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Rose
and Tourmalinated Quartz
Dig,
Plumas County, California October 24th-26th, 2008 |
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Invited by my friend
Scott Northouse, I traveled to this wonderfully-unusual pegmatite deposit,
located on private property, near Frenchman's Lake-
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24 Oct- We arrived in
the late afternoon, quickly set up camp, hiked
to the spot, and started collecting! Here, Scott's sons' Daniel and Stephen help out- |
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Right next to a fabulous,
2-meter exposure of incredibly hard, massive
Rose Quartz, I discovered a pocket of clay and lustrous, tabular, colorless Quartz crystals- |
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Unfortunately,
the Quartz crystals in this particular pocket didn't have any Tourmaline
inclusions-
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A closeup
of the Rose Quartz outcrop. The color is TOPS!
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25 Oct- The
next morning we're right back at it. Today, Scott's brother
Jim drove up to join us in the fun collecting!
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In
this area, streaks of deeply colored Rose Quartz can be seen running
through less deeply colored material. I worked on this incredibly
hard outcrop for 2 days to produce 2 buckets of good material-
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A closeup
of a fine
Rose Quartz outcrop that I pounded
on until my hands were bruised and blistered through heavy gloves!
I was able to free many large,
deeply colored specimens!
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My
debris pile looked like it had pieces of frozen cotton candy
all through it! |
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Pink Fun!
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Then
Scott Northouse found this AMAZING 6cm long, double-terminated,
mirror-lustrous, Tourmaline-included Quartz crystal!!!
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26 Oct- Here
I am helping Scott look for Tourmaline-Included Quartz crystals-
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Even
with a 20-pound sledge hammer and chisels, it was a sweaty
and bloody process to work though this ultra-hard Quartz!
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Here's
Scott and Jim Northouse
showing off some goodies from the trip! |
Scott
and Jim with Daniel
and Stephen- |
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One
of my better pieces of
Rose Quartz from this dig. It is hoped that after cutting and polishing the contents of my 2 buckets into spheres and cabs, that these Rose Quartz specimens will show pronounced asterisms (stars)! |
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The
Fall colors were in full force with the Aspens in the area.
If you didn't know any better, you might think you
were in Colorado!
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Of
all the Tourmalinated Quartz crystals we found, I discovered
that these two DT's fit back together! Scott was very
generous and let me go home with this cluster!
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They
went together to form a 45x38x30mm floater cluster!
WOW!!! |
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A 31x22x6mm, beautifully Tourmalinated Quartz crystal that also I got to go home with! THANKS SCOTT!!! |