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