Daniel Barbarisi - Chasing the Thrill: Obsession, Death, and Glory in Americas Most Extraordinary Treasure Hunt

June 7, 2017

Do you hear that?

My treasure-hunting partner, Beep, kept his eyes glued to the map. Hear what? he asked me without looking up.

It sounded like thunder, I said, glancing up at the sky, which minutes before had been clear and blue and pristine. Now it was blackening, suddenly ominous.

We were standing on the side of State Road 68 a few miles north of Pilar, New Mexico, several hundred feet up the highway from the Rio Grande Gorge Visitor Center. In front of us stood an impenetrable mass of rock and brush, right where the map said the trail leading to Agua Caliente Falls was supposed to be.

Except it wasnt there. It didnt exist.

A rumble echoed through the canyon, unmistakable this time. Before Beep or I could say another word, the skies opened up and the raindrops began to fallnot a polite, drizzly rain, either. These were big, heavy drops, a cascade of water coming out of the sky with no warning and shocking suddenness.

Run for the car! I shouted, and we tore off toward the parking lot, a quarter mile up the road. Eighteen-wheelers rumbled by as we scampered along the shoulder of the highway back to our rented Ford Explorer. Yanking open the doors, we tumbled inside, out of breath, wet, and already defeated. We hadnt even gotten to our search area yet.

How did we not think to check the weather? I asked, mostly rhetorically.

Its the desert. I thought the weather was always the same here, Beep said, looking perplexed. A pasty Canadian, he was shivering in the passenger seat in a gray fantasy sports T-shirt and black gym shorts, fully unprepared for the deluge. At least he was wearing a boonie hat hed purchased because it seemed like good hunting gear, its floppy brim partially hiding his people-pleaser eyes. Just as well. I figured hed be looking at me with disappointment for my embarrassing lack of preparation.

Quite the auspicious start to our careers as treasure hunters.

Treasure hunters. It still sounded crazy. A few months before, Beep had discovered the tale of Forrest Fenn, a wealthy New Mexico art dealer who claimed to have hidden a treasure chest worth millions somewhere in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe. In 2010, Fenn published a book and a poem that promised to lead searchers to the treasureif they could figure out the poems nine clues. Beep had become completely obsessed with the chase, and Id followed him down the rabbit hole.

Wed flown into Albuquerque the day before, and made our way up to Santa Fe later that night. Then early the following morning, Beep and I had stowed our newly purchased treasure-hunting gear and jumped into the car for the two-hour drive north through the wilds of New Mexico, the kind of place that isnt really barren but is still sparse enough that you mostly lose cell service. Once outside of 85,000-person Santa Fe, the starkness of the landscape is stunning: flat and broad for miles and miles in every direction, until that land runs into mountains far in the distance on each side. Wed theorized that Fenns treasure must be somewhere among themthat chest and its cache of gold, diamonds, emeralds.

Driving toward those peaks, the only markers of civilization we saw were the periodic small towns, just hamlets reallya bar, a general store, maybe a school. In between them was nothingnothing, except crosses at regular intervals along the highway, marking spots where unfortunate drivers had crashed. There were more of them than Id ever expected, more than Id seen along any other stretch of highway anywhere. They were our constant companions as we drove up, pacing the distance between the only true landmarks on this journey: Native American tribal casinos. They rose out of the plains like the palaces of ancient kings, massive and elaborate and blinking with lights and signs and promises of riches. There was so little along this route, and yet one of these strange oases appeared every fifteen miles or so, and the parking lots were all packed. Who were all these people? Where did they come from? Theyre a bit like us, I figured, hoping to strike it richjust in the form of plastic chips, not gold coins. And probably just as unlikely to realize their dream.

As wed made our way to the search spot, Id found myself growing more confident in our solveour solution to Fenns poem, our step-by-step route to the treasure. It had actually felt as if the treasure was within reach. The spot we were seeking was barely markedit didnt even show up on Google Maps, the worlds current digital arbiter of what is legitimate and what is not. Wed found the location on a United States Geological Survey map, listing Agua Caliente Canyon and, a few miles hike away, Agua Caliente Falls. Wed zeroed in on the sites for two reasons. First, Agua Caliente means hot water in English. In the first line of Fenns poem, the all-important verse that is supposed to lead searchers to the treasure, he advises seekers, Begin it where warm waters halt/And take it in the canyon down.

Many people have taken that instruction literallyseeking out a spot where a river changes in temperature, or where a hot spring hits another body of water. But what if Fenn was just playing with words? What if, instead, he wanted us to start where warm waters halt in a different wayto begin where Agua Caliente Canyon ends, and then follow the canyon itself off into the wilderness? From there, wed make our way to Agua Caliente Falls, which could be the site of heavy loads and water high, one of the other clues in the poem.

This seemed like a pretty good idea when Beep and I were hashing it out back east, I from my home in Boston and he from his outside Toronto. But now that we were on the ground, hiding in our car, our internet searching seemed remarkably nave.