We made it out to the Rowley around 10:30 AM. We knew that someone must have been there because of the parked vehicles, but it was eerily quiet. The rustic cement block shack with a metal roof was empty of life, save for a long-tailed lizard that ran down the side and out of sight with Opal in hot pursuit. We made our way over to the entrance to the mine and called down into the shaft to try to get someone's attention. Within a few minutes, Jim Ricker answered my call and made his way up and out of the mine to greet us. He told us that Bill would have come out too, but multiple knee surgeries cause him to limit the number of trips that he makes up those many ladder rungs to the surface.

Jim showed us around the area and indicated to Chrissy the best places to collect in the spoil piles. Chrissy, who is a bit claustrophobic, opted to stay above ground where she would surface collect. Opal was game to go down, but she had to stay above because she had forgotten her hard hat and Jim's extra one didn't fit her dog-shaped head. After a short mine safety speech from Jim, I gathered up my gear and followed him down the shaft into the mine.

As a bit of a side note, I'll always remember Jim's greatest words of advice while at the mine. He told us, "Hunt and sell snapping turtles and you'll make BIG bucks". You may ask, what do snapping turtles have to do with rockhounding? The answer is almost nothing, except that Jim, who is an avid rockhound, seems to greatly enjoy promoting the hunting and selling of snapping turtles. "The Chinese can't get enough of them", he said. No, Jim doesn't actually hunt snappers himself, but he claims that this is only due to a complete lack of the scary-looking reptiles in Arizona. As you may gather, Jim is quite a card and it didn't take long for us to discover that he and Bill are like two peas in a pod when it came to joking around and telling offbeat stories. Anyway - back to the rockhounding!

Both men were in the process of lengthening a deep tunnel in the mine. They will take turns crawling down into the narrow passage and use a hammer drill and other tools to work the rock. They generously allowed me to collect in what they called their "production area" from which many fine specimens of wulfenite (or wulfies, as Bill would say) and mimetite had been collected in the past. They had recovered some of the finest wulfies ever to come out of North America from the "Jaegermeister" and "Crybaby" pockets. "Crybaby"??? According to the guys, there had been a long dry spell during which nothing much was found and a lot of whining took place just before they hit a huge wulfenite pocket that contained up to 2-inch crystals. They named it the "Crybaby" pocket as a mock tribute to all their whining before the big strike. The Jaegermeister pocket is self-explanatory, or at least the "Jaeger" part is.

Bill showed me around the subsurface workings and where my best bets would be to dig. There was a whole lot of color showing on the walls, but recovering any decent crystals was a real chore as the actual pockets were well hidden behind the hard rock. I found a spot on a wall that contained some decent looking wulfies, so I decided to go after them. This small pocket was in a somewhat awkward spot, but I was eager to go after the bright orange crystals. After about 45 minutes of banging away, it seemed that I was no closer to recovering the crystals than I had been when I started. The brecciated rock, filled with massive barite, just wouldn't fracture where I wanted. I started to feel like a sculptor, as I was doing more rock carving than splitting. At about the one-hour mark, I stuck my chisel up and behind the small pocket-containing rock that, by then, was jutting out slightly from the wall. The rock above finally split and a softball size hunk fell from the wall. I instantly lost all interest in the small pocket that I had been futilely trying to recover for the past hour. Behind the hunk of rock had been hidden a crystal-lined pocket that ran up and into the wall at about 30-degrees from vertical. "Momma!!!!", I said. Somehow I had lucked into finding a real pocket that was full of beautifully colored wulfies and mimetite!!!

It took the next couple hours to fully exploit the pocket. First, I had to widen the opening so that I could more easily reach in and pull out pieces of rock that contained the goodies. This particular pocket consisted of a collapsed breccia with relatively-flat rock fragments that were half loose and stacked at odd angles to each other. Recovering the minerals without damage took great care and patience - it was almost like the old game of pick-up sticks that I used to play as a kid, except that this was in reverse because I had to work above my head and pull rocks out without having others fall down and onto the floor. One wrong move would have caused all the rocks in the pocket to come tumbling out at once and this would have destroyed most of the delicate crystals. And, as if this wasn't challenging enough, the only way to reach the overhead pocket was to bend over backwards and rest my upper back on a shelf of rock. I found out in a hurry that it gets real hard to breath in this arched-back position. As Bill said when he heard me complain of the awkward position and shortness of breath, "Gives you and idea what it would be like to be crucified". That Bill, what a card!

I finally managed to clean out the pocket as best I could. After filling a couple flats with excellent specimens, I decided to leave what was left until after lunch. I realized that I was too fatigued to be able to continue with the same care that was required to not damage the remaining specimens. Besides, I was pretty darned satisfied with what I had recovered thus far. Before making our way back up to the surface for lunch, I sat around with Bill and Jim and we exchanged stories, most true and some with great embellishment. Can you say, snapping turtle????

Bill Jaeger and Jim Ricker (on right) taking a well-earned break!