[Rockhounds] WAS: Mitchell maps... now: a true book in Idaho

[DonH]

Dan Hanks wrote:
> I too have some disappointments with the book, however...


I certainly agree that a lot of guide books are terrible.  However I 
would like to point out a great book experience I had just this morning!

As I was taking a "vacation" and cruising around the St. Joe Forest in 
north central Idaho, I was trying to find a place we had visited on a 
field trip.  All those dirt roads look the same.  As I crested a rise 
literally in the middle of nowhere, I saw a senior citizen bent over in 
the road.  Now where did she come from?  Her husband was in a van 
further up the road, I found out.  She was looking for garnets too!  She 
gave me a little one off the ground.  This wasn't the formation I 
remembered, but it didn't hurt to start looking while I was here.  I 
drove further up the road, trying to get to a peak called Castle Rock, 
but the road became too bad for my car to take.  I turned around and 
found some compact schist on the roadside, which contained small garnets 
when hammered open, but nothing I wanted to keep.  However, when I got 
out and took a look around the foundations of the former fire lookout 
tower, I found a golf-ball-sized garnet in a loose, very micaceous 
schist.  It did not appear to come from any of the local rock, but 
again, the area seemed as if it had been heavily worked and filled to 
make the road passable.  I saw nothing else even close to that.

As I approached their mega-van, they were stopped in the road eating 
lunch.  I showed them my large garnet.  Then they said they were going 
to look for kyanite next; they had tried already but failed.  I 
scratched my head and commented that the rock around here didn't appear 
  that it could contain any significant kyanite.  I should also point 
out that the area has been metamorphosed, intruded, folded, lifted, and 
scrunched, to the point where you might find a completely different 
facies a few hundred feet away; anything is possible.  And so it was 
that they pulled out one of Lanny Ream's books!  Well I couldn't argue 
with that.  The map was a primitive line drawing, but it did give 1/10th 
mile intervals for where the minerals would be.  I told them they should 
just keep eating lunch--after they let me get by--and I would go up to 
the intersection, zero my odometer, and come back 0.8 mi. to where the 
kyanite outcrop was supposed to be, and they could find me when they 
were done.  Well, it turned out the outcrop was about 30 ft. from where 
they were already parked!  It certainly looked like a different rock 
than most of what we had seen along that road.  I tried to call Lanny 
for advice--I guess we weren't *that* far from the nearest tower--but 
the cell signal kept breaking up.  So I got out with my tools and began 
to look for telltale lath-like crystals, which I expected to be small. 
I think those folks had been expecting deep blue knife-sized blades of 
kyanite like they had seen in rock shops or from other sites.  Well, to 
make the story short, I did some exploring and found what they were 
looking for.  By this time they had wandered over from the van, with 
their granddaughter.  To our happy surprise, there were sky-blue 
crystals, long and thin, up to 30mm, in one layer of the rock.  I showed 
the granddaughter an accordion-folded piece of rock, showed them the dip 
angle and the foliation layers, and pointed out the thick, crumbly 
strata of dark mica that was right below the kyanite.  Fortunately the 
formation was very clearly foliated and it was easy to chisel sideways 
into the mica and pry off small plates of the kyanite-containing rock. 
I only took a few for myself, since I am trying to off-load specimens, 
not obtain them; the best piece I collected was a micro matrix specimen 
of perfectly transparent, terminated, aqua blue kyanite, perhaps 2mm 
long, and fantastic under the 10x loupe.  My new friends appreciated 
micros, but were happy to have their larger, thumbnail sized blue 
beauties in white matrix.  We each had a handful, which is all any of us 
wanted.  There are still plates of blue kyanite crystals there to be 
had; unfortunately, given the remoteness of the locality, they will 
probably weather out long before most of them are collected.

It is nice to get back to the joys of simple collecting.  After a number 
of years it is easy to become jaded.  However this family was excited by 
their find, and of course it is always great to see a youngster having 
fun and appreciating the blue-on-white crystals; and we all enjoyed the 
view from 6,000 ft. and a cloudless sky, with enough heat to melt the 
remaining pockets of snow (!) but not enough to be terribly hot.  It 
always pays around here to talk to everyone you meet; I found some nice 
samples I would never have known were there, and those folks found 
something they knew was there but weren't sure how to get.  I've 
collected some opaque and translucent white kyanite up to 5cm around 
here, but never the pale blue, and I like these much more despite their 
size.  And of course it was some faith in Lanny's directions that made 
me keep looking; if it had been any other guide book, I would have 
shaken my head pretty quickly and wished them luck.

If you want to see where we were, using TerraServer or GoogleEarth or 
TopoUSA or whatever, check out some UTM coordinates: datum NAD27 CONUS, 
grid 11T, Easting 0573872, Northing 5205958 .  It's nice to have 
specific grid coordinates, but this outcrop was really 0.8 miles from 
the turnoff!

Best,
Don