My Trip To Dawson City, Yukon, My Run In With Miners & Gold

This story is about meeting actual gold miners (shafters) and my experience of pulling real actual gold out of the ground. I thought it might be interesting to some of you, so enjoy.

Approx 7 years ago in my very early 20's a friend of mine suggested we take a trip somewhere other than overseas or out of the country for that matter. We discussed B.C. but then our attention turned to the Yukon after catching a show on tv in regards to Dawson City. We looked at each other and said "lets do it". We ordered bus tickets and 3 weeks later we were off for an entire spring/summer and fall season. The bus ride was quite a story in itself but that can be for another day.

After a week on the road, we finally entered into the Yukon and let me tell you driving along the Alaskan highway was absolutely amazing. After a day or so on the highway, we landed ourselves in Whitehorse where we had to catch a smallish school bus to Dawson City. Another odd experience.

When we pulled into Dawson City, I looked at my friend and said "oh my god where are we and what have we done"? The town looked old and there was no tim hortons in sight. The sidewalks were wooden, the bars looked like actual saloons and it was extremely small. I was taken back and a little scared.

On to the exciting events.

We spent a lot of our money eating and having fun on the way up that we were now discussing getting a part time job. An older man walked up to us and asked where we were from and was overall, friendly. He told us about a cabin he had across the yukon river and up in the mountains and if we wanted a place for cheap rent, it was ours. (Yes a complete stranger offered us this) so of course warning bells went off in our heads. So we declined for the time being and stayed in a hotel. Over the next few days we asked around about this fellow and we heard nothing but positive things back. So after a few times going out with him, we decided to take him up on his offer.

Fast forward. When we went up to the cabin, we were amazed how secluded it was and at the same time how beautiful. He took us over to a hole in the ground approx 35 feet deep with a pully above it and he said "this is your freezer/fridge and he pulled up a cooler out of the ground. I was like "lol Wow". He explained it was an old shaft and he showed us to a few other ones on his claim. We were dealing with an old time miner! How exciting! I asked him if we could do some mining with him for the experience. He gave us a job!

Over the next few weeks we spent time hanging down in a shaft with a tiger torch melting ice and pulling out buckets of water, ice and muck! WoW it was wild! As we dug down further and further we finally reached what they call bedrock which is were the gold sits on. As we pulled up buckets, others ran them through a sluice box. The very first buckets, he tought us how to pan for gold. And low and behold we saw real gold! Flakes! small nuggets! Amazing! What an experience!

At the end of the day, we were sitting around and he handed us a couple of smallish vials filled with gold and said "this is your pay for the week". He was paying us in gold? lol amazing!

So we went into town and we sold it for money and we actually used some to pay for things. IE: food and drinks, some hotels accept gold for pay. I couldnt believe it, it was so neat.

I did this for two summers and it was absolutely amazing. An experience of a life time and I miss it!

Back then, gold was worth approx $450 an ounce. Well if I knew that gold would be 4 times that today, I would have saved as much as possible. Oh well!

I hope you enjoyed my story even though it's super long.

You can ask me questions or just read and enjoy and hop on to the next thread.

Thanks for reading!