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

[Tim Fisher]

That's the Freezeout Ridge locality. I had been there many moons ago 
(yes from ed. 1 of Gem & Minerals Collectors'  Guide to Idaho). Some 
of the best huckleberry picking within a day trip of Moscow will be 
back up the road in the saddle in a couple months. The garnets are 
0.33 mi. S of the kyanite on the W side of the road. I went to the 
end of the road at Castle Rock and didn't do any better. The old camp 
past the lookout is a killer place to stay the night.

At 08:33 PM 7/12/2007, you wrote:
>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
>

Tim Fisher
Ore-ROCK-On!
Email address at http://OreRockOn.com