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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...
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Recently Google Maps updated it's maps with new imagery, removing all those areas obfuscated by cloud cover. Presumably they didn't map Skull Island because it's perpetually shrouded by clouds, but wherever a clear image existed it replaced one with clouds, allowing you to view a (presumably) sunnier world.
Which explains the curious patchwork of winter and clouds I found in this image:
The couldn't get all the clouds (Maybe THAT's where King Kong is living), but they got some. Note the curious squares of winter...
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Grey day, fine walk up coffee creek...
The higher you go, the more interesting the mineralization...
A curiously crystallized quartz boulder.
Large Dogstooth Spar (Calcite) crystals coating the bottom of a boulder, many were a couple of inches in length. They'd need the weathering to be cleaned off to attractive...
In the distance the Ferry making it's way from Crawford Bay to Balfour.
A lot of Elk and Deer tracks, and so naturally a rather large Cougar Track...
Waterfall...
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And restless (always), getting out and searching the roadcuts for minerals of interest...training the eye...
large (2") Feldspar crystal in Granitic...some of the intrusions are made up of masses of these, large, good places to look for other large crystals...
coppery colored fools gold in quartz (note the iron, good mineralization, worth grinding & checking for gold...)
More Pyrites.
More pyrites in mica and quartz...
Digging in a decomposed vein of clay, or possibly a pocket, the clay beneath the top was a brilliant white, perfect environment to find crystals. I found nothing.
Deep blue, azure, in Mica Schist, likely copper, photo is a bit blurry (sorry, blame camera)
...and, after the minerals in the schist decay there's a light recombination of the minerals, beautiful pale blue, turquoise, light - crumbles away in your fingers, but shaped like a coral or a brain, maybe a biological agent?
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Some Photos from the Daughter's Visit. We explored, the old abandoned Marble Quarry, the Ferry to Proctor, the Ferry over then down to Creston, back over the pass, metal detected the beach (only find: A lead fishing weight), hung out at Oso, generally a laid back vacation, the weather not (yet) good enough to accommodate my prospecting interests (to her immense relief, I'm sure....)
The Graffiti makes a great space even better, and it's constantly renewed...
The Glass House. Always wanted to stop, finally did, it wasn't open...The Story goes that they bottles were from a funeral home - they all held embalming fluid. Curious.
An old mine shaft beside the road, a few of these, only to discover I hadn't packed a flashlight. Grrr!!!...I need to be a little better prepared...
And this, a favorite house on the way out of Nelson, creative use of a rockslide, a shame it's so close to the highway...
And waiting for the roads to be cleared at the top of the Kootenay Pass...still a good 10 feet of snow at the higher elevations...