Mountain Walk Versus Forrest Fenn: A Memoir

Mountain Walk Versus Forrest Fenn was written to support a unique idea and to defend the legacy of a generous and noble friend. Forest Fenn devised a treasure hunt in which he hid a fortune in gold and jewelry in the Rocky Mountains. He peppered clues throughout his book, The Thrill of the Chase: A Memoir, as to its location and declared the finder could keep the treasure. The purpose was to get people outside, and to share the things and experiences that made his own life interesting and fulfilling.

The treasure was discovered in June 2020, shortly before Forest Fenn and his wife of sixty years passed. A decision by Fenn and the finder to not disclose the site left many of the thousands who searched for his treasure dissatisfied-some caustically so. For them, the game was a hoax, a scam, and unfair. Legal suits were brought against the Fenn estate, the finder, and other tangentially involved individuals. Books and articles were written with no purpose other than destroying Fenn’s legacy.

＂Mountain Walk,＂ a blog to help interpret the clues and keep treasure hunters out of trouble argued the only way to stop the nonsense was to find the hiding site using nothing but the clues given in Fenn’s memoir, The Thrill of the Chase. The author takes the reader through that mental exercise with the caveat that at this point, only the finder really knows the site’s location.