Cassandra Glacier, Airale Valley, Torreggio Valley, Torre di Santa Maria, Sondrio Province, Lombardy, Italyi

Regional Level Types
Cassandra Glacier	Glacier
Airale Valley	Valley
Torreggio Valley	Valley
Torre di Santa Maria	Municipality
Sondrio Province	Province
Lombardy	Region
Italy	- not defined -

The rocky spur, located between the two tongues of Cassandra glacier and culminating at the elevation of 2938 m, consists of ultrabasites intersected by a sequence of rodingite dykes of various composition.
The light grey pyroxene dykes are similar to those of Cima di Corna Rossa and contain the same minerals, except for garnet and apatite. Diopside forms elegant greenish prisms, often transparent; titanite appears as spectacular purplish-brown tabular crystals with brass-yellow internal reflections, up to 35 x 18 mm in size, perched on calcite among clinochlore lamellae, or more commonly as violet or yellowish plates; magnetite occurs as octahedral or cuboctahedral crystals, often rich in specular additional faces; zircon is rarely found as orange-red elongated prisms.
The epidote veins contains bright translucent crystals of epidote and clinozoisite, varying in colour from yellow-green to pink and attaining also centimetric sizes, with colourless or milky apatite (that at Cima di Corna Rossa occurs in the pyroxene dykes only), almost acicular calcite, rare grains of galena and very fresh prismatic crystals of "stilbite", up to 1 cm in length.
Garnet dykes, in which epidote and clinochlore occurs as accessories, host beautiful andradite crystals, from cognac-yellow to orange-red or dark brown-red in colour, up to 2 cm in size. They can be considered the best andradite crystals of all Malenco valley to the exclusion of demantoid crystals.

Other mineral finds from different rodingite dykes and erratic blocks in the Cassandra glacier area include: vesuvianite, sometimes in association with andradite; sepiolite in association with epidote; ilmenite, sometimes with acicular rutile; dravite in association with epidote.

In the associated chloritic facies the mineral assemblage comprises clinochlore, magnetite, apatite, epidote, chalcopyrite, chrysocolla, and malachite.

Furthermore, vanadinite has been found in an erractic rodingite block rich in diopside and clinochlore (Borgonovo and Campostrini, 1997).

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References