Chrissy, Opal and I drove out to the Gal Saturday morning to meet Wayne and Patty who were already
there waiting when we arrived. It was a cold morning and the weather forcast was not calling for much
improvement that day. We warmed up pretty fast though by hiking up and through the steep thickly forested
slope. Wayne had planned to show us some of his favorite spots in that general area of the Gal. There
was no trail; we all just followed Wayne's nose. Along the way, he pointed out certain landmarks:
like the tree that had blown over in 1993 or the pile of rocks that somebody had stacked back in 1982.
Wayne knew where all the different types of rocks were located and where the best places to find corundum were and weren't. Along the way, we payed a visit
to "Patty's Rock", a 250-plus pound boulder that was dotted with pink
corundum blebs. Getting that rock down the mountain will be a job for Wayne's Rockbot. But, it is
still there if you want to try your hand at lifting it and carrying it out, the directions to
the rock are as follows: Start at the road, hike up the slope and go past the 2,132nd tree to the end
of a large cut. The boulder is on the west side of a big oak. Good luck!
The first spot where we stopped was an old cut that Wayne, the walking-talking
history book, told us was dug in the 1940's. Near the cut was a large hole that was dug by prospectors
and enlarged later by DerWaynemeister himself. Scattered around the cut and hole were large boulders
of mostly edenite-amphibolite. Patty proceeded to find a large rock that was covered on one side by what
appeared to be pink corundum. The rock was heavilly stained with iron oxide and covered
by dirt, but the highly resistant corundum made the surface of the rock appear bumpy. With her sharp
and experienced eye, Patty was able discern that the bumps were corundum as a bit of pink showed
through. She gave the rock to me to cobb down to a more manageable size. The rock cobbed just right
and somehow ended up in my pack. I have since cleaned the specimen by washing it, scraping away the
weathered and oxidized material, and cooking it in oxalic acid. The following pictures show the final
product. Hey Patty - you can have your rock back . . . but I hope that you don't mind keeping it at our
house . . .
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Click on each specimen picture to enlarge.
We surface collected and dug up a whole bunch of boulders that I attacked with
with my 6-pound sawed-off sledge. Not to be outdone, Chrissy went after some of the smaller ones with
her 3-pound crack hammer and chisel. The edenite-amphibolite in this area is incredibly hard,
unweathered and contains a fair amount of
white corundum so that breaking it is very difficult. Wayne and Patty knew to turn their heads in
the opposite direction any time I started swinging the sledge as the rock chips were flying
in all directions. We managed to find several more specimens dotted with pink and
white corundum.
Click on each specimen picture to enlarge.
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By late-morning, we decided to move on to another location farther up the
mountain. We bushwhacked upward through the thick forest choked with rhododendron thickets to
an area on a creek just below a cut dug by the US Geological Survey in the 1940's. Since the
USGS was performing mostly exploratory work and this area was never commercially mined, plenty of
corundum was left behind for rockhounds who are willing and able to dig for it. Many who frequent the
Chunky Gal area will tell you that it is necessary to screen all the dirt that you dig in a creek,
but Wayne prefers to do his digging dry so that he can feel through the soil for the corundum
and find it mostly by its weight and shape. I've never been much for screening myself, so I picked
a likely spot in the trench spoil pile, dug a hole down to weathered bedrock, pulled down
material from the sides of the excavation and looked and felt for corundum as I went. I suppose
that one might find a fair amount of small corundum pieces in the dirt that I threw out of the hole,
but I prefer bigger stuff anyway. I had to stop a few times to track down Opal who was busy
chasing lizards. I think that she would have climbed a tree in pursuit if she could have
found two pairs of spiked boots that would have fit her. I asked a bundled-up Chrissy to take control
of our obsessive compulsive dog so that I could better concentrate on my digging.
By the mid-afternoon, the temperature had dropped and a bit of sleet
began to fall. Wayne and I stayed busy digging, if for no other reason but to stay warm, while Chrissy
and Patty combed the area surface collecting and catching up on small talk . . . I don't have to tell
you what our furry lizard hunter was doing. As the afternoon progressed, we were rewarded with some
decent chunks and crystals of corundum as you can see on the next page of this report.
Report continued . . . . . . .
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