He spotted untouched snow -- and then the Treasure Hunt medallion

Jerome Krieger winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt shows off the 2017 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt Medallion in the lobby at the Pioneer Press on Monday, January 30, 2017. Krieger found the medallion at Keller Lake Regional Park on Monday around 3:30 PM. (Pioneer Press: Ginger Pinson)

Jerome Krieger, winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Medallion Hunt, shares a laugh with Joe Leonard of Fury Motors after Krieger was presented with his $10,000 prize inside the lobby of 10 River Park Plaza, which houses the paper's headquarters, Monday Jan. 30, 2017. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Jerome Krieger, winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Medallion Hunt, shows off the medallion and tells the story of how he found it to other treasure hunters inside the lobby of 10 River Park Plaza, which houses the paper's headquarters, Monday Jan. 30, 2017. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Jerome Krieger holds the 2017 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt medallion he found at Keller Regional Park Monday, Jan. 30, 2017, inside the Pioneer Press offices. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Jerome Krieger, winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Medallion Hunt, lets others photograph the medallion and tells the story of how he found it to other treasure hunters inside the lobby of 10 River Park Plaza, which houses the paper's headquarters, Monday Jan. 30, 2017. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Jerome Krieger holds the 2017 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt medallion he found while posing with his family, from left, daughter Maddy, wife Jeanne, and daughter, Greta, Monday, Jan. 30, 2017, inside the Pioneer Press offices. Krieger and his family have been searching since 2004, though Krieger found it without their help on Monday. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Jerome Krieger’s moment of glory came around 3:30 p.m. Monday.

He was off the east shore of Spoon Lake, part of Keller Regional Park in Maplewood.

It was his first time there. First time there, that is, hunting for the medallion, the object of the annual Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt, which has been held since 1952.

Like many of the legion treasure hunters, Krieger had zeroed in on Keller from a rereading of the clues and sensing a shift in the collective wisdom of the crowd of hunters, who often post breakthroughs on social media.

Before that, Krieger, 47, had been among those fixated on Long Lake Regional Park, a site where the medallion had never been hidden before. (It was hidden in Keller once before, in 1976.) Saturday and Sunday, he had worked a pair of 16-hour shifts volunteering at a local basketball tournament.

Then Monday afternoon, he worked his way around Spoon Lake, where more than a dozen cars were parked and hunters were scattered, poking, prodding and scraping the landscape.

Just inside some trees, on a slope of the land, he spied an area of untrodden snow.

He was alone. He used to hunt with relatives, but for the past several years, time commitments made the task tough to schedule, so on Monday, he was solo.

“We’ve been close so many times before,” he said Monday evening.

He and his wife, Jeanne, found a “fake one” in 2007 at Roseville’s Central Park, where the second of two medallions was hidden that year. Days before it was found in 2012 at Tony Schmidt Regional Park, Jeanne had stood within a few paces of where it was eventually found. Swede Hollow, 2009, same thing. In 2010, they saw Jake Ingebrigtson find the thing at Lilydale Regional Park.

But this was Day 9 of the 12-clue Treasure Hunt, and nine is Krieger’s lucky number, the numeral that adorned his baseball jerseys as a kid.

He began clawing gently at the untouched snow. After about three minutes, his hoe struck something. Ice. Which was strange, he thought, since the area had southern exposure, and recent warm spells had melted all the ice in the immediate area.

His daughters, Maddy and Greta, were returning home from school. Jeanne was at work. As a couple, they had become hooked together on the annual hunt, held in conjunction with the St. Paul Winter Carnival. The Kriegers had been “hunting seriously” since 2004, when the prize was hidden in Phalen Regional Park, near where Jeanne grew up. (Jerome was raised in St. Paul’s Como neighborhood.)

Jerome Krieger dragged the ice block — a sheet really, about the size and thickness of a large book — toward him. (It had been, in fact, a frozen boot print, according to the clues explainer and a video of the medallion being hidden, but perhaps it lost its form in the balmy days before.)

Later Monday, he explained what happened next, an early telling of a tale he told throughout the evening, and will be telling for the rest of his life.

“There were leaves on one side and it was just gray on the other. The ice was gray. I couldn’t see anything inside. … I dropped it to see if anything was in there, and it (the medallion) just popped right out. … I looked around. No one was there. I picked it up. … There was nothing on it, just a piece of tape with a number to call. I put it in my mitten and started walking.”

He called, in order: Jeanne, his mom, the Pioneer Press.

He picked up his family and drove the prize in. He furnished the nine clues from the Pioneer Press and had properly registered his Winter Carnival button, thus earning him the full prize.

At 6 p.m., Pioneer Press Associate Publisher and Vice President Greg Mazanec and Joe Leonard of Fury Motors, which sponsors the event, presented Krieger with a check for $10,000.

Krieger said he’s not sure how he’ll spend the money, though both daughters quickly put in a pitch: “They said, ‘We want a spring break,'” he said.

Spoon Lake is a small body of water just north of Minnesota 36, part of the Keller chain of lakes. Spoon is downstream from Lake Gervais and up from Keller Lake, which flows into Round Lake and Lake Phalen.

He spotted untouched snow -- and then the Treasure Hunt medallion

Jerome Krieger winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt shows off the 2017 Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt Medallion in the lobby at the Pioneer Press on Monday, January 30, 2017. Krieger found the medallion at Keller Lake Regional Park on Monday around 3:30 PM. (Pioneer Press: Ginger Pinson)

Jerome Krieger, winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Medallion Hunt, shares a laugh with Joe Leonard of Fury Motors after Krieger was presented with his $10,000 prize inside the lobby of 10 River Park Plaza, which houses the paper's headquarters, Monday Jan. 30, 2017. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Jerome Krieger, winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Medallion Hunt, shows off the medallion and tells the story of how he found it to other treasure hunters inside the lobby of 10 River Park Plaza, which houses the paper's headquarters, Monday Jan. 30, 2017. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

Jerome Krieger, winner of the 2017 Pioneer Press Medallion Hunt, lets others photograph the medallion and tells the story of how he found it to other treasure hunters inside the lobby of 10 River Park Plaza, which houses the paper's headquarters, Monday Jan. 30, 2017. (Pioneer Press: Dave Orrick)

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