Post by elementary on Jul 2, 2012 17:51:01 GMT -5
Went out with a friend last Tuesday to Kramer Junction.
This place has been hunted for 50 years or more but you can still dig and find things.
We were hunting a hole that gave us some purple agate a few years ago.
We first went to the old Kee Kay claim site to catch our bearings. The whole hill and surrounding scrub-covered ground is littered with thousands of pounds of agate - palm, moss, plume, sagenite is what you want to find. Most is garbage.
My friend Ron and I wandered over the agate littered terrain and climbed the white ash-colored hill. We kicked about the patina covered rocks while side-stepping the numerous pits. (Photos pending for this).
I roamed across the pock-marked landscape and came across a hole that was relatively recent. It had gone down to the layer of opalite that sits about 3 feet down. A green mass of the opalite was protruding from the side of the digging that showed some neat moss:
I started digging which caught Ron's eye. I pointed to another mass of caliche covered orange material and Ron set to work on the other side of the ditch. The chips and small pieces that came out first heightened our interest:
After pulling out the first piece, I came across the backside. I pried two more pieces out that have promise:
One a green opalite with orange stingers:
And another the backside of the first piece:
A closer look at the interesting looking window in the middle:
There are many pits here, and the opalite can be green (as here) or orange, or, as you can see, cranberry in hue:
Here's my haul:
After this I followed my memory to where the purple agate hides. We've only found it in one hole in this entire area. It makes me wonder what else hides out here.
The hitch is that the purple only exists on the outside of the seam. I've been here three times, and I pulled out the thickest pieces of all trips this time. I'm wondering if the purple gets better deeper down.
Anyway, Ron and I redug the pit, and soon we had pulled out enough for the day. The temperature was moving up to 90 and we still had a visit to Diamond Pacific in Barstow planned.
Here's the haul and some photos:
You can see the remnants of rootlets running through some of the photos.
Now we gotta slab and see how much purple is workable.
Thanks for looking...
Lowell
This place has been hunted for 50 years or more but you can still dig and find things.
We were hunting a hole that gave us some purple agate a few years ago.
We first went to the old Kee Kay claim site to catch our bearings. The whole hill and surrounding scrub-covered ground is littered with thousands of pounds of agate - palm, moss, plume, sagenite is what you want to find. Most is garbage.
My friend Ron and I wandered over the agate littered terrain and climbed the white ash-colored hill. We kicked about the patina covered rocks while side-stepping the numerous pits. (Photos pending for this).
I roamed across the pock-marked landscape and came across a hole that was relatively recent. It had gone down to the layer of opalite that sits about 3 feet down. A green mass of the opalite was protruding from the side of the digging that showed some neat moss:
I started digging which caught Ron's eye. I pointed to another mass of caliche covered orange material and Ron set to work on the other side of the ditch. The chips and small pieces that came out first heightened our interest:
After pulling out the first piece, I came across the backside. I pried two more pieces out that have promise:
One a green opalite with orange stingers:
And another the backside of the first piece:
A closer look at the interesting looking window in the middle:
There are many pits here, and the opalite can be green (as here) or orange, or, as you can see, cranberry in hue:
Here's my haul:
After this I followed my memory to where the purple agate hides. We've only found it in one hole in this entire area. It makes me wonder what else hides out here.
The hitch is that the purple only exists on the outside of the seam. I've been here three times, and I pulled out the thickest pieces of all trips this time. I'm wondering if the purple gets better deeper down.
Anyway, Ron and I redug the pit, and soon we had pulled out enough for the day. The temperature was moving up to 90 and we still had a visit to Diamond Pacific in Barstow planned.
Here's the haul and some photos:
You can see the remnants of rootlets running through some of the photos.
Now we gotta slab and see how much purple is workable.
Thanks for looking...
Lowell