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[chris]

Forget Tucson, München, Sainte-Marie or the East Cost Show... The Chamonix's mineral show hosted "only" 55 dealers this year, some being native mountain guides of the valley. It was organized by the mineralogical club of the valley.

While climbers were on their way on this beautiful saturday morning to the top of Europe, my cousin Patrick and I have decided to discover what lays beneath it deep inside granite rock. Because the Chamonix's valley stands besides Switzerland for some of the most desirable smokeys & pink fluorites from the Alps...

At 9:00 AM sharp we get into a still quiet show. the rush hours will be for later. An opportunity to get permissions from dealers to take some pictures of the minerals displayed. Even if the show hosts dealers offering worldwide specimens, I'll only focus on smokeys & fluorites from the area.

This report is splited in two parts : one about the show itself and another one focusing on the exhibition case of the president of the mineralogical club of Chamonix, M. Bavuz, who exhibited some of his own minerals of the valley.

PART I, the Show :

Despite the weather conditions, the recollection is under way. Some cristalliers even had specimens from 2008 pockets mixed with pieces from the previous years. In the search for crystals, global warming might be a good news. With the thawn of the lower part of the glaciers, some hope to discover new pockets or ease the recollection of the fragile crystals prisoners of hard ice. Time will tell us if they were right.

The first feature of the area is the smokey quartz whose shapes,sizes and colors amaze both experienced collectors and one day visitors as well. But wait a minute. Why smokeys of the area have such a color range, some of them even being colorless ? The natural radioactivity of the granite matrix should turn all of them black. More striking as higher in altitude you go as darker the quartz is, turning to Morion around 4000 m.

Back to school. To create smokey we need 3 conditions :
- A color center in the crystal due to Aluminum + Lithium substitutions of Silicone.
- An activation by a matrix bearing radioactive elements (Uranium, thorium, potassium 40) .
- A temperature below 200°C to avoid the color's destruction and even lower (50-100°C) to ensure a conservation over a long period of time.

As low altitude granite ranges of the area (below 2400 m) took more than 2 millions of years to have their temperature drop below 200°C, the natural radioactivity of the matrix has had less effects on the coloration of low altitude quartz than from quartz of high altitude.

My thoughts about the show : Even if I have had the impression there were less"top" specimens than the previous years, the prices for good quality ones seemed to be less expensive, allowing more collectors like me to get interesting specimens without spending too much. A very subjective point of view however as you still needed to spend several hundreds of euros to get one. Unfortunately, as usual, pink fluorite specimens remained quite expensive, a good specimen still worthing several thousands euros...

[chris]

[chris]

Part II : M. Bavuz's exhition case

Besides the show, the mineralogical club organizes exhibition cases with different thematics. This year the guests were the fluorite from le Burg, Tarn, France & the mineralogy of the former coal mine of La Mûre, Isère, France. And as usual minerals from the Mont-Blanc's range.

This year, M. Bavuz, the president of the club had the good idea of exhibiting quartz specimens, whose shapes or combinations turned up to be underrepresented at the show itself, allowing the visitors to get a complete overview of this mineral for the valley.

[chris]

Important information : You are a fluorite lover. You'll be around Chamonix this summer ? Don't miss the mineral museum (espace Terray) which exhibits some of the finest fluorite specimens found in the area during the previous decades. More information on:
https://www.chamonix-montblanc.fr/animationculture/site_museecristaux/informations.html (in French)
(link normalized by Jordi)

Acknowledgments : To Mme & M. Charlet, Ghilini, Dufrêne, Eva, Feray, cristalliers, and to M. Bavuz, president of the mineralogical club of Chamonix, for the permission of taking pictures of their specimens and answering my numerous questions. Thanks also to my cousin Patrick for reviewing and commenting this article.

References : information about the coloration of smokey quartz from the Mont-Blanc's Range from Le Règne Minéral special issue “Minéralogie du massif du Mont Blanc ” #5 - 1999 & « cristal de roche" published by the geology museum of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Christophe.

[Jordi Fabre]

Great post Chris! Thanks to share it with us.

Jordi

[Gail]

I honeymooned in Chamonix and fell in love with it there, even the scary ride to the top of Mt. Blanc!
We rode our tandem bicycle across France along the Tour de France race course before the racers were on the roads later in the morniings. We would follow the route each day, but we managed to side track and visit Chamonix for a couple of days and we fell in love with the beautiful town.
Thank you for a wonderful visual treat and great mineral photos Chris.
And for a reminder of my wonderful honeymoon with Jim.

[chris]

You're welcomed Gail, but don't tell me you folks even climbed Mont Blanc with your tandem ;-) .

Christophe

[Gail]

Oh thank goodness, NO. We did, however, go up the Alpe d'Huez !!! Now THAT was tough.
We started in Grenoble, so it was a climb the whole way there and then to take on those switchbacks, ouch.
Coming back was much faster and scarier, we were really going fast and we were glad we added a drum brake on the rear wheel.

Again, thank you for your lovely photos. Chamonix will always remain magical....

[Tracy]

Thanks Chris for sharing your report and photos with us. It is great to be able to view treasures and learn about minerals and about other beautiful parts of the world. I am particularly fond of gwindels too... :-)

- Tracy