FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[John S. White]

I just got back from three days collecting quartz crystals on the top of Petersen Mountain, Hallelujah Junction, Washoe Co., Nevada. The "mine" is about 25 miles from Reno. This has been a fascinating experience and I would like to share some of it with FMF followers. I was part of a group of about a dozen collectors, one of whom was Tony Potucek who will, I hope, provide many more photos. I was only able to take photos the first day because the wind and dust at the mine made my camera unusable after that.

[John S. White]

Continuing

[Don Lum]

Mr. White,

I enjoyed your pictures and looking forward to more from members of the group.

Regards,

Don

[vic rzonca]

Love field trips, John.

[Mark Randle]

Think I see Paul and Noel in the group shot? Hot as summer here in NC right now and I am openly jealous. Would love to see more photos from whomever took some. Been wanting to do that trip for a while...

Mark

[Pierre Joubert]

[Tony L. Potucek]

As John White mentioned, we had a great trip to Petersen Mountain, which was arranged by Scott Werschky working with one of the owners, Paul Geffner. The steep part of the road leading up to the top of the mountain, where the claims are located, is where Forum member John Cornish slid backwards on the wet clay and tipped his truck over a couple of years ago. Gotta pic, John? The pictures cannot convey the steepness of the terrain. When there is wet weather, no one goes up or down the road.

To Scott and Paul and the other owners, I would like to thank them for the hospitality. On with the show.

[Tony L. Potucek]

More photos of the Petersen Mountain, Nevada quartz dig.

[Mike Wood]

Great post John and Tony; many thanks for sharing the experience with us with your excellent photo's. Looks like a really fun day was had by all - the phrase " rabbits in a sandpit" springs to mind. The quartz crystals aren't bad either...!

Cheers, Mike :-)

[Chris Rayburn]

I'm purple with envy! Thanks for posting some wonderful photos.

[John S. White]

Some more photos.

[John S. White]

And more.

[Pierre Joubert]

Fantastic John! What can be more exciting? Thank you for sharing. I look forward to seeing some of the cleaned specimens.

[John S. White]

Pictures are only part of the story so I hope FMFers will forgive me for adding some lengthy text that may help to explain what the pictures illustrated.

Some observations:

This amazing quartz locality sits near the top of Petersen Mountain, Washoe Co., Nevada. While the elevation of Petersen Mountain is given as 7857 feet (2395 m), the mine is said to be about 6500 ft. in elevation.

I believe that I was the only collector who had not been at the mine before (apart from the young boy, Jack). One of the more experienced collectors told me he had collected at this site some 20 times, and most of the rest had been there often.

The rock in which the crystal pockets occur is a granite or a granodiorite, extensively fractured from a combination of tectonic forces and weathering, which is why the track hoe can so easily scrape off layers of it a little at a time. Pockets appear to be completely random, although the veteran collectors claim that the best chance of finding them is "following the quartz," which occurs in seams. This did not appear to be a constant. When one encounters a pocket it first appears as a relatively small spot in the rock that consists of quartz fragments, perhaps some feldspar fragments and brown mud, and usually it looks damp. This debris is easily removed using a wooden chopstick so as not to damage any crystals as the pocket is penetrated by removing this loose debris. In the two pockets in which I found crystals, the largish crystals (about 9-10 cm across) were just sitting in the pocket in this rock debris like a hen sitting on her nest. They were not attached to anything and could be easily lifted out after much of the rock fragments were whisked away from their sides. I did not find any large scepters but I have been told that when they are found they tend to have their heads lower in the pocket than their stems. Such pockets can either neck down quickly and be quite small or they can open up to large sizes. The one major pocket discovered while I was there ended up being about 4 feet deep, and well over a foot high and wide. A large number of great scepters unattached to matrix were removed from this pocket, plus an astounding fat scepter sitting on a quartz base with some other quartz crystals. By far, most of the scepters had no matrix and all crystals were usually at least partially covered by mud when removed.

Most of the crystals found here are smoky in color, but much of it seems to grade to a pale citrine, and some goes to amethyst but these are always zoned and smoky areas tend to dominate. Broken scepter stems are frequently seen, and these are typically in the form of hexagonal columns. Adjacent pieces can usually be fitted together but the scepter "heads" may not appear. One feature of these stems, in particular, is that most often the breaks occur along crude planes that are parallel to rhombohedral faces on terminated crystals, supporting the theory that quartz does, indeed, have a relatively common cleavage in this direction. For some reason this alleged cleavage is very common at this locality, while at others it is seldom seen. Scepters are very common, and they take many forms. In some the terminations are but a few mm wider than the stem, while others have extremely large and complex heads that sit on stems no more than a few cm thick. These are the specimens that are most highly coveted. I am very hopeful that someone will post photos of the amazing pieces that were taken from the large pocket alluded to above once they have been cleaned. In general, cleaning involves little more than scrubbing off the mud. but some pieces have fine-grained mica firmly attached.

In all it was a great experience and I am very grateful to all of those who made it possible for me, in particular Scott Werschky who persuaded me to do this, Paul Geffner who was a gracious host, Ian Merkel who directed me to the pockets that produced my best finds, and many, many others who helped to make the whole thing wonderfully memorable.

If I have misstated any important details in my account above I hope that one of the other participants will jump in and make appropriate corrections.

[Martin Rich]

I'm fascinated!

Martin