Sure enough, after hiking a couple miles uphill and hacking through some brush, we found the place just as he had described it.

All of this made me have to conclude that those dummies just didn’t know what they were doing. It was a couple of years later before the solution for this puzzle became clear to me.

…more difficult terrain must be traversed in the hope of locating small pockets, low depressions or small gullies on needle-covered slopes.

…being sneaky, I filled in the hole, and buried therein some trash items that I had previously found, just to discourage any other detectorist that might come along.

I have a slight mental disorder. It causes frequent lapses in common sense, good judgment and bouts of high fever—gold fever.

I learned the next day that I was not the only one that had crossed paths with a bear. Dick told us about his harrowing experience from the previous night.

On about the fifth time across one of these slopes, and down near the little wash...bam! I found a nice chunk of rock, laced through with gold. Wow! How had I missed this?