Who's Going Rockhounding This Weekend ?

... and where are you going ?
My buddy and I will be " hounding " rocks and minerals this weekend in Lebanon Co. Pa.
Gonna be good to get up early and head out and get dirty for the 1st time this year.
What are you doing ? Where are you going ?
We will post some pics of what we find - so you do the same !
Good luck and have fun
-Tom

I was gone for 2 weeks in Missouri and then Arkansas then a week in South Carolina rockhounding...I think I will take this weekend off
Let us know how you do!

I think Cookie & I will hit the dumps at the Memphis mine, Organ District, Dona Ana Co., NM to search (again!!!) for the legendary elusive tetradymite touted in the literature as being "museum grade". We've been looking, off & on, for 15 years with no luck!! I'm beginning to think that the galenobismutite was mistaken for tetradymite!!

Don

It was great to get outside - I think I got a bit of sunburn even ....
Found little bits of the usual stuff ... pyrite / magnetite (?)/garnet ....
Nothing too great
But we did find some cool blue mineral that I hope is Chrysocolla ....
And a green Serpentine-looking rock ....
Only pic so far --- me on some rocks

with my austrian club members we took a bus to visit the nice pribram show in czech republic.
a very nice show. more then 30 % of the minerals were found in czech or slovak republic.
many minerals from pribram to see - even large silver on matrix, specimen up to 30cm were offered for reasonable prices.
my "find" was a classic 3,5 cm proustite group on a 5 cm matrix from jachymov - very happy with it!

yes - and in the afternoon we had a really good field trip to teskov quarry.
from a new blast some nice quartz crystals were found, nicest are scepters up to 3 cm.
also very interesting perimorphs calzite to quartz.
my highligts were fine micro crystals of rare phosphates: meurigite, dufrenite, leukophosphite and others.
thank you to our czech friends for guiding us!

Busted a lot of rock.....pyrite, specular hematite, iridescent limonite/goethite, garnet, chrysocolla after ?, etc, etc. The elusive legendary tetradymite is STILL merely legendary and obviously elusive!!! But, its always fun to bust rock!!!

Don

I have never done it but would like to try this week, if I were to go where would be the places to look and what method of looking. Would old creeks and old dryed up crick beds be sufficent or what about old rock piles located in the woods? Basically I know it will be fun just how do I that and be succselful in my trips?

J. Clark,
Unfortunately, you live in a rock and mineral unfriendly area. That is, interesting rocks only occur in very specific locations. Find the "Locality" Search entry at the bottom of the screen. Enter your county (such as "Wood Co."), and click on search to find the "locality pages" for interesting site to search nearby.
Good Luck
-Dean Allum

J
I lived in south-central Illinois awhile, and was surprised how different the creek beds were just a few miles apart. take a mash hammer and what other tools, and goggles, for sure, and go for it. You may smash up alot of stuff, get tired of it, then look for more detail in the rock. Rocks w/ pock marks on them may indicate some mineral washed away in the creek bed, that may have pockets of it inside still, or look for odder shaped rocks. It is a bit of a learn-as you-go, and a bit of detective work too. Maybe you'll just find pyrite, that seems to be everywhere, but if it looks cool, add it to your pyrite collection, you know? Deep southern Illinois was a lot of sandstone, the creeks were much less interesting, i don't know where you live, just try it...

Mike

I found this near [www.mindat.org]

I am hoping its Malachite ....
Maybe Chert ?
Serpentine ?
Any opinions ?
Its also magnetic ....
Thanks
Tom

If the weather is good, probably heading to my claim. Lots of mucking to be done as I did lots of digging the last 2 times. Hopefully will find more rare earths, nice quartz, and I sure wouldn't mind something new.

National Limestone Quarry this weekend for calcite, strontianite, wavellite, and more. The quarry was recently sold and rumor has it that next month it will be closed to collectors forever.

Bob

Hey Jim,
I hope that folding shovel (fovel) will work well as a mucker.
Don't forget to follow the albite. Good Luck.
-Dean

Hi to all,

Tomorrow, I will be pursuing my goal to check (hopefully) all quarries in the Province of Quebec, and will be visiting 5 or 6 quarries during the day.

Last year, I have input over 800 locations on "my" Google Earth, a great deal of them being old and inactive quarries. This database allows me to check many spots on the same field trip (my record day being 11 locations).

As of today, some 105 places have been scouted, of which a handful only proved worthy of a visit.

Sigh !

But, hey, at least, I also know where not to go !

Once this venture is achieved, I will then turn my attention to old mines (over 2,000 in my list...). But, most are somewhere in the woods, and I'm concerned : our mosquitoes are fierce and blood-thirsty !

Serpentine Tom

Ishpeming Rock and Mineral Club field trip to the Republic Mine 10 am Saturday.

Field trips 2012

Tom Bennett Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I found this near
> I am hoping its Malachite ....
> Maybe Chert ?
> Serpentine ?
> Any opinions ?
> Its also magnetic ....
> Thanks
> Tom


That's a nice piece of serpentine, dude!

I'm going out Sunday, to either: the Succor Creek area, where you will usually find SOMETHING worth taking home and even if you dont, the scenery is SPECTACULAR; or to the High Valley area, where good finds are harder to come by, but when you DO find something, it can be REALLY good! Havent decided which place yet.

I'll be going to St Peters Dome near Colorado Springs on Sunday with two other people. I went there a couple weeks back on April 7th and couldn't locate the old zircon mine workings as the directions were rather sketchy being unclear as to which place was "down the slope". This was the first time either of us had been in that area. We did find timbers for an unmarked collapsed mine shaft but nothing interesting in the supposed snow covered dump. The snow was pretty thick in the areas with the trees and footing was pretty slippery as a result. It was also the same day that someone was killed in a fall from St Peters Dome as we noticed a bunch of emergency vehicles when we walked back to the main parking area.

This time we have an extra person who knows where the zircon mine workings are so it should be a bit more productive this time! I just hope the weather is at least semi decent as the forecast calls for scattered thunderstorms around Colorado Springs.

Hope you found some good ones James. I went to Mt Rosa with Dean once and found some zircon. Most were small, but some were close to 1/4" I think. I never made it out this weekend due to rain, so I just worked on a couple home made headlamps, an alternative solar panel to power them in case batteries don't last, and a solar powered fan for ventilation in the back room.

I found pretty nice crystals of zircon, the largest I found was a loose complete crystal of about 1/2 inch of a nice cinammon brown color that was partly gemmy. Most crystals were very small though. I will try to post pictures of the actual mine and shaft tomorrow for the database. It is pretty much cleaned out since the shaft is so short that any new supply would have to come from rock falls unless someone is crazy enough to attack the very hard white quartz in the walls that is the matrix for most of the zircon crystals and they aren't that common to make the attempt worthwhile.

You pretty much need a guide to the actual location since it involves a rather long hike down the slope from the St Peters Dome parking area which was a completely different slope than the prior trip! I had major leg cramps hoofing it back up the slope to the parking space with tools and specimens. The SW UV lights we used showed the zircon pretty nicely and there was major red SW UV color for what appears to be feldspar under regular light, any suggestions on what it may be if it isn't feldspar? One isolated specimen had a short strip of blue SW UV color that was hidden just under the white quartz and I can't see what it may be under regular light. We usually didn't bother with the UV lamps as the zircon showed up pretty well with the sharp faces.

There was a bit of fog on the drive up and we got a 2 second glance at a young brown bear rushing for cover on the way up. There was a bit of rain while we collected and a very light snow started when we went hiking back up with some sticking to the trees. It was a pretty fun if tiring day overall!