Sierra Rivers

Like a lot of bad ideas, it begins at a bar. Murphy's Bar, in Hardrock, California, is the home of really bad ideas. The way to identify a bad idea is to look to your left and see if you're sitting next to Bob Flanagan. I'm not saying he originates bad ideas, but they do tend to follow him around like puppies. After a few bottles of Old Tailings, the local IPA, bad ideas don't sound so bad. Over time I've developed some resistance to bad ideas but every now and then a new strain of bad ideas incubates in Murphy's Bar, and that's where this story begins...a bad idea.

I'm a sucker for the "big gold" stories. Not long ago I was having a beer at Murphy's Bar when Bob Flanagan, grabbed the stool next to me and ordered an Old Tailings IPA.

He asked how I was doing and I replied about a pennyweight a day, which was a lie, I was doing worse than that but didn't want to admit it.

Bob said "I heard there's good gold on Starvation Creek."

"Really?" I paused mid-drink, knowing full well this was going to lead to nothing good.

"Yeah, I know a guy who took out 7 ounces a few years ago."

I replied, "I heard Starvation Creek was all worked out and it's almost impossible to work because of the boulders and brush."

"That was before the '98 flood. It's all been ripped out and it's good dredging now." Bob replied. "I talked to a guy who was in there and he said the gold is just laying up on the bedrock."

"If there is good gold there, how come you're not mining it?" I had to ask.

"I'm pulling my gear out of Yellow Jacket Gulch and I'm going to file a claim on Starvation Creek just below where Suicide Gulch comes in."

I mentally filed Starvation Creek as something I'd have to check out. I knew Bob routinely got better gold than I did, and the truth was my current claim was just about worked out. It was about time to look for better ground and if Starvation Creek was good enough for Bob, then there just might be something to it.

That night I studied the maps and Starvation Creek did look pretty good. It seemed like it was in the right area and the historical reports said big nuggets came from that area. Best of all, there were no mining claims on the creek so I could jump Bob's plans and get in there before he could.

I made the decision to go prospect for a better claim. I packed my dredge out of my current claim on Slick Rock Creek which took me two days and loaded it in the back of the truck thinking I'd be in the water in Starvation Creek in a day or two.

The map showed a road which looked passable and would lead me within a couple of hundred yards of the creek. Once in the creek I could go up or down creek for my prospecting. Easy day.

It was a two hour drive down a paved road to reach the turnoff to the dirt road which led to the creek. Five miles an hour was the best speed I could make on the dirt road and I was glad I brought my chainsaw as the winter's deadfall was still lying across the road. It looked like a couple of years of deadfall and they really have the ability to get bound up when they're laying across the banks, but I managed to have enough gas in the saw to clear the road. I reached what I thought would be the jumping off point, but it was already getting late in the day so I turned back thinking I would get a fresh start in the morning. Luckily my spare tire was good and I made pretty good time changing it, considering my flashlight batteries were dead.

The next day I was up early with the confidence of knowing I'd have the dredge in the water by the end of the day. The stupid tire place didn't open until 9, but I was glad for the time to rest my arms which were sore from cutting all the logs across the road. By 11 I had my tire and was on my way to Starvation Creek.

It was nearly 3pm by the time I reached the final section of road which dropped into the Starvation Creek canyon. I figured I still had an hour or two to try to find a trail so in the waning afternoon I put the truck in 4 low and followed what appeared to be an old access road but it could have been a goat trail. Hard to tell in the fading light.Turning around on a goat trail is impossible, backing up is tough, but tougher in the dark. I don't listen to the radio that much so losing the antenna wasn't so bad it was still dangling by the cable which was handy for finding it the next day. The brush really makes an awful sound against the side of a truck, but I figured with a little buffing I could fix that and I'm not real sure you need both your side view mirrors to be street legal, but I'm no expert on the law.

The next morning the scratches looked like they may require more than a little buffing, but with some duct tape I had my mirrors and antenna back on again and I was off once more for Starvation Creek. With enough daylight and some more chainsaw work I'd be on the gold by noon.

The old miners didn't have lightweight gear and vibram soled hiking boots so I knew I could find a passable trail in with a little patience. I made good time getting back to the jump off point and it was still before noon when I parked. The map showed only a couple hundred yards to the creek and it looked like there was a nice gentle sloping ridge which would lead right to the creek.

Maps are horizontal, the real world tends to be a bit more vertical. A couple hundred yards on the map was also a couple hundred yards of vertical drop. If I'd paid closer attention to the contour lines I would have seen the contour intervals were 40', not 10' which meant I had just about a straight drop into the canyon.

Not being one to let a little bit of elevation change keep me from prospecting I pushed ahead with my chosen path certain my skills as a seasoned prospector would get me to the creek.

Poison Oak really grows big in the canyons, don't you think? I thought I was immune but apparently there's a point where you're not so immune. I always carry some Tecnu in the pack. Tecnu requires water, I'm not complaining, but there's very little water on the side of a Poison Oak covered slope. No big deal I'd be to the creek soon enough and would have plenty of time to wash it off.

After a couple hundred vertical feet I felt I was making pretty good progress, I could see daylight ahead and knew I'd be at the creek within the hour. Did you know Search and Rescure teams have found daylight to be a good indicator of a cliff? I backtracked back up to the ridge and took a sideways path looking for a way around the cliff. Which involved two hundred more yards of poison oak.

There's a lot of rock in the Sierras and an surprising amount of it is vertical. The light was giving out and I decided I'd better abandon my attempt for the day. I felt pretty good about at least confirming there was a cliff there, meaning the trail was somewhere other than the cliff.

The guys at Tecnu are pretty serious about their directions to use it within a couple hours of exposure. I took a week off to deal with the rash.

I thought the locals in the town of Hardrock, which is the closest town to Starvation Creek, may have some secret way into the canyon. They were evenly split between telling me there's no way into Starvation Creek, and there's a great trail into it because someone they knew told them about it. None of them had actually been to Starvation Creek but they did mention they heard there's a lot of poison oak.

On the map the opposite ridge was looking better, but required 50 additional miles to get there. I got up early and managed to arrive on the far side by around 11 a.m. I managed to only lose one shock on the washboard road, but the shocks were old and were bound to fail one day anyways.

The drop into the canyon was definitely less severe and actually looked doable. A trail into the canyon began where I parked the truck but it looked like it hadn't been used in a long time.

No matter how steep, how thick, how rocky and rattlesnake infested the area, old time miners managed to pack rail car sized chunks of iron into the canyon and move every rock in search of gold. As I struggled through the brush there was ample evidence this canyon had been worked hard in the 1800's. A rough looking trail took me upstream to Suicide Gulch.

There is no walking through creekside alders. You can walk under, over, around, but not through. Did you know yellow jackets like to build nests in alders overhanging creeks? Yeah, I didn't know that fun fact either. If you happen to find a prospecting pack at the junction of Suicide Gulch, under a yellow jacket nest would you please return it?

My gold pan and rock hammer were in my pack, but I wasn't going back to get them. With the trickle of water seeping through the creek bed there wasn't enough water to do any panning so it seemed prudent to head back up the hill and forget Starvation Creek. I'd just spent the past month and a half of gold season chasing down the "good gold" and it wasn't there. Maybe at one time it was, maybe before the alders choked out the creek; maybe when you're not in a drought year; maybe when you could find a decent trail, maybe before someone hauled in a giant cast iron crushing mill, but that was a lot of maybes. Defeated, I headed back up the steep slope and put any thoughts of dredging Starvation Creek out of my mind.

A few weeks later I ran into Bob Flanagan again at Murphy's Bar. I'd settled back into my old claim doing about thirty dollars a day, some days worse.

"So did you check out Starvation Creek?" Bob asked as he ordered another Old Tailings.

"It took me two weeks to even find it," I replied, "Ruined the trucks paint, got a bad case of Poison Oak, my face swelled up from yellow jacket stings, and the creek is nothing but an alder choked worn out dribble of a stream."

"Oh. Did you go in through 12 Toe Dan's camp?" He asked.

"Where?" I replied.

"You just take a left at 12 Toe Dan's camp, then park at Wiley's Diggin's, it's just down the hill. You could take a quad about halfway down if you wanted."

"No, I didn't."

"Oh." Bob paused. "How'd you get in?"

"Through Suicide Gulch." I replied.

"Oh."

"Something wrong?" I asked.

"Well, it's only a 30 minute walk from Wiley's Diggin's. I staked a claim I call the Biscuit in there two months ago, I've been getting about a half ounce a day."

"There's no water in Starvation Creek and you can't get through the alders." I told him.

"Downstream from Suicide Gulch it opens up and there's plenty of water. Pretty nice dredging really. There may be some open ground upstream, but with such easy access it probably won't last long."

"Thanks for the tip Bob." I said as I downed the dregs of my Old Tailings, threw five bucks on the counter and went home to look at the maps.

You can read more of this series at Murphy's Bar