Yesterday, cloudy but not too cold, time to get into gear and head out towards new digs. According to my map, approximately 10 KM into the new ground, pack up my rucksack with hammers and chisels and set out.
It's an easy walk around the lake, on the railway tracks, not ideal (trespassing, fines), but I know the train schedule and the few times I've seen maintenance they've always been loud enough to give me plenty of time and warning to hide in the trees.
A long walk, after a long and sedentary winter.
There are pegmatites all the way in, everywhere there is potential, and while the bedrock is most clearly visible along the cuts there's another 90% of the ground that can be dug up, there are abundant changes in terrane, numerous faults, and every 50 or 100 yards there's signs of another pegmatite.
A little bit of banging, quartz, smoky quartz, some black tourmaline in the beginning, small muscovite flakes, lots of feldspar, as you get further in the muscovite turns to biotite mica, some pegmatites - narrow, an inch, max, others several feet wide. Chip, chip with the hammer. I need to bring a can of paint to mark the areas with more promise.
9 KM in, roughly, and it's more or less time to turn back. This is definitely worth considerably more prospecting, exploring, most pegmatites where I've found anything it's only been after repeated efforts and digging, there are so many here that even to canvas the ones I've seen exposed would take several months, let alone the ones that must lie buried under overburden and moss, and the countless others that must line the tracks for the next 100 KM or so...
Now the walk out, and at about 15 KM I notice my feet dragging, the pack, it's growing heavier and heavier, how much does it weigh? No more than 30 lbs, but it's starting to feel like a ton, and when finally I'm free I'm realizing it's time for a booty camp for prospectors. Nevermind, the restaurant will be open soon enough, I'll get my training in there, I'll also need though a mountain bike (the investment of time hiking could better be spent digging) - or - better yet - a dirt bike.
Hmmmm.
Or a Jet Ski...