There’s gold in them that hills (well sort of)

I’m tardy in publishing this but mid July this year my childhood friend Bryan and I went to northern NH to camp and pan for gold. I know all the gold shows seem to be centered around California, points west and Alaska. But there is gold in NH in some of streams. Not commercially viable but enough to spark gold fever in those of us who have watched Gold Rush lol. So we decided to try our hand.

We left on a Friday mid day and headed to the White Mountain National Forest ranger station just north of Plymouth to get our gold panning license since we planned to pan on WMNF land which unlike private property is legal to do with license in hand. As always my concern was about the parking lot and if it would allow easy ingress and egress pulling my Airstream. Well there was a large loop and parking area in front of the building so anxiety level dropped a bit. The outside of the building looked nice though a bit unkempt perhaps a back to nature plan (or just it’s not my turn to mow issue). The lobby was huge with alot of interesting displays including a cut hemlock trunk which asked you to guess the age. I believe it was 200 years or so old!! That’s old for NH where much of the land was clear cut in the past. Over a hundred years ago NH was only 20% forest! Hard to believe if you live or visit now as NH is 80% forest! Lots of stone walls a mile into a thick forest where fields had been cleared back in the day.

A very nice ranger showed us on a map where we could and couldn’t legally pan, explained the rules (hand shovel, pan only in an active stream bed, no dredges like Parker on Gold Rush has etc etc. They don’t want sediment raised in the stream that would be detrimental to trout amongst other reasons. With our free license in hand we headed to the campground. We were camping in Warren NH at the scenic view campground. We checked in and easily found and backed into our campsite on the Baker River. Great site but had to buy more hose to reach the water supply which was as far away from the site as possible without being in another town. Coincidentally they sell hose in the camp store for easily 50% more than Camping World. But we had water.

We then decided to reconnoiter to see where would be panning. The area around Warren and North is wilderness. Hard to imagine who and how they built the road to Benson where we would be panning. Winding up and up and down and down through Ricky wilderness mountains. We were sure that we had taken a wrong turn as we drove and drove and drove but eventually found a road that had a name similar to the brook we were looking for. No cell service so GPS non existent. This road got more and more desolate and narrow but eventually we found the brook and WMNF sign confirming that we were where we wanted to be.

Since we were there we decided to pan a bit. No gold but beautiful brook. We headed downstream on a road that ran next to the brook to discover someone hand removed the street sign perhaps to make the gold stream difficult to find and we had driven by the entrance on our way to the brook? Oh those claim jumping rascals.

After a hearty breakfast the next AM we headed off to a now not so long and scary drive to tunnel brook. We headed up stream this time and found a few flecks of what we believe are gold (non magnetic). Cashing those in and $50 might cover the gas up lol. Fun time though.

After a great day in the woods panning with a few flecks of gold we headed back to the campground. Warren was having their old home day celebration so verrry busy. Looked like lots of fun and well attended. We fought the urge to stop for fried dough successfully though it was close. Had there been easy parking we might have lost that battle. As a side note Warren has a Redstone ICBM misdke in the middle of town. It is there to honor Mercury 7 astronaut Ken Shepard. I’m not sure how that is do since Slan wasn’t born in Warren (born in Derry, NH) or why a nuclear bomb carrying rocket (Alan was brave but not that brave) but hey it may be one of the only public park ICBM rocket displays so it’s cool.

The trip back to Bryan’s the next morning was easy as we weren’t overloaded with gold bars but heading south on Rt 16 on my way home was gridlock as all the North Conway visitors headed back to Massachusetts.

A few shortcuts and I made it back unscathed with another fun trip logged. Can’t wait to try again this time early in the spring before all the gold that is washed downstream with the spring snow melt is found. That’s my theory why we didn’t get rich this trip lol. Too late in the year! Starting to plan the next trip!!