Treasure Hunters The Mystery of Pitt Lakes Lost Gold Mine

in the rugged mountains of British Columbia the legends hang as heavy as the mist and for over a century one legend has loomed above the rest it's the story of old slow Mac the Salish Indian the story of one of the greatest gold mines ever found and the curse that hangs over it still there are no photos of slew Mac only reports full of gaps and puzzles all centered around gold it is said that in the 1880s the old Indian came down out of the hills carrying huge nuggets from a hidden gold mine no one knew whether mine was for each spring slew Mac simply disappeared and each fall when he came back he had more gold than ever rumor had it that slew Mac was a killer that every year he took a pretty young woman off to the mines with him in all nine women who were never seen again how much is true only one thing is certain in 1891 slow Mac was arrested for the murder of one Lewis bean and hanged the secret of his mind went with him to his grave but for over 100 years treasure hunters have been looking for that mine every year in the spring somebody will call me usually three or four or five people will call me and they'll say has anything new been found on sumac where else can we go to find stuff on sumac and there's two is we've little books out there to basically reprints of the same thing I believe and people still look there are people who said they found it other people have tried and failed and and I imagine next spring I will get other people in here wanting to go and look for it the hunt begins in the Wild West town of New Westminster but you've got a typical town that has a Western flavor to it you've got boardwalk sidewalks and awnings and a large Main Street lots of saloons and bars and hotels restaurants stores churches schools this was a very bustling spot and slew back became known for the fact that he would disappear and then come back into town and and you can imagine that people in town would know when this character was back that he was back in town and it would probably buzz through the city pretty quick it pretty pretty quick you know sumac is is in such-and-such a store and he's got another bag so today nothing is left of the town of New Westminster it has long since been swallowed up by Vancouver a modern metropolis an urban industrial center which looks forward to the future not back to the past the romance of the old Wild West can no longer be found here yet only 60 miles north of Vancouver everything is still as it was in Slough max time it is here at Pitt lake that the old Indian would set off each spring heading up into the mountains and it is here that the trail for the legendary gold mine begins in earnest we have come to Pitt Lake to unravel the dead man's mystery to start our own search for slow max go here in the woods and waterways at the foot of the Canadian glaciers we travel through a timeless world a world almost exactly as snow Mac would have seen it our guide is Peter Velma's for years he's been following Stu Mack's trail and piecing together his story well he was an old Indian guy that used to come out of these mountains somewhere and bring his gold into New Westminster into the saloon and trade them for beer his food and then come back up in the mountains and stay up here for long periods of time and then come back out of the mountains the story goes that he used to take women with him so that they could stay they suppose squeezed into a small crack to get the gold out but from what I've heard of talk to you about his relatives they say that's not true that's just the the propaganda I guess they they made up in those days even still Matt's death is controversial he was home for the murder of Lewis B another Indian guy from the same area and they had been enemies most of their lives and apparently Lewis B had always been threatening him and bullied him and finally in fear of his life they say he shot Lewis B every year Peter spends some weeks at bit Lake like Slough Mac he exchanges the Society of men for the loneliness of the mountains and as he does he thinks of the vanished gold which has never been found it's there there's too many people saw him bring that gold out of here and he's from here born and raised here he never went very far some people say he got it from somewhere else or he robbed other people but I don't think he would have ever gone that far away from here many treasure hunters have come to Pitt Lake looking for snow Mac's treasure and many have died it is said that with his last breath the old Indian put a curse upon his gold a curse on all who would follow his path and over the years this terrain has certainly proven deadly its roughest country in the world you go in the weather changes so fast in here you get stuck in these mountains just about 30 people have died directly because looking for sumac smoke gold and this includes search parties parts of fish parties have got lost and and fell down or died of exposure in your towns yet a list of dead men no matter how long cannot deter someone who has been seized by gold fever every treasure seeker relies on his own experience and concentrates on one goal the mine and rumors of the occasional gold find small as they may be only enhanced the legend and there's been many guys looking for it in a couple of found gold in her but they didn't tell anybody either they are all silent the dead and the fortunate few so which way do we take our search peter has set up his tent along the Pitt River perhaps this time we'll be lucky the camp is comfortable the were there fantastic that's August weather sunshine blue skies no wind a good time to set off on slow max trail it is a journey for which there is no strategy Peter follows his instincts and the few clues that slow Mac left behind he would take he would have to follow the tide up from New Westminster which was a city he went to to here so we'd have sometimes we might take him two days to get here but once he got here they say three days in one day out the next morning we set off on our journey peter is one of those very special types that seem to thrive in the Canadian mountains trailblazers and loners who find their way around the wilderness better than the big city jungles for the past 20 years peter has been spending the summer in these bitbake mountains always in the shadow of snow max legend each year he sets off following the Pitt River wandering ever further up towards the headwaters it is not a journey to be taken lightly the terrain is treacherous the paths unmarked there is no one to turn to here for a through these hills there are a few simple trails but each new path brings a new adventure new discoveries to be made this time it's a dilapidated gold camp a ghost mine long uninhabited old gold camp gold mine yeah looks like at least 50 years old yeah maybe 80 slow Mac was not the only one looking for gold at the turn of the century British Columbia was the land of gold creaks the earth smelled of gold here and this smell drove the prospectors into the wilderness where they lived alone godforsaken just a few tools to keep them company all their old axes and frying pans manic area at all in here the tools are rusty the camp abandoned did the prospectors who built this cabin find gold they must have they wouldn't have built all this unless they came in here first and found something and is that the area where sumac was yes but if the story of stomac is 100 years old the story of this forest is much much older these trees are 1,500 years old in here some of them and a friend of mine fought three years to save this valley from loggers for Peter the hunt for the Lost Creek mine is more than just a search for golden nuggets that's because over the years Peter has come to believe in a broader definition of treasure this is the gold here here in the ancient forests of British Columbia there are no cars no telephones just lush green woodlands a primeval world along the banks of the Pitt River on SLU max trail the reward lies not just at the end of the journey but every step of the way here the waters run fast and pure and plump salmon swim in abundance I for Peter the true wealth of the forest lies not in gold but in freedom the search for slow max mine it is the key to a life like that of the old days of the Wild West a life unspoiled uncomplicated the people who live in the forests of the pit lake mountains love the solitude but when a dusk rolls around they enjoy a few hours of company around the campfire immersed in the old tales of mysteries and legends always leading back to slow max gold I believe it's here somewhere there's people come in every year there's two three people still come in every year looking for it you know I believe it's still here Danny Jarrah has heard his share of slew max stories what is this place yes flew back from what I hear I was talking to a fella here about a month ago his great-great grandpa logged up in this area in Slough Merrick worked for him and he said that the one day they should go back and forth by ferry out here every two weeks and the one day they went out slew Mac had a nugget the size of his hand when he went out and the guy that swears by this story that flew Mac had this nugget the size of his hand all tales of the legendary mine and with volcanic Brown who apparently did discover part of Slough max gold volcanic Brown he they found his last camp at the top of the stave glacier and they never did find him and they found 11 ounces of gold in his camp nuggets so old Kanak brown was definitely on the right track volcanic Brown began his search for slumach's gold in 1923 32 years after the Indians death he himself was then already 76 years old a living legend for volcanic Brown was like the region around Pitt River as rough and craggy as the ground he walked Brown was a pioneer in a land of pioneers a jack-of-all-trades who never stopped dreaming and in our dreams he lives on if we want to find snow max mine then we'll have to follow old brown's trail the next day takes us higher and higher along the banks of the Pitt River to an old hot spring whereas lumic and Brown were said to have warmed themselves these waters still bareMinerals and peter is always on the hunt checking for gold searching the soil and the currents for any littering trace maybe he'll strike it lucky like volcanic Brown who challenged fate even as an old man and really did discover gold but three days into our journey we are still far away from the glaciers where old Brown set up his gold camp that Valley there those ridges that's where vault volcanic Brown was looking for his gold it's hard to understand how old Brown could have walked to the glacier for Peter it's clear that we'll need some help well the best way to get into these mountains and look around is with a helicopter from here on out we'll take to the air but we don't want to tempt fate in a region where a curse covers snow Mac's curse would in fact fell even volcanic Brown in the late summer of 1930 Brown failed to return from the mountains in the fall a group of men set out in search of him the men found his camp and 11 ounces of gold but of Brown himself there was no sign he had simply disappeared Brown would never be heard from again what will power men like snow mac and volcanic brown needed to set off into such a fierce and hazardous world an untamed realm of wild animals and barren peace stomac and volcanic Brown accepted the challenge of the wilderness they braved the coal the ice fields the storms the unforgiving terrain they were loners hard men in a hard land taking on the unpredictable moves of nature and they were rewarded with the greatest treasure the earth has to offer gold today there is no trace of volcanic Browns camp in these mountains our search has come to a dead end and yet there is one more trail one more clue to be followed through the jagged coastal peaks of British Columbia for volcanic Brown was not the only person to venture this far in search of slew max gold another treasure hunter reached the ice fields of the Pitt Lake glacier looking for the Lost Creek mine his name was W Jackson and he left behind a written record in 1901 the American Jackson was one of the first to set out on Stu Mack's trail he too was smitten by the curse but in the weeks before he died he wrote back claiming he had discovered Stu max mine I came to a place where the bedrock was bare and there the bedrock was yellow with gold many treasure hunters carry copies of this letter with them and experts claim that it's genuine the original letter was date stamped from a government office and that date stamp I examined very closely I know who found it and the letter is interesting and is probably the key to it it uses certain phrases that were only used in the 1880 s and 1890 s such as light out and all with an OLE which is an American phrase so the original letter is genuine there is an area there there was some three words left out we think it's a blind Canyon there's no doubt that that slew Mac had something to do with it um I'm not sure and has been called the slough Mac treasure I think that a Shotwell or one of the others did find it I don't think there's any doubt about it he makes he makes certain comments about the Bank of British North America in San Francisco and he calls San Francisco SF which was usual with the Americans so um when you look at that letter and go over it very very carefully it's not like other letters that sometimes are genuine sometimes are not genuine this is a genuine letter and the terminology makes it genuine and the date stamped makes it more genuine bill barley is himself a treasure hunter of the old school since his childhood he has been roaming through the ghost towns of British Columbia in search of traces from the past I'm a researcher of the Old West and I've picked up some treasures yes some small ones fifteen twenty twenty-five thousand dollars some a little more I missed one that was would now be worth about three million because I was a little careless and I was the only one of the other the only other end to know about it and I waited too long I waited six months I should have gone in six minutes I didn't and when I was a kid I walked through the ghost towns and when I walked through those ghost towns the thing I remember very very vividly was walking up the boardwalks which were still there looking in the windows of the stores and everything was still inside the pitcher and basin and the the one-armed bandits and the and the roll-top desk and there was dust inside and cobwebs coming down they'd simply walked away from those towns they'd simply walked away and that stayed with me ever since I was a kid of about eight or nine years old and there were a number of those towns all through that mining country because the towns only lasted as long as the gold or silver lasted once that was gone they were gone the search for snow max lost gold mine is also a view through a window into another era an era which captivates us still in our journey through the wilderness we have sensed the legacy of the past here in the solitude of the pit lake mountains The Legend of this loner has come to mingle with the landscape and with each retelling the myth keeps growing there are a number of extra stories the this is more than just one man and a little story about his goal I mean this thing this thing really goes most people who deal with it simply look at the fact that he did kill someone and there are comments that I have read other people doing research there was more than one person I think that it's it grows with the legend but it all comes back to this thing that there the legend grows but there was this man he did something bad he paid the penalty and he was finding gold in the moment of his death slow map took his revenge with the scariest weapon of the Old West the curse he placed on all the treasure seekers who would follow him and there are many who did Jackson and Brown and all the others who wandered to the storms of the Pitt Lake glaciers yet is Lomax curse not the curse of all treasure hunters the irresistible lure of hidden gold always looking for the gold I believe it's here somewhere there's people come in every year there's two three people still come in every year looking for it and I believe it's still here no I think it does exist and maybe it wasn't as big as everybody thought maybe it is and we just haven't found it yet yeah I think that the swih mac treasure does exist it's there some say that slow max ghost still hovers over the pit lake mountains that his name is still whispered by the wind the river the trees and the mountains it is said that the echoes will never leave this lonely land until he's gone his phone you

Channel: Robert Escobar

Views: 465,694

Rating: 4.6622057 out of 5

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Id: rlm7nsMKqDQ

Length: 26min 10sec (1570 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2014