There’s Treasure Inside

Part 3: Always Be Prepared

The next morning, I wanted to approach from the Compton trail head, specifically taking the Hemmed-In Hollow trail down and the Sneeds Creek trail back up. I wanted to take this approach because I believe it is the route that Jon Collins-Black describes in his book, and I wanted to check the clues he leaves in his story against the trail features I encountered along the way. In addition, it was the steepest but shortest route to the search area, allowing for the maximum time to search before needing to head back and exit the wilderness before nightfall.

In the end, I compromised and agreed to take Kevin's chosen river route. For that, we would be following the Old River Trail, which started out at the Steel Creek campground. On our way in the rented Mystery Van, we passed a dead baby white tailed deer at the side of the road. It was the size of a dog and must have been only days old. This was a sad start to the day. It's one of my favorite animals after the fennec fox and holds a special meaning. My first stuffed animal as a baby was a Bambi plushie. They made things well in the 70’s, and my daughter still cherishes and cuddles that same deer to this day. She calls it Camel, not Bambi, because for the first three years of her life, that's what she thought it was. I don't really believe in omens, but if I did, that baby deer would have been an indicator that the day was about to go sideways.

At Steel Creek, which is little more than a camp bathroom, we parked the van and headed back to the Buffalo River. The water was lower than the previous day, but still relatively fast-flowing and decently high. We searched for some solid walking sticks in the nearby woods and rolled up our pants mid-thigh. This was nearly October, and as we began to cross the river, the water was shockingly cold. You could feel the storm-induced current immediately, and we aimed our shins into the current to avoid our knees buckling under the pressure.

The cold water woke me up, and I suddenly felt alive with the thrill of the hunt. Surrounded by high rock bluffs on either side of the winding river, it was hard not to be energized by the vastness and beauty of the area. The river snaked back and forth, carving a deep channel into the surrounding landscape. The bluff wall would often come to the river's edge, alternating which side of the river this happened on with each passing bend. As such, the trail cut through the foliage between bends, but we often had to re-cross the fast-flowing water. Tall bamboo plants and other tangled vines could be found growing among a mix of deciduous and coniferous trees, giving parts of the trail a slightly jungle-like atmosphere in the morning haze.

Unfortunately, the first water crossing was the easiest, and as we went further along towards our search area, the water became deeper and stronger. Eventually, rolled-up pants turned into no pants, and the process of changing from hiking boots, socks, and pants into water shoes, then crossing, towel-drying your feet and legs, and changing back took quite some time. Keep in mind, we would be doing this in either deep mud or rocks on the other side of the riverbank. It became exhausting and increasingly dangerous. The first rule of hiking is to keep your feet dry, so this process was slow going but necessary. One of the crossings was so deep I genuinely feared we had bitten off more than we could handle. We had to shuffle our feet because if we lifted them, the current would have swept us away. Another crossing had a fallen tree between both banks, which I chanced walking across just to avoid having to change again.

Occasionally, along the trail, we would come across elk prints which looked surprisingly similar to the prints left by my camel on a recent trip to the deserts outside of Dubai. Though sadly, we encountered no Bigfoot prints during our hike.

Given the slow-going nature of our trek, by the time we reached our search area, half the day had already passed. By that point, we had crossed the Buffalo River seven times in nearly crotch deep ice cold water. I'm a few inches taller than Kevin, so he had it even worse.

The reality was, we had just gotten there, but it was already time to leave. Intoxicated by the chance to find the box, we ignored the position of the sun and hazarded a search anyway. The Pokémon box holds not only extremely rare and valuable Pokémon cards but other treasures as well. The total value was unknown, but it was part of five boxes, which together equaled 2 million US Dollars. Kevin and I set out to quickly look for the box; doing so meant two smaller creek crossings, which by that point we were hopping stone to stone across any path we could find with rocks jutting out of the water. We split up briefly to cover more ground, but after an hour, I tracked him down and insisted we must head back, or risk a night in the wilderness.

If we left at that moment, we would return just as the sun set. Kevin explained that he had found another route back called the Buffalo River Trail, which, unlike the Old River Trail, would only cross the water twice. This alternative route would take us back to the van but required a steep hike up and around the bluffs, following the snaking river from the top of the bluffs rather than along the water's edge below. Neither of us wanted to do another seven river crossings, so a rash decision was made. We headed towards the new trail back.

There was no way we could have known this, but the Buffalo Trail back had not been maintained for quite some time. The further we went, the worse it got, and often we lost the trail altogether, given that it had grown over in parts by the dense foliage. This made it very slow going as we bushwacked our way through the brush, having already come too far to turn back. I was looking at the map and the time. At our pace, things didn't look good. Then something in Kevin's knee gave out. The pace dropped a further 60 percent as he painfully hobbled along.

I continued to track the time and our pace. I estimated it would now be 10 pm before we reached the van. The sun would set at 7 pm in just a couple of hours. At that time, we would be in the dark, on the edge of a cliff, following a nonexistent trail with an injured hiker. My mind began to race. I had been the one to drive to Kevin's house initially, with my copy of "There's Treasure Inside" tucked under my arm and a smile on my face. Had I pushed us too far? Okay, okay, options... I can build us a shelter and we stay out here the night, or I can run ahead and get help, but I don't want to abandon Kevin. In the end, it was advanced planning and staying calm that saved us.

I had packed a tensor bandage. It was now on Kevin's knee. I had asked Kevin to bring his collection of headlamps, which were soon to be on our heads. I had printed maps and downloaded Gaia, a GPS app, before leaving. I had used that app to download maps for use offline, especially in areas where we had no signal, as well as plotting the GPS coordinates of landmarks that indicated key areas related to Jon's story. Luckily, I had decided to download the surrounding area maps as well; thankfully, they covered this new Buffalo River Trail that we had decided to take back.

I attached my MagSafe battery bank to the back of my phone, and even though the trail was now mostly gone, my map showed me where it "should" have been. I plowed ahead, looking for pitfalls and trying to pick up some semblance of the trail while Kevin hobbled behind. Whenever the trail would be easily lost or there was a hazard on the path, I would stop, turn around, and light the route behind me until Kevin caught up. We moved like this until 11 pm, a full seven hours after we had started the trail back. Finally, after one last water crossing in the dark, we reached the Mystery Van. Gaia showed we had been hiking for almost 14 hours and covered 20km in that time. To Kevin’s credit, he suffered through the pain and managed to complete the hike back out.

We returned to the hotel after midnight. I showered and then collapsed into bed. I woke up five hours later. It was 6 am, Kevin's knee was increasingly painful, and we were running out of time. I was sore and exhausted, but determined. It was time to take Jon Collins-Black's route, and I was going to have to do it solo.