Aug 4

Written by:
8/4/2003 12:00 AM 

Greetings from the Cripple River Gold Camp! Today is a beautiful day! The sun is shining and there is a slight breeze that is keeping the mosquitoes at bay. In the lower 48 where I live, the mosquitoes are small and tend to come out mostly in the evenings before dusk. Here the mosquitoes are a lot larger and they feed all the time. If they waited for a dark summer’s night in Alaska they would go extinct. Miners with their full concentration on prospecting and panning for gold make ideal dinner plates. One old sourdough (an Alaskan old-timer) told me that in the good old days the Eskimos and miners would trap and skin the mosquitoes, tan the hides and use the skins to make blankets for their beds. It kept them warm at night and all the wild animals avoided their cabins because they were afraid of “waking up” the mosquitoes. While I am no longer considered a cheechako, or greenhorn here, I almost believe him.

This has been a great week here with the blueberries ripe and ready to pick as well as my personal favorite, the orange-gold cloudberries (also called salmonberries here in northern Alaska). These berries are a local delicacy highly prized by Eskimo women. Its’ unusual flavor however is not to everyone’s liking. The bog cranberries, the lingonberries and the crowberries (called blackberries in northern Alaska), are late fall/winter fruit harvested after the first frost or snow. Many fruits and plants native to Alaska are edible, or are used for medicinal purposes. But be aware there are some that are poisonous, so when on the tundra, be careful what you sample.

There have been numerous animal sightings in and near camp. A herd of seven full grown muskox and one baby visited the Cripple River Camp this week and spent some time checking us out to see if we humans were eating up all their food. Relieved that we were leaving their graze alone they consented to let us take lots and lots of photographs. The muskox (called “omingmak” which means the animal with skin like a beard) were plentiful in this area during the ice age, and the present population around Nome is estimated at 2,000 animals. Their hair (called quivet) is the softest, warmest and rarest fiber in the world. While the hair has little or no smell to it, if you get downwind of a mature male muskox during breeding season you soon learn how they got their name. There were many sightings of other animal residents including moose, caribou, reindeer, fox, arctic squirrels (sisiliks), a female? walrus, a baby seal and its mom; and at the mouth of the Sinuk River--- two sea lions. Quite a week for animal watching, and picture taking.

I enjoy meeting the many interesting and friendly people who come to Cripple River, and I try to interview several groups each week. This is not always easy to do as most people are very busy prospecting for gold. One couple willing to be interviewed this week was Lynn and Leonora Myers from Aiken, South Carolina. They were first bit by the gold bug when they saw Tom Massie in a Gold Fever Show on the Outdoor Channel several years ago. A few weeks later they saw another Gold Fever Show, and it advertised a Gold Show in Gainsville, Georgia. They went to the show, learned there was gold on the east coast and joined the G.P.A.A. while at the show. Leonora is the metal detecting and panning half of their prospecting team, with Lynn building the equipment and doing the shoveling. The Myers were impressed with the Cripple River Camp, and they explained why, “This camp is a lot more than we expected, and not nearly as primitive as we thought. We especially like the trading post, and the fact there is so much to see and do. Everyone is friendly and helpful. We worked flour gold with the beach box by the Bering Sea, coarse gold and flakes highbanking at the trommel, and we prospected and metal detected all over. We explored the area surrounding camp and found so many interesting rocks and treasures that we can’t take them all home. We even got to meet Louise from the Temecula office. We have spoken to her many times on the phone, and she is every bit as nice in person. This has been a great trip.”

Stan Esty, Bob Carr, and Larry Heinhold are visiting our camp from Gunnison, Colorado. These three good friends are spending two weeks here at Cripple River. Stan is the elected “Fearless Leader” and “Expert” of the group with some experience as a hard rock miner. Stan stated that he has had very little experience with our kind of mining, but he and his buddies are learning fast. Larry and Bob are relative “newbie’s” to gold prospecting. Today all three are taking a break from camp and they are going to tour Nome, to see a different kind of local color. The town of Nome is great and a fun place to visit. If you have the time to listen, the older residents know a lot of interesting stories and little known historical facts. When I asked the gentlemen from Colorado what drew them to the Cripple River Gold Camp, Larry emphatically said, “No telephones!” Stan replied, “It was a chance to totally get away from it all.” Bob answered, “I wanted a vacation and a chance to get some gold.”

On a more somber note, Thursday at 12:45p.m. approximately 40 friends and fellow prospectors gathered for a memorial service at Bowhead Creek to say a final goodbye to their friend Richard Keesee from Victorville California. Rest in Peace Richard.

Fishing in camp is unusual this year as the Cripple River was closed for Salmon, until yesterday. Fishing on the Sinuk River about 15 miles to the west, on the other hand, has been open for salmon for several weeks. Of course Dolly Varden and Arctic Char have been caught all year. Unofficially, the largest Dolly taken in camp was by Henry Henry from Santa Rosa, California. This member of the trout family was 21 inches long and was a fat 5lbs. Henry Henry has been a crew volunteer for more than 20 years, and is loved by everyone here. Just keep on fishing Henry Henry, with all that experience the fish don’t stand a chance. More on fishing: you can fish for Grayling on inland rivers in the interior, and small Halibut in the Bering Sea. Corey Rudolph, while out of camp this week, caught a Dolly Varden reported to be 24-25 inches long and about 6 or so pounds. If you think this sounds like a fish story pictures of this Moby Dick of the trout persuasion were taken!

NEWS FLASH!!! Tim, a reputable source in camp, reported that at a place called Gold Run about 20 miles outside of Teller (Teller is 71 miles from Nome), a person used a dowsing rod to find a place to start running their dredge. When the dowsing rod did it’s little excited quivery dance the spot was marked and the dredge placed. A FORTY-ONE OUNCE nugget was then dredged up at that location. This happened just two weeks or so ago!!! Gold is where and HOW you find it.

The ATV trips to the Sinuk River and to the trommel at Upper Arctic Creek led by Perry Massie are very popular! Gold and treasures are always being found, and the ATVers get a chance to see, feel and experience riding their quads in entirely new ways. The areas toured are beautiful, the air so fresh and pure you should be able to bottle it and take it home with you. And the memories and pictures are Pure Cripple River Gold!!!

I want to write about a special experience I had, for my special friend in California. Night before last I was at the Arctic Creek Dredge Camp. It had been raining off and on all day. Around bedtime it started to clear up, and I could see the light from the sun start to peep over the mountain behind me turning the sky from a misting silvery gray to a red tinged gold. I looked the other way across the tundra and as the light from the sun touched the many different bushes of the shrub willows the colors seemed so bright and clean that I could not remember ever having seen more vivid colors of greens and browns. The tundra just sparkled! I looked my fill and had just turned to go back into the hooch when my husband called out to me and to Ralph our fellow dredger, “Come see this rainbow!” I spun around and looked at the sky and I was awestruck. The rainbow was enormous. I could see the complete color bands; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, ultra-violet, indigo then red again repeating THREE times, on the inside first with a wide subtle showing of all the colors, and getting stronger, brighter, and more distinct with each new color band. The colors of this rainbow grew more brilliant and glowing with each new rainbow. It seemed to grow wider and wider. It was a rainbow within a rainbow within a rainbow! I could see both ends where the rainbow gently kissed the ground, and the colors glimmered, and shimmered where the colors met the green of the hill. Behind me was sunshine. And in front total beauty! Overhead, a gently mischievous little cloud softly misted rain gently on my head. Then this glorious triple rainbow had another rainbow appear over it! My triple rainbow was doubled, the second rainbow a wide one with gentle soft colors. Ralph took pictures of this rare and beautiful phenomenon and had me take a picture of him with the rainbow arching against the sky, over our hooch and his head. We stood out in the misting rain while the beauty of this country washed over our hearts and souls. I heard my husband Jim sigh. At 12:05 a.m. the cool rainy mist and my wet hair broke the spell, and it was off into the hooch to dry off and have hot herbal tea and honey before bed. What a day! Alaska’s famed midnight sun AND rainbows!

Until next time, may there be many rainbows in your life, and may the bottom of your pan turn golden.

Arctic Annie