Sunday, July 18, 2010

Garnet Field Trip

I went on a field trip to Heather Lake in Wenatchee with my rock club and family, we found lots of fabulous things. Soapstone, Actinolite and Garnets. I have pictures below of the last portion of the rockhounding adventure, the gathering of the garnets. We hiked 1 1/2 miles to the spot in the river we wanted to dig. In order to get the garnets you had to stand in the fast flowing river and shovel gravel. You then had to sort out the garnets, this was easier if you found a spot with some sunshine, as the river was very cold. The river was full of larger rocks making it hard to find the gravel bottom buried below the rocks, where you needed to dig. After much effort we all found some garnets, see below for some of the highlights.

This is a fabulous tree that was over me while I dug for garnets. Love it.

Sorting in the river right off of my shovel, we didn't have a screen as we should have. Most of the other club memeber brought screens, but some of the garnets were so small they would have just fallen thru.

This is the type of screen most club members used to screen out the garnets from the gravel in the river.

I am walking in the river trying to find a good spot to dig.

Here is a picture of the river, showing some of us digging for garnets.

Nice shot of the river.

Here is me posing in the cold river, I was in this river the entire day. I even sat in it to sort my garnets. I was numb from the waist down for most of the day.

Norma letting us know that she is ready to take off, we left shortly after this. I think she was getting cold in the river, the sun was starting to go down some. Norma and Kevin just finished a 2 1/2 week rock hounding adventure, so they were ready to go home.

Kevin letting us all know what to do, and having fun.

Kelly and some other people gathering garnets.

A bunch of us getting garnets.

Upclose of some of the garnets that we got.

Picture of some of the garnets that we dug, we also got a bunch that were still in the matrix.

Digging in the river.

More pictures from the dig.

Anna at the dig.

My daughter and I as we pick thru the garnets that we got together.

A shovel load of gravel that needs to be sorted.

Kimforbeads