Q&A: Treasure Hunt winners talk strategy

Two brothers separated by 4,000 km have found six 6 oz. of gold in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle after months spent decoding clues in The Northern Miner’s Great Canadian Treasure Hunt. 

Jason and Matthew Schwartz uncovered the regional bonus prize at Kleanza Creek Provincial Park near Terrace (700 km by air north of Vancouver) as daylight faded and the search looked close to ending.  

The brothers told The Northern Miner’s Video Anchor Devan Murugan they had spent weeks swapping ideas between Toronto and Prince George in B.C.’s northern interior, digging through mining history and testing lines from the poem that guided the hunt. 

The prize, worth about $37,600 at current prices around $6,265 an oz., capped what began as part birthday trip, part reunion. Jason is turning 50 this year and the brothers used the hunt as a reason to spend time together after decades without a long stretch in the same place.  

Devan Murugan: Jason, when you heard your brother yell, “I found it,” what went through your mind? 

Jason Schwartz: Disbelief. We had been searching that area for quite a while and working different elevations. Matthew was lower down and I was higher up retracing our steps, checking holes, tree trunks, anything that might make sense. At that point, we were still asking ourselves if we were even in the right place. 

Then I heard him yell. I looked over the edge and could see right away how excited he was. We got together fast and hugged. It was one of those moments where the whole trip came together at once. 

DM: Matthew, how serious did this become for the two of you? 

Matthew Schwartz: At first, it was not serious at all. I mainly wanted to spend time with my brother. It is a big year for him and I thought this would be a fun way to spend a week together. 

Then we started digging into the history, the mining side of it and the logic of the poem. Once those pieces started lining up, it got exciting in a hurry. It stopped feeling like a casual road trip and started feeling like something we could actually solve. 

DM: Jason, when did you think you might really have it narrowed down? 

JS: That came from the overlap in our research. We were both working through different sources, comparing notes and checking each other’s thinking. The more we did that, the more the same place kept coming back. 

We felt we had the general area before we left. What we did not have was the exact spot. That only came once we got there, walked it and tested the clues against the ground in front of us. That was the difference between theory and actually standing in the place. 

The more I researched and the more my brother researched, the more overlap there was in what we were finding. We knew we had the area. We just did not know the exact spot until we got there and mapped it out more carefully. It all led to a wonderful experience and a memorable 50th birthday for me. 

DM: Matthew, what was the search like on the ground as the light started to go? 

MS: Exhilarating. I kept running the logic through my head the whole time. I was looking for a certain bend in the trail and what felt like a forgotten path. We kept checking places that fit the poem, then ruling them out. 

By late in the day, I had already told myself the next stop would just be reconnaissance. We would take some pictures, learn the ground and come back the next day. Then one of the last places I checked was a hole I did not even want to stick my hands into. It looked like the kind of place where something might be living that would rather be left alone. 

I shone my flashlight in and saw something that looked too perfect. It did not look natural. At that point, I had to reach in. 

DM: Was it what you expected to see? Jason told me the thing that caught your eye was that it looked unnatural. 

MS: It was literally a hole I did not want to explore. It looked like it might have something in there I did not want to encounter. But when I shone my flashlight inside, I saw an object that looked too perfect. It was something nature could not have produced. That is what made me reach in. 

DM: How hard was it to decode? 

MS: Hard. I started with the video clue and worked out “Kleanza” from there. That got us to the park. After that, it became a matter of matching the trail, the terrain and the history. 

JS: The history mattered a lot. We went beyond the clues themselves and read into the prospecting history of the area and the Indigenous history around it. We wanted to understand why people went there in the first place and how they used the ground. That gave us more confidence that we were reading the hunt the right way. 

DM: Jason, this was about more than gold, wasn’t it? 

JS: Much more. We live in different parts of the country, and while we stay in touch, we had not spent this kind of time together in decades. Maybe 30 years, really, when I think about it. 

That is what stays with me. The gold is wonderful, of course. But the real prize was having the time together, driving through the province, solving the clues and then sharing that moment at the end of the day. It gave us a memory neither of us will forget. 

DM: Matthew, did your different backgrounds help? 

MS: I think so. My job in navigation technology probably made me more rigid with the logic. I wanted markers on the ground that matched what we had built on paper. Jason brought a different way of thinking and together that helped. 

I went into this without much knowledge of mining. I came out of it feeling like I understood a great deal more. The story of placer miner Joel Trollson, who used copper wire to pull moss from the rocks around Kleanza Creek to find bits of gold, really stayed with me. Once I understood that history, and the older mining work in the canyon, the poem made more sense. 

DM: Are the Schwartz brothers going after the $1 million grand prize next? 

JS: Yes. We are very eager to take that next step. The challenge is finding the time. We both have careers and families, so now we have to carve out another window and start the next search. 

MS: We are definitely not done.