Anyone, from any country, can stake a claim for $50 through the surveyor’s office to get exclusive mineral rights on that land. As long as they annually demonstrate 200 hours of actual work, they can even renew it up to seven times. Wayne & Linda had chosen a spot about 40 miles up river where they thought the remoteness would have protected their claim from previous prospecting.

Ranchers from Texas, Wayne and Linda first visited Alaska about 10 years ago and have spent most of their summers since then in Chicken because they are hooked on gold mining. Several years ago they staked their own claim and they say they will move here permanently (“…with trips south in the winter to visit the grand kids, of course…”) as soon as someone buys their ranch back in Texas. Imagine living the entire summer in a tent by the river without any communication except when Wayne occasionally spends a day to head back down to Chicken for supplies.

It was no surprise that they both wore pistols strapped to the belts to ward off bears, and neither were the stories of having to use them. Wayne proudly told us that Linda is the official “bear chaser”, and she said that although warning shots have always worked so far, “If one keeps coming, I’ll drop ’em!” One young grizzly was so persistent that he returned three times one afternoon until Wayne started up the hovercraft and did several big circles to scare him off.

Hovercraft? Yes. Three years ago Wayne and Linda built it from plans they found on the Internet in order to get to their camp. The craft actually floats about 1″ above the grass or water or rocks or whatever. We were lucky to arrive on the day they were taking it for the test run prior to loading and heading up river. We were thrilled for the chance to watch them launch and ran to get our cameras and bug spray. Check out the video below and pictures of their amazing boat and our smiles riding in it.

Most of it was built from lightweight foam board stiffened with a coating of fiberglass on each side, except the front panels which are just aircraft fabric. In addition to turning the large propeller, the 24 horsepower Honda engine drives a down-facing impeller that pushes some air into the coated fabric that forms an 18″ diameter tube around the base of the boat and holds the rest of the air captive. With a pressure differential of just 3/4 psi, it can lift and carry an effective load of about 700 pounds. Typical cruising speed is about 20 mph, but they have had it up as high as 40!

Although Wayne and Linda enjoy their “work” and have tremendous fun mining for gold, this is far from idle play. They actually run a 4″ dredge, which is a large, gasoline-powered pump that sucks gravel from the stream bed and deposits it into the sluice box that sorts out the bits of gold. It takes them several trips up river in the hovercraft to move all their supplies to camp each year.

Is it worth all the effort? It sure is. Most years they’ve mined enough gold to pay for the summer trip that they would have taken for fun anyway, and the big payoff was last year when they found about 50 ounces of gold worth over $50,000 — enough to completely remodel their home in Texas. Not a bad payoff from an enjoyable summer vacation!

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