These shares involve miners and gold panners—claims, digs, and mining camps where hard-rock or placer work meets something in the surrounding country.
Common threads are remote claims, seasonal camps, and workers who need to stay put for the job. Browse these shares for mining-country encounters.
Don and Tina were hired to operate a remote, one-man mining claim in the Koyukuk River drainage. After the owner departed due to flight delays, the pair spent three days working pay-dirt during a period of torrential rain. The isolation was punctured by heavy, percussive bangs—as if large rocks were hitting the metal mining equipment—that occurred regularly.
Tyler recounts a terrifying account by his father from 1946 during a mining operation off the then-Fortymile Rd. The crew was subject to the full gammit of harassment, including the bushmen throwing a head of a caribou with horns ripped off onto their campsite, followed by a hindquarters.
The crew ended up abandoning camp and leaving the operation.
Ian and his buddy share an experience from 1983 when they flew into the tundra off the Reindeer River to do some gold panning.
Ten years ago, Richard and Samantha were mining for Richard's uncle near Hope when they encountered the Hairy Man.
An interview with John who shared some experiences over his many years in Alaska.
During the historic gold rush era around 1898, an expedition consisting of six men—Austrian-German prospectors Fritz and Johann, two young greenhorn laborers from St. Louis, Missouri, and two Gwich'in Indian guides—traveled into the remote interior near the southwest slopes of the Beaver Mountains along modern-day Billy Goat Creek. After two weeks of constructing a windowless log cabin to support a multi-year gold panning operation, the two Gwich'in guides went berry picking along the mountain slopes.
During the final cleanup phase of a seasonal placer gold-mining camp situated off the Yukon River drainage, an imported heavy equipment operator named Doug was running a loader in a deep mining pit. During his pre-dawn shift, he noted an edge-of-vision dark form darting into the tree line. At midday, while sitting in the camp smoking area, Doug heard a terrifying, screaming howl echoing from the pit, prompting him to ride a four-wheeler down to investigate under the assumption that a co-worker was injured.
An experienced river guide named Rick ran a rinky-dink charter service on the Nushagak River for ten years, ultimately retiring after enduring four separate encounters with the Sasquatch population. His first event occurred near Sophie's Landing when three clients fishing for king salmon pointed out a large black figure that abruptly shifted from a crouched stance to stand erect and walk into the timber just 25 feet away from their anchored skiff. The second event involved five clients who were targeted by an intense shriek emerging from a slough near Portage Island.
In the early-to-mid 1990s, a Bristol Bay native named David spent weeks alone at his grandfather's (Uppa's) cabin situated on the West Channel of the Nushagak River near Keeper Cutoff, due west of Portage Creek. While constructing a log generator shed, David was pelted by pine cones and endured three consecutive nights of heavy thumping on the cabin roof, later clearing off large clumps of uprooted grass and soil with a dip-net pole under the assumption that his brother was playing a prank.
During an autumn gold prospecting trip, two first nations brothers named Ivan and his sibling navigated their 18-foot Lund skiff as far upstream as possible into the headwaters of the King Salmon River, north of the Nuyakuk confluence. While meticulously searching the bank cuts for gold-bearing quartz veins, they pitched a light spike camp using a Coleman cookstove. On their third night, a terrifying vocalization that sounded exactly like a woman being murdered erupted from the opposite bank.
On site at Hatcher Pass where Eric had an encounter at Gold Mint Trailhead with his son while teaching him some basics of hiking. He heard a scream that sounded like someone being murdered and went to go help them, but he had a bad feeling and decided against it and to get help instead. On the trail on the way out, he saw what was making the loud scream: a Sasquatch about 10' tall running across the trail about 15' to 20' in front of them, and into the trees. His son was terrified, and when they met up with another group and warned them, they mocked him.
Two shares, the first a retired fish and game biologist that had an experience ten years ago off the Mulchatna river while gathering data on salmon with three others, where they realized what they at first thought was a person exiting the freezing cold river was a Sasquatch they estimated to be over 10'. They later met up with a group of observers who didn't believe them at first, but did later after they had an encounter, topped off with screams. When both groups tried to relay their experiences to a fish and game trooper, they fell on deaf ears.
