I wonder if rings have wings or feet because even though you drop one straight down, they seem to always turn up somewhere else.
This search started as they almost always do. Hi, I lost my ring and I found you on the Ringfinders web site, and I hope you can help me find my ring. It was in the afternoon that I received just such a call. It was snowing hard on Snoqualmie pass near Seattle. He had been having a great time until he was getting ready to leave. His hands had become cold and wet while working at the back of his vehicle. His Platinum ring slipped off his finger and dropped straight down into eight inches of fresh powder. Knowing that the ring should be right at his feet he began to feel around in the snow and try and find the ring. The problem was he could not find it. So, he dropped another ring and nearly lost it.
After searching the small area he widened the search area and before long the fresh powder snow was all mixed up and he could not find the ring. Being of sound mind he left his vehicle right where it was, and marked the spot with wooden stakes. He then closed the tailgate and left. He called me the next day, and I agreed to do the search that night after work. He was able to locate a metal detector and was searching the area for several hours before I arrived on the scene.
What the search initially looked like
Search area after snow plow came through the next morning
- Would have been nice to have bright lights.
After listening to his story, and looking at the area to search it seemed like it should only take a few minutes to find the ring on the flat ground, even with the snow still falling on over half a foot of new snow. The problem was that the snow plow had been through the lot the night he lost it, and plowed within inches of his vehicle. Since the tail gait was down when he lost it, and closed when it was plowed it left plenty of room to collect most of the snow where the ring was dropped. This had been piled into a drift of snow that was at least 12 feet tall and twenty feet at the base. This ran for about 200 feet around the edge of the parking lot. Needless to say we had our work cut out for us.
We worked in the falling snow and falling temperatures with head lamps until 1am. He shoveled and I detected. But no ring. I left that night and got home at 3am. We decided to search it again once the snow had melted off. This was in February. I went up again in May to search again, and most of the snow had melted and all that remained was a 3-4 foot pile of snow around the outside of the lot. But once the snow was mostly gone and the weather warmed the underbrush had started to grow and now made searching very difficult in the area he lost it. I was able to again go over the snow, and into the icy creek that now ran through the search zone. I picked my way through the brush with a small hand held detector and no ring. I once again left the snow to melt away and did not get to search again until July.
We were going over the pass on the way home from a short break, and I talked my wife into letting me search the area for about an hour. This time the brush was so large that I could not search the area where he lost the ring. So I decided to finish off the rest of the parking area. After about an hour I found the ring sitting on the top of the dirt about 80 feet away from where he lost the ring.
It was a nice sized heavy platinum ring. I gave the owner a call and let him know that I had found the ring and mailed it off to him the next day. It was a great find, since I thought I was going to have to help him cut all the brush down to search it again.
Rob with the ring. The snow bank now brush
Nice heavy ring
On the question wondering if rings have wings or feet. In this case they had wheels. On the second search I ran into the man that plowed that parking lot the night the ring was lost. He remembers wondering why someone would put wooden stakes behind his vehicle. I also learned that he used a front-end loader. He said he scooped the snow straight into the bank and dumped it. So the ring must have clung to the side of the metal bucket with the left over snow and fell out where I found it.
It was a great hunt and a happy find. Thanks for the call to search for the ring, and the reward was great as well.
If you have lost your ring in the Yakima or surrounding area give me a call and I will see what we can do to find it.
