Hi, I'm Bob Jackson, a retired geologist. My company, GeologyAdventures.com, hosts collecting adventures at fun sites around the globe.
The first two photos are from Kirsten's 2007 visit to
Rock Candy Mountain, a crystal producing (fluorite, barite, & quartz) locality I own in BC ... or maybe it owns me! The Rock Candy episode of Cash & Treasures first aired in 2008. Kirsten liked the translucent quality of Rock Candy fluorite, and had several pieces cut into jewelry stones. It also cuts beautiful bookends and slabs.
You can join a dig at Rock Candy to find gem material like Kirsten did, or crystal specimens of these minerals (my passion). Our 2009 trip dates for Rock Candy Mountain, and lots more photos, are posted on
RockCandyMine.com
Bob with ametrine cluster, self-collected at the Anahi Mine in Bolivia.
My second adventure with Kirsten and Co. was at our Spruce Ridge quartz & pyrite locality in Washington State. That show was the debut of the 3rd season, first show of the
Kirsten Gum: Adventurer series. An adventure it was, starting with a scary helicopter landing, which gave me a few more gray hairs (just what I need!). The show made collecting at Spruce look scary as well, which it is not ... we entertain a hundred or so lucky collectors per year, have never had an injury which needed more than a Band-Aid ... we do dispense lots of those tho, crystals are sharp! For the backstory of entertaining Kirsten and her crew at Spruce, check out my
blog.
Photo (above left): Quartz, pyrite, ankerite and calcite specimen, fresh from a vug.
Photo (left): Kirsten drops in to
Spruce Ridge. This was on the second day of the shoot, and she's still pretty clean! The green cord by her feet is detonating cord, used to control the small explosive charges which help us open the crystal-laden vugs.
For the TV shoot, we took out the fences which usually protect our visitors (fence coiled in background).
Spruce is located in an old growth forest within a steep mountain valley full of waterfalls and wildlife. If you were standing where Kirsten is, and had a pair of binoculars, you might be able to see the soakers in
Goldmyer hot spring on the opposite side of the valley. The peak in the distance is in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area. Sound man Steve and Medical guy Rich in the background. When you live a life of danger, you bring a medical team along, just in case.
The dark spots in the photo are all vugs, crystal-lined cavities in the rock. We open an average of 20 vugs per week, so our visitors always have fresh material to collect. To see how to join us at Spruce, and for lots more photos, visit
www.geologyadventures.comPhoto (below left): Smoky quartz crystals, matrix plates, and geodes found at Mooralla, Victoria on our
adventure Down Under. The smokies are found in lithophysae, aka: thundereggs, in an area of deep clay soil derived from decomposed rhyolite.
Photo (below left): You need to dig a deep hole to find the eggy layer, so we start digging a month or so before our visitors arrive. Crystals are plentiful once you've dug 6 to 8 feet deep. Digging is pick and shovel work, with the dug clay being hauled to the surface by hand powered windlass.
We take visitors to this site in November/December, when the spring temperatures are pleasant there (Nov. 08 was unseasonably chilly in southern Australia, which is why I was wearing a sweatshirt in this photo). At home in Seattle, I would have been wearing my woolies in November ... another good reason for being in Australia in November!
Other materials we find in this part of the world are faceting quality olivine and chrome diopside, found in volcanic bombs; geodic brachiopod and pectin fossils lined with calcite crystals; and some of the world's best gypsum crystals. As with our other trips, we guarantee you will find what we're searching for.
Note layering in the clay: red clay near the surface does not contain crystals. Pink clay which starts about 3 feet down shows small lithophysae, mostly solid agate, without crystals. The darker clay bands down 6 feet or more contain the larger lithophysae which contain the smoky quartz.
Photo (below left): Red quartz crystals and topaz are what we find on our
Kalahari Adventure in the desert of South Africa. These occur in small pegmatites which are extremely abundant in a remote area of the Kalahari we have under lease in Bushmanland, Northern Cape Province.
The area produces many colors of quartz, all due to the presence of inclusions and phantoms. Scepters, doubly-terminated crystals, and other unusual forms are common.
Aside from the fascinating and ancient geology (the country rock in the Kalahari is 1.4 billion years old), this trip includes a wildlife photo safari to an area of huge, private wilderness preserves adjacent to Kruger National Park. The animals roam free, and unconcerned by the presence of our open-topped jeeps. But they are wild, and wild things happen right in front of our eyes ... we time our trips to be there for mating season of the big cats ... when lions are at their most active. Hearing a male lion roar 20 feet from our jeep can set every one of my gray hairs on end!
I hope you can join us at one of the fun places we play.
Photo (left): Female leopard we saw on our last S. Africa trip. She's calling her cub to a fresh kill she's made, hidden in brush nearby.
