Post by Sabre52 on Jun 27, 2014 12:07:05 GMT -5
Well, to continue the tale, my prospector friend was feeling just as frustrated as I was about not being able to find the site for the fancy poppy. We sat down and talked it over and decided to start at his pops old pit and work our way east along a ridge about two football fields long that ran back up into the hills. We four wheeled it back in and proceeded to surface hunt the ridge for float and were finding just enough to make it interesting but no real source We were also finding it a bit dangerous as every time we pushed into the chaparral, we found ourselves almost stumbling into open gold mine shafts.
Well, we were burning daylight so next we decided to investigate the small canyon and creek that ran alongside the ridge down to where his pop mined. This proved more difficult than one would think as the brush ( buckbrush and mountain balm) was nearly impenetrable and we finally had to cut a path in with a brush hook. Once down by the creek, man there were skinny jasper veins everywhere in the host rock but nothing really like the fancy poppy. At that point, it being scalding hot, we finally got got discouraged and left.
Well, at that point my buddy decided he wasn't much interested in poppy hunting anymore that summer but in a day or so I went back in to the creek canyon. I had seen a little surface veining that looked interesting so decided to do some digging. About two feet down the vein expanded and I found two nice lenses of really nice poppy jasper similar to the Sierra Primrose but more orange with some odd hexagonal poppies and some really large poppies up to a third of an inch or so. Here's pics of the rough and some slabs.
Well, after removing about 20 pounds of prime poppy the vein totally pinched to nothing and though I burrowed around the area for awhile, I could find no more so I headed back to my truck and as usual, got lost in the brush which is well over head high. This proved a boon because as I was pushing through the tangle, I discovered the outcrop of jasper my wife named "Firefly Jasper" which lasted me for several days of digging as the deposit was maybe twenty feet square of blocky semi buried jasper hunks and boulders. Here are a few pics of this material.
This jasper is solid and hematite rick so the cabs polish out with metallic silvery highlights but.....still not the gulldanged poppy I'm looking for....To be continued......Mel
Well, we were burning daylight so next we decided to investigate the small canyon and creek that ran alongside the ridge down to where his pop mined. This proved more difficult than one would think as the brush ( buckbrush and mountain balm) was nearly impenetrable and we finally had to cut a path in with a brush hook. Once down by the creek, man there were skinny jasper veins everywhere in the host rock but nothing really like the fancy poppy. At that point, it being scalding hot, we finally got got discouraged and left.
Well, at that point my buddy decided he wasn't much interested in poppy hunting anymore that summer but in a day or so I went back in to the creek canyon. I had seen a little surface veining that looked interesting so decided to do some digging. About two feet down the vein expanded and I found two nice lenses of really nice poppy jasper similar to the Sierra Primrose but more orange with some odd hexagonal poppies and some really large poppies up to a third of an inch or so. Here's pics of the rough and some slabs.
Well, after removing about 20 pounds of prime poppy the vein totally pinched to nothing and though I burrowed around the area for awhile, I could find no more so I headed back to my truck and as usual, got lost in the brush which is well over head high. This proved a boon because as I was pushing through the tangle, I discovered the outcrop of jasper my wife named "Firefly Jasper" which lasted me for several days of digging as the deposit was maybe twenty feet square of blocky semi buried jasper hunks and boulders. Here are a few pics of this material.
This jasper is solid and hematite rick so the cabs polish out with metallic silvery highlights but.....still not the gulldanged poppy I'm looking for....To be continued......Mel