Now I've been there before, read the reports, knew they were there and returned to find my own. Sapphires. This outcrop, just past the avalanche/rockslide zone on the Slocan Valley Rail Trail. I walk the trail, my prospecting is kept low by the snow above the road, and I pass the avalanche zone, walk another kilometer, checking every outcrop, every inch...the report says they're in pockets in the black bands of the gneiss.
Garnets. Plenty of garnets. Garnets aplenty. But nothing that to me resembles a sapphire.
I dutifully bang off a couple of dozen pieces of rock from different zones and haul them off to the Chamber of Mines. Brad, Brad, he's my man. Last trip there was a beautiful young blonde, just graduated, bubbling and all the rest, but I'm about the rocks and I didn't trust her information. I trust Brad.
Brad quickly looks at my rocks and gives me the "nope nope nope". Brad's good. I got a lot more rocks for him, but that's for another day...
He gives me precise instructions. "They'll be small and grey..." he warns me, then shows me a giant blue one, 3 inches across, from Herb Hyder and the Revelstoke area. Yeah, I wouldn't have missed that, and I admire Herb's finding ability, but I need to spot them in the wild, or at least the signs that will lead me to them...
The next day:
A pegmatite/feldspar occurrence, take a photo for Brad.
The place he told me of, the sapphires in the feldspar next to the entrance of the "cave".
A close up of the feldspar. That's black tourmaline (schorl) in the upper right.
And closer:
See them? Grey, I bust one out and bring it in, the tiniest shit-sliver of a sapphire, 2mmX1mmX.5mm, show him the photos. Yep, yep, yep. But, really, who would fucking recognize this?
Still, know the small and you can find the big. The biggest from this claim, (or above this, this is a rail trail, not the claim) is over 500 grams (2500 Carats!), and colors range from a steel grey to a cornflower blue. So...I found one, now to find better!
Links: Herb Hyder's Sapphire Finds:
- https://www.rockngem.com/sapphire-discovery/
- https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?t=6116&view=previous
Yeah, don't google any further, the instagram and facebook are just disturbing. But he finds good shit.