Bright Ice in the Frozen Land of Cape Cod; How to Find a Ring in Snow Piles


Having been frozen out of the ocean by cold temperatures, high winds, and blizzards, I welcomed the challenge to find a lost engagement ring.
When I arrived at the Preschool location, I was intimidated by the seven foot high piles of snow and did not know exactly where to start my search. I was about an hour early. So I started the search correcting my equipment for the railings and re-bar in the walkways and concrete benches. The first hour yielded only one L.L.Bean button and a few pieces of tinfoil.
The school janitor came out to see what I was doing. It was good luck for me as he had searched for the ring two days previously. When he searched, there was two inches less snow that had fallen and been removed from the walkways. He told me where the wedding band was found, about ten feet from were I was searching at the time.
Lesley showed up right on time and told the same story so I knew I was in the correct area. After moving what felt like a ton of snow and detecting each shovel full I started detecting in harder to reach area and moving more snow. While reaching over a railing, I was shoveling snow from a five foot high snow pile that was between two pillars only 10 inched apart, an area too small to swing my detector.
I was detecting the third pile of removed snow and heard my detector sing out the sweet note of gold. I moved the pile a bit and saw the ring with its diamond sparking amongst the frozen ice crystals.
The rest is history: My first 2015 Ring Return search ended with Smiles and hugs all around and a Thank You card that I will cherish for years to come.





Sarah and her husband had spent the day at Laguna Beach. The weather has been awesome, sunny and temperatures in the mid 80’s. They left about 2pm to get on the road before traffic got too bad. Thirty minutes down the road Sarah realiz
ed she did not have her wedding ring set. Two very special rings that she has worn for over 25 years. Her and her husband had recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary last week. She knew that she had put the rings in the cup holder of her beach chair while putting on sunscreen. There was a possibility that the rings were in the sand where they had been sitting. Returning to the beach and sifting through the sand with their fingers with no success . Sarah Google searched “how to find a ring in the sand” . Up popped a link to TheRingFinders with my contact information. I was in my car about 8 miles away, but it took about 20 – 25 minutes to get to her location. Just as I pulled up Sarah’s husband found the larger ring. I was able to locate the smaller ring after a few swings of my CTX3030 minelab metal detector. It was a weak signal which may have been because it was in a vertical position. It may have been buried a little deeper because they had been moving around a lot of sand doing their search. What’s most important is Sarah has both of her very special rings back on her finger, hopefully for another 25 years. Sarah commented how her smart phone and the internet worked to bring us together. I agree, I have the metal detecting equipment and know how to use them, but the smart phones and internet makes these recoveries happen.






