alan m wrote:All accounts I've read indicate that waltz tried to tell Julia the mines location
It must not have been extremely difficult to find since he hoped that she could locate it
This tells me that it is not as hidden as it first appears
The key being that it is in a place where no miner would ever look for it
Alan
Hi Alan,
After pondering this situation for a couple of years, here’s my current belief on the issue of why Julia (Reiney, Holmes, Spangler, et.al.) never found the mine.
Primarily - I don’t think Waltz ever intended for them to find the mine (Holmes may have been an exception, with the key word being “may”). My point is that I believe that Waltz intended for them to locate the caches, not the mine. Hence Waltz’s directions lead to the cache and not the mine. It only makes sense that if Waltz went to all the effort to mine the ore and then to bury it again, that he would bury it some distance away from the mine – otherwise what’s the point? Whatever “some distance” is – your guess is as good as mine. After Dr. Glover’s presentation at the 2012 Rendezvous, I have serious reservations about Waltz ever saying anything like, “you can’t find the one without the other.”
Secondly, like most DH’ers I have my favorite location and I believe the landmarks in my location line up with the legend. However, everything in my location is just slightly off kilter. Actually, this is exactly what one would expect in a twice-told-tale. For example: TRTLLAM is not “over the point of a ridge” it is actually “adjacent” to the point of a ridge. Please bear in mind that is my personal opinion, but when you think about that, it makes sense because if TRTLLAM was over (as in behind) the point of a ridge, you wouldn’t see it.
What I am saying is that I believe the information we have is corrupted. Even if we had a word-for-word print out of what Reiney said to Bark, the information is still corrupted – not by a huge amount, but just enough so that following it will lead you to precisely…….nowhere. I believe that’s why Reiney never found it. It doesn’t take very much in terms of the directions being corrupted; little things like “over” when it should be “adjacent” - along with “facing west” when it should be “facing north” and nobody will be able to locate the LDM following the directions we have today.
Just my 2 cents,
Ashton