2006
Gold Panning Expedition
A Photo Essay
Expedition Guide: Nils
Comic Relief: Glen, Windy
Location: Somewhere in Western Canada
September 2006
Gold Panning Expedition - A Photo Essay
Expedition Guide: Nils
Comic Relief: Glen, Windy
Location: Somewhere in Canada
September 2006
Well, on Tuesday morning, September 5th, we took off, quite separately, Nils and Glen from
Richmond and Windy from New Westminster, each traveling different routes to throw off anyone following
attempting to glean the secret(s) of the “lost Mayan gold”! Meeting place: the “? store at the second left, in
the fourth major hamlet”,
versus village, town, city, etc,
“after leaving Hope”. In my
case, this was “no Hope” as I
didn’t have a clue. I was taking
the longer, yet faster, route
while they were going the
shorter, scenic, longer (timewise) route.
Quite fortuitously I
found them when I stopped at
Young’s Station (photo at right)
for Ice, Coca Cola and Cold
Beer. They had stopped
moments before me for Ice,
Cold Beer and Coca Cola!
Fortuitously because I didn’t
have a clue where the “? store
at the second left, in the fourth
major hamlet” was and would
have been lost and wandering all of the hamlet streets futilely!
We drove on and, eventually we passed the “? store at the second left, in the fourth major hamlet”
and a little later on we came to a vast supermarket where we stopped in for some last minute supplies - tube
steak, bread and buns, and I snagged a
good-looking top sirloin steak for supper.
Hey, we might be roughing it in the
wilderness, sharing space with bears ’n
such, but the least we could do was go out
in style, with a top sirloin dinner and some
homemade hooch!
Some time later, gassed to the gills
(our vehicles, that tis), we passed a
campground and made use of the facilities,
then hit the road again to the gold fields: as
in “gold laying all about” awaiting the
simple pickup and cashing in of same. As
the old saying goes, “no pain, no gain” but,
in this case, “much pain,
still no gain!” Here
commences the photo
essay with very little in the
way of verbiage and a
whole lot of photos.
Along the way we
spotted someone else out
panning for the heady
yellow metal....
If you look closely,
just at the place where the
water touches the trees
(left) along the shoreline,
you will see the hardworking panner out in the
river. In the photo to the
right, looking even more
closely, you will see the
panner in the river, still,
with his wife kicking back
on the beach right behind
him, reading a book and
sitting in the shade. My
wife does the same thing
when she goes gold
panning with me??? Note
also the relative sizes of the
panner and his wife, and
the rocks they are near on
the beach? Not much size
difference you say? You
indeed are perceptive to a
fault!
Now here in this
bottom photo, we have a closeup of the panner and you
can see just how far away he really is. We are on a
bridge about 100 feet above him, and from trail’s end it’s
a good half-kilometer hike “down” to the river topped by
a hundred yards across those 1-2-3 foot diameter
boulders, and then, after digging, and panning, and
walking back and forth from the river to the gold hole all
day, the long hike back across the boulders and up the
half a kilometer hill that seems like Mount Rainier
instead?
We also saw a fantastic sight - a young raptor,
about full grown but obviously, while apparently ready,
not yet kicked out of the nest
and sent on his way, He was
waiting for Mom or Dad to
come back and feed him. Does
this scenario sound at all
familiar? Now these pictures of
the gold panner, his wife and the
raptor were taken while we
were in Lytton, BC, where we
stopped for supplies some time
before we arrived at the scene
of our expedition for gold.
What’s really neat about
the first picture of the raptor is
the clear view we have of the
confluence of the “muddy” Fraser
River, far side, and the “crystal
clear Thompson” in the
foreground. And in the second
picture we have a closeup of the
raptor and you can clearly see
him (or her?) sitting in his next
waiting for his next meal?
And if you look closely you
can see both the clear Thompson
half of the river, the muddier
Fraser far side, and the actual far
bank along the upper edge of this
second photo. You will see the
raptors, likely a hawk, have
conveniently adopted a power
pole for their next, rather than
finding a tree. Hey, it gives a
perfect launching spot for catching
migrating salmon right there in the
river below them? Pretty smart if
you ask me.
We departed Lytton still
early in the morning after our “Oh
Dark Thirty” departure from
Vancouver, with hours to go to the
gold fields, but we finally arrived,
scouted out the best descent down
a vertical mountain goat’s path
(right) to the river bank below, and
then we scouted down to the river’s
edge (right), picking our “spots” to
both dig and then pan it out. We
carried all our gear, picks, shovels,
hammers, gold pans, grizzlies,
buckets for washing and separating
the finer and gold-bearing gravels
from the worthless rocks of the
overburden, and not forgetting the
crowbars for moving the larger
rocks and boulders out of our
“digs”. The trick is to get down to bedrock to glean the treasure that can work its way no lower, or to
“break up” the cracks in the rocks to glean the treasure that gets trapped in the crack.
Looking down from the bank above, left straight down and right, up the river. The local Native band
was fishing at the beginning of the white water to the right, and doing well.
Looking along the bank (left) and across the river (right) at Nil’s and Glen’s digs the first day. I
wasn’t quite willing to go over this route. And
(below) Windy’s digs from Tuesday.
Windy setting up (left) and actually digging the dirt
out (right) where you can see the shovel in the hole
and the gold pan hidden partially in Windy’s shadow.
Also note the crow bar lying beside the gold pan. As
you dig your holes deeper you need to use the
crowbars to pry out, or at least move out of the way,
the bigger boulders to get under then for the trapped
gold.
To the right we see Windy’s pans, gloves,
grizzly, ruck sack to carry it all in, and rock
hounder’s rock hammer.
And here below we have Windy on day 2 in
a different location (left), digging a second hole, with his grizzly taking the shovels full of rock and his bucket
waiting for the gold-bearing siftings from the grizzly. With three-four shovels full of gravels and rock, you
shake the grizzly, hard, to get all the rock and hidden flakes of gold, off the larger rocks and into the pan
below, from thence into the bucket. When the bucket is about half full, now weighing about 30-50 pounds,
the panners make their way to the river and begin panning their treasures.
Here we see, above, Nil’s carrying water back from the river to wash the sands as he digs his glory
hole. You see his back pack with all his tools standing just in front of him. And, right, he checks a likely spot
glory hole. Below, Nils checking further (left) for a possible “glory” hole. And on the right, actually digging
his hole. As you can see, the holes tend to get pretty deep pretty fast, or at least as fast as old fogey’s such
as us can shovel, push, throw or otherwise move tons of worthless rock overburden out of the way and
make it to cracks, crevices, seams and actual bedrock to glean whatever treasure lies buried there!
Here’s Glen digging his “glory” hole....Tuesday.....and....
Wednesday....
Here Glen has a pretty good-sized hole going....
Glen and Nils use small garden trowels as shovels, Windy uses a 4-inch “mini-shovel”. And while
Nils wet-washes his gravels immediately to wash off even the smallest flakes of gold, both Glen and Windy
dry-wash to separate the flakes from the overburden. Windy’s decision was based upon it being a darned
difficult walk over exceedingly rough terrain, as well as a drop and subsequent climb of some 8-10 feet, to
get to the river and then carry a 30-lb bucket of water back up simply to “wet wash” our gravels before we
carry them all back down to the river to “wet wash” them (pan them) again!
And speaking of panning, here’s Glen in his hidey-hole, checking and panning and panning....
And Nils, panning and panning and panning....
And Windy, panning, and Nils and Windy panning and panning and panning....
What was more interesting was watching the natives with their fishing. And it was successful as we
saw them pulling out fish after fish. They were mostly “chum” salmon, which they called “Jack” salmon, but
they smoke well and taste really good smoked. And they’re not bad fresh, either.
There were two different groups of fishers on Tuesday, and they got a dozen or so salmon each.
And on Wednesday we had a single fisherman and a group. The single guy, with rod and reel, didn’t seem
to have anything? But the group, netting and using lines, did as well as the previous day’s groups did,
thought it seemed that of all the fish caught most
were 3-4 pounders with a few really big ones
going to the 4-6 pound range.
Looking at the picture to the right you
will see one fisherman poised on top of the rock
in the upper middle of the photograph. In the top
two photos you will see a couple of fishermen in
the same place but it is much further away in the
top two photos. They did well with the netting.
Of course, what was perhaps most
interesting to us, while sitting here in the hot sun,
digging holes, sifting dirt and gravel, and then
carrying a 30 pound bucket of gravel to the river
and sitting down and panning our gravel for, we
hoped, some yellow gold. GOLD! The Fever
was upon us, of course! But watching the river
rafters shooting the rapids made us simply look up and watch them floating past.
The first group was two big rubber boats, loaded with about 10 rowers each and a coxswain. The
second group was with three smaller rubber boats
with 6 rowers each and a coxswain. And the final
group was preceded by two people on ‘skip
boards” floating the rapids, followed by two rubber
boats with six rowers each and a coxswain, and
followed by three individuals on funny looking
“bicycles” on large pontoons, 2 pontoons per
“bicycle”. They resembled nothing so much as
“planeless” pontoon planes and looked sorta silly
coming down river, but they made it just fine!
And of course, no trip to the gold fields would be
complete without a wee trace of the heady yellow
metal, the “fruits of all this labor”, as it were... so here it is....the GOLD! itself! If you use a magnifying glass
you can count the flakes in the pan – and it will come out to about 50 or so. But....all of them put together
sadly make no more than the one big one that’s so easy to see? Sigh....
Tuesday we arrived at the gold fields shortly after noon. We packed it in as the sun began declining
toward the horizon, loaded up our gear, and hiked back up the hill to where we had to park the cars.
Downhill isn’t so bad, even carrying the gear. But, 4 hours of intense labor later, all the heavy equipment and
gear we packed down – crowbars, hammers, shovels, even plastic gold pans – weren’t all that light after
all? Plus all the tons and tons of the heavy yellow metal we were packing out – the GOLD! Above we see
Nils, complete with backpack, trudging up the hill, and to the left we see Glen doing the same. Note the top
of the hill off in the distance – a much better view in the Nils pic! Sigh....
Sooooooo....camping out for the night. Then back to the gold fields in the morning for more digging
and carrying and panning and trudging. Camp was a nice respite after a very long drive and a very hard
day’s work....
left to right (left pic) Nils, picnic bench with the ice chests and stove, Windy and Glen. Right pic, cleaned up
for bears, shows just the water bottle, stove and chairs. Supper was capped by blackberry pie, then all the
food related stuff and ice chests were put away in the cars.
The big disappointment of the evening was the full moon being out, there being enough light that we
could see quite well, but no moonlight – it was hidden behind the mountain. What a bummer! But the threat
of bears, plus the chipmunks chittering away at us all evening and again the next morning, made up for it – a
little, anyway!
No camp is complete without the tent and sleeping bags. We substituted, warm weather, a simple
tarp on the ground with two pads to cut the sharpness of the rocks, Nils to the left, Glen to the right and
Windy’s air mattress bringing up the middle. The bears left us alone.
Windy was up at 7:20, making the hot water for the tea — we had a Continental breakfast with
fruit, donuts and tea — and Windy taking these
revealing pictures. And, as no good deed goes
unpunished, for long anyway, everyone, not just
ancient Windy, woke up with creaky bones and
joints and wishing they could just go back to bed
instead of back to the hike up and down to the gold
field.
We did finish up about 1 pm on Wednesday,
carried buckets of un-panned gravels back to the
cars, loaded up and headed on back to the
mushroom fields as a great capper to the trip. Hey,
we still had the top sirloin steak and fresh wild
mushrooms would just set it up fine – a veritable
connoisseur’s delight.. But....no rain for at least two
months and no mushrooms. So we headed up to the cabin on the river just outside Boston Bar, arriving in
the early evening, and Nils promptly laid down on
the love seat and took a nap.
Windy and Glen headed up to the lake for a quick
bath, taking along a bar of soap. Oooops! There
was a young family at the lake, swimming and fishing.
We chatted awhile and then drove on up to the
second lake (there’s three of them there) and it was
empty, not a soul in sight. And a nice beach and stair
case – a rail, anyway – leading down to the beach.
Windy stepped into the water and it wasn’t cold at
all. Not warm, but not cold, just sorta “in between”.
So Windy immediately walked out about knee deep
and lathered up, hair, face, arms, under arms, chest,
and began washing off. Threw the soap back to Glen on the beach so he could wash up.
Then Windy lifted up his left foot to take a step and SCHLOOOP! it let go. It was stuck in the mud.
This threw Windy a little off balance, and when he tried to pull his left foot up it was worse. Windy, looking
rather unathletic at the time, took a great fall and ended up not taking a partial wash-off but a full bath. Oh,
well, after two days of sweating over the gold panning, probably needed it. Glen, watching this spectacle,
avoided the pitfalls of muddy bottoms and wondered, really, at whether Windy was putting on an act for his
benefit! Nils, meanwhile, awakened from his nap and drove up to the first lake but not seeing Windy and
Glen returned to the cabin figuring they’d eventually get back there themselves.
Glen walked down to the river (left) and Glen and Nils are sitting at the table on the porch.
The cabin is right on the Nahatlatch River, at River’s Edge Resort, 22.5 kilometers outside Boston
Bar. They have 7 cabins, all along the river, and each equipped with furniture, a gas refrigerator and gas
stove, gas lighting, bedrooms, pots, pans and cooking utensils, plates and silverware. There’s an outhouse
for each cabin and one facility with a flush toilet and sun-warmed water shower that can get downright hot.
The cabins run $50 a night for two, and $5 per person more than two people. They are located on the web
at: http://riversedgecabins.com/ and are usually booked solid for the summer so planning in advance is
definitely recommended.
We had a late supper,
fried potatoes with onions and
bacon and top sirloin steak, along
with Wendy’s (Nils’ wife) special
pepper sauce. Fabulous. We
forgot all about the three
blackberry pies we had left, but
they didn’t go to waste! Glen
cooked supper, Nils did the
dishes.
We were up in the
morning and Windy again had the
hot water on for tea. But today
Windy cooked breakfast. Hot
tea, juice, and – Eggs! Poached
for Nils and Glen, and scrambled
for Windy.
It must have been pretty good because there weren’t any leftovers at all and no complaints, either?
Nils helped Windy do the dishes.
Nils is a chef by trade, so when he gets off in the wilderness like this cooking is definitely not his
preferred thing to do - anything but, in fact.
We were just in
the ends of packing
up and getting the
cars loaded when our
neighbor came over
asking for a jump
start before we left –
his car wouldn’t start.
We obliged, but it
didn’t work. Our
next stop was
halfway back to
Boston Bar to pick elderberries on the way home, to make elderberry
wine — our only reason for being up at River’s Edge — that and that we
were simply too tired to drive all the way home the day before. So Windy
took the neighbor into Boston Bar for a wrecker and Nils and Glen did
all the elderberry picking. We got at least 3 gallons of elderberries,
enough to make 6 gallons of Elderberry wine and 6 gallons of
Elderberry-Burgundy wine. Not a bad capper to a gold panning trip.
$300 for gas, camping and food, no mushrooms, $10 worth of gold, but
we did get enough elderberries for enough wine to make it worthwhile!
And helped another human being at the same time.
Of course, hope springs eternal -- like in baseball at the beginning of spring training, or in gold panning
when you believe “the mother load” is just over the next hill? Our next trip could be another 10-15-20 miles
further into the ruggedest of the mountains -- over the next hill to the mother load!
Inside Back Cover
No story of this trip would
be complete without some pictures of the squirrels who did
their best to distract us in our
camp, nor of the Stellar blue jays
at River’s Edge camp. After all,
we did miss out on the bears thankfully.
The squirrels were cute little
bushy-tailed fellas, looking more
like miniature squirrels but
chittering just like chipmunks.
Here we see Glen getting distracted for a bit by one that came
right up into the camp. And the next
morning maybe the same one came
back to a little rock right beside Nils
and perched there, quietly, just
watching him snore.
I lay quietly in bed for several
minutes just watching the little feller
watching Nils sleeping - such excitement!
But I’ve heard chipmunks scolding people unmercifully and it just
didn’t happen with us. They were quite content, for the most part, to just leave us
alone, and kick back and watch?
Top to bottom: Glenn watching
one in the tree, Climbing down the
tree, and hopping over to a 604699-2961 stump.
Cheap entertainment at least!
2006
Gold Panning Expedition
A Photo Essay
Expedition Guide: Nils
Comic Relief: Glen, Windy
BACK COVER
© September 2006
The Stellar Jays were beautiful. Blue.
Brave. Looking for handouts, of course,
just as any wild critter who is used to
people is. So we obliged, with
crumbs....from our hoard of blueberry
scones.
In other parts of BC you find the
“Camp Robber” Jays who will be so bold
as to come right down and eat the crumbs
from your hands. Not these critters, no
sirree! They’ll just keep their distance,
waiting your largesse - waiting for you to
throw the crumbs out at a safe distance,
and then they will scramble to get them.
We had from 4 to 6 at the height of
our “crumb madness”, but hold our hands out with a crumb as long as we would and no luck. The
Jays were just not gonna come that
close.
Pretty soon we just gave up and threw
it out....and then they’d all flock to the
scene of the food.
FOOD FIGHT!
Good, cheap entertainment.
Photos, top to bottom:
Stellar blue jay in a tree out front, Nils
holding out a crumb to no avail, and,
throwing out the crumb the jay will come
close enough to get it — taken under the
table.