A treasure hunt in Utah culminated in an Eagle Mountain father and son finding a treasure chest containing a $25,000 prize.
Damon Johnson and his son Ty were exploring Grove Creek in Pleasant Grove when they found the chest behind a rock.
“It still feels like a dream,” Ty said in surprise. ABC 4 last week while he was with his father and an unidentified child.
Utah poem scavenger hunt organizers David Cline and John Maxim confirmed the win in an Instagram post. video They posted after Johnson and his son found the treasure.
Johnson and his son found the treasure three hours after solving the riddle of the search: a Spanish poem.
Damon Johnson and his son Ty were exploring Grove Creek in Pleasant Grove when they found the chest behind a rock. It had $25,000 inside.
Johnson, who participated in the scavenger hunt in 2022 and 2023, revealed that it was his and his son’s third trek since Cline and Maxim posted the clue.
In Johnson’s words, his breakthrough moment came thanks to his knowledge of the Beehive State’s history.
“I read a story about how tribes would gather around Utah Lake and have festivals,” he said.
With that verse, he connected the poem to a chorus, which made him think of Mount Timpanogos.
Johnson continued searching for the mountain on Google Maps and found a shadow that led him to the area where he found the treasure.
“I think the way you got there wasn’t exactly the idea we had in mind, but you still got to the same place in the end,” Cline told Johnson after the explanation.
Johnson participated in treasure hunts for the past two years before finding it. The Utah resident made the connection through a poem in Spanish, a clue posted last Saturday.
Cline and Maxim began conducting scavenger hunts in Utah in 2020 and have conducted poem hunts and QR hunts every year since.
The pair explained on the scavenger hunt’s website that they created it as a way to create something fun that would give everyone a “safe way to hang out with family and friends.”
Although they have provided multiple clues for almost all of their scavenger hunts, organizers confirmed this was the first time they had used a poem that was not in English while speaking to ABC 4.
“In a lot of the movies and things that we came up with, like The Goonies, for example, the treasure map is all in Spanish, so it’s not that weird for us to say, ‘Hey, this time the treasure is in Spanish,'” Maxim said.
David Cline and John Maxim confirmed the win in an Instagram video they posted after Johnson and his son found the treasure.
Damon plans to use his money to finish his degree in computer science. He recently used some of it while back-to-school shopping with Ty.
He also plans to pay off some of his debts and put some into a school fund for his children.