After a time, we broke out of the woods and the guys got their first looks up into Big Chief. It was a humbling and impressive experience. Bold vertical rock without end rose up into swirling white clouds. We took a break here prior to entering the heights, out of the way of falling rock. From here, we'll turn the corner and we'll enter into the shooting gallery. During our five days working at Big Chief, we saw innumerable rock falls, the largest of which unexpectedly released a shower of boulders over an area we'd all just recently hiked through... scary!
In the cliffs, as we scrambled higher, ever higher, it was a full time job not to fall. Hand over hand we clawed our way into the loftiest benches of the deposit and there we set to work finding treasure. We spread out, always being mindful, careful of the others around us. One loose rock is all it would take to make our good day bad and personally, I never want to experience this other scenario. As I mentioned, we were all extremely careful!
We swung our hammers and pounded our chisels. We wrenched at our bars and over time, we worked our way into well over a dozen pockets, some easier to work then others!
Pockets at Big Chief go up to about ten feet. Here in these photo's, you can see my backpack set into one of the largest pockets as exposed on the claim. At one time, this pocket had been rich in long slender crystals with brightly colored green phantoms. This pocket sits within a swarm of pockets and was a real fun area to collect back in the day. Now, it's a level spot and a rare and welcome one at that!
Of all those pockets we worked, one Keith found proved to be the most exciting. He found it on a vertical face as a small opening from which rust colored waters had flowed. This stained opening led into a large chamber whose floor was covered in an inches thick limonitic mass from which several crystal terminations protruded. Upon closer examination once the pocket entrance had been enlarged and opened wide, it was easily seen that this pocket held much more than simple terminated quartz crystals, this pocket contained crystals of sceptered quartz!
Keith , Caleb and I, we all worked the pocket, actually more accurately a pocket system, and opened half a dozen pockets from which we recovered some exceptional specimens. Still, all told, the specimens from the main, and first pocket Keith had found, were by far the best of the lot. From here, he collected about a dozen scepters, some on matrix, but the majority loose and nearly all of them containing 2-phase liquid and gas inclusions. The bubbles in the crystals were free moving in all but one specimen and traveled distances up to about 3/8's of an inch. Additionally recovered from this pocket, was one amazing scepter which contained another scepter skewering it, passing completely through to stand out from the main crystal's other side. And if that wasn't enough, the skewering scepter entered the larger host crystal as a normal sceptered quartz with a larger termination over a smaller shank and exited the main crystal as a reverse scepter now displaying a termination smaller than its lower extremities; cool! This zone still has lots of potential!
From another higher area, Adam found the second pocket of major consequence. This pocket had spilled its contents ages ago and had weathered free of the cliff, no sign of it anywhere to be found. No matter though, some of the goodies within it had been left behind tangled and inter-grown with the root-balls of the few scraggly trees which had somehow found purchase in the cracked rock. From this little hot spot, Adam managed several truly fine groups of stellar octahedral pyrites. The largest single crystal was 2 inches across and all were sharp, sharp, sharp. Each of the pyrite specimens were coated by a thin earthy-brown coating of limonite, but once cleaned, the crystals were found to have a beautiful golden color, the pyrite beneath bright and fine.
These two were the champion pockets of our dig, still, as we were finishing our last day, Keith managed another pocket. He only worked it for about half an hour, in that time he managed approximately two dozen quartz plates, the majority doubly terminated and fantastically lacking any point of attachment. All he had to do was reach in and pull the plates free! These quartz's contained abundant black colored inclusions and were often peppered by small 1/8 inch pyrites which were partially included into the quartz quite attractively. Later, once home, we found one of the floater plates to be a Japan-law twin. The twin is 2 inches across and is partially obscured by a blossom of black included quartz crystals which effectively cover its terminations. Still, the twin is very apparent and being a floater, it is quite magnificent!
Keith left this pocket zone barely tapped, what other treasure yet awaits I wonder?
Adam, continued digging right to the very end and even tried to entice us with the story that he'd just found a monster crystal. "How big is it?" "This big", he called! We all had a good laugh, but it was time, after five relentless days, we agreed to stay on our set schedule and called it quits and began packing. We all had monster loads as we packed our treasures down to camp on that last hike. At camp and 100% off the trail, we eventually got around to stripping our packs, beginning the process of re-packing everything for the big haul home. What an incredible time we'd had. We'd all been run through the ringer and we all had our share of scrapes and gouges, cuts and bruises, but we were happy. We'd survived. We'd learned to work as a team and were rewarded, retrieving treasure from the cliffs. It'd been a very satisfying trip.
Back home here in Port Angeles, we spread out all our treasures and took pictures prior to the big split. We'd managed some beauties but now, with everything before us, this was the first time that it'd really dawned on all of us, just how well we'd actually done. This was an extremely satisfying time!
