In the parched, hot mountains, there's a place where the San Gabriel River cuts close to a high ledge of polished bedrock and along a grove of alders casting shadows on warm sand. Under the trees, families loll in hammocks on listless Sunday afternoons. They barbecue, listen to ranchera music and splash with their children in the shallow pools.
But among them, there is also is an odd scattering of people hard at work.
They are men, and some women, with aching backs and tall, tall tales of good fortune and busted luck.
They trample around on their knees in the water, grunting and heaving boulders until their muscles shoot with pain. They scan the channels and rapids and eddies. Rocks crush their toes. Cold numbs their limbs. And the sun sears their skin until eventually, as the old-timers can attest, they get iguana necks.
But once the demon infects you, they say, weekend after weekend will undoubtedly pass in this hard-bitten way.
Looking for gold.
"It's like the devil," says Bernie McGrath, 65. "It keeps calling."
McGrath is a former heroin addict with broken teeth, wispy white hair and arthritic hands. He moved to his mountain trailer at Camp Williams years ago and has since become a beloved character in the gold-digging community, known for his generosity, expertise and half-believable stories about crazy hermits, speed freaks and gold's sometimes-devastating allure.
The regular crew of prospectors who work the San Gabriel Mountains includes everyone from the almost-homeless to building contractors to corporate executives.
They call this place Nugget Alley--an evocative name that vastly overstates the output of the steep, rocky canyon in the Angeles National Forest. The prospectors who have day jobs had best keep them.
Ron Hoagland, who owns a prospecting store called Azusa Gold, guesses that no more than 75 pounds of gold comes out of San Gabriel Canyon every year, a small fraction of what is found in the gold country of Northern California. Most individuals bring out small flakes or occasional nuggets worth around $20.
And at $256 an ounce, even a good day will never pay expenses.
Jesse Martinez exports skateboards for a living. Every summer weekend he packs up the camper and his family and winds up Highway 39, up the East Fork, past Camp Williams to his favorite spot where the flaming dry yucca spears give way to quaking aspen.
