The last day of work, then the announcement that the province would be locking down for another 3 weeks.
Strongly mixed feelings about this - on the one hand, seriously, I was dreading returning to work. Every year has been busier, poorer staffed than the one before. This year will be no exception.
On the other hand, all this free time is of no use if I can't afford a tank of gas to go exploring.
Tuesday morning, not giving a damn I've got places to be. First off, meet Stormy for breakfast, only clearly there's no breakfast with the new lockdowns, and Stormy thinks free to stand me up. I dump some parcels off for him, his scooter is there. He's expecting me to knock, at which point I'll be ambushed into taking him on 100 errands around Nelson, 100 errands, 100 KM, he just got paid after all. Nope nope nope. I'm not knocking, not today.
Onward, to work to BS about the possibility of the restaurant reopening, then on the 11:30 Ferry, meet Chris. We're off. First stop, the toxic-crystal beach at Pilot Bay, collect a few of the tiny quartz crystals that have fallen out of the processed silver ore.
From here on to Riondel.
The village, quaint old miners houses, yards filled with fruit trees and the debris of a thousand Nelson Free Piles. Everywhere. Just gather useless broken shit and pile it in your yard. It's your civic duty. Old people staring at you cautiously as you drive by, new in town, doubtless there to steal their garbage...
The Bluebell Mine. Chris is impressed, as am I, I've been here before, but returning my eye is a lot more practiced - there's limestone, crystalline, marble, quartz, feldspar (??? odd here, but this place is an anomaly), pyrites, abundant left over silver ore, some small quartz crystals...
But no means into the mine. The adit - crushed under a million tons of rockfall and debris - it's not accessible, I thought it might have been, but getting in under the ledges, great slabs of rock overhanging by a thin sliver, squeezes that probably go on to nowhere, I was deceived by the presence of bats, a bat might fit; me - no - and trying to would definitely bring down the rest of the mountain. So no. But - some silver ore, more rocks, (what for?), Chris, as usual, gets carried away and doesn't want to quit.
Finally, from here on North of Riondel, rough logging road, past Garland Bay (where it improves, the logging trucks have carved ruts that will need serious grading to fix), then up, up, up. No snow, not for a few KM, good news, stop, check the rocks, outcrops, granite and pegmatites, what I expected. Come to a shady wash of ice, park, and hike from here up. Lots of granite, lots of pegmatite, no great finds, but this is a reconnaissance, after all. The ground is relatively snow free, lots of granite exposures, lots of pegmatites, remote enough that you can be assured if it's here it might be yet undiscovered. And so we wander for an hour, stick to the road, bear scat (they're up, small little liquid blotches every 100 yards up the road, still wet, we've surprised someone...).
Then, time to head back.
We've left it a bit late, tearing down shit logging roads, aiming for the 5:30 ferry, the far side of Riondel a hitchhiker, pick her up.
"Her" in the most liberal of terms, if you know what I mean (In a deep baritone voice).
"She", it turns out, is here from the university, looking for fragments of the meteorite that fell a few years back over Boswell.
Interesting.
"Chondrite?" I ask, and she assures me that yes, it is, and so I should be able to find it with a magnet or metal detector. Bits of it I should qualify.
So we chat about that - I was following it after it happened, heard they thought it went into the lake past Riondel, only they've recalculated the trajectory and figure it ended up somewhere...
Yeah, sorry, I'm not telling. Pegmatites and meteorites.
Let her out, tear onto the ferry with seconds to spare, it's just disembarking, it wasn't 5:30, it was 5:20, and so we're there by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin, and the jeep is all in one piece.
So - 3 weeks of this I can do. The weather, gradually improving, keep local - budget 2 tanks of gas and long days on foot, and maybe, with a bit of luck and a lot of legwork I can find a reason not to return.