damnit where is that gold

Could you imagine being in a dark cave and shining your light on millions of dollars worth of gold? Well that moment is what Stephen and I were looking for this last week when we went treasure hunting…THAT’S RIGHT we went treasure hunting. We were looking for Deadman’s cave, a cave that is legend to have millions of dollars of gold bars of Spanish origin. The story goes that in the 1880’s five Spanish prospector’s were stranded in a fall snowstorm and found a cave that had been untouched for centuries and went inside to find out that there were five dead bodies in one cavern and in the next cavern lay 500 bars of gold.
Now in preparation for this venture I did the math and found out that of all of the gold was found now, it would be worth over 80 million dollars. And I went with my adventure buddy Stephen. So we set off at six AM, (and for those of you who know me know that this was a struggle) and took off down south. The cave was indeed in the middle of nowhere, which we figured worked to our advantage because not many travelers would be likely to go in the same direction as us. We got to the town of Crestone without a hitch, but there our troubles began. We spent over an hour trying to find the right road to take that would lead us to the right trailhead. We finally found our heading and just to our luck found that there was a gate that prevented us from going any further in our 4 runner. We got out and studied our map and figured that we were a little more than three miles away from the bottom of the creek, and we had anticipated being able to start hiking at that point, but with this gate in our way we had to begin there. This setback set our journey three hours of delays but we began to hike along the road that would take us to the creek, and quickly found that this was a road that offered us little in the way of traction as we were walking on pure sand. We passed a Buddhist temple up on the hill, which offered to be another sign of just how different a world we were in. We stopped many times to figure out if we had gone too far and if the creek had been dried up, and if a dry creek bed would be what we would hike along. But we continued along the road until we did indeed find ‘dead man’s creek’ in an unmistakable placing. This was a huge first step for us to find the creek as we were hiking through hot unshaded sandy desert, and our climate then immediately changed to going away from any path or trail and bushwhacking up the creek with trees to shade us and a cool creek to cool us off whenever needed. We spent the next hour of our journey hiking up the creek just to enter the canyon where somewhere lied a cave with unheard of riches in it. As we rose up in elevation the climate changed many times, we went from sandy desert to thick pine areas. These areas were thick with all sorts of brush, and mining remnants. Stephen pointed out tree stumps that must have been cut with old handsaws, and I pointed out to him old mines along the edge of the canyon walls. We were smart enough to distinguish a cave from a mine. And it was important to do so as mines are known for their instability. We hiked further up into the canyon just as the climate was again changing to thicker plant life and more Aspen trees. We decided to stop for our packed lunch under a large ledge that was similar to the one we envisioned seeing. We took off our packs and chowed on our lunchables, and then to our amazement and somewhat fear we saw a man staring at us from a distance. We immediately went on edge as Stephen and I both agreed that much about many of the things we encountered on this day were odd and made us uneasy at best. The man approached us confidently and we made small talk and Stephen and I remained convinced that this man, much older than us in his 50’s, was looking for the same cave as us. He continued quickly on and Stephen and I discussed exactly what had just occurred. After we had finished our replenishing lunch we looked along the canyon walls to find many mines and a few caves. We found but one that we were intrigued with. We entered it with tons of adrenaline and fear in us. But we entered and explored briefly before we decided that this was not what we were looking for. As we were coming back we found ourselves briefly lost, and discovered just how easy it is to get disoriented in such a situation as this. We consulted our tools and followed our instinct to get back to where we needed to be. Once we had gone back down from the canyon we trudged up the road for another three miles to worn out completely but overall very satisfied at what we had accomplished. On the drive home we discussed what we would do differently if we did it again. Among other things we would make it an overnight trip, and would bring things like GPS with us, in hopes of locating ourselves better.
Will we return again before the summer is out? Probably not, but to anyone that is intrigued by this journey, Email me at StefanZed@aol.com to get more details and if interested in helping with a return trip. Until the next time, keep looking for that gold