Just another piece in the puzzle to help you solve Forrest Fenn's riddle and find the pot of gold!

Treasure Hunt The Poem Hints & Clues Need Maps Links & More Where to Begin

Hints & Clues to Help You Find Forrest Fenn’s Treasure!

We are told that the poem contains nine clues. But, which nine clues? That is the $64,000 question…

There are many possibilities for the 9 Clues, let’s take a look at some of the more likely candidates:

From Start to Finish (Begin to Cease/End)

BEGIN: Where warm waters halt
Canyon down, too far to walk
Put in below, Home of Brown
No place for the meek
End is ever drawing nigh
No paddle up your creek
Heavy loads, water high
Blaze
Quickly down: CEASE

So, tell me… Which clues exactly are the 9 Clues?

Each Clue is a Sentence:

Stanza 1
Warm waters, canyon, walk
Home of Brown
Meek, nigh, no paddle creek, loads
The blaze, tarry scant, marvel gaze
Leave my trove
Answers, tired, weak
Hear me, worth the cold
Brave, in the wood, title

There are nine sentences in the poem - and nine clues. Coincidence??? It would make perfect sense if each sentence is a clue. And, this would go a long way in explaining the poem’s rather odd punctuation. Like that semi-colon for instance. Not to mention all those commas serving no purpose but to lower the sentence-count.

Some time in the middle of 2010, wealthy author/collector/archaeologist Forrest Fenn hid a medieval chest filled with gold coins and other valuable artefacts somewhere in the Rocky Mountains for anyone to go and retrieve. He wrote a book called ‘The Thrill of the Chase’, in which he hid clues to help people find the treasure.

Inside the book is a poem which secretly encodes the whereabouts of this treasure chest. If you can solve the puzzle, you can go and collect hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not well over a million) right now!

But, hold your horses! It’s not that easy. Thousands upon thousands of people have tried - with absolutely no luck whatsoever!

Fortunately for you, we’re here to help guide you right to Fenn’s gold!

Starting from the top of the poem version of the 9 Clues:

Gone alone in there
Keep my secret
Where warm waters halt
Home of Brown
No place for the meek
No paddle up your creek
Find the blaze
Tarry scant with marvel gaze
Cold brave in the wood

Which 9 are the 9 Clues?

Ignore all the lines that are about him, only focus on the lines that tell you to do something.
Ignore all the lines that tell you to do something and focus on the lines that are about him and the treasure.
Ignore the past and future tense, focus on the present-tense commands.
Vice-versa.
Focus on directional commands (down, up, etc...).
Some individual clues may be made up of several separate clues, spread throughout the poem.

Other Ideas...:

If the first option isn’t correct, then it’s a mighty big coincidence that there just so happen to be 9 distinct clues between Begin and Cease.

But, not just that, all nine of those clues are in the paragraphs where the author is telling ‘you’ to do something. All the paragraphs that talk about what the author did in the past are clues that help you know what to do in the present.

It fits just a bit too nicely to be wrong. So, until we hear a better option, we’re going to focus on variations of the first (not excluding anything, of course).