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McRocks "The
Gathering"
July 4th - 9th, 2006
Spruce Pine, NC
Little Pine Garnet
Mine
July 6th, 2006
The following morning we
got an early start after breakfast and headed for the planned dig of the
day at the Little Pine Garnet Mine. Here we met up with Bruce Skubon and
his sister, Beth Selig, Guri Zeigerman and his Dad, Alex, Don Henderson,
Beverly Sapp, Ann Bair, Mike Streeter, and the Jeff-a-dillo himself, Jeff
Deere.
Regina Richards standing
in the main adit.
Mike, of course,
immediately headed for the main adit after showing those new to Little
Pine where to find the best garnets digging in the spoil piles. He, along
with Jeff, Bruce, and Don set up shop in the mine and went to work in
short order. They disappeared for several hours and emerged, apparently
triumphant, with grubby smiles galore. To find out why, see Mike's trip
report at: Mike's
Little Pine Report. Let's just say that at Little Pine, Size DOES
matter!
Mike, Jeff and Don
return from the mine smiling.
Mike and the others
joined the rest of the group at the spoil piles to dig big holes in the
bank in search of chlorite replaced almandine garnets. There were a lot of
good garnet specimens recovered from the digs, as always. It seems the
Little Pine will never cease to share it's bounty with the likes of us
rock-heads.
Looks like Jeff is
contemplating where to start.
There is a reason why Jeff
has the nickname "Jeff-a-dillo" as I soon found out. While
digging a rather large hole into the spoils, Jeff concentrated his efforts
on a particular spot which he seemed to want to crawl into head-first.
This was mostly due to Mike sitting on the bank above him razzing
insistently....
Of course, this
does have it's downside at times. The loose soil has a tendency to sluff
off above unsuspecting diggers, especially about the time a good specimen
comes to light! Just about the time Jeff spotted a good matrix piece, the
bank began to give way. He wasn't quite quick enough to get completely out
of the hole before the small landslide overtook him.
As you can see from
this series of pictures, Jeff's glory hole is no more! I'll save him any
further embarrassment... NOT! Don had to help dig him out of his minor
predicament...
And Mike's
reaction?
"I told you
to hurry up!"
Nothing doing, it
wasn't long before Mike was in the hole to rescue the garnet in matrix
specimen from the slump. In short order he had cleared the hole and soon
recovered the specimen, which turned out to be a little smaller that first
thought... Only a 2" garnet, but still a nice matrix specimen.
Everyone had success at
finding garnet specimens, both loose and matrix pieces. The following
photos can tell their own stories.
Left: Bruce Skubon,
Beth Sileg. Right: Guri and Alex Zeigerman
Regina Richards
Left:
"Hollywood" Ann Bair. Right: Beverly Sapp
Left: Guriel Zeigerman.
Right: Bruce Skubon
Left: Don Henderson,
Jeff Deere. Right: Mike Streeter
RAY
MINE JULY 7th, 2006
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