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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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May 16, 2018 - 08:10am PT
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Might be an amphibole,
like actinolite or hornblende
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i-b-goB
Social climber
Wise Acres
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May 16, 2018 - 09:42am PT
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Here's a cool er hot photo of new lava rock!
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 5, 2018 - 07:35am PT
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Our wet May has not been good for my mineral collecting visits to the Great Basin & the joys of killing weeds, trimming trees, & mowing the lawn were starting to make me a little restless.
On Memorial Day, I found a forecast for NW Utah that predicted Tuesday & Weds would be rainless days. On Tuesday, I managed a crack of 9:00 start & headed back to the Gold Hill Utah area for hiking & mineral collecting.
Tuesday was a very nice day. I got to the Gold Hill area early afternoon & enjoyed two hikes to old hill-top mines.
At the first mine, there were three large adits, each about 500 feet apart. The largest one in the middle, had been worked on recently by the BLM & both the adits were gated. Since there is no road into that mountainside mine, I assume the steel gates were helicoptered in. I did find some interesting copper carbonate & copper silicate specimens there.
Some Chrysocolla, with a little Azurite around the edges.
Here's a little specimen I took home, with micro-crystals of Azurite outside Chrysocolla.
I also found a specimen of densely clustered black Tourmaline crystals, with a slight coating of Chrysocolla. It looks better in hand, than in the photo.
After that, I explored another group of mines closer to camp & I didn't set up my car-camp until 7:30 PM.
Craig Fry! Re your comment on my strange looking black Tourmaline/Schorl
“Might be an amphibole,like actinolite or hornblende”
The two Geologic survey publications, I have of the area, mention how widespread the Tourmaline is in some places & indeed there is some actinolite, but it appears as bladed light colored crystals, which I did not encounter.
Re my showing strange looking Schorl/ black Tourmaline. Here’s some experts on the subject: MINERALIZATION IN THE GOLD HILL MINING DISTRICT, TOOELE COUNTY, UTAH by H. M. EI-Shatoury and J. A. Whelan:
“Tourmalinization is associated with extensive silicification and locally abundant apatite. Tourmaline
occurs in tabular crystals, in columnar aggregates and in the form of radiating needles on the surface of
quartz or orthoclase I forming "tourmaline suns." Some crystals show hexagonal zoned cross sections.”
Here’s a little more classic specimen of black Tourmaline, as radiating needles from the second mine I explored.
I didn’t make it to my ridge-top car camp until 7:30, but the weather was calm and there were few biting bugs about.
On Weds, I was hiking by 8:00 AM, & the first raindrops hit me on top of a hill at 11:00 AM. But I enjoyed exploring some more old roadless mines, & found more copper specimens.
Here’s a classic Conichalcite, CaCu(AsO4)(OH), that I found early on in the morning. It also has several Tourmaline crystals sticking out & some Calcite crystals.
Late morning, I found some more more Conichalcite, as a thin coating on quartz.
& a couple of significant lizards.
This one was posing by some Conichalcite.
And this Great Basin Collared Lizard picked a broken miner’s shovel to warm up in.
I had a full-blown thunderstorm chase me off another hill at 12:30.
Back to weed-killing on the Ranchette for me.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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The various knobs, hooks, door and drawer pulls where I live are polished Ammonite fossils. The septa patterns are pretty simple so I’m thinking they are pretty early on in ammonite evolution... I’m guessing early Monday do vintage an, any thoughts?
Almost as if they were waiting for a paleontologist emeritus to move in?
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Butte Monzonite with some thin splitters but will the lady approve or slap you down...??
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 5, 2018 - 04:35pm PT
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Jaybro! Re your comment on your collection of Ammonite knobs:
The septa patterns are pretty simple so I’m thinking they are pretty early on in ammonite evolution... I’m guessing early Monday do vintage an, any thoughts?
So----- I believe Ammonites came pretty late & the earliest of them were not created until late on Thursday, but I do not claim to be an expert on that subject.
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 5, 2018 - 04:37pm PT
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Cragar: I traveled Montana as a sales-rep until 2013 & I was always impressed by that huge statue above Butte. I'm betting the nearby granite easily lasts longer.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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When I say Monday, I of course mean Devonian 😎
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looks easy from here
climber
Ben Lomond, CA
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I figure I'll throw this out to the Taco brain trust since I don't know enough about rocks to even know what to Google. Found at about 7000' in the western Sierra, out past Shaver Lake. Anyone know what's going on with the "eggshell"? Something during formation? A river rock with a million years of oxidation slowly penetrating the surface?
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Looks Easy, Dinosaur egg?
then, 'cause it funny what we have in our unique spheres that we also share, I love this
touch stone
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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A river rock with a million years of oxidation slowly penetrating the surface? yes
Giant Rock broken off flake
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Fritz, that specimen with the radiating tourmaline crystals, how big is that (how many inches across)? That is a really cool sample.
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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These little gems are found among the Burmese Gem gravels
slightly rounded from 100s of millions of years that it took for some one to sift it out of the stream bed, after the mountains that it formed in dissolved into dust
Pourdiettite
KNa2B3Si12O30
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Craig Fry
Trad climber
So Cal.
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Painite, also from Mogok, Burma
Was considered to be the rarest Gem Mineral on earth for some time
It's a metamorphosed ruby with extra elements combining to form painite
http://minerals.gps.caltech.edu/files/Visible/painite/Index.html
Painite was once considered one of the rarest minerals on earth. The first painite to be recognized as new mineral (painite #1) was a sample discovered in Burma in the early 1950's. For many years only two crystals of this hexagonal mineral were known to exist. Its chemical formula is ideally: CaZrBAl9O18. However, it also contains minor amounts of chromium and vanadium that contribute to the orange-red to brownish-red color of the mineral plus traces of iron. In addition to zirconium, minor amounts of titanium and hafnium also are part of its composition. While it often appeared in lists of gemstones, only two faceted gemstones had been reported prior to mid-2005. The discovery of a new locality in northern Myanmar in 2002, and the discovery of major new localities in the Mogok area led to the recovery of several thousand crystals and fragments. Nearly complete crystals remain few in number and high quality facet material remains rare, although several hundred crystals and pieces have been faceted to date.
many pieces have ruby inclusions that fluoresce red under UV
still rare, but available to collectors
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Now thems some septa, gnome! Clearly Permian or beyond!
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 6, 2018 - 07:07pm PT
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ydpl8s! Re your comment: Fritz, that specimen with the radiating tourmaline crystals, how big is that (how many inches across)? That is a really cool sample.
Thank you! The photo shows an area about 1” x 2”. It’s the only specimen I found like that.
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looks easy from here
climber
Ben Lomond, CA
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Thanks Craig. I was pretty sure that was it, but there's always the liiiitle hope Gnome was right.
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kpinwalla2
Social climber
WA
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So I opened up a closet door in my office and came across this random assortment of minerals and thought of this thread. Here's a list:
Lazurite
Cinnabar
Arsenopyrite
Pyrite
Schorl tourmaline
watermelon tourmaline
kyanite
star sapphire
spodumene kunzite
specular hematite
smoky quartz
amethyst
wavellite
mimetite
prehnite
beryl
smithsonite
chrysotile
muscovite
aurichalcite
pink topaz
fire opal
rutilated quartz
mesolite
green fluorite
purple fluorite
galena
almandine garnet
a trilobite
crocoite
celestite
azurite
rhodocrosite
grossular garnet
calcite
morganite
vanadinite
selenite gypsum
orpiment/realgar
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Oh yeah Uncle Ray I remember you coming through Pipestone repping PuR in a complete no-nonsense/no BS kinda way. You were one of the more respected reps to come though our door; Bill Belcourt is another with rep qualities like you. Appreciated.
Keep posting up the ID mining goodness, por favor!! I am doing an x-bike tour in The Frank outa Challis later this year to go looking for ghosty-zones of past mining times, recommendations are always appreciated ;^)
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