Rie Munoz - Propecting: PART 1

"Prospecting is Our Life" is a five-part story written by
Rie Muñoz, published in the Alaska Sportsman magazine in 1962.

When Juan and I were married, about ten years ago, I was a reporter and artist for the Alaska Sunday Press in Juneau and Juan was a geologist with the U.S. Bureau of Mines. I was from Los Angeles and had been in Alaska only six months. A small apartment, a steady job, and merely being in Alaska were still rather high adventure to me.

Juan had talked a great deal about prospecting as a way of making his fortune, and I had agreed that it would be an ideal way to live. But when he announced shortly after our marriage that he was quitting his job and we would go prospecting, I was thunderstruck. To talk about prospecting is highly romantic, but how was I to know he really meant it?. My experience in the woods had been limited to an occasional hike in Griffith Park-and I had a more than normal fear of bears.

I was somewhat relieved when Juan pointed out Lincoln Island on the map and said that would be our first destination. Lincoln Island is only ten minutes by air from Juneau and had, I soon established, no grizzly bears - just black bears.

"There are reports of copper float here," explained Juan. "I don't know whether it has ever been investigated, but the mining records show no claims staked on the island, so we may as well go and see what's what."

I'll never forget the day we flew out of Juneau in a small chartered Alaska Coastal plane. It was loaded full with all our gear - camp stove, tent, a gold pan, food, pots, pans, a fifty-pound bag of dog feed, the two of us, and our hundred-pound husky, Hiccup.

The day was July 17, opening day of the Golden North Salmon Derby, and our flight took us over the fishing grounds. It was early morning, but the fishermen had got up ahead of us. There must have been a hundred boats of all sizes bobbing on the blue water. We flew low and could see the fishermen, intent on catching the prize fish which might net a new car or a round trip for two to Hawaii. Some looked up and waved us on to our adventure.

Before the lively spectacle was out of sight the plane headed downward, and soon we taxied into a beautiful half-moon cove on Lincoln Island. The pilot and Juan unloaded the gear, Hiccup sniffed at the numerous deer tracks on the beach and occasionally barked at the plane, with the contempt of a sled dog for this newfangled means of transportation, and I busied myself getting the gear up out of reach of the incoming tide.

In a matter of minutes, with a cheerful "Good luck!" the pilot revved the engine and was off.

We spent the rest of the morning setting up camp on a grass flat at the rim of the beach, then went out to look for firewood. By late afternoon, a large stack of driftwood collected, we decided to explore. Juan took along his prospecting hammer, glass and pan, and I took a pencil and sketch pad.

We had no sooner left the smooth white sand of the cove when we came upon boulders the size of steamer trunks, and the walking became difficult. We trudged on, and in time came across a number of boulders gleaming in the sun with the peacock colors of chalcopyrite, a copper mineral.

The point of our exploring now was to find the source of the copper-bearing boulders. On the northern tip of the island we found a small vein of copper-bearing rock and, a few minutes farther on, a smaller vein glistening with specks of the copper mineral.

We were both elated with our first day's prospecting-especially I. What an easy way to find one's fortune! That evening as I lay in my sleeping bag watching the dying embers of our beach fire, I mused over ways of spending our new-found riches. It did not take me long to find out that there's more to making one's fortune by prospecting.

My first hint came at five-thirty the next morning, when Juan woke me with a cheerful, "Time to get with it."

After a big breakfast, which elevated my spirits tremendously, we set out for the northern tip of the island again. This time the tide was out and we were able to follow the lower shore, where the rocks were only the size of the human skull.

With the aid of his compass Juan soon established the direction of the parallel veins, and then came the job of staking. This brought me to reality as nothing ever had before-or since. We literally plowed our way through underbrush so thick that at times we could not see each other at a distance of ten feet. With machetes we cut, hacked and tramped down a swath through the dense growth, following a compass line. My clothes were torn by the treacherous devil club that grew to the height of a man's head. Its barbed thorns worked their way into my hands in spite of my leather gloves. Once I sat down on a log without noticing the branch of devil club draped across it, and was attacked from the rear.

When we sat down to lunch in a cool spot under a tree, swarms of mosquitoes and flies immediately joined us. Tired as I was, I said, "Let's eat while we're working." The onslaught disappears as by magic when one is moving about.

We stayed on Lincoln Island for five weeks. On the whole the weather was wonderful. Even the few rainy days had their advantages, as the mosquitoes and flies stayed well under cover. We staked five promising claims and explored the entire island. Once Art Kimball, a friend from Juneau, came out to see how things were progressing, and we declared a holiday from staking. Dick Holmgren, sanitary engineer with the Alaska Department of Health, spent a few days with us. Pete Sainsbury, with the U. S. Geological Survey, came out and explored the island with Juan while I spent a wonderful day in camp. Pete returned to Juneau with the many samples Juan had taken, promising to have them assayed.

Our work finished, we spent a few days merely enjoying the island, then broke camp and returned to Juneau. Pete had bad news for us, The samples had been assayed, and were not of economic value.

But one thing had been accomplished on Lincoln Island, to Juan's great delight. I too had been bitten by the prospecting bug.

Once again established in our small cabin on the shore of Gastineau Channel, we counted our pennies. There were not many left - certainly not enough for another prospecting trip. Besides, it was now late August, close to the end of the prospecting season.

We decided on the only possible course. Juan got a job with the U. S. Bureau of Public Roads, and I, as cartoonist for the Daily Alaska Empire. We spent our spare time working on our cabin, and Juan wrote a few articles which, luckily, were published. The money they brought bolstered our grubstake tremendously.

When spring rolled around, Juan came up with an idea. We would buy a boat, live on it, eliminate the expense of chartering planes to get us to our prospecting areas, and save time putting up camp. It all sounded extremely brilliant to me, and when Juan flew to Sitka to buy a boat that was highly recommended by someone who "knew about boats" (we didn't know the bow from the stern), he went with my blessings and good wishes.

A few days later I invited friends to a picnic at Auke Bay, about twelve miles north of Juneau, where Juan was to bring the boat. The whole affair was a grand success. We ate hot dogs, beans and potato salad, built a huge fire on the cliff overlooking the water, sang ski songs, drank beer, and kept a sharp eye out to sea.

Just as the sun was setting and the last case of beer was being opened, the boat came around the point of Douglas Island. She came along at a very fine clip, and before long we were all admiring the boat while Juan and his companion for the trip, Warren Christianson, a Sitka lawyer, stepped ashore and admired what was left of the food and beer.

Here a little must be said about the Pushka. Her name, we were told, is the Russian word for cannon. She was a twenty-four-foot inboard cruiser, unique in Alaskan waters in that she had an inverted-V hull. Instead of being U- or V-shaped, like any other seaworthy hull, the Pushka's hull took a turn upward where others took a turn downward.

Juan had been told that this type of hull, called a Hickman Hull, I believe, had gained some popularity for lake boats, the advantage of its extraordinary feature being that once the boat gained a little speed, an air bubble formed in the hull cavity and the boat would plane, thereby gaining greater speed.

She had planed beautifully on the trip from Sitka to Auke Bay, making the voyage in very good time, but apparently she had gone too far, too fast. Vibration had loosened her seams. This we did not discover until the day after the picnic, when Juan and I returned to Auke Bay to take our Pushka around Douglas Island to Juneau's small boat harbor. We found to our dismay that she had taken on quantities of water during the night.

Auke Bay had no facilities for raising boats out of the water, and the only way to recaulk the Pushka's seams was to put her on the ways. There was nothing for it but to get her to Juneau, some thirty miles. (Although Juneau and Auke Bay are along the same shore, the direct route is navigable only during an extreme high tide because of an immense system of tide flats created by Mendenhall Glacier.)

By the time we had pumped several hundred gallons of water out of Pushka, the afternoon wind had sprung up and we had to give up the trip until the following day. It was too stormy again, but nevertheless the Pushka had to be pumped out again that day, and the next.

Finally on the fourth day the sea was calm enough, even after the daily ritual of pumping, and we managed to get the Pushka to Juneau. Time and again we put her on the ways at high tide, and chinked her hull while the tide was out. As time went on we became acquainted with many of the waterfront characters, and eventually we became characters in our own right, much to our dismay, because our boat was always on the ways, high and dry, being chinked.

"I'm so used to seeing your boat in drydock
I hardly recognized her in the water"

On one of the rare occasions when we had the Pushka in the water to test her for leaks, one wit remarked that he was so used to seeing her in dry-dock, he hardly recognized her in the water. Thereafter we checked the tide book and put her on the ways during the dark of night, following this ridiculous procedure until we were finally satisfied that the Pushka leaked no more than any boat had a right to leak.

Then came the job of moving aboard. Load after load of living and working equipment was brought to the small boat harbor, stowed and arranged, stowed again and rearranged, to make the best use of the space. With the Pushka loaded to the gunnels, we were ready to explore Southeastern Alaska in search of riches.

"Prospecting is Our Life" is a five-part story written by
Rie Muñoz, published in the Alaska Sportsman magazine in 1962.

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