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(A life lesson where the writer is happy to not pay the ultimate price for a bad decision)
“Oh man, I’m gonna die” As the water of the American river dragged me down further and the rapids slammed me into the rocks I realized I had done a stupid thing and was now acting like a fishing lure being trolled into chilled waters.
Ok, a little back history. I am proof that gold fever does not discriminate. I don’t own a single piece of flannel (and let me tell you that a polo shirt does not help in cold nights). I own my own professional services business. I live in new home in a yuppie neighborhood; and the people I associate with consider roughing it playing the ball where it lies.
 But one thing I do well is prospect. At 33 I have been panning nearly as long as I can remember. My first pan was an old frying pan that lost it’s handle and I was pulling gold while most of my friends were trying to figure out girls. Most everyone I know who knows how to pan was taught by me and I’m pretty sure I could give anyone a run for their money on speed panning. I’ve even been known to swim across wide rivers to pan spots that I knew would produce better than the sides where everyone could easily access.
This has really been my year for panning too. I took an employees “problem child” out to Coloma and helped him get his first gold and found an 1843 half dime in near mint condition less than ten feet in the river in front of the Sutter’s Mill memorial. I demonstrated proper panning to countless people and even made a good business relationship in teaching a father and his sons how to find the rock that gives you the fever (different article).
But here I was, about to be another lesson on the tongues of anyone who thinks they know it all. My company would end up being my memorial, and my beautiful wife of only 3 years was about to be a widow. All because I didn’t use the common sense God gave a beetle.
A week before our four day camping trip my wife and I went to the Gold Mine which is the only prospecting supply store in Sacramento. I was drooling over dredges in the Gold Prospectors magazine and decided it was time to step up my inventory. There was a used dredge the store was selling on consignment along side the new dredges at half the price. Well my wife twisted my arm, a full half degree, and we bought a new two inch dredge that fit perfect in the trunk of my Buick sedan. I spent the next few days dreaming of the size of the nuggets we would find the coming holiday weekend and even irritated the people at the counter as they handed me my dredge permit.
On Thursday we loaded up all of our gear, which included a queen sized air mattress, propane stove, shelf stable weight loss food (perfect for camping) and everything that yuppies would need to make “roughing it” bearable. Along with my lead designer, Jason and my brother N Law who would join us the next day we headed out for Ruckachuck which is a small first come first serve campground right along the north fork of the American river. The road, and I use the term loosely, that leads down to the camp site is only graded once a year and is abused by rafting tours all season long making the drive impossible in anything other than a truck or vehicle with incredible ground clearance. Definitely not a casual drive for the faint of heart.
Even as we were unpacking my new toy was getting some serious attention. People walking by with their gold pans and cheap metal detectors were asking me all kinds of questions about it. Even two guys down at the river helped me walk it down next to their older dredge just to be able to see it at work.
The Honda engine started on the very first pull and after priming the water line for a few minutes I felt the first sucks as the vacuum took. I donned my snorkel gear and immediately began working bedrock outcroppings that were covered and tangled with submerged debris. This was a good sign to me that no one had been there with a dredge in quite some time. After a full tank of gas I fumbled through pulling everything apart, made sure my 50 feet of rope was tied secure and began panning the concentrates while my (did I mention wonderful) wife Amy setup camp.
If you ever want to see a grown man dance around like a kid in a candy store with a credit card, this pan would do it. I pulled the biggest flake I had ever had out in the pan; easily the size of my pinky fingernail. I was glad the guys who had helped me down were gone, because all they were pulling was flour gold and I didn’t want to make them jealous. Amy and Jason, who both hated the cold of the American, were in the water with me as we all drooled over the amount of gold I pulled out on my very first tank. As much as I wanted to keep going, the sun sets quickly over the steep hills surrounding the river and we lugged the dredge back after about another half hour of sucking material off the river bottom.
As we ate dinner back at the camp and Amy went through the concentrates, I couldn’t help but stare and covet the other side of the river. Its steep virgin bank had several areas where you could see material had simply dumped in from the overhanging cliffs above it. The exposed bedrock had many deep grooves and pockets that would act as riffles when the water rose during the winter. As my wife picked even smaller pieces of yellow out of the pan I vocalized what could have become fatal. “Tomorrow, I’m going to swim across the river and dredge the other side.”
That night all I could dream about was the hum of the motor and the sound of material traveling up the ribbed hose to the sluice where it would leave all its secrets behind. I fantasized pulling out a nugget that was too big and heavy to travel up the hose and thought about nine different ways of revealing its glory to Jason and Amy.
The next morning I ate heavy because I knew I would not be swimming back across for lunch and could not wait to plunge into the frigid waters. Now where I was going to originally swim across was about 70 feet wide and slow moving. I knew that I would be able to get about two thirds across the span before I would be towing the dredge and everything we had loaded on it but the first problem came from Jason’s lips. “Ya’know, I don’t swim so well.” With nothing to tie the dredge to on the other side I would need Jason to hold the rope and man the sluice, so I would have to think of a different way across. Well that meant the rapids were the only way to go. They were shallow and the two outcroppings of bedrock were only about twelve feet from each other. I was sure I knew where I cold jump in, where I would pop out, and even told Jason which exact rock I would grab onto the other side to pull him and the dredge across. We waded across the first section without any problems I had the rope tied into a loop which I wrapped over my shoulder, across my chest, and under my right arm. I pulled the dredge across the sweeping waters and pulled it up onto the first exposed bedrock before I would have to take the plunge.
Now if my brother in law Aaron had been with us he would have probably hit me hard in the head to knock some sense into me before I jumped into the fast moving river. But he wasn’t and I ignored the now loud screaming voice in my head as I walked to the spot I felt I would need to jump in to be able to grip my target rock on the other side. I bent my knees and dove straight out with enough rope in my hands to make up for the drag from the water.
I popped up on the other side and grabbed the exact rock I had said I would. Jason later said he was impressed that my mind could calculate where to jump in, how fast I would swim, and how fast the water was going to pop out right where I said. There was, however, no solace in that as my hands failed in getting a grip on the slippery rock. As my hands frantically slid down the rock, desperately looking for a hold anywhere the voice in my head gave out an annoying “I told you so” and I quickly was drug downriver until the rope went tight and yanked me under the water.
I knew this was bad, this was “We need you to identify the body” bad. Jason was holding the polyester rope which was now choking me and the angle the rope was around me forced my body straight down until my shins cracked the rock on the bottom. I was able to stand my legs and jumped, popping out of the water long enough to yell “Let go of the Rope” which my wife who was standing on the shoreline later told me sounded like an unintelligible scream. “I’m about to drown and I’m going to end up being on some stupid video rescue as they find my body floating into Auburn” was the burning thought in my “battered against the rocks” head. I thought about how unfair and horrible my lack of foresight was. How much I loved Amy and was finally in a good place in life.
“I am not going to die like this!!!” My thoughts went from futility to pure anger in one single swoop. I forced the rope over my head and drifted away from my noose past the rapids. As I took my third lungful of air I could see my wife sigh as I raised my hand and waved at her so she would stop worrying.
My neck was hurting from the rope burn, blood was pouring from my shins and hand where the rocks introduced themselves, and my eyes were as wide as saucers, but I was alive. Jason was in the middle rock watching me drift away and was moments from shoving the dredge in the water, which later overturned when we tried to pull it across the rapids, to try to lesson the pull of the rope. I drifted to a rock on the other side and laid in the shallows out of everyone’s view. As I recovered and went over my injuries I saw the pocket I was sitting on and couldn’t help but think “This is where I need to bring the dredge”.
Back at camp my wife treated my injuries and Jason and I dismantled the motor which was now waterlogged. My wife’s sister and her husband showed up after we got the dredge working and I was working a small hole on our side of the river.
Next year I will get a longer rope and swim across the slow part of the river to the hole I recuperated in. I will suck the material through the hose and listen to concentrates settling in my miner’s moss. I will pan, and hopefully pull out some beautiful color from my GPAA pan. But I will never forget to respect the power of nature. I will never forget to listen to the voice in my head. And I will never forget how lucky I was that the big man upstairs decided not to make me pay the ultimate price for my lapse in judgment.
So maybe I am a lesson after all. But amen that it’s me, and not the evening news, around to tell it.
I sent this article to the GPAA for publish as well. I know more people probably read the magazine than this forum. Just hoping to minimize anyone repeating the same mistake I made.
P.S. I'm in the market for a good flannel shirt if anyone has suggestions
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