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

[Lanny]

Wow! Fabulous report Don! But then I'm prejudiced about the subject.

I'm glad the book's instructions worked for you and your new friends. 
I've been amused by the messages about the quality of the data in some 
of the field guides. The information in those I wrote was always taken 
from firsthand experience. Some people don't like the maps, but I've 
always found the simple road maps, hand drawn, copied or otherwise 
derived as easy to follow when I've used other people's guides, so 
stayed simple with mine. Also, at the time, it was the easy way of 
doing it.

I must confess a problem though with the Freezeout location you were so 
successful at in following my guidebook directions. Right after I 
published the first edition of Vol. 1 of the Idaho guide (I don't know 
if you have a later edition of Vol. 1, or the combined, newer guide 
with both volumes 1 & 2), a friend contacted me that he could not find 
the kyanite location. I checked my notes against what I put in the book 
and all was fine (no transcribing error). The next time I was up in 
that area I checked the mileage and discovered that somehow, I had made 
a significant error in recording that 0.8 mile distance. Thus, some 
people are running around out there complaining about how poor the 
guidebooks are and there is nothing to find on the road to Freezeout, 
all because of an error by the well-intentioned author!

Speaking of bad guidebooks: how about this: I was discussing some 
locations with the author of one of the Montana guidebooks about the 
reported forsterite at Lemhi Pass between Idaho and Montana (where 
Lewis & Clark crossed over into Idaho). His guidebook states that the 
forsterite is not gem quality, but there is a lot of it and the 
crystals are nice. I told him that I had looked for the material, and 
although I didn't spend a lot of time, I felt I should have seen at 
least some indication of the crystals considering "there is quite a lot 
of it" there. He simply stated that he had looked for it too and never 
found any. Many of the locations in his book are like that: apparently 
just stories, reports and rumors, what someone told him.

Have a good summer,

Lanny (author of Northwest guidebooks)




On Jul 12, 2007, at 8:33 PM, DonH 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
>
>
>
> -- 
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