McRocks Field Trip
Corundum Knob - Buck Creek
Clay County, North Carolina
June 25, 2009
Report by Mike Streeter
(mcstreeter@charter.net)

As part of the 2009 McRocks Cookout and Rockswap activities, I led a field trip to the Chunky Gal area, best known for corundum of various colors. We started the day digging for pink and red corundum in a rock called smaragdite on the flank of Corundum Knob and spent the latter part of the afternoon screening the gravels of Buck Creek for small almandine garnet chips. Since I have written numerous field trip reports for McRocks.com and even two Rock and Gem Magazine articles about collecting at Chunky Gal (Click Here for McRocks Field Trip Report Listing), I'll simply let the following people pictures tell the rest of this story.


Laurie Skubon

Bruce Skubon


Ernie Walker

Ethan Martin


Jim and Litha Adams

Sally Pulte


Robert & Leo Pulte


Buck Creek


Jim and Litha Adams

Ethan Martin

I gave away everything I found, so I don't have any specimen pictures to show, but you can check out the other reports for representative material (see above link). But, I did manage to capture a moving picture of another type of "specimen", who, for whatever reason, kept muttering, "What you lookin' at, Willis?

Update: Jim Adams posted the following on the McRocks' message board.

Thanks again Mike and Chrissy for organizing these events.

At 1,883 miles round trip, this adventure turned out being 197 miles shorter than our trip to Nipigon Ontario. I was a little surprised by this fact.

I was wondering what the story was with Bruce, Laurie, and Ethan's shirts. That goes into the 'wish I'd thought of that' category. Great idea guys.

We had a fantastic time despite the southern heat that threatened to melt us Yankees.

Here are a few photos, starting with this scenic overview on hwy 64 near Franklin.

As far as I know, Mike found the best specimens at Corundum Knob, but very generously gave it all away including this piece with pink Corundum.


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