McRocks Ray Mica Mine Dig
Yancey County, North Carolina
June 26, 2009
Report by Mike Streeter
(mcstreeter@charter.net)

As part of the McRocks 2009 cookout and rockswap, I led a field trip to the Ray Mica Mine near Burnsville in Yancey County. We hiked up the trail to the creek and proceeded to an area where Harry Polly had enjoyed some recent success. Most of the crew spread out in a line and dug into the creek bank while others fanned out to surface collect or dig elsewhere. Since I have written a plethora of trip reports for McRocks.com about collecting at the Ray Mine (Click Here for McRocks Field Trip Report Listing), I'll simply let the following pictures tell the rest of this story.


Jim Stoops, Phil Koble, Litha Adams,
Jim Adams, Harry Polly & Chad Walker
(front to back)

Ray Mine Creek


Jim Stoops, Phil Koble & Jim Adams


Bruce & Laurie Skubon

Mike Kosicki (left) & Chad Walker


Ernie Walker

Ethan Martin


Harry Polly and Ernie Walker

Everett Harrington


Everett Harrington & Michelle Schaefer


Everett & Michelle

Just as at Chunky Gal the day before, I gave away everything I found at the Ray, so I don't have any specimen pictures to show, but you can check out the other reports for representative material (see above link).

By the way - getting decent picture of certain individuals can often be difficult, especially when they like to play Ray Mine peek-a-boo, like our Ernie does . . .

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.

The Ray mine was being stingy on Friday, but I managed to dig out some pretty nice rocks.

Update 2: Phil Koble posted the following on the McRocks' message board.

Hey All,

Finally took time for posting pics of some of my finds at Ray Mine.

 

 

 

Had a great time and hope it can all happen again next year!

KOR

Phil


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