Fall 2025 Blue Ridge Mountains Treasure Hunt

Long time no talk! But I promise it's for good reason. I have so much new stuff to share. Let's get right into it...

Countdown Treasure Fall 2025 charity update

So, first things first, I want to start this last wrapup post by showing you exactly where the $21,000 we raised with Countdown Treasure Fall 2025 went.

Appalachia Service Project

A few weeks ago on Halloween, 10/31/25, I started the morning at Johnson City, TN where I met the amazing team (thanks Belle, Carson, Melissa, et al!) at the Appalachia Service Project, and handed them a big (literally) $10,000 check – made possible by all of you – that will directly help fund ASP's continued Disaster Recovery efforts. These funds will go towards active recovery efforts in TN and NC, in an efficient and effective way to support Hurricane Helene survivors.

ASP had actually just handed over keys to a homeowner the Wednesday before, completing their 3rd rebuild post-Helene, and they have 20 more homes in active construction or final pre-construction. Tennessee has even more completed and dozens underway. The team was amazing and gave me a tour of their campus where 10,000 volunteers come through every summer to help rebuild homes all around the entire Appalachia area.

Bee Log CRC

From Johnson City I drove down to Burnsville, NC, where I saw first hand the continued recovery efforts from destroyed homes and roads. The drive is still full of detours and temporary roads and bridges as the area continues the long process of rebuilding. And then I arrived and met the equally amazing team behind Bee Log CRC (thanks Chrissy and co!) and gave them a (again, literally big) check for $10,000 – thanks, again, to all of you!

They have taken over Bee Log Elementary and are making it into a permanent resource for the entire community where they can go to get food, clothing, supplies, and prepare for another winter while they continue to rebuild. Our donation is going to help them refurbish the school's kitchen for meal prep and add on an apartment for families that are displaced.

Bailey Mountain Preserve

And then, finally, I finished by driving back to the scene of the crime, Bailey Mountain Preserve in Mars Hill, NC, to meet the small but mighty team (thanks Ryan and Laura!) behind the Bailey Mountain Preserve fund and donate $1,000 to help them buy some available land around the preserve to continue expanding their amazing public trails (and to quickly hike and retrieve the trail cam!)

And from there I drove on to Chapel Hill, NC to meet up with my family and do some last minute trick or treating.

It was a busy day! But I wanted to make sure, with this last Countdown Treasure Fall 2025 wrapup post, that you saw exactly where our donations went and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that we all helped make a difference here. Thank you to everyone who participated, upgraded to premium, bought merch, and especially to the winners Corey and Zoe for their incredible donation of the entire sidepot. $21,000 is huge! Let's double it next year ;)

Legend coin update

FYI, for all my Legends waiting on their commemorative coin, I had to restock on coin blanks and bring on some extra help to get through all the coins, but am now working as fast as possible to get your commemorative coin to you ASAP. I'm going in order of when you signed up, so keep an eye out for an email when your coin ships. I promise I'll get every last one out before Christmas, thanks so much for your patience!

(And if you don't remember filling out the survey telling me the name you wanted on the coin and your address, please hurry and fill out the survey here it will close at the end of this week)

Oh, and speaking of next year, you might have noticed things look a little different around here. I told you I'd been busy!

Introducing Countdown Treasure 2.0

You can go here to read more about Countdown Treasure 2.0 but, in short, the entire site has been rebuilt from the ground up to make it so that anyone 1) can create their own treasure hunt of any kind, shape, or size. One day hunts, weekend hunts, big hunts, and more and 2) can easily join hunts, both online and in person, from amazing treasure hunt creators all over the country.

Countdown Treasure will handle all the signups, payments, clues, updates, emails, etc – so that you can focus on creating an amazing hunt.

If you or your city or organization are interested in becoming one of the first creators on the new platform, please apply here.

Spring 2026 Blue Ridge Mountains hunt is coming

That's right! We're running it back next year with the Countdown Treasure Blue Ridge Mountains Spring 2026 Hunt and you can signup here to be notified of all the updates and details as we get closer. I learned so much with the Fall hunt, and the Spring 2026 hunt is going to be bigger and better in every way. I absolutely cannot wait.

The Community is back

And, lastly as we wrapup the wrapup, as promised the Community is back! Going forward every premium hunter gets access to both their hunt's community for the duration of the hunt, but also a general Countdown Treasure community where we can share our favorite hikes, our favorite hunts, and whatever else is on our mind. As always, it will be a good vibes only kind of community, and it will close every night from midnight to 6am so we can all take a much needed break from our screens.

And… whew… that's all I've got! Thanks so much for reading, have a great Thanksgiving, and come say "hey" in the community when you get a chance. Happy hunting! - Adam

Interview with dad and daughter duo Corey and Zoey the winners of Countdown Treasure 2025

I had the pleasure of interviewing father and daughter Corey and Zoe of Northeast Georgia on Mon, Oct 20th following their finding of the Countdown Treasure 2025 treasure on Sat, Oct 18th.

We talk about their love of treasure hunting, the other hunts they've done, their methodology in winning Countdown Treasure, and how I could potentially "cloud proof" the next one.

We also talk about my methodology in choosing the location, the work behind the scenes in making a treasure hunt work, how the popularity of a treasure hunt can jeopardize its community, and the amazing donation they made of the entire side pot to the Hurricane Helene Relief Fund.

Subscribe here to stay up-to-date about future treasure hunts!

The Big Countdown Treasure Hunt Breakdown: All the details and a huge surprise

Good morning hunters! To what would be Day 11 of the hunt if it weren't for those darn clouds! We've got to do something about these darn spy clouds! (read below to find out what I'm talking about)

But no, seriously, strap in, because in the name of complete and 100% transparency I will be breaking everything down in this post. And, whatever you do, make sure you read to the end.

The finders

So, first things first, HUGE congratulations to Corey (username @Fuzzy in the Countdown Treasure community), his daughter Zoe, and their dogs Remi and Winni, the finders of the $26,350 in gold coins sitting on the forest floor of 100% publicly accessible Bailey Mountain Loop in Mars Hill at 12:41 pm yesterday! Corey and his clan are from Northeast GA and drove in yesterday.

And, amazingly, this is actually the second treasure hunt Corey has won recently! He won a 1oz gold coin in Este's Quest and has now added substantially to that gold stash.

For a week and a half this dynamic dad and daughter treasure hunting duo painstakingly saved every website trail cam update and spent hours matching that up with publicly available cloud data using Zoom Earth. They put in the time and the work and found cloud shadows from Tuesday or Wednesday that led them to the general area. And that, coupled with the shadows from the drone photos and the foliage on the ground, eventually led them to the treasure. It took a couple of walk bys before they saw it, but eventually… there it was!

This is the close up photo of the treasure they took on discovery. You can see the trail cam there in the background and the leaf sitting on top that fell just yesterday.

This is the hidden coin I made and placed in the treasure with the secret code they shared with me to absolutely prove their find.

So, no hints. No shenanigans. Just sweat equity. He said they were on Cloud 9 all the way down – I bet! he's probably giving a cut to these spy clouds! lol – and made sure to take the scenic route to enjoy the beautiful hike back down to the parking lot.

Corey and Zoe also, like the total treasure hunting bosses they are, left a silver bar in the jar of peanuts they left behind. @WeatherMan in the community, the one with the bar in the photo above, found it around 30 minutes after they did. I believe @WeatherMan was doing some weather data crunching of his own that led him to Bailey Mountain Loop the same day.

Corey, Zoey, and I did a Zoom interview that I will post here and to Youtube, where they went into detail about their process and everything about their find on Saturday. We had a long chat Monday night and their forthrightness was amazing as they walked through it all again. Again, I'll post that here and on Youtube, make sure to give it a watch!

More about Bailey Mountain Loop

The treasure was located just off the Blue Trail of the Bailey Mountain Loop at roughly 35°51'16"N 82°34'18"W.

• 🏛 The Town of Mars Hill owns and manages the Bailey Mountain Preserve for the benefit of the public
• 💯 Bailey Mountain Loop is 100% publicly accessible 24/7 365 days a year. It is – again – "public land", managed by the Bailey Mountain Preserve
• 🚶‍♂️ All their blazed trails, free trailhead parking, and signage are all for public use year-round, free of charge
• 🛣️ The official trailhead has free parking (and porta potties!) and is at the end of Forest Street in Mars Hill, NC, a publicly owned and accessible road
• 🌱 While Bailey Mountain Preserve is a conservation easement, no parts of it are ecologically sensitive. The treasure was sitting less than 25 yards off the trail, in a patch of the invasive plant species Japanese stiltgrass, the least ecologically sensitive grass in NC (stomp it if you see it! take that stiltgrass!)
• 🚁 And, last but not least, drones are not restricted at Bailey Mountain Preserve as long as you follow FAA guidelines. Which my DJI Mini drone must do by default. Here's a drone video from Madison County, NC on Youtube.

Burying the lede

But, enough about all that Adam, let's get to the fairy tale ending: Corey and Zoe are giving all of the side pot to the Hurricane Helene Relief Fund!

Yes, you read that right: $16,420 straight to the relief fund! An absolutely amazing gesture that will not only mean we meet my original goal of raising $20,000 – we exceed it!

Here's how it will break down:

• The Bailey Mountain Preserve: Currently, at least $420 will go to the Bailey Mountain Preserve fund for their amazing job on clearing, cleaning, and marking their beautiful publicly owned and accessible trail. They did a ton of work after Helene to open most all of the trails in the preserve up, and this money will help them continue that hard work. Note: Any extra money raised this week while the donation form and charity merch store stays open will go directly to the Bailey Mountain Preserve fund. So, if you'd like to thank them for their hard work and also grab a Wrecky Raccoon hoodie while you still can, I'll keep updating the number throughout the week with a final tally on Friday, the 24th.

• Bee Log Community & Relief Center: $10,000 will go to the Bee Log Community & Relief Center, a grassroots organization providing immediate disaster relief and long-term recovery support to communities in Western North Carolina affected by Hurricane Helene.

• Appalachia Service Project: $10,000 will go to Appalachia Service Project. ASP has been making homes warmer, safer, and drier for families in Central Appalachia – so not just NC, but Tenneseee, Virginia, and all the surrounding area – since 1969, and are now providing critical disaster relief and rebuilding services.

Absolutely jaw dropping stuff. Again, not a cent of the side pot will go towards Corey or myself, it will all go back to organizations doing amazing work to help NC, TN, VA, and all the surrounding areas recover. I will be documenting the handoff of all these funds through the next couple of weeks and posting it all to the website. It'd be pretty hard for anyone to be unhappy with that ending, right? Right?!

My lessons learned and next steps

• Gonna beat those darned clouds: I absolutely love this format of hunt, pioneered by Jason over at Project Skydrop. But, if we run it back, I will "cloud guard" it next time. You hear me, Corey and Zoe, I'm going to figure this out! :)
• Harder hike?: The length of the hike is also a really tricky part of this format. If I'd have hiked, say, 10 miles in to place the treasure, we'd all still be hunting. But is that cool? Is that what we want? The treasure was only around 2.25 miles in, on a well kept and blazed trail, with clear markers and nothing crazy, and that is was I decided was "not extreme". But, maybe next time, there will be 2 treasure hunts – the family friendly one and the hardcore one. And you can do either or both. Each will, at the very start, have a mileage range that is very clear and repeated over and over whenever anyone asks. We'll see, maybe.
• "Just off the trail": You don't want people to have to bushwack through the brush to find the treasure. You can't always put the treasure in a field of japanese stiltgrass, so is there a way to do this hunt and keep the treasure on the trail, is a big question I'm going to noodle on for awhile.
• A way for hunters to "check in" to a park: The big question is would this give too much away? But I'd love, at the end of the hunt on your profile page, for you to see nicely illustrated pins of all the hikes you made during the hunt. Would this help every one narrow down trails too quickly? I'm not convinced of that yet, because folks will still hike the trail but miss the treasure.

Conclusion

Thanks to everyone who kept the vibes high throughout this amazing hunt. Once I post all the community photos to a permanent gallery on the website, and have a gameplan for the next hunt – someone mentioned hunt presales on the community and that's something I'm going to think through because I think that idea has promise – I will open the Community back up. I hope we can discuss our favorite hikes there, the latest treasure hunts, and upcoming plans for future hunts.

Thanks for an amazing couple of weeks everyone. I hope this post went into all the detail that you deserve to know this hunt was done as fairly and transparently as humanly possible. Look out for updates through the coming weeks here and on Youtube. And if it's not raining where you are today – beautiful sunny skies here in Charlotte – go out on a hike and, as always, keep your eyes peeled!

Update: In an earlier version of this post I'd hastily used the wrong screenshotted map. And because I never wrote down the coordinates, just memorized the location based off the map so it would never get written down anywhere, I posted the wrong coordinates 😞. The little loop and big loop look very similar and I thought I had a zoomed out version – but it was just the wrong version! 🤦🏻‍♂️ Both the loop map and coordinates have now been updated. Thanks for your patience! All good now. - Adam

The treasure has been found!

Signups and logins have been closed for now, but I will update everyone via this page and email as soon as possible.

Thank you all for an AMAZING hunt. I am a little bummed that it is over, we were having so much fun, but so thankful for the good vibes everyone brought to the hunt the last 10 days.

And what a beautiful day to end it on! Again updates coming soon thanks everyone! - Adam

Hurricane Helene Relief Update

The number one request I've received since the hunt began was for a way to contribute directly to the Hurricane Helene Relief Fund. I am very happy to say that you now can! Just go to the relief fund page – now in the main logged in nav, it's the ❤️ icon – and contribute what you can. And if you want to look stylish while giving back, there is also now merch available where all proceeds will also go straight to the fund. I've already ordered mine!

I also want to announce where the funds are going: Bee Log Community & Relief Center and the Appalachia Service Project.

Bee Log Community & Relief Center is a nonprofit that provides emergency aid—such as food, clothing, shelter, and recovery support—in its local community, while restoring and operating a former school building as a hub for long-term social and economic resilience.

Appalachia Service Project works with volunteers to repair or rebuild homes for low-income families in Central Appalachia, while fostering lasting relationships and service-driven transformation.

We've built a community here that wants to help. And I'll make sure to put every penny to its best use. I will be consistently updating the additional relief funds throughout the rest of the hunt. Have a great Day 8 everyone and thanks for making all this possible!

Some of the coverage Countdown Treasure has been lucky enough to receive the last few days since launching. Thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word!

• Tiny Money: Coin maker creates real life treasure hunt, hides $25K of gold coins in NC mountains
  Thanks to Ted Williams for helping me launch Countdown Treasure with a bang!

• WSOC: $25,000 treasure hunt launched in the Blue Ridge Mountains
  "A $25,000 treasure hunt is now underway in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A Charlotte coin maker stashed a mason jar full of gold coins somewhere on the forest floor near a public hiking trail in the Blue Ridge Mountains."

• cltfive: 🏔️ WANT TO HUNT FOR $25K IN GOLD?
  "A Charlotte entrepreneur has hidden $25,000 worth of gold coins in the Blue Ridge Mountains for an epic real-life treasure hunt."

• Mysterious Writings: NEW HUNT: COUNTDOWN TREASURE - Over 25K (as of now)
  Are you on the East Coast?! (or ready to travel there?) A new hunt - Countdown Treasure - has just launched! It will end in less than 21 days!

Hunter Jimmie D sent this in and said I could share. Thanks Jimmie, great story!

Who doesn't like the search for hidden treasure, as day three dawned I eagerly awaited the closing of the circle, the live view as daylight slowly crept in.

An idea hit me about a complex mathematical equation and I set to work calculating the center of the slowly closing circle.

When all was said and done I was looking at a set of coordinates, could it be? The actual location was a place well known to me, infact I had proposed to my wife at this very same spot many moons ago.

The coordinates... Latitude: 35.7670°N Longitude: 82.4160 W..... the location fit the bill, public land, off of a hiking trail.

We gassed up the car, grabbed some water and headed across Western North Carolina on quite the adventure.

We were off to the Coleman Boundary, home to multiple water falls, the occasional open view to wonderful mountain views and notably Douglas Falls, where a few movie shots from last of the Mohicans were filmed, and where many years ago the army would hold specialized training on the mountain.

We arrived at the gate at the base of the mountain and it was closed and locked with an official barricade barring entry… best guess since the hurricane.

I plugged in the gps location from there and it back tracked us to another public county road that soon narrowed as we approached higher on the mountain, and not to far from the end of our destination we were stopped by and irritated local and although we were on a marked public roadway we were assured by the local that we were in fact trespassing and un welcome.....

So my math may not be math'n but it made for a spectacular day out and returned my wife and I to where we began so many years ago.

Tomorrow is a new day, and I'll replace the batteries in my calculator and try again.

If you have a story you'd like to share with the community please send it either via the website contact form or adam@countdowntreasure.com.

Take that trash panda! No wonder they wear those masks.

Yesterday, after The Great Raccoon Incident of 2025, all the gold coins were quickly accounted for and placed inside Mason Jar 2.0. The gold was no worse for wear, just slightly dirty and covered in raccoon paw prints.

Our new, anti-critter (🤞) jar has a tight fastening lid and is nailed (tightly) into the ground with string and stakes! 🔨 Happy weekend hunting! 🔍

Wrecky did his best but we bounced back!

Hey! I'm Adam Howell, the creator of Countdown Treasure. Welcome to the hunt!

How We Got Here

Last year my family and I participated in Project Skydrop, and we had so much fun with it. It was such a smart and clever use of technology to create a unique, modern-day treasure hunt that created a true sense of urgency and excitement. I was hooked.

The only catch? It was all happening in the Northeast. In fact, we were packing up for a long weekend camping trip, planning to hike some of the trails we'd flagged near Boston, when the treasure was discovered.

Just over two weeks in, the $25,000 gold prize—along with a side pot of around $85,000—went to a meteorologist from the Boston area.

The experience was thrilling and unlike anything else online. Every morning you'd rush to check the shrinking map and the growing side pot, one of those rare times you could see a website truly go viral in today's corporate controlled internet.

The whole time I kept thinking: Someone needs to bring this to the Blue Ridge. And eventually, that someone turned out to be me—Countdown Treasure was born.

What Is Countdown Treasure?

Countdown Treasure is a real-world treasure hunt featuring $25,000+ in gold coins hidden somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But this isn't your grandfather's treasure hunt—we've combined traditional adventure with cutting-edge technology to create something truly unique:

• Real Treasure: $25,000 worth of real gold coins sitting on the forest floor, completely out in the open
• 24/7 Live Webcam: Watch the treasure in real-time with our webcam that updates every 10 minutes, so you can see it's still there
• Shrinking Search Area: Every morning at 9am ET, the search area gets smaller, creating urgency and excitement
• Growing Prize Pool: Every premium signup adds $10 to a winner-takes-all side pot that goes to whoever finds the treasure
• Premium Access: Premium hunters get daily drone photos above the treasure and access to a private community of fellow seekers

More Than Just Adventure

After witnessing the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Countdown Treasure became about more than just adventure. The Blue Ridge Mountains aren't just the setting for our hunt—they're home to communities that were hit hard and deserve support.

That's why we're committed to giving back:

• $2 of every premium membership goes toward our $20,000 goal for Hurricane Helene relief efforts
• We encourage every adventurer to support these resilient communities directly—by visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains, dining at local restaurants, shopping at small businesses, and staying with local hosts during the hunt

Together, we can make this adventure meaningful for everyone.

The Hunt Is On

Fall in the Blue Ridge Mountains is a beautiful time of year. The leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and the mountains are stunning. It's the perfect setting for an adventure!

The treasure is out there right now. The webcam is live. The map is shrinking. And the prize pool is growing.

Will you be the one to find it?

Join the Hunt Today

— Adam