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5 Mile Point
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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A days prospecting adventure, 12 KM in and out, looking for an old fluorite vein marked on the MTO at 5 Mile Point. No sign of it. But a pleasant walk...
A maze out of river cobbles...
My First Sapphire...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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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.
Recycle
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Link of the day
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Definition: That symbol that is intended to reassure you that all the extraneous packaging surrounding the item you bought will not be brought to landfill, if only you take a few minutes out of your day to ascertain which pile it belongs in...This, despite it being entirely manufactured with the express intent of being thrown away.
IBID: A Guilt trip bestowed upon customers by companies ... that if their disposable product manufactured expressly for the landfill should by accident end up in the landfill it's entirely the consumer's fault.
IBID: A ploy by large oil companies to get around environmentally conscious or sensitive policy and lawmaking.
IBID: A scheme by which companies can charge more for a product or it's packaging by providing the reassurance that it can be recycled despite knowing full well that it won't. Were the packaging / materials actually recycled the material costs of the packaging/product would easily double.
Links:
- https://www.plasticsoupfoundation.org/en/plastic-problem/bogus-solutions/recycling-myth/#:~:text=An%20absolute%20reduction%20in%20the%20amount%20of%20plastic,is%20not%20separated%20during%20collection%20in%20The%20Netherlands.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauratenenbaum/2019/05/15/these-three-plastic-recycling-myths-will-blow-your-mind/
- https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-recycling-myth-2647706452.html
- https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
- https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/energy-environment/2020/09/13/381750/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled/
Prospecting, a couple of new mines, Cave Spiders, and a Calcite...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
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Today, off west of Kaslo looking for rhodenite. I know there's a claim, have read a few mining reports that refer to other instances of it, I know it's up here. I just want a view of it in the field, to improve my finding ability (that's another post).
So:
Colorful mossy waterfall.
Pink, and sort of bulbous, in a tufa-sort of way. It proved to be a deep organic map of moss & vegetation. Cool, but not what I'm looking for...(you can see where I dug through it to the rock beneath, middle left)
Mine number #1, never would have seen this from the highway, but walking it becomes apparent. Note the Stalactites forming on the ceiling. And, note the trash in the back (it ends just out of site of the flash). Who does this? "Honey, I'm just running my trash 10 km out of town to a hole I found in a cliff...it'll save us a dollar on the collection!!"
Another mine, a few yards deeper - further up the road. Again, invisible from the highway at driving speed. This one has in the back formed some beautiful calcite terraces and "cave pearls". All this in probably a hundred short years..
In the cave it reflects a brilliant white by the flashlight. The flash doesn't do it justice.
Fine stalactites forming...look to the top left of the photo...
Yep. A shit-ton of cave spiders. Clusters, the edge of the crevasse is hairy with them. hundreds, huddled together for (?warmth? IDK WTF!?)
These are actually pretty common, at least in the first chambers of any mine/cave, but - well, I still brush my clothes a little anxiously and shake out my hair. You always spot them only after you've been brushing up against ceilings/walls, and then you discover (too late) that they're everywhere.
And, the end of this mine, an upturned ore cart, broken shovel, skull mask, and an ominous looking noose hanging from the ceiling. A little memorial to remind me that this isn't mine own private discovery (but the calcite - beautiful!)
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