Things I should have done – gold mining
I’m sure that you’ve all heard some of the quotes that say that when you get older, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the things you did do. The list of things I didn’t do seems quite small, so I’m okay with that, but a couple of long-time friends have their placer gold mine down near Dawson for sale, and I’ve been thinking a lot that I should have tried that for a season or two. Hey, if Tod Hoffman can do it… 🙂
Placer gold and I have been been friends since I was just a little guy – since my Dad caught gold fever during British Columbia’s Centennial in 1958. Gold panning for me, though, was like fishing – I don’t like fishing, just catching, and the bang for the buck was just never there with gold panning other than Dad and I had some wonderful days together. In this photo, Dad is showing my brother-in-law Warren how the magic happens, on his claim on the Fraser River at Spuzzum, BC.
The proliferation of gold mining shows on TV has certainly caught the interest of a lot of people, and I’m on that list. Just from guiding tours through the Klondike gold fields for 20+ years, I know more about placer gold than some of the people in these shows seem to!
And now my friends tease with the gold mine they have for sale at Frisco Creek, 72 miles upriver of Dawson City. It’s ready to go, and there are some great nuggets in a pan on their Web page! (it’s now dead) I certainly never saw anything like those in my pans.
But no, I think I’ll leave large-scale gold mining on the list of things I didn’t do. I have lots of other plans for the coming summer 🙂
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