Cans, stripes, luck (Carrara NV)

It was a lovely cloudy day on Sunday. I'm still delighted by stunning blue sky days here, but sometimes a brewing storm can be even more beautiful. It wasn't heavy enough to be raining down to ground level much, but the virga/walking clouds were trailing lightly over the hills, and the sunlight was dappling the land through huge crazy cloud patterns.

Raffle prize - a chunk of halite from California.
Approx 25 cm across. Yes, it's pink.

We started out by driving over the hill to Pahrump, where Simon had won two raffle prizes at last week's rock and gem show. (Our batting average lately is astounding, actually. Last time I entered a raffle was at the rock and gem club meeting a few weeks ago, where I also won two prizes, one of them the grand prize. Hey statistics, you just keep looking the other way, okay? Okay.) The prize pickup was handled in a particularly Nevadan way, by meeting up in a casino car park.

Hidden treasure (Casto Canyon)

Early Autumn foliage at Casto Canyon

It's kind of off the beaten track though really not far off it: less than 3 miles north of the Bryce Canyon turnoff, and then about 3 1/2 miles in on an unpaved but well-graded road. To - just a canyon, in about the middle of nowhere.

A wide stony wash, still wet in places from recent rains. Red-orange sandstone walls, lucent against the sky, subtly echoed in the autumn foliage. The rain has washed off and settled the dust, leaving all the rock richer in colour and the sky a crazy clear deep blue, near-cloudless.

Still plenty of heat in the sun, but a cool breeze.

Hound them rocks (garnets and agates just as they growed)

I've been fascinated by rocks and minerals for a long time. I think it started when I first was given a couple of tumbled stones - agates, memory's eye says - by Amanda Brown in about Standard 1 (that's Year 3 in new money.) I also remember buying tumbled gems for maybe 10¢ apiece at a shop on Waiheke Island in a summer holiday there. Then, of course, I was 'into crystals' as a teenager and even worked for a gem merchant later in my teens. About 25 years ago I acquired an auction lot of unlabelled mineral specimens. I have always enjoyed having them around, the vari-coloured odd rough shapes, weights, textures of them. Now I think they came from the southwest, because I keep seeing familiar colours and shapes in collections hereabouts: petrified wood, fluorite, gypsum. On two recent trips, I've gone a little out of my way to reach rockhounding sites to bring home more piles of rocks: Garnet Hill, near Ely, NV, and a spot on the road between Cedar Breaks and Brian Head. 

Leave no trace except a pit

Garnet Hill is a BLM site where you can - with luck and a hammer - find small dark garnets
embedded in their native cream-coloured rhyolite. It's a well established site, and not everyone follows the 'leave no trace' approach.

Hammering away

Worth a visit, though, even if you don't want to look for gemstones, as the road up from Ely is both short and beautiful, and the hill affords a view over the huge Ruth copper mine, an open pit that stretches around a third of the horizon. We wanted to do both big and small, so when we got to the carpark, we headed uphill rather than down, and enjoyed the views from the top as well as the rockhounding. 

Panorama from Garnet Hill with the logical opposite of leave no trace - Ruth open pit copper mine

That speck is actually a garnet

The garnets themselves are not gem quality, being too dark to see through. They come as big as walnuts - or so it's said. We didn't spend the many hours that might have netted such large specimens, but in the hour or so we were there, we got the technique of breaking the rhyolite open with hammer and chisel, and found a few to bring home ... all big enough to see with the naked eye, and that's about as much as you can say for them (the biggest is maybe 5 mm across). 

A hill made of agate - view towards Cedar Breaks

Cedar Breaks agate is easier to see from a distance. The pale lumps on the hill are the bones of it showing through, and it is made of agate. The range of colour and pattern is amazing. Luckily, the site is well above 10 000 feet, so I couldn't carry away armloads of it (also there's a 25 lb per day limit.)

I had taken a rock hammer, but really I didn't need it, as there were so many beautiful pieces just lying on the ground, from small flakes and shards to chunks as big as your head. I kept mine, but brought away several lovely pieces ... and already can't wait to go back for more.

Meiklejohn Peak experience

Last year we stayed in Beatty on a trip to Death Valley and one of us spotted Meiklejohn Peak on a map or in a book. It's on the eastern side of Bare Mountain and is known for its large white butte (cue many stupid puerile jokes from me, along with remarkable restraint and some moderate and justifiable eye-rolling from others in the back seat of the rental car. You know who you are.)