Back to Part 4

A five-part story written by Rie Muñoz,
published in the Alaska Sportsman magazine in 1962.

PROSPECTING

Is Our Life

By Rie Muñoz

Part five

Though we were headquartered in the Salt Chuck on Prince of Wales Island, Juan had irons in other fires too, and periodically he would be gone for days looking over some other prospect. Because we no longer had the Pushka and airplane travel was expensive enough for one, I would stay in camp. But I was not alone. Hiccup was always with me, the Pelletts and the Gardners were next door, and if I wanted a change of faces I could always hike down to Charlie Wong's and discuss current events over a glass of whisky.

When Juan was going to a prospect within range of our skiff and outboard, we would load up with food, sleeping bags and whatever gear might be needed, whistle for Hiccup, and take off.

On one such trip, to Niblack Anchorage, we left the chuck early in the morning and passed Kasaan before the early-risers there were even stirring. Out in Clarence Strait, the sea became too choppy for the heavily loaded skiff so we pulled up to a secluded beach to wait for the water to calm down.

We had long since learned never to venture beyond the mouth of the chuck without a number of pocket books for just such occasions. This time Juan read a Perry Mason story and I became deeply engrossed in Of Human Bondage, a moldy copy of which I'd found in one of the mine cabins. When the seas were still high after lunch, Juan suggested we cache some gear to be picked up on the return trip, and try running with the added freeboard.

When one goes prospecting in the wilderness, it is frustrating to the point of madness to find that a single, seemingly insignificant item has been overlooked in the packing. For instance, it takes real imagination to attach a tin can with a claim notice inside to a discovery post, if one has forgotten a nail. You can build a rock cairn and stuff the can inside, if there are boulders nearby. Juan and I have walked miles without seeing a single boulder. You can tie the can to a tree with a string, but in due time the string will rot, or a small animal will gnaw it in two, and in any event that would be a most slipshod way of doing it.

With this in mind, Juan always goes prepared, and when we took off on one of our trips we practically cleared the cabin. Juan was known far and near for all the equipment he carried, and was jokingly referred to as the "Much Gear Mining Company."

We sorted our gear, cached what we hoped we could do without, and continued toward Niblack Anchorage. But another hour closer to our destination the wind sprang up, and once again we were forced to take shelter. I finished my book and next day, as the seas were tougher yet, I took to Perry Mason and Juan, to Maugham.

On the following day our food supply was low, so we headed back home in spite of the seas. We shipped so much water that after going a short distance we landed on an island which was only about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide, and put up our tent on the highest spot.

About midnight I woke up and heard the splashing of waves alarmingly close. I awoke Juan and we crawled outside to find that the tide had risen, and our island was now less than thirty feet long and about twelve feet wide. While I held the flashlight, Juan consulted the tide book. To our relief we learned that the tide was at high slack, so we returned to our sleeping bags assured that we would not float away.

The next day the sea was calm as a mirror, but, lacking food, we returned to the chuck with our tails between our legs, so to speak.

One of the prospects Juan dug up out of a 1912 U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin was the Charles Prospect. The time we spent looking for that! According to the map in the bulletin it was just outside the entrance to the chuck, and whenever we had a sunny day and Juan felt like taking a break, we would go out to search for it. Time and again Juan plotted the exact location, using protractor, ruler and any other tools that might be of help. One time we even paced it off on the ground. But do what we might, we never found the Charles Prospect.

Try what we might--here it's magnetometer
readings--the Charles Prospect eluded us.

Another prospect reported in an old bulletin threatened to be equally elusive, but we finally found it, thanks to an eagle.

According to the report, the property had been staked during the winter of 1914, and a blazed trail to the digs started at a cabin on the beach. We found the ruins of the cabin easily enough, but look where we might, and we looked everywhere within a radius of a quarter of a mile, we saw not a single blaze.

We were sitting on a tree stump near the cabin, bemoaning the inaccuracy of the report, when a bald eagle sailed over and settled on a limb not far from us.

"Look at the eagle," I said, pointing to the handsome bird.

"Look at the blaze, you mean!" Juan exclaimed. A few feet below the eagle's perch, and about fifteen feet above the base of the tree, was the faint trace of a blaze.

"If we'd stopped to think a minute, Juan said, "we'd have figured out that the blaze might be that far up the tree trunk."

"Oh, sure," I said brightly. "The report was written in 1914, and the trees have grown since then."

"More to the point," said Juan cheerfully, "is that the man did his blazing in the winter, when there could have been a great deal of snow, which obviously would have put him well above the forest floor.... Ah, there's the next blaze!"

When the snows of 1954 began to fall, Juan called it a season and we went outside to visit our families. In March we returned to the Salt Chuck where the Gardners and the Pellets had "toughed it out," as Warren liked to say. A third Gardner brother, Ralph, had come to help with the logging venture, bringing his pregnant wife and small son. In all our time at the chuck there was at least one pregnant Gardner and sometimes two. This time, however, they didn't have anything on me.

At one time, when the Goodro Mine was in operation, there had been electricity in the camp. Warren Pellett, who came early in 1954, had brought an electric chain saw, but like the rest of us he was sawing wood with a Swede saw. Now he undertook the gargantuan task of re-activating the electrical system, and as the old wires ran to all the cabins, we all urged him on. He showed so much confidence in his eventual success that the Gardners and we went so far as to order a twenty-five watt bulb apiece from Ketchikan. (Warren had set that limit on the wattage, for reasons too technical for me.)

He disappeared into the mill building for weeks on end, to emerge only when Ann clanged the triangle for dinner. At all times of day we could hear him banging away inside the mill and, depending upon how things were going, cursing roundly or whistling, "When the Lights Go on Again all over the World."

Finally Warren announced that the task had been completed, and invited the men to the mill to see his handiwork. They came out a little later, shaking their heads in admiration, and Warren barked an order to one of his boys to go up to the lake and turn on the water.

The wooden pipe, about eighteen inches in diameter and half a mile long, had been laid many years ago, when the mill was operating around the clock, and up until the time Warren started his project, this pipe had carried an abundant supply of water down to an open trough at the mill. Here Ann and I regularly did our laundry. As the water had been turned off during the reconstruction period, we'd had to haul our wash water from a small stream, with the result that the Munozes and the Pelletts were a grimy lot. The turning on of the water for electrical purpose was, therefore, double reason for celebration.

We all stood by, waiting for Nibs Pellett to get to the lake and turn on the water, and in about half an hour it came, full force. The pipe had stood dry so long that the wood had shrunk and even split in places. The water shot out with terrific force, spraying water throughout the mill. We were all sopping wet in a minute, but too much engrossed with the electrical system to leave.

Slowly, very slowly, the wheel began to turn, and Warren issued a howl of triumph. Faster and faster the wheel went, until the very floor started to quiver.

"The water is turned on too high!" Warren yelled above the din, and he rushed to the door and up the hill to the lake. He got there too late. The water wheel and belt started to vibrate and before long the belt snapped, letting the wheel turn even faster. None of us got home in time to see those light bulbs function.

But Warren was not one to give up. The small taste of success spurred him on, and he sent to town for another belt. When it arrived, after a few weeks, he disappeared again into the mill. When all was in readiness once again, he went up to the lake himself and turned the water on.

That was when the lights went on again in the Salt Chuck. Warren was able to use his long-idle electric chain saw, and we all contemplated buying electric luxuries besides our twenty-five watt bulbs. The system was in constant need of repair, however, and in time Warren tired of it. Once again the mill became a silent ghost, we returned to our gasoline lamps (which gave more light, anyway), and Warren went back to cutting wood with a Swede saw.

Although the old Goodro Mine was more or less abandoned, it did have owners. The major stockholder was Mr. Lee Howard of Seattle, in his early seventies at this time, who had given Warren permission to live in one of the cabins in exchange for keeping an eye on the place.

When the Gardners had arrived a few weeks later, they moved into a small shack just outside the chuck. The Pelletts, thinking it would be nice to have company, had written for and received permission to let the two couples use several of the many abandoned cabins. Then we showed up and Warren invited us to use a cabin, and the third Gardner brother came, and I doubt whether Warren had bothered to advise Mr. Howard of our tenancy.

One day Warren got a letter from Mr. Howard saying he planned to come up for a visit sometime that summer. Each time a plane came in we expected to see Mr. Howard emerge, but he didn't, and in time we forgot all about his intended visit.

The Gardner brothers decided at this time to build a skiff. Their old one, which they'd bought second hand from a cannery in Ketchikan was so leaky it took two to operate it–one to handle the outboard and another to bail. Even so, they couldn't go far in the skiff, as the water would seep in faster than it could be bailed out.

Construction was started in the kitchen of one of the Gardner cabins, so the men could work by the light of the gasoline lamp after they came home from the days logging, and so the boat would be out of the rain during the building. When the project was completed the obvious situation presented itself: The boat was too big to go through the door.

The Gardners never at a loss for the solution to a problem, promptly tore out one of the walls, and were in the very act of carrying the boat out when a plane swooped down and deposited Mr. Howard on the raft just off shore.

To say that Warren, caretaker of the establishment, was in a panic is an understatement. He bellowed orders to the Gardners, then proceeded to row, as slowly as he felt he possibly could without attracting undue attention, out to the raft where Mr. Howard stood waiting.

In the meantime the Gardner men, women and older children, Ann Pellett with her crew, and I (Juan was off prospecting) slapped boards, slats and window frames together, and by the time Warren had rowed back at his leisure with Mr. Howard, the wall was back in place.

Mr. Howard stayed for three days and we took turns having him over to meals. He turned out to be a wonderful and kindly man, and when the plane came in to pick him up, all the Salt Chuckians gathered to wish him bon voyage.

By now my pregnancy had progressed considerably, and one day I was surprised with a baby shower. It had been planned with such secrecy I had suspected nothing. Gifts and even gift wrappings had been ordered from town, and Ann Pellett made one of her "poor man" cakes (she called them that because even a poor man could afford the ingredients–flour. sugar, cocoa, vinegar, soda and water, no eggs, no butter, no milk–and yet they were the best cakes I've ever tasted anywhere).

Betty Gardner brought a pot of coffee and Joyce, appropriate paper napkins and plates.

After the gifts and refreshments we settled down to the serious matter of baby showers–the recounting of personal experiences by "old" mothers for the benefit of the about-to-be mother. It is a good thing, I guess, that the expectant mother can't change her mind after this kind of preparation for the coming event, as the population of the earth would surely dwindle if she could!

Next morning, possibly due to too much coffee, cake and candy on top of a big lunch, I felt rather queasy and Juan became concerned. Finally, he decided that as a precaution we should consult my doctor in Ketchikan. The closest two-way radio was in Kasaan, the weather was too rough for us to go there by skiff, and I, feeling sure the fresh air would perk me up, was all for the idea of going on foot.

We took off right after breakfast. The eleven-mile trail led past Charlie's house and he invited us in for a glass of whisky, which we promised to accept on the way back. It started to snow and the trail became slippery - bad enough in it-self, but we also found that a recent wind storm had felled a great number of trees across the trail. We arrived in Kasaan exhausted.

Luckily, radio reception was clear. Juan explained my symptoms to Dr. Phyllis Smith, who had delivered all the Salt Chuck babies of the past eighteen months, and listened attentively while she replied, "It's probably something she ate, but let's be on the safe side. Have Rie stay in bed for a few days, and under no circumstances is she to do any strenuous exercise, or even walking."

With that advice we walked back through the deepening snow, climbed over or crawled under fifty or more windfalls, and arrived at Charlie's just before dusk. This time, after twenty-one miles of rough, slippery trail, his tumbler of whisky hit the spot.

I stayed in bed for a few days, getting up only to toss a log into the potbellied stove now and again. Juan even prepared the meals. I read a number of 1920 magazines, leafed through a few copies of the Congressional Record, then got up and continued to enjoy life in the chuck. After we returned to Juneau that fall we became the parents of twin boys.

The next spring we returned to the Salt Chuck again, this time with the twins, but it wasn't the same. Dear old Charlie Wong had died,. the Pelletts had moved to Hollis, a logging camp farther up Kasaan Bay, and the Gardners, who could do everything, had somehow moved a huge two-story building from the mine site to the far end of the chuck, where they were now living and logging.

Once the Gardners came across the chuck in their new boat to visit, admire the twins, and show off the new babies they had produced during the winter. We stayed in the chuck a few months, then Juan's prospecting called him elsewhere and I returned to town, to make only an occasional visit to one prospect or another.

I am still living a most civilized town life with our small family, and that too, I am told, has its advantages.

The end

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