Fieldtrip Report:

Diamond Hill Mine,
Antreville, S.C.
December 8-11, 2005

Well, I thought this was going to be my final trip report of the year, but then some of our slightly off members decided to spend Christmas weekend at the Diamond Hill Mine again!, actually it was all Steve Barrs idea, but being slightly off myself, I decided to join him for a couple of days 8^). Anyway, back to the report at hand. The M.A.G.M.A. club had again reserved the mine for a long weekend at the beginning of December. We had quite a turnout as usual, and everyone came home with some beautiful specimens. This report is seperate from the other reports that I have put together from the discovery of the unique smoky crystals we had discovered in October and November. Recent digging at the mine has turned up some unusual material, from very nice drusy plates, pale colored amethyst plates, nice smoky plates, but nothing like the original material that came from what I refer to as, the "Chunky-Dave Pocket". I arrived at the mine on Thursday morning to setup camp and scout out the area, Tim Barton was already there and working in the smoky hole, the pit was again full of water and previous digging had been directed up the dump piles and into the wall of the pit, repeated "caving" into this wall made it difficult to work the area, we spent at least two hours removing the overburden left by previous diggers in order to make the area safe to work, time well spent as we began to find some nice size smoky plates and crystals, 1-1.5" in diameter, that evening it rained for a few hours, I had my camp setup with the rain shelter and super deluxe heater, I even had my 12 volt tv, it was like being at home!, the next day many more members began to arrive and many different things were found.

Steve Barr and his Mom, Edith.

Steve and John D. had both brought some of their big smoky plates that they had cleaned to show everyone.

Ron Seaver and I spent a little time in the skeletal pit, Ron found a couple of nice pieces, including this double terminated skeletal crystal on matrix:

Rons skeletal cluster.

Working the dumps of the smoky pit.

Andrea

Luther

Carl and Scott Rogers joined us for the dig, they worked a hole into the ground in search of the smokies, by lunchtime they had made it to China and we all had rice for lunch, (just kidding, I had the eggrolls) they hit a nice vein of high quality white clay that I had a lot of fun with, I made numerous clay balls about the size of golfballs and threw them at unsuspecting members while they were digging, then I realized that they could throw them back, so I quit 8^(.

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