Fieldtrip Report:
Ten
Days of Diamond Hill!
Antreville S.C.
May 13th-22nd, 2005
Photos by Rick Jacquot,
Lee Fleming
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Hello members, it's been a couple of days since I returned from our ten days of camping and digging at Diamond Hill, what a great week and a half !. I met many new friends, visited with old friends and we all came home with some of the best specimens ever from this site. We had arranged this trip with the owner of the mine Chet Karwoski, our club along with the Columbia S.C. Club worked together with Chet to bring in Chunky and his digging machine. I arrived on Friday the 13th to find Chet at the site along with our M.A.G.M.A. member Harold Myers already set up and ready to camp.
Chet and I looked over the area to figure out the best areas to open up when Chunky arrived, we decided to do some work in the skeletal pit as well as the smoky quartz area. We spent the afternoon opening new areas to collect and creating huge dump piles for the members to search through on Saturday, as the evening wore on, many more campers arrived for the night and prepared for the next days big dig.
Kim Robinson and Donald Lloyd setting up camp.
Brian Taylor drove up from Florida and Annie Woods came from Tennessee.
Glen Branch drove down from Raleigh.
Lee Fleming also drove down from Raleigh along with one of our new M.A.G.M.A. members Charles Griffin from Fuquay N.C.
By Friday evening the area was starting to look like tent city as more campers poured in for Saturdays events. Harold even brought a boat in case the creek was up, we planned to go fishing!
Saturday morning came early as numerous vehicles began to pour into the parking lot for the days dig.
I did not get to dig on Saturday, I spent the day signing people into the site and directing them to various digging areas, Chet and his crew worked the amethyst pit by themselves for the day while the Columbia and M.A.G.M.A. members worked the smoky and skeletal quartz pits.
Chet and his crew.
