Gold Fever

THE LURE OF GOLD is one of British Columbia’s most enduring and romantic notions. Ever since the Gold Rush in the mid 19th century, fortune seekers the world over have travelled here to search our waterways and rock formations for this lustrous metal. What was once a life-changing gamble 150 years ago has turned into a profession occupied by mining companies, private claim owners and social-media prospectors, as well as a hobby for people with a gambler’s heart and a love of the outdoors.

I fall firmly into the latter category. As I’ve talked about in these pages before, I’m always up for a little “hiking with a purpose,” whether that’s fly fishing, rock hounding and, most recently, panning for gold—all at the most amateur of skill levels, of course. Just as Linda Gabris describes in her story “Going for Gold” on page 52, I too caught my gold fever at the gold panning display during a road trip to the historic mining town of Barkerville. After watching my kids find little gold flakes in their pay dirt, I was inspired to purchase one of the Barkerville-branded gold pans they have available in the gift shop—thinking that this was going to be my new hobby.

After several years with that gold pan sitting untouched in my closet, I finally gave it a go during the depths of Covid isolation at a little stream by our family cabin on Vancouver Island. I had read in one of Rick Hudson’s articles on rock hounding that gold was found just upstream from the road crossing near us, and surely the expertise I gained from watching my kids pan for gold one time would lead me to riches on the riverbank. That wasn’t even remotely the case, but it did provide us with a fun afternoon of scooping up gravel and washing it in the pan in the creek.

Just like my no-catch fly fishing outings, I’m not one to let bad luck stop me from enjoying a hobby. In fact, soon after this expedition I purchased a high-powered magnet to go magnet fishing off the dock (a little more success here, as I pulled a rusty log boom spike from a lake), and eventually purchased a metal-detector “for my son,” which has found us a pile of rusty nails and aluminum cans.

This past summer, BC Magazine art director Arran Yates and I took a backcountry road trip on the Hurley Forest Service Road from Pemberton to Gold Bridge, with half an idea to try all this stuff out. We had a great time crawling around the old, abandoned mining equipment and tailings, and imagining ourselves living in the Bridge River Valley all those years ago. Of course, we had no luck finding anything of note with the gear, but I did get a consolation prize of grabbing some nice pieces of nephrite jade to take home as treasure.

That road trip is simply amazing, and we have plans to do it again this summer with hopes of striking rich. Though this time we’re going prepared with a little more knowledge, both from Linda’s great article in this issue and by watching Aussie Gold Hunters online. But as the saying goes, the chase is better than the catch, so I’m sure we’ll have a blast even if we strike out.

—Dale Miller

EDITOR Dale Miller editor@bcmag.ca

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Arran Yates

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