‘Every year surprises us’: Utah Treasure Hunt creators talk this year’s hunt and everything that goes into it

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The hunt is on, Utah! The creators of Utah Treasure Hunts sat down with ABC4.com to share the scoop on this year’s hunt and the phenomenon that the summer treasure hunt has become.

The Utah Treasure Hunt is an annual tradition that gets people from across the state exploring the outdoors as they search for a hidden cash prize. It began in the summer of 2020 as a thing for people to do during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has grown since then–and so has the prize.

During that first hunt, $5,000 was on the line, but this year, participants have a chance to win $25,000.

ABC4.com spoke with David Klein and John Maxim, the organizers behind the Utah Treasure Hunt, and they talked about this year’s hunt and what it’s like to run an event like this.

What to know about this year’s treasure hunt

“So, it’s out, hidden in the mountains right now,” Maxim said, referring to this year’s prize. “We’ve released a poem on Instagram that, if deciphered correctly, will lead them to the treasure.”

The poem is the first hint, and then additional hints are released each week to ensure that the treasure gets found.

“The goal was always to have it end before school starts, but this year we kind of had a delayed start, so we’ll see what happens,” Cline said. “We never know. I mean it could be found today, it could be found in two months. Every year surprises us.”

Maxim said that the only places the treasure cannot be is on private property, ski resorts, or a city, state, or national park. Any other public land is free game, such as Bureau of Land Management land, National Forest Service land, etc. They also release boundaries alongside the first hint.

“Normally it’s somewhere between Ogden and Spanish Fork,” Cline said.

The hunt is completely free and open to participate in. You don’t have to sign up for anything, but you can sign up to get the hints emailed to you through the website if you want, Maxim said. You can also just look out for the hints on Instagram, but Cline and Maxim suggest you follow both of their accounts, since they sometimes release additional random hints throughout the week.

What keeps the treasure hunt going

One reason they started the treasure hunt, Maxim said, is that with some other big treasure hunts, you don’t find out if the treasure even gets found. He said that they always try to make sure that everyone knows when it was found and who found it.

“Everyone loves treasure hunts!” Cline said. “It crosses every line, political lines, you know, societal lines. I mean, we have a little bit of everything, and so it’s been really fun as the organizers to kind of see, you know, everyone from kids to grandparents looking for treasure.”

When it comes to hiding the treasure, that’s actually very stressful, they said.

“John’s gotten pretty famous,” Cline explained, gesturing to Maxim, “and a lot of people recognize him, so it’s a whole production trying to hide the treasure. We have to get disguises, we have to borrow cars, we have to borrow phones, because, you know, some treasure hunters are pretty passionate, so we have to be really careful.”

Maxim said that his favorite part of the experience is the impact it has on people.

“We get thousands of messages from people who say, ‘I’ve lost weight,’ ‘I’ve reconnected with my family,’ you know, some of them are so powerful,” Maxim said. “It’s kind of amazing to see how it really just gets people out into nature and gets them working together and thinking about things that aren’t the ugly stuff of the world.”

That impact, Cline said, is why they’re doing it for the sixth year in a row. “It keeps us going.”

“The treasure hunt affects a lot of people in a lot of ways that we would have never imagined,” Cline added.

This year’s poem can be found on the Utah Treasure Hunts website and on Maxim and Cline‘s Instagram accounts, and we’ve also included it here.