Collecting Extremes; Petersen Mountain
Washoe County, Nevada

By John Cornish
September 3, 2006
(cornish@tfon.com)

Page 2
 

Chapter 2

The week that followed was quite busy. We had much to accomplish prior to jumping into our actual mining routine, foremost amongst these duties was establishing and setting up camp. When we finally did get the chance, the wind was blowing ferociously. The tent proved to be an especially troublesome bother whipping about in the gusting winds. Everything that wasn't held down soon found itself flying and right quick we learned this lesson. Still even while doing our best, we made several trips into the bushes below camp retrieving this and that before things were finally up to snuff and we'd made ourselves a home. Truth to tell, this was exhausting work and I know I speak for both of us when I say that it was with a great deal of relief and satisfaction that when completed we sat down and just enjoyed the view for a bit.

And what a view it was. Inspiring, lyrical, enchanting, it was all these things and more. The slopes surrounding us were covered in thick sage, clumps of sparse grass and the occasional flowering plant, though for these, the majority were on the other side of the mountain where the weather hardest hits. Our side was drier by comparison. There were stunted trees here and there hugging the slopes and everywhere about was hard resistant rock. In fact, before us, rising like a gray fist held against the sky, a wonderful spire of weathering granite thrusts. It's face was adorned in a mottled coverage of lichens, some bright green while others were duller, deader colored. And it was here, and against the ridge due east of us, that the eagles perched.

They were majestic creatures those eagles. They circled and rose above and around us riding invisible air currents rising blast-like from the rocky slopes. Their cries were constant companions and eagerly we sought them out, brown against the gray if perched and black against a triumphant blue sky if a' wing. They had a nest, though we hadn't noticed it at first, that hugged a high sheer face of the ridge and it was here that we enjoyed some of our most awesome wildlife moments as we watched the parent eagles swooping into a raucous choir erupting from the upturned squawking mouths of the two baby eaglets that waited therein. They were constantly a' howl those little guys, they made it crystal clear they were hungry and that all would definitely not be enough. Ma and Pa were kept very busy as you can likely imagine!

During the many weeks we were on the mountain, these little ones learned to fly and it was awesome watching the sky fill with their soaring wheeling dance. They were among our most cherished neighbors. As a thought, there was one evening when Scott and I were hanging around camp when we saw a truly neat thing, one of the parent eagles was coming in from the west and heading east to the nest. At about the halfway point between the nest and our camp, the eagle lost a snake it had clutched in its talons and together, we all watched its twisting squirming fall. Not to be denied, the eagle impressively wheeled about and plunged downward to reclutch its prey in mid air before again winging towards the nest and the waiting babes. Immediately after, Scott and I both looked at each other as if to say, you saw that too, please say you actually saw that and that I've not gone all blurry from the heat!

We experienced another of these wildlife moments when we were making camp and setting up the tent, I had the need of several large rocks to hold the guideline stakes in place and while looking, I started running into scorpions! They ranged in size from about one half inch up to about three inches in length and while I hadn't suspected it, they were literally all about us! Each rock seemingly had one under it and hey, if things get too boring in camp, we can always dig with the backhoe and see how many we can scrape down into our working pit. Ah, that ol' John, I bet you're thinking he must be exaggerating... nope, in fact, while working a pocket one day and sitting in the muck, when I rose, I was stunned to see I'd actually been sitting on a nice plump fat bugger... uggh!

But wait, still there's more! We weren't alone on the hill, we had a neighbor. Mark is his name and Mark lives on the California side of the mountain and works a claim there in the hard rock. He lives in a tent with his two companions, two snow white hybrid wolf-dogs. Those dogs were big and really cool looking too and it was obvious what they were, hybrids, it was something in their eyes. Anyway, these two, brothers from the same litter, they were a real pain. We'd not been on the mountain a day before we'd suffered a raid from these curs. They came in while we were working in the pit and worked our camp over dragging full, heavy ice chests out from under cover (you should have seen the scars their teeth carved into the ice chests!) and devoured all of our meat. They raided us several times, though none worse then that first day. Want some tension on the hill, this will do it!

And finally, creepy, crawly things not for you, then you may want to avoid this passage all together because I'll tell you the truth, things got down right disgusting next. It was a beautiful morning and we woke expecting a wonderful day, but when we went outside, we found the ground swarming with crawling two to three inch insects; Mormon Crickets. As if wrecking the truck, the howling wind and the dog raids weren't enough (I've not yet even had the chance to discuss the intense sun and the temperatures we'd be working in) it seems we're now stuck smack dab in the migration route of these little horrors. Oh joy, I bet you wish you were here too!

Chapter 3

Over the course of the next week, the operation became 100% functional. We'd brought in our supplies, those for us personally, for the equipment, and those required by MSHA. And from there, we waited. We had inspections scheduled for both MSHA and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and until those inspections had occurred, we were running at half speed doing reclamation mining. Initially, this kept us from working the claim as we'd have liked, but it would be in our best interest to have our operation completely compliant with both agencies.

Our MSHA inspection came first and we all walked through the claim together. I found this an incredibly interesting experience and took mental note of the obvious and not so obvious concerns and or comments raised by the MSHA field man. This was a courtesy inspection and once concluded, we were off and flying, at least in regards to them. Still to come however was the BLM inspection. This occurred the next day following the MSHA inspection and had an entirely different feel to it. When that was concluded, Jon was set into action responding to their concerns, primarily in regard to a new bond being established requiring payment prior to the commencement of our actual mining operations. If it's not something, it's something else and just that quick, two days were lost. When next Jon was on the hill, he'd jumped through all the flaming hoops and it was time to have some fun and dig some crystals!

As mentioned, up to this time we'd been primarily focusing on reclaiming older, no longer productive areas of the claim, contouring, etc. This waste material became our first areas of production. Scott had purchased a pair of monster hoes and with these gargantuan spades, we worked the fresh tailings Jon dumped. We managed a bit of this and that and even an incredible thing or two. While much of the quartz recovered in this fashion was pretty dinged up, it was still plenty acceptable for faceting rough or as kids rock, but there were other pieces too, those fine, fine specimens that occasionally rolled out, bouncing among the rocks tumbling down the slope to land miraculously, perfectly at your feet. As unbelievable as it sounds, that kind of luck, we had it. We found scepters here and smokys there, busted radiant shards of purple amethyst and bunged and battered junk and then one day, one terrific day, I found treasure while working over the piles. I'd just come up the tailing pile, raking as I went and came up over the edge and started walking about checking the landing when I found a great amethyst scepter lying right in the road where it had fallen. How cool is that! We'd begun producing, not just crystals, but crystals of substance!

With the flats beginning to accumulate, Scott and I began our cleaning and sorting routine back at camp. We had a small table Jon had brought up which we used as a washing and sorting platform. I took raw crystals straight from the flats and submersed them in water attempting to loosen the clinging sediments or residual mica adhering to their surfaces. With this done and after a bit, I worked each piece with a tooth brush in fresh water and then set them out cleaned as an "A", "B", or a "C" quality specimen. That's when Scott took over, he graded. Additional to the categories I've already mentioned, Scott also separated out smoky cutting rough and amethysts. It was a good system and not wanting to fall behind and get bogged down, we worked hard trying to stay ahead of our production.

An hour on and an hour off, or more accurately, an hour in camp working followed by an hour in the pit working. We rotated and this proved another great system. When we first started working in the pit, both Scott and I would work together, this was often more presence then was needed, and here's the corker, it was blast furnace hot outside! While we were on the mountain, the temperatures soared first from the high 80's to the 90's to a final trip high of 104 degrees! It was baking, intensely physical work supporting that backhoe in the pit and a person (I) needed a break to stay on top of his game. In the backhoe Jon was fine, it was an air conditioned machine, but outside it was brutal and depending where a person had to stand or where the wind was blowing (and it was always blowing!), a person could be additionally assaulted by the heat coming off the engine of the backhoe too; that's when we really cooked! And that's why it became so important for us to rotate out, to go back to camp, rehydrate, eat some food and then work with the crystals. It was a good system and we all benefited by our working with it.

And from there, we mined. Scott found the first really killer amethyst and set the pace for our first really successful day of collecting. His crystal was a beauty too, pure purple excitement, and it inspired all of us to produce the next real killer specimens. As we worked through the day, our further production was less inspiring and Jon finally shut the machine down after a solid eight hours digging after he'd exposed a massive appearing quartz vein while working back an area towards the central part of the pit. It didn't look like much, just shattered white quartz in a patch about a foot across. Both Scott and Jon poked at it and found a couple small less-than wannabe smokys and after a bit, both had called it quits. This had occurred while I was raking another area and I was the last guy to get a chance at that big blob of white. I scraped back the muck and whittled and pried and peeled back more of the wall to expose more quartz and boom, a big black three by three inch smoky face appeared among the white broken shards! Ya! It's uncanny how inspiring a thing like this can be!

I peeled back more of the wall and then worked open the vein some more and soon another smoky crystal face appeared and then another. That big 'ol smoky when it finally came out weighed about two and a half pounds and was only just a wee bit tinted by amethyst. With treasure in hand, we took a break and headed back to camp. Soon thereafter Jon split for home (what a luxury!) while Scott and I settled in for dinner. With that out of the way, and who could eat any way, knowing there was a pocket wide open up in the pit just waiting... By the time I'd finished digging, it was 12:15 a.m. and I had about fifty crystals resting in the flats, the largest smoky was about an inch and a half across and eight inch's long. What a glorious evening. The stars twinkled, reflecting off of the crystals I'm sure.


Report continued . . . . . . .

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