouches. We debated whether to take our ponchos and decided it was not necessary since the day was shaping up beautifully.
Traveling light, we hiked around the end of the ridge to explore Trib 2. We were able to stay at low level all the way. We knew the valley was wet and boggy so our biggest problem might be to avoid wet areas. With luck, we’d be able to stay on drier land at the base of the ridge.
The ground was firm while we stayed on the narrow strip of land between the treed slope and the wetter valley. As Trib I headed south, we started east around the end of the ridge. The southern tip of the ridge was narrow and defined. The wide expanse of Trib 2 Valley lay ahead of us. Trib 2 lay five hundred yards to the east, across what was obviously wet ground. We stuck to the edge of the valley as we turned northward.
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