Collecting by Helicopter

Now we can be proud to be members of a forum together with such a rich gentleman. I guess it is Bill Gates with the pseudonym Rock Currier.

However, without any joke your answers are interesting to read. Renting a heli in the US is cheaper than in Europe. I think it makes sense if some friends together rent a heli for transportation of men and equipment into the mountains above the timber line and call the heli later to come back into the civilization.

In Europe that makes no sense because you can reach every site from a mountain station by foot. A helicopter is only necessary if you had a rich find to bring the crystals back to the valley. I heard that such a renting costs 12,000.- up to 15,000.- EURO.

Uwe Ludwig

John's photos remind me of some other aspects to helicopter collecting in the Cascade Mountains.

Everything centers around the weather for the trip in AND the trip out. There is little hope of knowing the weather conditions for the trip out, but no helicopter pilot will pick you in foggy or rainy weather. You must become obsessed with weather reports.

It is very hard to synchronize a trip with yourself, your buddy and the pilot.

I think the trip John's photos came from are the time that our pick time in the morning was the same as my bed time.

This presents the final point. Sometimes the helicopter pilot has a job on the way to another job and he need merely drop down and pick you up without charging with shuttle time from his hangar to your pick up. I think John and I got our trip up Vesper Peak for $150. There we were. A bit after sunrise, and not a drop of sweat on us. Unlike the typical hike in where one loses about two quarts of sweat.

I tried to take a nap, but it quickly became too hot with too many mosquitoes. So I drank a "JOLT" cola and just started collecting under the influence of a massive caffiene infusion.

The true experts on this subject would be Bob Jackson or Joe George.

Bart

And another thing about helicoptering into the wilderness.....you might have to stay a few days.

My sister's husband used to snowboard and he and his friends had a helicopter drop them off in the Alaskan wilderness. I don't remember if there was a miscommunication or a snow storm, but things didn't go as planned. They ended up rescuing another group from an Avalanche and walking in waste deep snow for 3 days.

Bart:

The interior of the county in which I used to live consisted of largely uninhabited, very rugged terrain. Some guy used to take people in there on camels.

There are some abandoned gold mines up there too. Years ago, a few guys started working one of them. I don't know if they ever found anything but they decided to announce their claim in a news paper article with a promise to shoot anyone who got near it. I thought it was pretty funny considering most people would have had no idea what was up there otherwise, and most people would not have gone through the trouble to get there even if those guys did find a few bits of gold.

LOL, that's what ICT-people call "Security By Obscurity" or "Security Through Obscurity (STO)" ;)

Bart,
Tony Reese still flies, as recently as last week delivering gear for the Spruce LLC. Tony is one of the two best pilots I've ever had the pleasure of flying with. The other is Bob Wright, of Federal Way, now retired from the air but happy to pilot collectors to interesting locations by boat. A good mountain pilot can put one skid on a precipice for passengers to hop out.
As to heli-access being the realm of the super rich, the cost of a flight is less than the price of the computer I'm typing on, and a helluva lot more fun.
Bob

Jenna,

I wondered about those camels. Early western settlers sometimes used them instead of horses, burros, mules and oxen. Perhaps the ones you are mentioning are descendants of those early camels. Certainly the best for desert work, but where do you find a camel rental and a trailer to transport them ?

I get frightened on top of a horse. I can't imagine my fear level on top of a camel.

I'd like to have a little burro. The fall off of one would not be a long drop, and they don't get up much speed. Every time I get on a horse they know I am not in control, and they take me under a low limbs, and then scrape me off at the barn door. Horses are kind of mean and a lot smarter than they are given credit for.

There is an old MTV video by the band Trio and Error in which a big guy rides into a dusty town on the back of a burro. I think the burro should be riding on the back of the big guy.

Burros are very cute. They won't spit on you like a llama, kick you in the head like a horse, or just plain quit like a mule.

I have a book entitled simply "The Burro". by Frank Brookshier. I think a burro would keep my lawn mowed, and maybe, if I could get him to lie down, I might be able to fit him in the back of my Jeepster.

They are not as sure footed on snow as a llama. I don't have the perfect solution yet. My dog can haul 30 pounds in his saddlebags, climb anything I can climb, and he definitely can fit in my Jeep.

Bart

Every spring and fall, a jewelry store in Fountain Hills, Arizona sponsors a Helicopter Trip to the Four Peaks Amethyst Mine. The good news is that it is a great ride to near the summit of Four Peaks, it is a VERY easy way to collect, you get to go underground to dig up your own amethyst crystals, you get to keep everything you find (within reason), and they give you a small faceted amethyst as part of the deal. The bad news is that it costs about $400.00 per person and you only get to stay an hour or two.

Check out:
[www.samifinejewelry.com]
[www.amethystminetour.com]

It's a great trip and I have done it twice and I may even do it again. Most of the people that go are Scottsdale YUPPIES that are clueless about mineral collecting and they don't dig up much. However, they let hard core mineral collectors like me dig into the amethyst veins as much as they want. Note that most of the amethyst crystals are subhedral because they are all jammed together but you can find a few deep purple points. The Four Peaks Mine is known for facet grade amethyst, not nice crystal groups.
Steve

All right I have to say this: If rich German rock collectors had helicopters, would the use them? I would think so....

-Rowan Lytle

son: -picks up huge loose amethyst cluster- "Is this what we're looking for?"
father: "Holy #$@%!

Not completely related to Uwe's original question, but I've noticed that a few European collectors, reinforced by occasional comments in European magazines, seem to have gotten the impression that the average American collector is very rich and happily pays far more for rocks than a European would, and that prices for minerals in Tucson are much higher than in Europe. Of course many European dealers can be seen shopping for rocks at the Tucson show and they come back every year, and it is a mystery to me how they can buy at the "inflated" American prices and then resell back home at the far more "reasonable" European prices. Perhaps they are philanthropists who sell at below cost because they just feel sorry for their poor fellow collectors back home?

No Rowan, that is the difference between the "Old World" and the "New World".

The few Europeans, especially these who are Germans and who are rich enough to have an own helicopter will use this for reaching the next airport or to go to their business sites and their enterprise will have an own pilot . These 1% of these rich peobles who are interested in Minerals are probably the customers of the dealers which Alfredo mentioned.

To go abroad by the own helicopter makes no sence. Nobody will use a helicopter to go from Europa to North America, Africa or Asia. Europa is very small and has a close net of streets compared with the US I guess. The interesting mineral locations in Europa can be reached simply by car and by realtively easy hiking. The hotspots in the higher mountain areas need an alpinistic equipment and experience - who of the rich have that?

Reading the lot of repords here of this forum I think in the large deserted counties a helicopter makes really sence.

Uwe Ludwig

Can't help myself reading posts by my friends- so here are quartz crystals collected by helicopter from the Pat Claims, south bank, East Rackla River, 1 mile SE of Kathleen Lakes, Yukon Territory N.T.S. 106-D-1 on July 28, 1979

Don't mean to dis your crystals, Ray, but if you're going all that way, try Raerock.

Bob

By the way: Helicopters are used to detect hidden ore deposits by TEM. E. g. it was used in the Harz Mountains in 2008. See: [www.scandinavian-highlands.com]

Greetings
Georg

You can't get a view like this any other way but by helicopter!

Cheers,
David K Joyce

Bart:

A man and his camel....and his zebra at the Sespe Hotsprings in Ventura County.

[camelphotos.com]

'copters ?
mmm, they are noisy, expensive, hard to park in mountain sites...
No, no so much better teleportation!

Luca B.

When international travel became such a hassle I had to give up big game hunting. So now I just fly around in a helicopter and shoot minerals. Much more challenging in some ways.