Making matters worse, we could feel the truck moving very slowly down the mountain along with the trees and mud. It was an uncomfortable sinking feeling, as you might guess.

As I laid in my Jeep and tried to get some rest, I began to realize how tired I was. I felt like a little kid who walked around Disneyland for 12 hours with his parents.

We all love to see that first glimmer of gold when it peeks out from under the black sand in our pan, or feel the weight of a nugget in our scoop when we dig a good target. But sometimes things don’t go quite so smoothly.

My right rib cage took the brunt of the blow from the fall, which left me feeling partially paralyzed and in immense pain.

My brother Darryl and I had not had a prospecting adventure since January and we wanted to try out our new drywasher, so we decided to go for the weekend and check out some claims near Barstow…

He could tell that the top part just slid partway down over the bottom half. So, he tried to twist it apart with his hands. No go!

We started off excited and enthusiastic as we began hiking up the river, daydreaming about finding big gold.