Some years ago, a geologist friend showed me a rock that he had collected from a very old abandoned barite prospect while mapping in the boonies of Madison County, North Carolina. It was a fault-brecciated meta-granite with massive pinkish barite and dark purple fluorite in bands and as fracture filling pods and veinlets. Although massive, the presence of these minerals piqued my curiosity as to whether there were any crystals to be found at this location. Long story short: Chrissy and I drove out to the remote location and after whacking on a whole bunch of rocks, we determined that there were no fluorite or barite crystals as we had hoped. But the rock was pretty so we dragged home a bucket of them just to have.
Those of you who have been hanging around the McRocks and our message board since last winter know that I was bitten by the cabbing bug about 9 months ago - got it real bad. In pursuit of my latest obsession, Chrissy and I have taken to going out and hunting down cabbing rough. There was a time when I didn't think that this would ever happen to me, but times change don't they? I've also slabbed and cabbed some of the rocks we've dragged home over the years, including a few of the Madison County fluorite/barite ones.
Since these turned out sorta cool, I wondered what other and perhaps better cuttable rocks we left on the ground while hunting for crystals on our one and only visit to the location all those many years ago. So, I put on my cabbing hat and convinced Chrissy to head back out to the old barite prospect with me to see what we could find. As always, I didn't exactly have to twist her arm because she loves nothing better than a rockhounding excursion on a sunny Fall day in the western North Carolina mountains. Am I a lucky man, or what?!
The rest of this rockhounding tale is pretty much the same as just about all the others and no doubt you know the drill: drive, park, hike, collect, haul buckets, drive home and clean up. So, rather than just bore you with the minutia, I'll simply let the following pictures and captions tell the rest of the story.
After all the recent heavy rains,
the French Broad River was raging.
The Fall colors were nearly at their
peak, albeit a bit muted this year.
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Getting our monster Tundra far
enough off a narrow forest road for
passing vehicles isn't always easy.
What trail? I don't see no stinking trail.
Yep, there ain't one as per usual.
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Chrissy posing at the
buried spoil pile rocks.
The mine shaft hidden
in the dense forest.
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Can you say, remote?
Old growth tree and man.
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Happy in her element.
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I know what you're wondering . . . did we find anything better than we already had for cabbing? I'm pretty pleased with the new stuff we found, but I'll let you be your own judge.
A pile of rough.
Close-up of one of the rocks.
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Gotta love the colors and patterns and don't get me started about the incredible geologic history of the over 1.0 billion year old rock!
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