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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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The last day of work, then the announcement that the province would be locking down for another 3 weeks.
Strongly mixed feelings about this - on the one hand, seriously, I was dreading returning to work. Every year has been busier, poorer staffed than the one before. This year will be no exception.
On the other hand, all this free time is of no use if I can't afford a tank of gas to go exploring.
Tuesday morning, not giving a damn I've got places to be. First off, meet Stormy for breakfast, only clearly there's no breakfast with the new lockdowns, and Stormy thinks free to stand me up. I dump some parcels off for him, his scooter is there. He's expecting me to knock, at which point I'll be ambushed into taking him on 100 errands around Nelson, 100 errands, 100 KM, he just got paid after all. Nope nope nope. I'm not knocking, not today.
Onward, to work to BS about the possibility of the restaurant reopening, then on the 11:30 Ferry, meet Chris. We're off. First stop, the toxic-crystal beach at Pilot Bay, collect a few of the tiny quartz crystals that have fallen out of the processed silver ore.
From here on to Riondel.
The village, quaint old miners houses, yards filled with fruit trees and the debris of a thousand Nelson Free Piles. Everywhere. Just gather useless broken shit and pile it in your yard. It's your civic duty. Old people staring at you cautiously as you drive by, new in town, doubtless there to steal their garbage...
The Bluebell Mine. Chris is impressed, as am I, I've been here before, but returning my eye is a lot more practiced - there's limestone, crystalline, marble, quartz, feldspar (??? odd here, but this place is an anomaly), pyrites, abundant left over silver ore, some small quartz crystals...
But no means into the mine. The adit - crushed under a million tons of rockfall and debris - it's not accessible, I thought it might have been, but getting in under the ledges, great slabs of rock overhanging by a thin sliver, squeezes that probably go on to nowhere, I was deceived by the presence of bats, a bat might fit; me - no - and trying to would definitely bring down the rest of the mountain. So no. But - some silver ore, more rocks, (what for?), Chris, as usual, gets carried away and doesn't want to quit.
Finally, from here on North of Riondel, rough logging road, past Garland Bay (where it improves, the logging trucks have carved ruts that will need serious grading to fix), then up, up, up. No snow, not for a few KM, good news, stop, check the rocks, outcrops, granite and pegmatites, what I expected. Come to a shady wash of ice, park, and hike from here up. Lots of granite, lots of pegmatite, no great finds, but this is a reconnaissance, after all. The ground is relatively snow free, lots of granite exposures, lots of pegmatites, remote enough that you can be assured if it's here it might be yet undiscovered. And so we wander for an hour, stick to the road, bear scat (they're up, small little liquid blotches every 100 yards up the road, still wet, we've surprised someone...).
Then, time to head back.
We've left it a bit late, tearing down shit logging roads, aiming for the 5:30 ferry, the far side of Riondel a hitchhiker, pick her up.
"Her" in the most liberal of terms, if you know what I mean (In a deep baritone voice).
"She", it turns out, is here from the university, looking for fragments of the meteorite that fell a few years back over Boswell.
Interesting.
"Chondrite?" I ask, and she assures me that yes, it is, and so I should be able to find it with a magnet or metal detector. Bits of it I should qualify.
So we chat about that - I was following it after it happened, heard they thought it went into the lake past Riondel, only they've recalculated the trajectory and figure it ended up somewhere...
Yeah, sorry, I'm not telling. Pegmatites and meteorites.
Let her out, tear onto the ferry with seconds to spare, it's just disembarking, it wasn't 5:30, it was 5:20, and so we're there by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin, and the jeep is all in one piece.
So - 3 weeks of this I can do. The weather, gradually improving, keep local - budget 2 tanks of gas and long days on foot, and maybe, with a bit of luck and a lot of legwork I can find a reason not to return.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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So, off exploring with Chris - using wisely the last few days of freedom. Still too snowy to go anyways up the mountains, but there's a surprising amount to be discovered at the lower elevations:
Probably a deer bone, kicked out of the moss.
Mine at Woodbury, floor lined with water. An absolutely terrific place to send the kids exploring, if I'd known about it when they were younger...
Walls crusted with brittle sulfite crystals, grown since the mine was abandoned. Geologically a blink in time, imagine what will have grown in another thousand, ten thousand years?
piece of silver ore, already oxidizing on the break. Heavy, (which gives you the grade of ore), silvery-black when freshly broken with a cubic structure.
Another piece of ore, very heavy (high grade), oxidized, you can see the cubic structure and a bit of the metallic luster underneath the oxidization. Maybe 2 inches wide, but a full pound in weight.
If I could clean these up and seal them they'd sell as great specimens...
Hmmm.
Chris scrambling up to new mine, hidden just off the road. Curiously baked rock.
Shaft's all crumbled in, so no exploring there. Dated bolt on tree - October 1922 (??). Now there's so much of this hardware up there it gets me thinking what could I do to upcycle this? I mean, cool and all, how to repurpose so it doesn't go to waste and I can see some salvage value?
Spools of abandoned cable/wire.
Finally, an abandoned miners cabin, invisible from the road, worth maybe taking the metal detector up when there's less snow, but you can soon get tired of digging out all the discarded iron. Still, one day maybe something worthwhile? There are hundreds up here, surely somewhere around one there's gotta be something....
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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Last few days off, beautiful, still a bit chilly but the snow is vanishing. Sorted through a pile of my crystals and rocks to drop off at "Magic Rocks" kids house, some good specimens of Silver, Black Tourmaline, Fluorite, Quartz, the black tourmaline - looking at it, there are the streaks of aqua - I have to get back there this summer. There's too much possibility, it's been a couple of weeks since last I tried, maybe the snow is gone? I should lay a claim...
Talk to Chris, the restaurant will be opening...soon, maybe I have a week left, and I'm panicking. I need the money, for sure for sure, but - the hills are calling too...
Unboxing, the rest of Stormy's Scrolls, 2 hours to unroll, reroll approximately 200+ scrolls. The same as always, although he's got the phrase "Glittering Glory Hole", which I think is referring to the "Prospector's" variety of Glory Hole as opposed to the one seemingly depicted in his illustrations. He has a way of layering meaning in his pictures...
Today, to town to visit Dagmar, she's arranged an interpretive dance/movement class for us to attend. I'm a bit skeptical, the thought of doing all this with a bunch of 70 and 80 year olds isn't so appealing...fortunately at the last minute she reads my mind and changes it to doing some thrift shopping...
Whew...
And, for the moment, that's it!
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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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...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
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In the perfect location, situation, to do all things, instead finding myself increasingly anxious and bored.
There is no reason to be bored - I've much to do, but as much as I enjoy solitude it needs to be somewhat balanced with society.
Society, at the moment and for the past year, has been out of the question, and Pandemic Fatigue is settling well in.
The restaurant, while I'd prefer to finish things up and never return, at least provides some time away from myself, the society of others (and I know Ken must be missing my company...!), and the reassurance that for a time - worst come to worst, my finances can be restored.
But rumor has it that the restaurant - despite March projections - may NOT be finally reopening, there are obstacles, and - it might be time to start planning for the new backup plan.
In short, paradise is seldom what it's cut out to be...