The Thrill of the Chase
Mark Honeychurch - 2 September 2024
While looking into the prevalence of treasure seeking as a scam in the United States in the early 1800s (part of some preparation I did before talking to Mormon missionaries), I came across an update to a story that I first heard about a few years ago.
I love a good man-made mystery - often the real mystery isn’t in solving the puzzles in front of you, but more about who’s behind them. Who commissioned the Georgia Guidestones, what was Cicada 3301 being used for, what was actually found on Oak Island, and where are the remaining treasure boxes hidden in the book The Secret?
Another fun mystery that I’d read about a good few years ago is the location of Forrest Fenn’s treasure and I found an update to this story while searching for my Mormon ammunition. Forrest Fenn’s treasure is a small bronze chest containing gold and jewels that Forrest hid somewhere in the Rocky Mountains back in 1988. The location was somewhere that Forrest said he would like to be when he died, which was on his mind at the time he hid the treasure as he’d found out he had cancer. To help people find the chest, Forrest published a book called The Thrill of the Chase, which contained a series of autobiographical short stories, along with a description of the chest and its contents, as well as a poem that contained a set of clues that led to the chest’s location.
As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.
Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put in below the home of Brown.
From there it’s no place for the meek,
The end is drawing ever nigh;
There’ll be no paddle up your creek,
Just heavy loads and water high.
If you’ve been wise and found the blaze,
Look quickly down, your quest to cease,
But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace.
So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek?
The answer I already know
I’ve done it tired, and now I’m weak.
So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold.
If you are brave and in the wood
I give you title to the gold.
Given that treasure hunters have had to search the entirety of the Rockies, trying to match the first clues to geographical locations and then visit these locations to hike into the wilderness to find landmarks that match up with the latter clues (and Forrest let everyone know that there are 9 clues in the poem to guide people to the chest’s location), it’s no surprise that, over the years, this challenge has claimed the lives of no fewer than five intrepid souls. I guess these deaths should probably be weighed against the excitement that a small but dedicated group has received from obsessing over the hunt.
Sadly, as well as the good-natured camaraderie there has also been a certain amount of in-fighting and bad behaviour from some in the community. As well as vandalism and trespassing from people hunting in vain, and Forrest had to endure physical threats, stalking, lawsuits and even the threat of a kidnapping.
In 2020 a medical student, Jack Stuef, found the treasure - something Forrest didn’t expect anyone to manage in his lifetime, given how well-hidden the chest was, and how obscure the clues were. We know that Jack found the treasure because he was forced to go public before he was named in a lawsuit from an over-zealous treasure hunter who was arguing that the treasure was rightfully theirs. This lawsuit changed its focus from Forrest to Jack due to Forrest’s death soon after the treasure had been found.
Jack and Forrest with the treasure
Jack made himself known in a series of blog posts on Medium, where he talked about meeting Forrest after he had found the treasure, Forrest’s death, and the many messages he received after he outed himself - mostly kind, and mostly looking for more information about where the treasure was found. As Jack viewed the treasure’s hiding place as special to Forrest, and somewhere that he didn’t want turned into a trampled on tourist attraction, he has chosen to keep its location a secret. What he has said is that the treasure was found in Wyoming, and that it took a combination of decoding most of the poem, along with two other clues hidden in the book the poem was published in, and a couple of minor slip-ups in publicly available interviews of Forrest to find it. Even then it took a total of over 21 days of hiking and searching, over a period of 2 years, to finally uncover the box.
In three of Jack’s Medium articles he’s published his answers to some of the email questions he’s received, so that everyone can benefit from them - although beyond a few general clues there’s not much that he’s giving away. It’s good to hear that people are still obsessing over the location, even after the treasure has gone - so that Forrest’s challenge is still perplexing people today, and puzzle solvers can still take part in the thrill of the chase.
One of Jack’s hints, one that I would recommend for all lovers of puzzles, is to not overthink things too much. When designing a puzzle, people don’t put thousands of hours into encoding elaborate clues involving obscure mathematics or conspiracy-theory level interconnected ideas - these are most likely dead ends, interpretations made up by the puzzle hunter that bear no resemblance to the puzzle author’s thinking. Usually puzzle solutions require lateral thinking, and often stepping away from a puzzle for a while can really help. Jack even recommends that treasure hunters discard all their ideas once in a while and start from the beginning again, to avoid being stuck in a dead end.
A couple of years before he found the treasure, Jack made and posted a video to YouTube with some great advice for seekers. The video contains some solid skeptical advice, covering important biases that we should all be aware of and try to compensate for, especially when looking for hidden treasure!
If you want to know more, a good overview of the treasure hunt, and Jack’s success, can be read in Outside magazine from 2020.