Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation Area, Nevada

We found it quite easy to visit Red Rocks Canyon National Conservation area. It was an easy 30 minute drive from the strip in our rental car, and we soon found ourselves on the outskirts of town entering into the beautiful landscapes and geology of the basin and range system. My Mom and I took the rental car and headed out of town.

There is the Aztec sandstone, a fine grained sandstone whose color has been altered by passing groundwater. Most usually it is the brilliant red of iron oxide, or a stark white, a color that usually marks the passing of oil through the beds.

There is a grey limestone that belongs to the Bonanza king formation.

Before even entering the park, we stopped at Calico Canyon, a popular spot for boulderers and climbers. We walked in a ways and took in the desert scenery.

At the bottom of the valley there was a conglomerate that had formed. One can imagine how desert flash floods moved these rocks into place. The clasts, or chunks of rock are made up mostly of limestone. The soft matrix is composed of fine grained sand from the sandstone.

The area was popular for climbing, and it was evident why. Tall, house-sized boulders had routes up their corners and the sandstone had cracks and pockets along the steeper faces that begged to be climbed.

Large scale aeolian cross bedding could be seen within these sandstones. This is typical of a sandstone, formed in a desert by the movement of dunes. The dunes' curved front surface is preserved as they move forward, leaving the small curves in the sand that deviate from the horizontal line. These lines are created as the movement of the dune erodes the sand in front of it into a flat surface, leaving the horizontal straight lines.

The area reminded me of the landscapes that Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire spoke of. You could find places to hide here, caves hidden canyons, places in the harsh desert where nobody would come to look for you.

A pleasant sandstone den for someone. Nobody was home when we visited.

The area is also well known for its petroglyphs. This was found right along the trail, and I don't imagine that it is very old. Regardless of its age, though, it is neat. 

We then drove over to the Red Rocks Canyon area. A day pass was was cheap, only $7, and allows you to drive, bike or hike around a 13.5 mile loop. There are many roads turning off that would have been fun to explore, and the hikes you could go on I'm sure would be incredible. We, however got there at around 4:30 PM and they ask you to be in your car and driving out by 5 PM.

When I say that the sandstone is large scale cross bedding, I mean it. Here you can see just how large these are. This is the same sandstone as the red colored one, but it has had groundwater, and possibly petroleum passed through it. The areas of different coloration are created within layers of sandstone that are more or less permeable, so that the color is removed accordingly. This creates the lines that we can see with our eye from far away. Notice the person in the bottom right corner for scale.

We drove around, and wished we had more time to explore the trails. We then headed back to Las Vegas, where you could buy a tall can of PBR or Coor light for an outrageous price.

Or just gamble and drink for free.

Gross Reservoir Fishing

I headed out on the morning of the last weekend of October to Gross Reservoir with my friend Tate. Boulder's first storm had come through the region a few days earlier, dumping 6-8" all around. The shores were still a bit snowy that day, despite the 55 degree day following the snow. It was terribly windy as we got out of the truck, and we bundled up with all of our layers to stay warm. Heading around to the East side of an inlet to get on the leeward side of the wind, we fished the first inlet with everything we had, spoons, spinners and raps. Tate caught two little stockers there, to my none.

I was however more occupied with the quartz crystals I was finding along the shore. Pockets of quartz were visible in the granite, and they were lined with small milky quartz. Broken up pieces of pockets lay all around, some with crystals up to ~1.5 cm.  While most were heavily mineralized by either manganese or possibly a tungstate, some samples didn't have that typical black gunk.

As we moved down the shore, I had been getting a lot more "followers"chasing my lure back into shore, and soon enough caught a nice trout, eating size. The wind had calmed down to just a gusty breeze, and within the sunny areas was it quite pleasant. I thew the trout on a stringer and kept fishing.

Tate caught two more fish, but both were too small to keep. He was using a brown trout rapala and I was using a rainbow rapala when we caught those fish.

We fished around, exploring deeper waters and shallow coves and points, but found that most of the fish were centered around the windiest and widest point with a lot of rocks.

As it seems happen every time, the wind claimed a vast majority of my beer that I brought. Unattended cans somehow act like sails to the wind, ensuring that I only drink about 50% of what I pack in. Lesson learned: bring 2x as much beer as you think you need.

I took "Earl" home to grill. The fish deserved a name after accompanying me around the lake, being plopped in the water every time I stopped to fish and sometimes flung in the snow while I tripped over logs on the snowy shores. But as I gutted Earl, I found that it was a pregnant female fish, who hadn't been finding much to eat lately. Nonetheless, she tasted great.

Right before the snow came I harvested my basil from my garden and made some pesto. With a big glop of this into Earline's belly and some aluminum foil, I was set.

After it came off the grill, I peeled back the aluminum foil, and when the skin comes with it, you know it is done.

After dinner, I walked outside to cover the grill only to find a beautiful crescent moon, a great ending to my fishing experience.

Sluice Concentrates

If you are using a sluice box, at the end of the day you are left with black sand (which is much heavier than the quartz and feldspar sands which are light colored) and hopefully gold in your sluice box. Every attempt is made to easily remove most of the gold next to the river, but there is always some left in the sands and so you bring them home. Thus the predicament that most prospectors are faced with is born, fine gold and black sands.

The combination of the two can be a headache, especially if all you have to work with is a pan.  When I started prospecting, I bought a spiral panning machine that separates gold or heavy materials out, called the Desert Fox.  I came very close to selling the thing, because I was under the impression that it didn't work at all. I would run all of my concentrates at different angles and water speeds and get nothing but black sand, no matter what I did. It took me a while to figure out that there wasn't actually any gold in the material I was running(duh).

Once I actually started bringing home fine gold in the concentrates, the Desert Fox really showed its true potential. I'm now a solid believer that it can separate gemstones or any denser material for that matter, and it can do so quite efficiently when set up proper. Its ease actually allows me time to do work more while I'm at the river, instead of panning out my concentrates where there is water.

My process goes something like this:

When I run material, I use my snifter bottle to pick up gold I can see on the indicator matting. This gives me a peace of mind that the gold isn't going to travel further back into the sluice, where it has a greater chance of getting washed out. Also, I have the bulk of my gold (or so I hope) to pan out at the end of the day, but its always a manageable amount of black sand. Everything else sits in the sluice until a clean-up, where I dump the whole sluice load into a dedicated concentrate bucket.

This represents two days of sluicing. The concentrates come from Cache Creek BLM area by Granite, CO

When I take this home, the first step is to classify the material through a set of screens. The screens that I use are 1/4", 12, 30, and 50 mesh. The mesh size is measured by the number of openings in a linear inch.  I dump the black sands on the screens that are set up on a bucket. I take another bucket full of water and slowly pour it through while shaking to classify it.

All of this material was removed using a magnet. Magnetite retains the magnetic orientation of when it
crystallized due to its atomic structure, and will retain its magnetism for a very long time.

Once classified, I run them in the Desert fox starting with the material between 50 and 30 mesh, and move to the coarser material. Although the machine claims to be able to separate clean gold, I haven't been able to do so without feeling like I have lost some. I always set it up so that it takes a bit of black sands too, that way I can be absolutely sure I have gotten everything I can. When the material is well classified, and with the aid of a magnet, panning the gold from the black sands is a breeze and takes only a minute or two to get clean gold.

Some processed gold from the Desert Fox

Desert Fox doing what it does best.

I'm not sure that this machine can competently separate the fine, fine gold that slips through the 50 mesh screen, so I have been saving this material in a bucket for quite some time now. Ideally, I would like to run it through the Fox and then through a Blue Bowl, because I have heard they are better for this sized material. A Blue Bowl uses spinning water that empties into a hole in the middle of a bowl to allow the fine gold to separate. I would also be willing to invest in screens in the 100, 200 and 300 range, because I'm sure that there is a lot of gold in there that is otherwise practically inseparable.

I almost didn't run my 20+ material through the Desert Fox, because I thought that it might be easier to hand pan. I'm very glad that I did, though. When I was not expecting much gold at all from this material, the big guy on the right jumped out and ran up the spiral. It is my first nugget to register on a scale, weighing in at a massive .1 grams, making its worth around $5 currently.

For two days of moving around 15-20 five gallon buckets of dirt each day, its not a very good paycheck.
For spending two days outdoors, in the sun, and next to a creek with a huge smile the whole time, it is priceless.

Gross Reservoir

As the spring months roll around, there comes about this insatiable desire to get outside. After being bundled up all winter and working hard to finish my final exams, it was a great time to go and enjoy the warm weather.

I chose to go and spend a night on the shores of Gross Reservoir, it was an easy mile hike in, and I was hoping to gain access to some potential gold deposits in the gravels of South Boulder Creek, which have proven themselves historically and in my own pan.

The reservoir, approximately sixty feet below its full level, was amazingly desolate. Winds would blow the sand and mud from the exposed sides, whipping them into dirt devils and creating characteristic carvings on the sides of the banks. The bottom, covered with what would be a thick, oozing mud was dessicated into dramatic flats of mud cracks.

The river here was very interesting, because it flowed through a large basin of wind-blown sand with little to alter its flow. This last semester, in my Sedimentology and Stratrigraphy class, we learned how to identify the mechanics and formations of these river deposits. They were most certainly present and identifiable, I picked out parallel cross-laminations, some subaqueous dunes, and longitudinal point bars, all characteristic of a sandy braided river system.

Crayfish skeletons were abundant on the shores. As I stepped into the river to sample a long gravelly bar for gold, I almost crushed this very picture-compliant guy. 

I spent some time the next day sampling the area where the river meets the reservoir for gold. Most surface bars held some fine dust, and usually a decent amount of it. I didn't find anything that I could even call a flake, so i've concluded that the size of the gold depends on the size of the flood moving the sediments in. Finding a deposit from a large flood could contain some coarser gold.

Abandoned fluorite mine of Jamestown, CO

The Jamestown and Ward region, located up Lefthand Canyon endeared years of mining success during its booms, and like all other mining regions, misfortune and busts. The region produced gold, silver, lead, copper, and fluorite (then called fluorospar). Low grade fluorite is used as a flux in the melting of iron to increase fluidity, and so the region boomed during both world wars. Now, only a few year time residents and summer cabins remain in this area, but the aftermath of the mining is evident. Holes are dug into the side of the hills everywhere, and the yellow dirt can be seen pouring out onto the hills in many areas. These yellow rocks are sulfide minerals, which are frequently associated with veins of precious metals that have been deposited hydrothermally. These sulfides, when exposed to water with higher surface area react to form hydrosulfuric acid.

Chemically,

 2H20 + S ---- 2H2S +02

The additional oxygen molecule often proceeds to react to form carbon dioxide. The water that runs off  is then considered acid mine drainage. This region has a huge problem with this, and there are some mines designated as superfund sites that need to be cleaned up. One attempt to remedy this has been to put bags of limestone below the tailings piles, so that it will hopefully absorb the acid before it reaches the stream.

My mineralogy teacher, Joe Smyth, took us on a field trip up left hand canyon, and showed us some pegmatites, high grade metamorphic rocks, and then this fluorite mine. The few minutes we spent there wasn't enough for me, I have been back a few times exploring the area. The fluorite there is a pretty purple,  but doesn't occur in very solid crystals. The mine was originally a gold mine, but later was further developed for its fluorite.

The main pit. Fractures and fisures have been stained black by manganese bearing waters.

The pit was dug directly into the hillside, and the walls are about 60 to 80 feet tall. An old headframe sits on what used to be the side of the hill, and above the tailings pile. The tailings are a fine yellow dirt, that erodes easily into steep slopes, exposing the iron and wood fragments that make it so uninviting. The interior of the pit is also filled with this fine tan-yellow dirt, but no tetanus shot required.

Looking down at the side shaft. Pick axe for scale, ~3.5 ft long.

A small hole dug down connects through to the main pit. Its really quite tempting to climb down through it, but this is probably ill-advised with the unstable condition of the rocks. This shaft drops about fifteen feet before connecting horizontally with the main pit, still about forty or fifty feet above the bottom of the pit.

Quartz crystals in matrix.

                                                                                                                                                            










Some purple fluorite can be found in the walls and floor of the pit. It is quite rotted and is often found as a purple powder. Crystals here are rare, but I have found weathered cubes in some of the bigger boulders on the floor of the mine. Fluorite has a cubic crystal habit, and can form octahedrons, cubes, and plenty of like variations. On this trip, I wasn't looking for fluorite. I visited some outcrops above the mine and found some quartz crystals exposed from weathering on some fissures. They are a grey color, and embedded in matrix. I managed to chip away a crystal or two.

Two small, loose crystals.

Clear Creek Gold

With the few days left I had of spring break, and after being chased out of the central mountains by a huge storm front, I wanted to dig for some gold for a few days.  I headed out to Clear Creek early one morning to look for a place to dig. I was hoping to find some coarse, big gold that I knew was out here!

A wildfire in the gulch to the North had been spreading quickly, and on my drive up I witnessed some of the power and proximity of this fire. The canyon is curvy, and the hills on the side are steep. As I drove along on the road, without any cars around, I noticed that on the top of the ridge the trees were actually on fire. A 20' pine tree was a ball a flames, and the ground around it had 4-5 foot flames all around. It was absurd to think that the forest was burning right there so close to the road. I got another mile or two up the canyon to where I spotted a Jeep that I recognized as a man, David that I had met one other time before on the North Fork of Clear Creek.

I parked and walked down to where he was working. After doing a little sample panning, I decided on a spot on the upper part of this placer bar behind a large rounded boulder. The spot was showing a few specks a few feet down, but nothing too promising. I wasn't too far from David, and we would chat every once in a while about the history of the area, and our theories on the gold. After an hour or two, police sirens on the road caught my attention. A Jefferson County sheriff was yelling at us to leave, because the canyon was closing. We both began hurrying to clean up and pack our stuff back to our cars. By the time we could pack our stuff up, 3 other officers stopped and yelled at us to leave. David asked if I wanted to go  to his hole up the creek and dig there. He said he had been finding small nuggets, and guaranteed that I would too if I came with him. With my doubts, I followed him to his spot (which he asks I do not share the location of) where he had quite a large hole dug. Surrounding these boulders buried deep in the river, he said he had been getting the gold.

I began to dig, which wasn't easy because the hole was so deep and the footing precarious. My thigh-high waders were about an inch away from being filled in with cold, cold water, and in late March, the air temperature isn't quite optimal for swimming. I sluiced out all of my material, without seeing any gold that I could get too excited about. As it got dark, I cleaned up my sluice, and as I washed the top material into the bucket, there it was!
 
A Nugget!

My first decent sized piece of gold. It hasn't traveled very far, and is almost wiry.

Another day's work. Its not easy, but nobody said it would be.

A piece of gold that I could pick up and hold. I got very excited, and finished cleaning up with a huge smile on my face. We agreed to meet there the next morning, and continue digging. We did so for the next three days, and ended up finding some good gold.

In search of Barite and Topaz

The Granitic Tarryall Mountains, power lines and road signs.

   Some people choose to go to Mexico for spring vacation. Some people choose California, more choose Las Vegas, and more still like to take their break in Moab, Utah. Myself, I like Colorado.

I began my vacation by driving to Tarryall, to look for some Topaz that was rumored to be around these parts. The granitic mountains here are very pretty, and the scar of the massive Hayman fire that ripped through here years ago is beginning to heal. I spent the afternoon hiking the region accessible from Spruce Campground (or something like that), and looking at a lot of granite. Topaz crystals form in granite pegmatites, which are known to be found (in abundance) in the region.

A rundown on pegmatites:

      As a large body of granite is cooling (granite by definition cools very slowly), it is changing from a liquid to a solid. Large crystals are forming as the rock cools, but in a certain sequence of the available minerals. All materials melt at different temperatures, thus they will crystallize and come out of solution in the opposite order. As the rock is cooling, minerals that remain in solution tend to be rare earth minerals, and concentrate along with quartz, which has a very low melting/crystallizing temperature and form pegmatites. Beryl (aquamarine), Tourmaline, and Topaz are all examples of the gemstones that can form from the extremely slow cooling pegmatites. 

A perfect example of a meandering river, with some geese
standing on rocks most likely moved by glaciers

I found one pegmatite that had been excavated. The opening was 20' wide and 30' tall, with very steep sides. Contrasting to the entire mountainside, the walls were made up entirely of quartz. I carefully examined the walls for any sign of pockets where the crystals could form, but didn't see anything. The tailings didn't look too promising either, but I figured if somebody had come all this way to dig out that much rock, they had ought to have a darn good reason. I camped that night by the Colorado Topaz Mine, where an old screener box was sitting, without the screen. It looked like they had been digging around all of the large granite boulder sitting through the camp area. The nearby Colorado Topaz mine  is a  placer deposit of gem-quality Topaz, and has been a very sound producer. In the morning, I dug up a bucket of my own material to screen out when it wasn't freezing. 

The hole in which the barite was found. For scale, the green
screen in the upper part of the picture fits snugly inside the top of
a 5 gallon bucket. It was kinda nice to get out of the wind.

Driving on to the next stop, a barite crystal locality, I soon found myself in someone else's hole. Barite is a heavy mineral used for oil drilling as a thick mud, but occurs in CO in a rare blue variety. They occur in sedimentary rocks, and a formed under low pressure and temperature. They had dug down to the crystals, and must have either had their fill or gotten tired, because they left them exposed in the bottom of the hole. Sure, it wasn't the best hole for proper digging posture, and there wasn't much room to move limbs about, but it gave plenty of license for creativity.  After spending some time cleaning the specimens up, some are quite pretty, and I hope to return soon to dig out some more. The crystals will absorb UV light throughout the day and become more and more blue, so they are very pretty in windowsills.

Here the elaborate crystals are exposed in a mud filled pocket.
The bulk of the mud easily washes away, but the cracks are
filled in with mud, calcite, and iron oxide, but this is all
 easily dissolvable in a strong acid.

In the same day, I drove to Nathrop by Buena Vista, and in the whipping winds and ocasional flurries of snow went searching for garnets and yellow topaz that was rumored to occur there. It was so cold, so I practically ran to the top of the mountain that is of a certain rhyolite that is quite distinguishable. I looked all along the way, but only found one small crystal that I think has a chance of being a topaz because it is squarish and yellow/brown. I found out later that you need to split lots of rocks to find the gems, which I didn't split a single one. Regardless it was beneficial just to look at the geology of the area that they occur in, and now I know just where to go and what to do when I return this summer.

After and exhausting two days (and with a large oncoming storm front) I drove back to Boulder, ready for warmth. When I got there, I sat down, and wished I was still digging in a hole somewhere.

I guess thats just how it is.