Fieldtrip report:
Little Pine Garnet Mine
Madison County, North Carolina
April 3rd, 2004
___________________Hello members, we had another excellent fieldtrip this weekend to the Little Pine Garnet Mine in Madison County, North Carolina. The weather turned out to be excellent. We met at the usual place, the Silver Armadillo rockshop parking lot at the Westgate Shopping Mall in West Asheville at 9:00 Saturday morning. I was happy to see new members there waiting for their first M.A.G.M.A trip. John Deney was present as well. Altogether 7 MAGMA members and 2 from the Gaston Club, we proceeded to the mine to meet with several more members of the Knoxville TN. club as well as more Gaston County members, around 17 people total, a good turnout. Some did not want to dig in the mine so I guided them to the most productive dump areas on the other side of the hill, John Deney found two large very nice specimens.
John and his specimens !
Some of our Gaston County members drove from Charlotte to join us.
Several of us dispersed throughout the inside of the mine, John Mireles came out with a full bucket of garnets as well as other members of the Tennessee club, some of our new MAGMA members did not venture to far into the mine, they stayed near the front on the top and the bottom.
Drew and the Detroit Digger on top, RJ and Travis work the bottom.
Our newest MAGMA member Peggy and her Detroit rockhound friend.
Everyone found numerous specimens which is the norm for this mine, there is plenty of material to go around. I saw at least two 5 gallon buckets loaded to the brim with garnets leave with some Tennessee rockhounds, John Deney found some nice large specimens in the dumps, I found several unusual deformed specimens, elongated garnets, triples, several matrix specimens with twins and large single crystals, my best finds were two crystals together each about 3" across. This mine was worked in the early 1900's for abrasive garnet and later for soapstone, there are huge specimens of garnet still to be found, also some decent matrix specimens, most of the garnet is not gem grade and is slowly being replaced by chlorite which makes it impossible to polish them. The best material and the hardest to find is still the deep red almandine garnet that will take a polish, these garnets are becoming very rare at this site.
Polished almandine garnet crystal from the Little Pine Mine, 2.5" x 2", R. Jacquot, 1995.
As always everyone had a great time and all found some treasures to take home, I found a very promising vein which yielded about 30 garnets in 2 hours and some large matrix specimens. Since it is only a 15 minute drive from my house I plan to be there most of this week to finish the vein, I'll post what I end up with later, until the next trip, happy rockhunting !
ok, it's later, I have spent the last three days working a vein I found while collecting with the club last Saturday. Altogether I have collected 10 softball size garnets along with over 40 smaller (around 2") garnets, here are a couple of pics of what I have so far:
4" garnet still in matrix.
The largest crystal so far when it was first exposed.
I was looking for one of those deformed elongated crystals and I found one, this complete crystal weighs 5 pounds.
This is the smallest crystal so far from this vein, 1.5 pounds.
Two shots of the largest crystal so far. I will be back to finish the vein tomorrow, then I will post a group shot of everything!
