I was off on Monday for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, so I decided to
head out to the Redmond Prospect in the Fines Creek area of Haywood County. This is one of the
sites listed in my book. Even though this collecting locality is only about 30 miles from our
house, I hadn't been there for quite some time. Collectable minerals at the Redmond include
cerussite, azurite, malachite, galena and pyromorphite. Unlike the other minerals that are best
collected from inside the adit, pyromorphite can be found by breaking milky quartz rocks on the
forested slopes just above the mine. Since Chrissy had to work and she doesn't like me going
inside the adit by myself, it was just me and Opal in the forest that day.
The several mile long dirt/gravel forest road leading to the prospect was
very sloppy with thick red mud. The area received a bit of snow in preceding couple days that left
behind a slippery mess upon its melting. Had it not been for 4-wheel drive and decent tires, no
way would I have been able to make the last couple miles.
Fines Creek, just off I-40
Collecting area
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It is a good thing that the pyromorphite collecting area is on a southeastward-
facing slope so that the snow had melted on the forest floor. I spent several
hours hiking up, down and around about an approximate 2-acre area busting up every white quartz
float rock that I came across. I figure that you have to bust open about 100 rocks before you finally find one that contains
pyromorphite - you micro guys would have been proud of me! Since busting up rocks doesn't exactly
make for the most exciting tale, I'll simply finish up this report by presenting the following
pictures showing some of my day's finds.
Click on each specimen picture to enlarge
Click on each specimen picture to enlarge
By the way, there are pictures of some of the other minerals to be found at
the Redmond Prospect on the Haywood County page of McRocks.com.
CLICK THE LITTLE MINER TO RETURN TO THE FIELD TRIP PAGE
