FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Philip Simmons]

Beautiful brownies, Pierre!

[Reinhardt van Vuuren]

Missing this thread. Can't wait to join in the fun :D

[Pierre Joubert]

[Pierre Joubert]

Yesterday (Saturday) I took a drive to the upper Witte River valley (not to be confused with the Wit-Els River which is about 6 km from our home). The Witte River runs down the stunningly beautiful, and well-known Bainskloof (gorge). To reach the upper Witte River valley, I drove the 30 km to the Bainskloof pass and followed the twisting/winding road through the gorge to where the road starts the descent to the valley below. At this point, I parked the car just off the road and started my hike up a 4 x 4 track (used only by foresters and farmers managing a water 'divider'. On my way up, I encountered a monument to a young man that fell to his death there 5 years ago, and further up another monument to a disaster, which happened in the 1800's, in which a number of young people drowned in a flash flood. These where a reminder that nature also has its dangers. I have walked many, many km in the mountains, and am keenly aware of this, but also very grateful for God's protection.

My walk had 3 purposes: looking for crystals, catching trout and taking pictures. The weather report said that there would be a few clouds, no rain (SA weather reports are very unreliable). Not long into my walk, the clouds gathered and it started raining.
Fortunately it was not too cold and I had a warm jacket; also, the rain was intermittent.

[Pierre Joubert]

'Far away from the maddening crowd', that is my cocaine :-) I continue where I left off: As this was the first time that I had ever visited this part of the vast gorge, I walked off the beaten hiking track for most of my way up. I calculated roughly that I had walked about 15 km. The Western Cape has had 17000 field fires this year!
https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/firefighters-battle-17-000-fires-in-the-western-cape-since-december-20170313
(link normalized by FMF)
As you can see from some pictures, a lot of mountain areas are burnt. As soon as the winter rains begin, these areas will be green with lots of flowers. There is already one type of flower that has beaten the other species to it and can be seen by their thousands. The amazing thing of this flower, is that it has no leaves, only a stem and flowers.

I looked out for quartz deposits, but even though I found a number of (low quality) ones, I only found a few insignificant, small crystals.

The fishing was not much better either, and I only caught one nice sized brown trout.

Life is not just about crystals and trout and I enjoyed the remote quietness and beautiful scenery very much. Here are a few more photos of my trip.

[Philippe Durand]

Thank you for these photos.
Your country seems to have a lot of nice scenery places.

Can we say that the climate is mediterannean ? (with fires)
Reviewing some pictures, if the vegetation is different, it reminds me of the "bush" south of France, like here. But in South Africa granitic rocks replacing limestone.

[Pierre Joubert]

[Pierre Joubert]

On Sunday we took a drive out towards the mountains, which had a good deposit of snow on them, and took my in-laws along.
Here is my mother-in-law, a week before her 89th birthday. She had so wanted to look for crystals again, but after her double, above-knee amputation ten months ago, thought it was an impossible dream. We drove to where I had seen a small quartz outcrop previously, then maneuvered her in her wheelchair until we got to a spot where a few small crystals were lying around. We lifted her out of her wheelchair and put her onto a groundsheet and towel, where she was able to pick up and also scratch around for crystals with a little stick. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and so did we, just seeing her joy! Her motto is: "Accept your circumstances, and with God's help, make the most of it, and enjoy life while you still have it." My father-in-law (almost 93) also enjoyed the outing with us, but after a few minutes outside, decided that it was more cosy inside the car, where he then sat and just enjoyed the surroundings.

[Pierre Joubert]

A few more pictures.

[Heimo Hellwig]

Hello Pierre,

I think the expression on your mother-in-law's face, holding those quartz specimens, says it all. She will remember this for a long time to come. Regards to Riana.

[Reinhardt van Vuuren]

Wow that is precious, I had the joy of meeting the two of them but never took your mother in law for a rockhound like the two of us, that is awesome!

I'm so glad to see that the two of you enjoy them while they are still around, so many elderly people just get abandoned by their kids and you two are setting a striking example of how it should be, inspirational!

Keep warm folks.

[Pierre Joubert]

[Bob Harman]

PIERRE, A great series of pictures from your area of the world!

I especially liked the ones of people coming out to see the snow. It brings to mind a funny story from my family.
My daughter and her family live in Atlanta Georgia. In recent years, that area has only experienced snow on rare occasions. It is a treat for the kids as the younger ones may have never seen or played in real snow and the older ones know they will have a school day called off. Last winter, for the first time in several years, the news and weather service called for a "good chance of overnight snow". The schools decided to open late or called off classes and the highway departments got their few trucks out to pretreat the area roads. As you can imagine, the Atlanta area is a big city with the usual big city traffic problems.
Everyone was in anticipation. The kids went to sleep with great expectations and the working parents planned to arise very early as their commute to work would be much longer than usual. When everyone awoke and looked outside, all they saw was a cold rain. Not one snowflake had fallen for many miles around!! It was just a couple of degrees warmer than expected with only rain and no snow.
By the next day lots of folks were complaining about wasted time and money on unnecessarily treated roads, time lost from school, bad forecasting with major consequences in this age of advanced weather technology, and no snow for the young kiddies to play in etc etc

Better luck next time. BOB

[Pierre Joubert]

[Pierre Joubert]

This past Saturday, I visited an area where Reinhardt and I found some nice crystals when he visited here. I took a large wrecking bar and removed some large rocks, only about half a metre from where he found his pocket. I soon found some low-quality crystals, but as I removed more, smaller, rocks, I found another fairly large pocket with, larger than normal, crystals. I spent a few hours removing many crystals and left the rest for Riana to remove next time. Here are just a few pictures from the outing. Reinhardt missed the large pocket with only about 50 cm. Sorry Reinhardt:-( I will send you a few of these sometime:-)