Jul 10

Written by:
7/10/2009 12:00 AM 

Greetings from Cripple River Gold Camp. The weather here is absolutely fantabulous!!! The sun is bright and shiny, and it is toasty warm. People from our camp are out and about, going all over on adventures, or running their beach boxes. There was an ATV trip to the Trommel Camp this morning that left at 9, and an ATV trip to the Sinuk River led by Perry, Sandy, and Georgia Massie leaving camp at 9:30. Today, our usually-bustling gold camp seems very deserted and has been nicknamed, "The Ghost Town" by those of us left behind to work. Oh well, next time - maybe.

Chip Yorde, our Miner's Chef Most Excellent, has done it again! She has come up with a new recipe that has become a new camp favorite, and Chip has been asked for the recipe so many times here it is:

Chip’s Pumpkin Desert
Mix together until thoroughly blended:
1 large can pumpkin
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
6 eggs
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Pour mixture into an ungreased 9x13 baking pan. Take one white or yellow cake mix and one stick butter - crumble them together in a bowl with your fingers until mixed. Sprinkle mixture over the top of the pumpkin blend in the baking pan.
Bake at 325 degrees until done to your satisfaction, slice and serve plain or, as Chip says, for an extra treat, top with whipped cream or non-dairy topping.

If you had a dollar for every time you have heard the expression gold is where you find it, you could probably buy something really nice with the money! Yet the saying is still as true today as when the first person uttered it. This week, some unusual gold fell through the grizzly on the high-banker at the Trommel Camp, much to the surprise of Ben Castricone and Patti Yamane from California. They were high-banking together on Upper Arctic Creek at the Trommel Camp. Patti was choosing where in the pile of material to dig the gold bearing dirt from and Ben was shoveling and feeding the machine, when they noticed a large, round, golden object on their black mat where the gold is supposed to appear! It was a 1901 Gold Eagle U.S. Coronet Head coin, commonly referred to as a 10 dollar gold piece - one-half ounce of gold! This coin looked very nice when viewed with your naked eye, with a lot of detail in the eagle's feathers and shield on the reverse, and on the obverse. The face was sharp and clean, the hair was strong, and all the letters in LIBERTY were bold in the coronets headband, with very little wear! A beautiful coin!!! Lost by some unlucky miner long, long ago, the 1901 date says it all. If we had a lucky couple in camp competition of the year these two would be in top running, as they also won a necklace donated to the draw, and found a respectable amount of gold. And of course, they have each other! May their good luck continue!

Other lucky people in camp continue to hunt for, and find 'Long Tom Gold’ Massie's pirate treasure boxes. (I have it on good authority that our beloved leader, Tom Massie, is really distantly related to the famous, or is it infamous, Long John Silver of pirate fame who hid pirate treasure all over the Caribbean Islands and off of the U.S. Florida and Georgia coasts! So you see the poor Mr. Tom just can’t help himself, it's in his blood!) Those of us in camp aren't complaining, not one little bit, in fact, treasure hunting has become quite the pasttime.

The past six weeks have really gone by fast, and the summer is best summed up by Camp Manager Al Marconi.

"It has been a challenging and interesting summer, and a good one! There were no big problems, just enough minor ones to keep everyone on their toes," Marconi said. "With our excellent volunteer crew, we can handle almost anything, and do. Participants had a good time, and many have asked about coming back on crew for next year or returning as participants again but for a longer period of time. The outer camps are proving more popular, as some people want more remote conditions than the main camp offers. Gold recovery varied a lot, usually the more you worked at it the more gold you got, and with the Friday draws from the 'common operation' there is more gold to add to your poke. Thank you to everyone who made this camp work so well this year, and a special thanks to all our hard-working crew members. I hope to see everyone all back here happy and healthy next year."

Fishing in the Cripple River is now very good, with the silver salmon starting to run nicely. Fifteen ATVs went on the Sinuk trip with Perry for fishing, sight-seeing, beach combing, but mostly just to go! Fishing was very good at the Sinuk and two large pink Salmon were caught and invited to lunch. One lucky fisherman caught a 12-pound silver salmon. After a filling lunch of freshly-caught-and-cooked salmon, or frankfurters for the non-fishy folk, the adventuresome ATV-ers started the 17-mile ride back to camp. The large group broke up into smaller groups so everyone could stop and rock hound or beach comb at their own pace. The light rain kept the bugs at bay, and a great time was had by all.

The beach glass trip to Nome was again a success, with many nice pieces of beach glass being found including several small red pieces, several blue pieces, a yellow piece (yes a nice yellow), lots of greens, browns, clears/frosted, and some interesting pottery as well as one old blue glass bead and one tiny ceramic cowboy boot about 1½ inches tall. Then lunch and shopping and touring and pictures and back to camp for our Alaska King Crab Feast. What a way to liven up a Wednesday!!!

Easily the most popular classes in camp this year are those by Ralph Rogers of Texas. He has been teaching the basics of goldsmithing for several years, and this year he has added silversmithing to his class schedule along with rock cutting and polishing. Jade slabs as well as very nice cabochons appear in our Friday night gold draw and are randomly added to some of the gold draw numbers so the lucky recipient gets Cripple River Jade as well as Cripple River Gold to take home. A winning twosome! Ralph also will show participants how he cuts and polishes rocks, and will cut and polish a rock if asked.

Now classes are all well and good, but the important work in camp is done by the crew who keeps the trucks and ATVs running, the food on the tables, the wood cut for the fires, the gold coming in for the Friday draw, the beach boxes rocking, the showers and outhouses cleaned and stocked with supplies, the water and generator running, the beach box motors running happily, the Saloon stage show and refreshments going on Friday, the camp repaired, and all many, many other jobs I haven’t mentioned! There are too many names to list, but our crew know who they are, and my readers have met a lot of them if they have ever been to our camp, so a deeply heart felt thank you to all the hard working crew who make this experience possible!!!

And we wouldn’t have a job to volunteer for without our participants! One couple is Jeri Hayden and her husband, Bob, of Palmyra, Ill. They are here for one week and have tried to do everything there is here to do, which Jeri admitted was impossible.

"We trommeled, beach glass hunted, took gold and silver classes, garnet hunted, took artifact class, beach boxed, played games at night and won (I was Bingo Queen, won second in Yahtzee, won at won at cribbage)! I especially enjoyed the hot showers, finding gold, and the people. I had an absolute ball, but I am so tired and plan to sleep for several days when I get back home. I will definitely try to come back next year."

Big Bob Frelund of Phelan, Calif., is a member of the AU Mojave Prospectors of Hesperia, a prospecting club that also sponsors foster children to summer camp in Big Bear, Calif. Every year at Cripple River, Big Bob raffles off gold nuggets, with the proceeds going to this worthy cause. This year, it was two nuggets as one draw, the total weight of the nuggets was 5.7 grams of beautiful heavy yellow chunky gold. Tickets sold at six for five dollars. The drawing was held in the chow hall, the winning ticket was pulled by Chip Yorde, and the lucky winner was Stan "Squeaky" Simon. The drawing was to be last night at the saloon, but due to technical difficulties, it had to be postponed until this morning. Sorry about that! Congrats to the winner, condolences to the rest of you.

My fun summer is over, at least the Alaska Part, time to take my "on the road" as they used to say. I'll miss you all until next year, so until then, may your life and the bottom of your pan turn golden! Your Friend - Arctic Annie