It was a very difficult year for CJ during the winter of 1894/95, as he got trapped deep into the Forty Mile Creek area and had only beans to eat for two months.
After a long day of hard labor, his cabin would have to be heated with chopped wood and water melted for drinking and cooking.
[1] The honeymooners settled in at the Forty Mile Creek outpost on the Yukon River, and CJ got a job as the local bartender.
In the summer of 1896, George Carmack walked into the Forty Mile Creek Saloon and paid for his drink with gold nuggets.
CJ and Fred, staying very close to shore in their small boat, pushed themselves upriver with "poles" slowly but surely against the mighty Yukon River current.
CJ and Fred gathered firewood and built large fires to melt the permafrost, allowing them to dig 6 inches (150 mm) deeper each day.
CJ and Fred were savvy businessmen; they managed to acquire two adjacent claims on the El Dorado before word got out about the riches beneath.
On July 17, 1897, CJ and Ethyl Berry and other successful miners arrived in Seattle aboard the SS Portland, the first ship to put into the port with tangible proof of the riches of the Klondike.
In later years, CJ and his three brothers (Fred, Henry and Frank) worked as a team, alternating six month shifts at the northern mining camps.
Clarence's brother Henry later owned two professional baseball teams in the Pacific Coast League, including the San Francisco Seals, for many years.