May 18, 2019, after 26 years, I had finally saved enough money. I bought my one-way ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska, and I started off by finding a new job…

Many miners know that lead is very commonly associated with silver values, but the truth is that it is also associated with gold values in many locations as well.

I love it when I am in the middle of a high trash area and all the ferrous bars go away, the screen number goes to a three or an eight, and the meter is forty to a hundred. I don’t know for sure that I have found gold, but it narrows the odds down.

My mining partner Keith McBride and I spent a week in May working on a twenty-nine man crew split up into six teams at a couple of “pay to mine” mining camps.

After trading for a specialized gold detector, my gold finds went up in a hurry. Even though those older gold detectors were pretty good, things have changed a lot since then.

At this point, stress raised my blood pressure and I was figuring out escape routes through the brush, but thought it best to continue the conversation.