A small but entertaining hike today - the weather too unpleasant for any long term or overnight panning - but a short walk yielded some good finds. Great finds, actually, and already I'm planning to go back. Up logging road, only a couple short kilometers, watching the exposures, when you hit the snow (still low on the mountain) park, then get out and walk.
Stop, an old mine, dug only a dozen or so meters into the rock, walls still covered with quartz crystal plates, small points, but you need a flashlight, hammer and chisel to go in and try and recover them...but a good sign...
Further up the road, more garnet in Schist, still looking for the black Tourmaline's and Staurolite's. If I've found reference to them in the area they can't be too hard to find, but still 80 percent of the mountain is inaccessible and covered in snow...
Other adits, mineshafts, mostly caved in at the entrance, but if you attempt it with a lot of climbing/slithering and substantial apprehension at overhanging rock it can be done, many have water flowing through them, slight dripping calcite stalagmites, watery pools for floors, there's a world of (mis)adventure to be had up here...
Finally, a great tipple dump, landslide, exposure, here finding dozens of great quartz crystal specimens, more than I can carry, boulders with vugs, some druzy, some up to an inch in length, milky white and clear, I settle on a few photographs of the one below:
Not an "attractive" specimen, but interesting - good quartz points on the right hand side, and the black reflective material on the left is Galena, or Silver/Lead/Tin ore.
Detail of quartz points.
Yeah, it could use some serious cleaning, but it'll never be "beautiful", nonetheless it's great as an indication of what's up there. Other finds included abundant pieces of quartz, smokey quartz, a plate of amethyst, and some good specimens of Peacock Ore (or Bornite). I've not touched the tip of the Iceberg...