SteveHolmes
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since July 2009
Posts: 1,900
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Post by SteveHolmes on Jun 11, 2009 19:01:03 GMT -5
Sheesh I'm GLAD I opened this thread up! What a bunch of awesome specimens. I would have loved to have gone to some of the shows back in the day when alot of this material was somewhat available. That Bloody Basin Plume looks freaking awesome and so full of plumes. I hope you keep finding all your goodies Mel and posting them! Steve
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Post by Michael John on Jun 13, 2009 13:59:50 GMT -5
MJ: Checked my map and we were about 4 1/2 miles north of Leach dry Lake and it did look almost exactly like your pictures of sagenite canyon (though I gotta say lots of that area looks pretty much alike). I think I remember the wash with the plume as being a wash or two to the northeast of the sagenite which would probably put it in the park now....Mel Yup, Sagenite Canyon is about 4.5 miles north of the leach lake, and about a mile inside the DV border. It was part of DV's most recent expansion, which was at least partially influenced by the native Americans. However, Sagenite Canyon is one of the few places where I can honestly say that it was a good idea to close it off. Rockhounds really made a mess of the place. Maybe if it's left to nature for a few hundred years, man's scars will be smoothed-out, and erosion will uncover gemstones for future generations. Thanks for looking into it a little further, Mel!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Jun 14, 2009 14:22:10 GMT -5
MJ, Yep, as I recall, the site was pretty much a mess even way back in the 70's. Another place that was mega trashed was the Paisley Plume , nodule and black plume beds down in the Palo Verdes's. Man that place was so dug and trenched that there was not a scrap of material left around and it looked bombed out. Hard to even know where to look as you'd usually be in someone else,s tailings....Mel
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Post by Michael John on Jun 14, 2009 15:00:29 GMT -5
Yeah, Sagenite Canyon broke my heart. Completely aside from gemstone, it's SUCH a beautiful place, and the destruction that the hounds have done is a tragedy. The thing is, some hounding locations have been destroyed by one or a few selfish, irresposible people, but Sagenite Canyon was destroyed by a cumulative effort, over many many decades. If O-w-l-h-o-l-e Springs became "known" again all of a sudden, the same thing could happen there, but much more quickly. There are no "clues" left behind that I've been there, and I'll keep it that way, but I definately don't trust some others to do the same. So far, I've seen no signs that anyone else is hounding the area currently, and I know the area well enough to be able tell that. AFAIK, I'm the only one who goes there on a regular basis and cares about it (aside from my burro friends).
Are some areas at the north and south end of the Cady Mountains like that? Obviously badly scarred by hounds? I know there are parts of the Calicos that have been.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Jun 14, 2009 18:23:57 GMT -5
MJ: Actually, my experience with the Cady's ( last visit to the north end maybe 2 years ago) is there had really not been much digging done in the areas I've gone to. In the Fluorite mine plume beds there have been a few veins dug chisel deep and at least one plume nodule location in a wash has been surface dug but most the collecting has just been surface collecting on ridgetops and in deep canyons and washes. Lots of broke up moss etc on the surface in the north Cadys. ( a tumblers dream as you could pick up a five gallon bucket of fine moss in a few minutes in lots of areas) but the hiking can be long and difficult and the four wheel drive in is about 15 miles each way and can be rough. In the south Cady's more of the stuff is near the road so collecting is more sparse but I did find a fantastic site that was real rich last year and made some posts here about it. That material was within a few yards of a good dirt road. In the north Cady's, just a good hike from where we park would yield outrageous material. Tough to pack out much though as it's all sheep trails out there. This is an area of big flash floods too so sometimes collecting can get much much better from one year to the next. I found a 98# boulder of fine moss and plume sitting right on top the ground after one such storm and that same trip my buddy found a fantastic ( best Ive seen) vein section of multicolored plume resembling purple graveyard plume that probably weighed 20# .......Mel
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Post by Michael John on Jun 14, 2009 19:13:25 GMT -5
Cool! From what I've read, they don't intend to close-off the Cady area to hounding. In fact, while so much other acreage in southern Cali is in constant peril of being closed, their main reason for NOT turning the Cadys into wilderness is rockhounding. LOL they'd really have their hands full, trying keep hounds out of that massive area.
I assume that the fairly frequent flash floods have something to do with erasing man's mess in the area too, sorta like Mom Nature's housekeeping.
BTW, I read about an area somewhere near Afton Canyon, but north of the I15, called The Gem Beds. Do you know where that's at?
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Jun 14, 2009 22:01:39 GMT -5
MJ: Yep, the flash floods are pretty fair at erasing or rendering roads unnavigable too! Really common in th Cadys to return to an area a year later and not even find your road. Only stuff I've heard of north of the 15 in that area was in the area north of Cronese sp? Dry Lake at Basin Road. I've never had much luck up that way though and it's real easy to get your truck stuck out there. Lots of soft spots. I have heard of Gem Canyon but that's south of the 15 and south of Afton campground at the railroad bridge. Back in there somewhere is the place we call the Lost Jim Mine too. A guy in the Porterville club named Jim found a huge many foot thick ledge of flaming red moss/plume and brought out some samples and then when we went back on a fieldtrip we couldn't find it. He was very embarassed and we literally hiked miles trying to find the hanging canyon he found the vein in. In his defense though, the north Cady's area maze of dead end dry gorges and hanging canyons. I never have found the canyon I found a massive nodule of the finest moss I've ever collected in and it was like a few hundred yards from camp *L*.....Mel
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rockwizz
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since May 2007
Posts: 971
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Post by rockwizz on Jun 18, 2009 0:09:28 GMT -5
Mel...those are amazing. Hope you do something with them.
Ozzy
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aunuts
fully equipped rock polisher
Some days are gold, some are rocks. Either is cool.
Member since March 2006
Posts: 1,110
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Post by aunuts on Jun 20, 2009 18:30:58 GMT -5
Gorgeous stuff, but you already know that.
I'm finding more & more people who go to Quartzsite. We'll be there all winter, so please let us know when you're in town. Would like to meet all of you. lol. If there are a bunch of us there at the same time, maybe we could all get together for pizza or BBQ or something. Hope to meet a bunch of you there. :-)
Jo
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deedolce
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since October 2006
Posts: 1,828
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Post by deedolce on Jun 26, 2009 9:45:17 GMT -5
Beautiful, Mel, especially that last one!! When I was on the Burro Creek field trip back when with Jamie and Rodney, they used their ATV's, (as did Snowdog) and my bf is talking about one. Can you use those in places like Cady to rockhound? Or other places in CA? I'm so clueless. It was perfect for the rockhounding in AZ, but CA just seems like a different kettle of fish to me...
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on Jun 26, 2009 11:34:48 GMT -5
Dee: ATV access in the Cady's is supposedly regulated by BLM rules. Only allowed on marked routes etc. Think there's something in the rules about 100 feet from marked route too. That being said, in 40 years out there, I never ran into a single BLM ranger so I really don't know how much it's patrolled. You might check with their local office for the rules because the area is a maze of dirt and sand roads and many the rockhounds use are probably technically illegal. In most the good areas, the best material is up canyons which are not drivable anyway but it's cool if you can at least get close enough for you not to have to haul your rocks a long distance. It's very rough country. Another area which is very accessible by ATV is the gorge of the Mojave river. There is actually an ATV area at Basin road off Hwy 15 and a good gravel dirt road parallels the RR tracks clear through the canyon going west to the Afton Canyon Campground. Almost every exposed alluvial fan and gravel bar along the river yields good material ( Some is spectacular!) and you can get real close by fourby or ATV. If you can hit it right after a flash flood, you'll pee your pants at what you'll find. I've seen agates so big I couldn't even dig them from the ground after a flood and have carried out nodules and vein hunks as big as almost a hundred pounds. Any of the canyons on the south side of the tracks have the potential for good finds and there are good campsites at the Afton campground and across the RR track crossing at the end of Basin Road. When heading for the tracks on Basin take the left fork that is the sandier looking road going to the ATV area, not the right well graveled fork that goes up to a mine. The hills around the mine are not real good for quartz gems. I've hiked most of them. Best quartz gems are in the canyon gravels and off in the hills south of the RR tracks. IMHO, the Cady's are still some of the absolutely best hounding in the west....Mel
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redrummd
starting to shine!
Member since July 2009
Posts: 38
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Post by redrummd on Jul 15, 2009 1:14:31 GMT -5
sabre52 - You have some vey nice stone. If you ever want to do a bater trade for custom knife work contact me and we could see about doing one....
Michael S. Hoover
Art in Stone
redrummdknives.bldemakers.com
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