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From: Barwood,
Henry - GMS Member
Sent: Wednesday,
July 21, 1999 12:47 PM
Subject: Report
on some trips to Graves Mountain
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Thought
you might be interested in my recent trips to Graves Mountain to collect.
I arranged for small groups of mineral collectors to visit on June 12 (1999)
and recently on July 17 (1999).
June 12
(1999) the weather was very cooperative and it was cloudy and overcast
for most of the day. This kept the temperatures in the bearable 80's. We
examined the West pit in the morning and found lots of holes where rutile
is being mined by the more diligent collectors. The North wall has collapsed
and obscured most of the lazulite/woodhouseite zone. A small pit in the
floor that yielded some excellent micros was backfilled. My son worked
a pyrophyllite?quartz?rutile zone in the South wall that produced some
good pyrophyllite, but little else. The walls have become extremely unstable
from pot?hole collecting and none of our group risked collecting in the
more productive rutile areas. By mid?afternoon we had little to show except
some barite xls. and a few promising looking specimens that had micro woodhouseites.
About 3PM
we retired to the shade to eat lunch and recover. We decided to give the
East pit one last shot to see if there were any interesting specimens to
be had. Lucky us! Someone had dug a trench looking for lapidary grade lazulite
and had thrown out vuggy rock with variscite and crandallite. My son and
I worked until nearly 7PM recovering what we could. Finally exhaustion
and the image of a small car with broken springs forced us to stop.
When cleaned,
these specimens revealed angular cavities (the so?called "anhydrite" casts)
that contained colorless, light green, dark green, blue (from lazulite
inclusions) and red (from rutile inclusions) specimens of variscite crystals.
The variscites range up to 10 x 10 x 12mm in size, although the best specimens
are in the 4?6mm size and covering cavities up to several cm in diameter.
The material also contained massive and crystalline crandallite, massive
woodhouseite, pyrite, excellent blood?red rutile micros, and several unknowns.
A second
trip was arranged for July 17 (1999), despite predictions of extremely
hot weather, to see if more variscites could be recovered. This trip all
seven micromounters concentrated on the East pit. We recovered lots of
specimens, but none quite as nice as the initial discovery. Much of this
material has yet to be even cleaned, so there may be some surprises. By
late afternoon we had pretty much exhausted the "easy pickings" in the
area. We also found some nice lapidary grade lazulite, barite, hematite
and chrome (?) pyrophyllite. The weather also cooperated and it was cloudy
all day and barely reached 80 degrees!
Graves
Mountain continues to produce amazing specimens. These are by far the largest
variscite crystals I have ever seen and I suspect that they are, by variscite
standards, world class. I hope to have a web page up before too long that
has photos of the phosphate minerals and other "micros" from there.