Country, not a level
These creeks and benches are somewhere. Learn the bend where the gravel piles up and you've learned a bend in a real Alaskan creek, not a set piece someone drew for you.
Real Alaska
The mountain across the creek is a real mountain.
Gold is worth what it's worth today
Your jar sells for what gold is going for right now. Your fuel costs what diesel is going for up there right now. Only one of those is ever on your side.
Weather that doesn't care about you
It's raining on your dig because it's raining up there. Wind, cold, the light going early — you work through it or you don't work.
The work
Nobody marks the gold on a map.
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01
Move the dirt
Get in the cab and start digging. The pay runs in streaks down there, and no amount of standing on the bank looking clever will tell you where. You have to open the ground.
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02
Wash it down
A pan tells you whether this hole is worth another tank of fuel. A sluice tells you how fast you can find out. What sticks in the mat goes in a jar, and the jar fills slower than you'd like.
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03
Take it to town
Drive your jars to the trading post and watch the scale settle. Then take out what the diesel cost you. Whatever's left is the reason you're here.
Getting out there
Open a tab. Start digging.
Somebody shows you the ropes
Your first hour is on a small island with a creek, a camp, and the machines already parked. Make your expensive mistakes there — nothing that happens on it follows you off it.
Then pick your country
Head for Porcupine Creek or the Kodiak coast and work it alongside whoever else is out there. The hole you dig stays dug, and so does theirs.
Or go out alone
Run the whole thing on your own machine if you'd rather. Same country, same weather, nobody working upstream of you.
Still being built — rough in places, and getting less rough.