Betafite at Silver Crater (basin property)

Andrew Jonhs wrote; Juan,
if I happen upon one of these halos in the Calcite I will definitely take a photo and post it for ya when I get back..or you can start hitchhiking and we'll see you in the Spring.

thanks, please send me a PM if ever post a picture of the rad halos,

I can only wish to go.

Juan

Collecting at Silver Crater is still good, if you have the correct tools and are willing to work.

The hike in is an ass-kicker, doubtless the reason there's anything left at all.

I worked so hard there that I couldn't even eat in the evening... sat down to a lovely table full of hot Chinese food, and just looked at it. Decided, after a few mouthfuls, that any more and it would be coming back up on me.

Reiner however, being fit, worked twice as hard and didn't have any trouble polishing off the chop suey, lol.

God I hate that guy.

T

Juan,

Here is a picture of a betafite in calcite from the Silver Crater Mine. You can see the red-burgundy halo that people keep talking about.

I don't know if any of you read an old reporting I did on Silver Crater, but back about 43 years ago, I was there collecting on a Gemboree arranged field trip, and the widow of the original owner had had the basin scraped to bedrock basically, by a dozer, and we went in there with a fresh slate. A lady american mineral dealer, and a couple from Burlington Ontario both found circular holes filled with black muck very near the center. They started digging before lunch and at around 4 they had both mined out the u-shaped tube to the bottom. The results were about 5x5 foot trestle tables covered with crystals of Betafites for the Burlington couple and a large wheel barrow filled to the brim for the lady dealer...and these were all free floaters ranging from pea sized to 3" and larger perfect singles and multiples...all nicely protected and preserved by that awful black mire. The lady mineral dealer when I asked her what she felt she had in specimens, stated that maybe about 100 thousand would be fair market value, and this was back in the 60's . I have never seen such a haul before or since, with the exception of the pit in St Hilaire that produced those spectacular serandites, or maybe the collecting of garnets at River Valley near N. Bay, Ontario. I always wondered what became of all those hundreds of Betafites...if anyone knows ,please write me.

Ray, that is a great story and just the kind of thing we need for the best minerals articles. I started one on Betafite and put your story in it. Would you like to finish it?

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Andrew, I'm kind of late to notice this thread but I'll throw in my two cents' worth of advice. When we collected there back in the 90's they had the same system of pay the $2. to cross the property, and the road to the mine was nicely marked with little arrows to follow as it wound through the woods back at least 1/2 mile to the mine. We were able at that time to drive right up on to the hill which is basically soild calcite.
We parked up over where the adit goes under the hill. The reddish haloes do surround the areas where the mose betafites are found, but this is hard to see on the surface. It's mush easier to see what is going on by going into the adit and looking at the calcite there. The adit goes straight into the calcite body for a few feet, then there is a "crossroad" to the left and right, with a drift going up into the calcite. Looking at the walls in there you can see how the betafites cluster in zones. There isn't really anything to work inside the mine. I'm telling you this to save you the trouble of going in yourself, because God only knows how much radon there is in there. I spent as little time as possible and got out to work outside. On our first trip we tried to break up the calcite and found a few betafites, small ones up to a half inch or so, and some apatite, biotite, and hornblende crystals. The betafites are very brittle and easy to break, most of the time when you break the calcite you come up with two pieces, each with a half of the betafite crystal. On our second trip we had some good success by finding where there were betafites occurring and bringing home big chunks to toss in come acid in hopes that there were more crystals inside. Occasionally the betafites will pop out whole if you're lucky. My advice if you go is to try to break off big chunks if you can and bust them up. We found crystals up to 2 inches and clusters up to 4 inches, and only spent one day working at it. I'd love to get back there one day and give it another go. And by the way I wold be extremely surprised if it was all mined out. The calcite body is massive, and from what I saw it looks like the betafites go all through it. Good luck! Jay

Crystals to 2"! Pictures please!!!!

Hey Jay, still pretty much the same as you describe it. The adit is filled with water now so unless you have boots or maybe hip waders your outa luck heading in there. The area we found are Betafites was just reddish Calcite. There was a mass of many xls and it corrupted the Calcite quite nicely.. We managed to pull some nice Betafites out without major damage.. It's about a mile walk in, about 35 min at a brisk pace. Here's some of my finds. width=600 float=left][/pic]
2cm cluster with 2 golden brown zircon



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/04/2009 04:23AM by Andrew Johns.

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4cm cluster with 12 individual xls to 1.5cm



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 11/04/2009 04:28AM by Andrew Johns.

Andrew, Nice finds! Much the same as we found. The entrance to the adit was filled with water when we were there too, I forgot about that detail. I had boots so I was able to wade through it. How was the road heading back to the mine? Could a 4x4 truck make it back there?
Phillipe-- my collecting partner has most of the larger specimens from the dig, I will see what I have and post some pictures. Jay

Jay, the road going back to the mine is in rough shape. A good 4x4 should not have too much trouble making it out. As it turns out Mr.Kerr passed away a year or two ago and he used to look after the road, so the road has some hazards. Don't think you could make it to the Calcite hill anymore. Road narrows quite a bit. It is a rough walk though, very hilly terrain.. but the Betafites are definetly worth the walk and fortunately they are not heavy to carry back.

Andrew J

Andrew; Thanks for the information on the condition of the road. I guess I should try to get back there before it disappears. Hopefully next season. For Phillipe: a photo of some of the larger crystals I have form the last dig there. The larger one definitely isn't too pretty, from reports large well-formed crystals can be found, but the bigger ones we found definitely got uglier as they got bigger. Jay

Cool!! Thanks, Jay!

Sadly that is common with the Grenville province, the larger the crystals, the uglier they get. The large one is still fairly well formed. Very good haul!!

Philippe,
this phenomenon is not unique to Grenville - it's a common fact that the smaller the crystal is the more perfect it is - this is the reason we have micromunters. compare this betafite image [www.mindat.org]

cheers

Of course it's not unique to the Grenville....
The large minerals of the Grenville just happen to almost always be especially ugly (i.e. large apatites, scapolites, diopsides, nephelines, ...). Of course they are all nice in their own respects, usually just impressive size

Amusingly I was thinking of putting in a case of Canadian and Afghan specimens in next year's B.C. gem show to show exactly what you are talking about. Check out:

Yep, that is a good example.

Although the Afghani ones are coated in beautiful blue minerals, ours get up to 2 or so feet, well-formed, which is in my opinion much neater for nepheline!

Don't forget to do justice to the nice canadian minerals out there, i.e. MSH, Jeffrey, Faraday, etc

Over the winter I plan on doing exactly that Philippe - lots of uploads. I might just surprise you with a few pretty Grenville pieces too...

Look forward to that! CMN pieces or your collection? (any species in particular?)

Both. Mostly fairly common species, but I've got some killer pieces. I'll keep you posted.