Anyone who has lived in the Yukon or has been a guest for any length of time knows the feeling of awe and mystery this region holds. From the ancient peoples to the modern miners, it has an character all of it's own and this strange draw that grips your soul and makes you want to come back to carry on a grand adventure on top of the world.

This gallery is only a few windows to what mere words cannot fully describe, it is my hope that you will make the trek to this part of the world and learn the land's mysteries.

This mill was used by Skukum Gold, then Energold to mill Main Cirque, Lake Zone and Brand Vein ore in the early 1980's

Glacial cirques dot the landscape in the South Yukon. This particular example is on the flanks of Mt. Bell

The only access to Berney Creek is by an old cat road cutting throat huge blocks of talus. This road eats tires and small trucks for lunch, but is a beautiful valley full of fireweed and buck brush

One thing is for sure the gold miner who built this cabin at the base of the Charleston Cirque was one tough son of a gun. I packed 4 claims pots through the gulch and up to the top of the mountain and it wore me down. This feller not only built a cabin, but mined 2 shafts into solid rock to mine gold!

These roads were built in the late 1980's using D6 Cats and dynamite. The intention was to access the rich on strike extension of the Charleston vein and drill it, unfortunately the geologists did not succeed in finding rich ore shoots

Owned by E. Caron (Tony Caron) drilling, these skidable diamond drill rigs are custom built and capable of chewing over 1500 feet of holes into solid rock. Usually a crew of 2 men operates this equipment.

One day my friend Doug Potter, who was working with us as the First Aid Attendant and Carpenter, decided to assist me in tagging claims in the brutal Hodnett Lakes area. We had one helluva time that I will never forget and this AGRO can go just about anywhere. I have never seen a machine that can do what this one can.

It must have been an omen for me to photo this drilling rig after My Uncle Terry Elliott and I spotted the drill pad on the Ridge Zone, because later in the week we made a major discovery of bonanza grades of gold and silver!! The cores from this discovery are shown later in this gallery.

This is the face of the West facing slopes of Carbon Hill showing the tan area of Goddell Gully during the late summer around August 20th, 1997.

These old foundations were the basis of Klondike miners on there way up north to the gold fields who fell in love with a property along the way. There were nearby rich silver and gold veins that soon were exhausted. My friend Peter Hildebrand and I one day broke the axle of our Ford 4x4 trying to drive this road, but we stopped along the way and really enjoyed seeing these structures.

This is what a shear zone looks like. Notice that the rocks look like they have been cut like slices of cucumber. In these shears, sometimes fabulous amounts of gold are found. This one is no exception, except the veins are very narrow and pinch and swell, therefore are not economic to mine despite high grades of 46 oz/ton gold.

We call these gumdrops owing to their shape. Really they are small volcanic cones that were made during Tertiary eruptions of the Skukum Group of volcanics. This particular cone is located in the Upper Becker Creek area of Carbon Hill.

In 1998 forest fires became very severe in the nearby Primrose Lake area. The Forestry Service called all available personnel and helicopters to fight the blazes. One requirement was expensive aviation fuels which were stored in our base camp. All day and most of the night these helicopters came and went with bundles or barrels of fuel and people. I was very sorrowful to see such beautiful forest burn that year.

Hot springs usually occur in areas of volcanic activity as this one has on Carbon Hill. It is no longer active, but has beautiful colors and a neat mounded appearance from perhaps thousands of years of spewing hot steam and vapors at this spot in the hill side.

When Imax came to visit us to film several weeks of footage for their movie Gold Fever, it was hustle bustle and very interesting to meet the personalities of the crew involved. These folks provided everything from gourmet chefs to portable briefcase satellite phones. Actually it was very cool to me them and we enjoyed lots of laughs and a few saunas together.

Leebo cirque is named after a nickname that my cousin Ruth Anne gave me long ago in my glory days as a stud. I received much flak for sampling rocks out of this cirque from a pyrite halo on the opposite side of the rich Charleston gold-silver vein, but enjoyed the last laugh when my Uncle Terry and I made a significant discovery on the cirque wall. On the north face was pure ice sheets and a small glacial tarn. The purple and green color is very accurate in this pic.

That small gumdrop in the foreground is a volcanic vent. Actually it is a grueling climb to the summit, but has a wonderful view of the Wheaton River Valley. Early hunters used it in scouting and fondly called it Kopje. 

When you mix limestone beds with the hot magmas and juices of  granite or volcanic dyke, you get skarn deposits. The limestone is really ancient early Cretaceous coral reefs were uplifted and folded during a thrust from deep within the Earth, probably coinciding with the collapse of the Mt. Skukum Caldera. It really is a great looking structure, but the Watson River Valley that hosts them is very rugged and inaccessible except by horseback or helicopter.

This is close-up view of the hot spring or sinter deposit with me in action analyzing the economic geology of this prospect for possible diamond drilling. It is always good to wear bright reflective vests in the field where there are many hunters shooting the sheep and goats off the mountainside every day as the risk of accidental gunshot is an unfortunate and seedy part of  hunting the big game mammals.

When God made this Earth, he carved out slices of heaven all over. Montana Mt. fits this description, but also has the temperament of a beautiful woman. She holds much gold and silver in her womb, but can make a young lad's life rough if he doesn't handle her with proper understanding.

Are you scared of heights or get queasy around cliff edges? Well you better scoot your chair back as this is a view going downtown from 5500 to 3000 in a hurry. Not only is it steep, but the whole hillside is made up of glassy, harsh rhyolites. Believe it or not, working as a geologist, this was not a problem for me to tackle once I figured out how to conquer my own fear and just relax and boot ski these slopes. 

How's this view from up in the clouds, oh yeah it snowed quite hard that balmy July day at 7000 feet elevation!! But the view was awesome and we were finding gold and had a Quad so no problem, except it we almost ran the battery down trying to restart the Quad. The mountains are the Chilkoot Pass and Mt. McCauley and her massive ice glaciers near Lake Bennett.

This is what a monster dome of rhyolite looks like. It isn't just any ordinary gnarly rhyolite, but the shaley sharp and harsh to walk on rhyolite that you bust your can on. This plug is what we call the 'Scar'. It does hold some gold and in the professional opinion of my uncle and myself is directly responsible for driving hydrothermal convection in the formation of the rich Skukum Creek Omni Mines.

This scene looks like something that early Paleo Arctic hunters encountered full of mammoths. Today the mammoths are extinct, but moose and deer remain (what hasn't been hunted or poached out). It is a muskeg swamp at very high 4500+ feet in elevation. The mosquitoes here are enough to drive ya nuts, but grapefruit peelings rubbed in your hair, on skin and clothes with netting really is more effective than bug dope.

Oh do I have a story for you folks! One day some party animals from the big city came up here to snowboard 'Skukies' north facing 2500 feet vertical glaciers. We warned them of the grave dangers and that we were not babysitters, but did they listen? No, but thankfully they were too soft to climb this 8500 foot beast to break their necks, even hardcore sample bag skiers like me know their limitations.

One of the responsibilities of being a field geologist is managing claims. In the Yukon you first stake the claims, then apply for tags, they mail them to you then you must go back and nail them to legally staked posts! As you can see this means even climbing to breakneck heights of over 8000 feet to accomplish the goal of tagging, painting and rock-cairning the posts. In the background is the other gnarly side of Mt. Skukum. I climbed some tough ground, but those slopes become vertical near the summit and are full of broken boulders that are unstable...a true IRONMAN task.

This bronze is in the downtown square of Whitehorse, Yukon. When you are in the bush, you learn to love Whitehorse and appreciate the respect this city has for her mining people. 

I like this token of respect and think it tells a great story in the expression and garb their prospector and the dog are carrying.

Nothing gets the geologist more excited than making a historic discovery of gold during a diamond drill wildcat program. My uncle Terry Elliott and Omni CEO Jon Bergvinson created this program and hit the jackpot. My role was to assist Terry which I did and we really enjoyed the success immensely. 

When you see rock this nice and full of metals you know it is good stuff and indeed it is. The steely gray is arsenopyrite, the red is sphalerite, the bluish gray is silver rich galena, the bronzy color is copper and the white is quartz vein. This core looked so good that it was a shame to have cut it lengthwise.

Notice how the color of the core changes with the depth of the core. The mineralogy is different in the footwall of the core vs. the top. This was a very nice section and gave great gold and silver grades.

The Tantalus is a chert-pebble-conglomerate of Upper Jurassic age. This is a very diagnostic material throughout the Southern Yukon for understanding the age and events that transpired to locate it's position. On Carbon Hill it is on the very top and demonstrates the tremendous uplift of the regional faults and the erosion capacity of the Wheaton River. At the Sinter it has been heavily silicified by chalcedony, effectively providing a silica cap and forcing the sinter to erupt along the margins of the cap. 

At the Earl claims the Southwest slope of Mt. Skukum is expressed by a rugged, monster bull quartz parallel veined spine. These veins are parallel and are strong East-West striking and demonstrate the copious amounts of silica that Mt. Skukum expelled upon it's collapse. In my opinion the gossans and silica veins may represent a halo around a series of gold deposits in the mount itself. But like many other ideas, this costs big money, especially trying to build drill pads and haul equipment into position. Nevertheless I discovered rich gold on that South Slope above 6500 ft in elevation of the Main Cirque grade and quality. The Earl claims cover a similar gold vein further West.

If you look closely you can see the diamond drill on top of the ridge at the edge. Also look about 2/3 the way up these steep slopes and this is where I severely strained my ankle after being caught in a rock slide. It ended my season with Omni and effectively my work with the company as the market for gold continued to be manipulated by the Fiat crazed central bankers telling lies that hard assets like gold, real estate and collectibles are dead and that high risk currencies that can be printed out of thin air are the way to go!?! Economics can be very risky and full of obstacles, but can be rewarding for those who can think ahead and recover from temporary setbacks as I did.

Look carefully at this picture and you will see the pinkish colored blocks shaped like saw teeth. This was a rhyolite dyke that has been altered by flat lying step faults; which occur as stress relievers from adjacent normal faults inside a encompassing wrench fault structure (imagine the wrench faults like the petals of a rosebud and normal faults as simply rubbing your flat hands back and forth).

Wow what a view this is! Not only can you see the Wheaton River valley near it's headwaters, but also a great view of Carbon Hill and it's famous Big Diamond. Actually the Big Diamond is a graben style structure full of very pyritic 10% rhyolitic tuffs with flanking silver rich stibnite veins on it's shoulders. One very courageous gent, actually drove a D6 Cat zigzagging down it's face in an attempt to build a new road to the Goddell. I've been over there, the BD is huge, but from 7500 feet looks small. Also check out those roads above the Rainbow, Kuhn and Ridge Zones!

These drill pads were dynamited and cribbed by AGIP in order to test a very strong gold anomaly at Sulfide Creek. Unfortunately they were never drilled, but today are still usable, yet expensive to drill with helicopter only access.

I love this photo, to me it looks prehistoric and is absolutely breathtaking to see in person. To the left is the Scar of Mt. McNeil, Next is the Berney Creek Valley, Then the center is the wedge of Mt. Reid; where the rich Omni Mine is located, then Skukum Creek mouth and the left is Chieftain Hill with it's rich stibnite veins. All this from the top of Carbon Hill. It is spots like this that make you feel glad to be alive and are so peaceful words alone cannot describe it.

How would you like your golf or country club to have this view outside your sauna? When you're a geologist and are good at finding gold and silver you can join the club of using Al Doherty's Sauna located next to the Wheaton River. There is nothing quite like this sauna, it is rustic with a modified 55 gallon drum as a furnace and scrap wood nailed together, but man is it ever a good sauna!! We get this thing blazing hot with steam that you have visions then shock the system by plunging into the glacial waters of the Wheaton to flush the toxins from the body. It works, and all kinds of cool folks have enjoyed this unforgettable experience, a true Southern Yukon tradition.

There is nothing quite like waking up in the early summertime in the Yukon and seeing how crystal clear the sky is and how alive everything seems. 

Chieftain Hill which is appropriately named due to it's eagle population and the colorful feathery looking gullies, is one of the hidden treasures of the Wheaton River Valley. Although it looks fairly gentle, once you try to climb it, you find out real quick that it takes real skill and endurance to make the pilgrimage. 

The Goddell pad was constructed starting 1996 by Omni and Arkona Resources to build an adit for stationed diamond drilling the Goddell ore body in hopes of delineating the reserves. 

Many types of equipment was used in the process including Cats, trailers, compressors, jumbos, scoop trams, generators, hyabs, plus much in the way of costly materials in construction and maintenance.

RACA is a vivid orange-red gossan on the Southeastern corner of Chieftain Hill and is located directly across from the Skukum Creek gold-silver mine. This gossan has a very carbon rich, adularia-carbonate component and has been postulated as a manto style of deposit. 

Terry Elliott and I harped about drilling the RACA extension in 1997 and eventually it was accomplished with spectacular results. The alteration encountered deep in this section of the mountain is the best in the Wheaton River Valley.

This view is from on top of the Kuhn zone looking Northeast down the Wheaton River Valley. The RACA is visible in the foreground to the left and the Goddell is visible in the intermediate background to the right. At this location many deposits of gold can be seen and this gives you an appreciation as to how gold deposits dot the rim of an ancient caldera, perhaps an extinct one that predates the Skukum Group by many millions of years as postulated by Terry E.

The purpose of these pages is not to vainly attempt to show the major classes of minerals, but is to explore an interesting mix of specimens that I have been able to assemble during my travels and encounters with people and places that I have worked or visited. To all those who have donated or enabled me the leeway to collect these natural treasures, I am eternally grateful and hope that future generations will benefit and learn by these examples and will trust and respect passionate people enough to allow mineral collecting to continue without arduous impingements against freedom.

This beryl crystal weighs over 1300 carats. It is an excellent example of how these crystals are formed in a dyke called a pegmatite. The pegmatites are special because they are basically the 'left overs' of an intrusive event like volcanism that accumulate and form a stew of minerals including many fine gemstones like beryls. In this example, you can see the roots of the crystal in the whitish mass; also this type is called cabochon grade or gemmy, but not facetable into clear stones.

Aquamarine or Green-Blue Beryl

This stone is hexagonal in shape, and is tinted blue from the presence of a tiny bit of iron in it. The hardness is 7.5-8, which is harder than quartz.

The collector may find that it is getting more difficult to obtain fine, large beryl specimens due to exhaustion of resources. A good way to build a collection is to find old time collectors and show an interest in the hobby, as I did in obtaining this fine specimen from a generous British Columbia gentleman.

Corundum is either ruby or sapphire. This particular specimen weighs in at a hefty 39 carats of gorgeous striated, terminated, trigonal form. Rubies are usually formed in areas of high heat and temperature such as metamorphic limestones, dolomites, granites, gneisses and shists. This crystal has a very glassy look to it and almost looks machine made, but is perfectly natural, therefore will not be cut up in my lifetime.

 Ruby or Red Corundum

Hardness is 9.0, which is second only to diamond. I obtained this crystal from a rock shop at a museum for $12. This should encourage other collectors and rock hounds to visit their local museums and search for bargains, because they are available, but you need to do some research and learn the mineralogy as there are also imitations and machine cut quartz crystals all over the place. But with ruby, not many machines are capable of cutting them so a simple harness test is all that is needed.

Alunite is formed from an Acid-Sulphate epithermal type of setting. These usually occur on the flanks of volcanoes or along the caldera of them as did this example. The material is quite soft at less than 5, as the common pocket knife easily scratches it, but it is beautiful when cut and polished like this example. 

Alunite Vein

Sometimes very rich lode gold deposits occur with these veins, so prospectors should always assay any vein materials found in the area as alunites show a period of cooking and boiling of fluids and form a cap over potential deposits.

This spectacular find is from the Yukon, near Mt. Hodnett. I found it in a quartz boulder talus fan eroding from a vein alongside the mountain while working as a geologist tagging claims and prospecting. It contains purple amethyst quartz crystals surrounded by yellowish chalcopyrite and rusty brown limonite. The neat thing about this vein is that it contains small gas bubble cavities in it called vugs. 

Amethyst in Chalcopyrite

The vugs allowed the crystals to grow inward, yet they did not touch so have excellent terminated faces. Many people have seen the amethyst in spectacular lava tubes from Brazil, but few have seen them in a quartz-metal vein such as this. I assayed the vein for gold and silver and it ran generally low values, but has my approval as a fine locality for collecting these specimens.

Placer aquamarine is normally very gemmy and facetable such as these gorgeous little nuggets are. Anytime a rock is eroded out of a deposit and tumbled with other rocks in a river, it will either disintegrate or become very polished and survive. This means that the survivors are usually of extraordinary high quality.

Aquamarine nuggets

I've seen strands of these chips drilled and made into great necklaces for the ladies. Rarely at auctions you will see these sell fairly expensively, but be warned that many glass reproductions are misrepresented as such, so the harness and a specific gravity test will tell authenticity with the least effort. Always get a guarantee before buying material like this where you can't see the crystalline form or the matrix which hosted it.

Aragonite is a Calcium Carbonate mineral very similar in composition to limestones. What makes it different is the presence of lead, strontium and zinc that give it color, plus is actually a crystal instead of a massive lump. 

You can find these around caves, hot springs and some metal ore deposits. I wouldn't recommend removing the crystals from the caves as this can be dangerous business and cause damage to the cave's ecosystem.

Aragonite

It is however great to sort through the tailings of a mine and dig out the crystals.

The hardness is only 3.5-4, and they fizz in the presence of hydrochloric acid. These beautiful peach crystals are twinned and tripleted and are actually translucent, therefore possibly facetable, albeit very easily damaged if mishandled.

Have you ever seen such massive arsenopyrite? Well check this stuff out from the Montana Mt. Mines, near Carcross, Yukon! Not only is the arseno very coarsely crystalline due to slow crystal growth (creating a shiller effect), but also contains hefty amounts of gold and silver. Some of these ores assay up to 500 ounce of silver and 10 ounces of gold. I believe this example ran about 2 ounces of gold per ton. The yellowish-white metal is classic pyrite and the white is quartz vein. 

Arctic Caribou Ore

These veins are mesothermal or medium temperature veins formed from heat and pressure of regional fault movements causing a melting and boiling of magmas below to contact ground waters to mix and explosively form veins in the earth to 'plug' the cracks and fill them with metals from the very acidic mix.

I love hot springs, especially ones that contain hefty precious metal values in gold and silver. What I find neat about this one is that my uncle Terry Elliott was the first geologist to positively identify it as a hot spring occurrence on Carbon Hill in the Yukon. In 1998, I cut an example from an eroding bolder and exposed these neat bands showing how the hot spring was like a geyser similar to Yellowstone for awhile.

What is even more interesting about this occurrence is that it showed multiple stages of erupting from boiling, sealing, fracturing and repeating the cycle many times.

Banded Sinter

This is great for the deposition of gold as gold will precipitate about 500+ meters below a vent or hot spring like this is many cases, thus forming very rich, economic and easily mined deposits. 

Associated with the sinter is kaolinite or bluish white clays, opal, cryptocrystalline quartz, exotic carbonaceous multiethnic dykes and elevated mercury and arsenic values. These pathfinders all point towards real good potential for a deposit, unfortunately politics can mothball a project as happened to this prospect. Someday it will be drilled and I'm wagering that the operator will be a big winner.

Barite is usually a low temperature mineral found in veins or sedimentary deposits. The main thing about barite is that it is very heavy, thus is used as a drilling mud or in x-rays of the large colon. 

The hardness is low at 3-3.5 and the crystals range from tabular to rosettes like those beautiful desert roses we all have seen.

Barite with Fluorite

This barite came from the Rock Candy Mine right here in British Columbia. You can tell by the presence of fluorite crystals of purple and green color. The mines produce much fine gem grade crystals and are well known around the world.

During a stroll this past winter along the Fraser River near Hope, I found this great little boulder of jadeite. As you can see it has all sorts of greens, yellows, oranges and whites well blended to produce a spectacular looking rock. 

BC Jadeite River Cobble

The best time to hunt these cobbles is late in the fall and during the winter months when the water is low. Usually large rock bars are a good bet, but come early as the rock hounds will be out there filling their buckets with gemstones from our prestigious and giving Fraser.

British Columbian rhodonite is world class and well-known among lapidary circles. It occurs were the mineral manganese is present in large quantities such as in and around ore bodies. This example came from the gravels of the Fraser River downstream from a major NW trending metamorphic contact belt between the Coastal and Cascade mountains are.

BC Rhodonite Cobble

The material is a beautiful pink, black and white with a hardness of 5.5-6.5, making it slightly softer than quartz and used often in making fine decorative sculptures. Some of the BC material is very translucent and facetable into gemstones, but this locality is near Bella Koola.

When collectors think of stibnite or antimony ore, they conjure up images of the awesome Romanian specimens. What many people don't know is that the Yukon produces some of the finest bladed stibnite such as this example set in vein quartz. 

Bladed Stibnite

The reason the stibnite grows blades has to do with how the atoms arrange themselves during the growth of crystals. This example shows how many clusters of blades seem to originate from a single point and form fans outward. This is a remarkable phenomena of crystal growth.

One day I was driving along the highway and found this specimen when I was examining a talus slide area. It has taken me a long time to figure out that there is boron in this example and perhaps an assay will be the only means of settling the issue.

Boron with Quartz

What intrigues me are these little masses of crystals which are softer than quartz. Some may argue for orthoclase feldspar, but it isn't. if you think you know what it is, please email me at rod_of_rock@yahoo.com

This lumpy specimen of quartz came from Scottie Creek out of a heavily picked over and eroded vein system. What is interesting is that much amethyst has been found at this locality, but there is a sign there now by the claim owners warning against removing specimens for their own safety. What we have are beautiful crystals like this and some with terminated faces clinging to an overhang. That is supporting about 1000 tons of rock in a very precipitous way. 

Botryoidal Quartz

This type of quartz formed from the intrusion of a mafic-pyroxenite dyke into a granite host rock. During the cooling process the silica flowed like a wax and has some froth to it that ultimately gelled into this lumpy mass. The temperatures needed to form this type of crystal are moderately low and a student can consider the lumps as sort of 'seeds' for much larger crystals that didn't have time to grow.

This example is similar to the one above, but was formed in completely different host rocks called rhyolite-feldspar-porphyry. The origin is near Mt. Skukum in the Yukon, but the veins are covered by thick talus. I was able to salvage this specimen in 1997 while prospecting a gulch, but as you can see it took a few tumbles before I found it.

Botryoidal Quartz

This material also formed in an epithermal or low temperature environment. But this specimen did have time to grow both the lumps and some very tiny quartz crystals called crypto crystals. 

Very late stages of volcanic action in the Coastal mountains during Tertiary times produced abundant amounts of bull quartz. Normally they are not gold bearing as this example, but are good signs that the conditions may be favorable for a nearby deposit.

The Brown McDade is an ore body that has been intermittently mined during the past 100 or so years in the Mt. Nansen area of the Yukon. This particular ore is very nice and has lots of epithermal character, plus gobs of various sulfides including copious amounts of gold!

It was mined as recently as 1998 by BYG Natural Resources and I was lucky enough to acquire some stray specimens since this company was also involved with the Wheaton River properties. Interestingly, there are miners today mining placer gold next to this deposit.

Brown McDade Ore

When you study this ore, you can see how there are lots of irregular, slightly rounded blobs of metals encased by whitish quartz. Well this is classic for a deposit that saw lots of fracturing, boiling and healing. Sort of like the Earth was a pressure cooker at this spot and let of steam through a hot spring or geyser like spout. This is always great for gold deposits because the changing pressures and temperatures created stresses to bring out the goodies like the gold.

During a foray up a creek in the Butte Creek area of Mt. Skukum, I found a narrow veinlet or stringer containing these wonderful little blades of calcite that quartz came in later and replaced. This is called pseudomorphing or sort of like having on crystal form a shape, then another mineral coming and assuming that shape, but changing the chemical composition.

Brown Quartz Pseudomorphing after Calcite

The brownish coating is definitely an iron based mineral in itself. This sort of situation occurs in the latest stages of volcanic development, many times after the cone of the volcano collapses in a caldera collapse. The weight of the rock sinking into the Earth to fill a hollow void squeezes pools of silica dioxide up like toothpaste and it finds cracks of least resistance just like the calcite and will fill them with neat quartz forms.

Tennantite ore is composed of copper, iron, arsenic and sulfur. This is part of the tetrahedrite arsenic rich series. 

This ore comes from the Butte, Montana mines near the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains.

Butte Tennantite with Quartz Ore

Geologists love to find this mineral as it points towards a well-developed system where economic amounts of ore may be mined. Certainly this was the case for the rich mining barons of Butte. 

The presence of well developed quartz crystals point towards the top of a mesothermal or medium temperature vein system with it's classic epithermal top.

Isn't this crystal incredible? Looks just like ice from the Arctic. Actually it is a sulfate mineral containing strontium plus much barium with a fairly low hardness of 3-3.5 on the Mohs scale. 

The crystals are thick and tabular, but may also be nodular as well. The color ranges from light blue to colorless as it is formed in an sedimentary environment such as a dried up playa lake or inland sea.

Celesite Crystal

Click HERE for alternative view.

Sometimes rock salt is found nearby with these crystals, which shows a chemical evaporite mode of formation. 

Celsestite is used in making caustic sodas and custom glasswares.

These emeralds were formed in a metamorphic or changing rock environment under high temperature and pressure. They are a type of green beryl like aquamarine. 

The green comes from a few atoms of chromium replacing the aluminum in the beryl crystal structure.

 Emeralds

These examples are intermediate between a true gem emerald and aquamarine, because they have a bluish green cast. 

Also you can see a brownish crust on the crystals which is a shist. The shists that host these crystals are very ugly rocks so many times people will ignore them when prospecting. But when you hold these cabochon grade stones, you might do well to take a look at the shist.

Enargite is a copper-sulfur-antimony ore that is grayish black and has a hardness of 3.

This example contains tabular shaped crystals with striated faces in a semi massive sulfide lump. The origin is from Butte, Montana and was mined for it's copper content.

Enargite-Chalcopyrite Butte Ore

There are also some pyrite masses which formed in the same mesothermal vein environment.

This quartz crystal specimen is called cockscomb quartz because it is from a gas bubble in a rhyolite-feldspar-porphyry dyke at Mt. Skukum and grew inward towards the middle creating a masses of sparkly terminated faced crystals that radiate like the plume of a rooster in mating season.

Epithermal 'cockscomb' Quartz

Clusters like this are really nice to find, but it usually means bringing some heavy hammers and tools to break them out of huge boulders. Sometimes they grow so far as to interlock like your hands in a clasp, thus damaging the specimens.

Fluorite occurs in both sedimentary and volcanic environments like this specimen. It is encased in the center of a calcite veinlet. The crystals range from purple, green and colorless. 

Volcanoes spew all sorts of gases and have various brews of fluids in different stages of cooking around the rim of the caldera. 

Fluorite in Calcite Vein

Generally with the Sloko volcanics, like Skukum the fluorite and fluorite/calcite veins are near the main cone. Hydrofluoric acid contains fluorine and can dissolve quartz. Perhaps the fluorite is a byproduct of this chemical reaction and bonds to dissolved calcium to form these gorgeous translucent crystals.

This fluorite crystal is shaped like a pyramid or tetrahedron. It contains very fine specks of pyrite inside it's translucent center, perhaps formed from dissolved iron particles.

Also I believe this to be the sedimentary form of fluorite, because the volcanic form tends to form in veins whereas this is a single crystal from a cluster.

Fluorite Tetrahedron

Fluorite needs calcium from ancient limestone or coral reefs and veins to form. Also it may be involved during the replacement process of sagging silica of overlying sands replacing limestone to form chert beds that prehistoric man exploited.

Certainly much fine fluorite comes from British Columbia, but also Cave-in-Rock mines in Southern Illinois produce world class specimens.

I call this my free drilling specimen, because it shows a very rich quartz-sulfide vein containing very angular fragments of altered rhyolite of the same composition as found on Mt. McNeil and other rhyolitic plugs in the Mt. Skukum complex. 

To me this is extremely significant as a geologist, because this vein is filling a fault with an easily fractured rhyolite dyke, just like the nearby Rainbow, Raca and Ridge gold-silver vein systems are.

In 1997, I prospected an area of Mt. Reid called King Canyon and found this outcrop after very treacherous climbing.

Free Drilling!

After much discussion in the winter season, it was agreed to drill this target. The problem was access, so after a grueling early season hike with Jon Bergvinson a decision to drill was made, but at a higher location. I spent some time examining the rocks and walking the slopes then offered up a plan to drill multiple parallel vein systems from a single drill pad to be constructed to the West of this target. 

The prospect was drilled and a very fat 3 meter quartz sulphide breccia vein was intercepted in a singled drill hole. There was intense alteration surrounding the vein, but the assays came back low in Au/Ag. My recommendation is to follow this up with a fan of 3- $40,000 holes and maybe a 50 meter step out if everything pans out.

This yellow gem apatite crystal originates in Durango, Mexico from a sedimentary, phosphate bed environment. It is about 20 carats in weight and has real nice glassy terminated faces.

These stones contain calcium, silica phosphorous, fluorine, hydroxide, chlorine and sometimes radioactive elements like uranium, cesium, or thorium.

Gem Apatite

The hardness is used as a benchmark of 5 on the Mohs scale and these stones do fluoresce under the black lights. 

The thing about apatite is that it is what our bones and teeth are made of, well specifically fluoroapatite. So next time someone says Bon Apetito, they really mean it!

Haling from a secret location in Northern British Columbia, these gem quality opals are formed on the flanks of a good sized epithermal hot spring or sinter deposit. 

Although not developed commercially, one can only wonder when this deposit will be mined and these spectacular gems competing with our Canadian diamonds for the fancy of our beautiful North American ladies!

Gem British Columbia Opal

It is the saturation of water in quartz that causes it to become opalized. About 10% water will give nice colors and fire, so it makes perfect sense to see these opals as part of a opal blanket of rocks surrounding the vents of the hot springs.

It is quite possible that the hot spring holds hefty amounts of gold, but I'd love to be there picking through this sort of waste rock, wouldn't you?

The seller of these topaz explained that they came from San Luis Potosi, Mexico from a pegmatite. Certainly they are extremely nice gems here and very facetable into small jewels. 

Sometimes topaz and quartz are confused for one another. The surefire way of determining identity is by hardness testing as topaz is an 8 and can scratch quartz.

Gem Brown Topaz

Sometimes topaz is found in high temperature formations of rhyolite, but pegmatites seem to produce the larger and better quality specimens of  several thousand carats. 

This tourmaline was found as gangue from a mine in British Columbia. It is a bluish, translucent color called Indicolite Tourmaline. 

The chemical makeup of these gemstones range very widely with sodium, magnesium, aluminum, boron, silica, oxygen, hydroxide, fluoride, iron, lithium, manganese, chromium and potassium possible in the mix.

The crystals are normally hexagonal and hard at 7-7.5 on the Mohs scale. 

Gray British Columbia Tourmaline

These gems usually occur in crystalline shists, granites, granite pegmatites, gneiss, marbles or as an inclusion in quartz. 

It is possible for the collector to obtain these crystals and gems at a lower cost vs. other stones due to the abundant localities where they have been found, but in the future these non-renewable resources will become depleted and the finer, larger specimens will command higher premiums.

This slag was given to me by my Grandpa Michel when he was working for International Steel in Evansville, Indiana during the 1970's. 

It is made of various amounts of glasses from melted sands, limes and metals formed during the manufacture of steel products.

International Steel Slag

The bluish cast to this material suggests cobalt used in the manufacturing process and the dark gray banded area contains various spongy metals in alloy, with perhaps some titanium mixed in. 

The addition of alloy metals like cobalt and nickel form steels of different tensile, compressional and hardness properties needed in tool making.

Adularia is basically a mixture of feldspars and clays. This specimen contains the bluish clays called kaolinite, whitish adularia and maroon colored jasper. It was formed on the flank of Mt. Skukum directly on strike with the high grade gold Main Cirque mine. 

During the late stages of volcanic eruptions of Mt. Skukum much iron was expelled from the throat and vents of the volcano. This iron formed beautiful red, orange, and yellow gossans. 

Jasper in Adularia

But after the caldera collapsed, new faults were formed and lower chamber magmas were pushed upwards and hydrothermal convection cells formed to provide heat and fluids for the formation of epithermal vein systems that are the source of this adularia.

In the Tonopah district of Nevada, very rich silver-gold veins have been mined that contain much adularia, so it's unique presence is always a good prospecting key for gold exploration.

When I climbed the extinct throat of Mt. Skukum (8500 ft), near the summit were outcropping solid veins of volcanic jasper. The jasper is reddish colored iron that was powdery in texture that silicates like quartz veins have mixed with into a tomato like paste consistency. 

The RFP is a geologists acronym for rhyolite-feldspar-porphyry, which is a very siliceous mixture of quartz, feldspars, irons and sometimes gemstone minerals. At Mt. Skukum there are many dykes and outcrops of RFP, which occurred during the transformation of an early andesitic volcano into a highly siliceous later stage one.

Jasper-Altered RFP Contact

The most interesting thing about the presence of this volcanic form of jasper is that it strongly indicates the formation of a subsurface silica capping over a potential gold rich orebody. When epithermal orebodies are formed, they form a seal over them that causes the underlying juices to boil under higher pressures that cause precipitation of minerals. From time to time the high pressure causes the seal to be broken and steam and fluids vented into the atmosphere and when things calm down it plugs back up. 

Over a long time period of a million years, this can happen often enough that much gold or silver is deposited. Therefore anytime a geologist sees this formation, he or she should get excited.

This interesting example came from the Lake Zone Mine in the Yukon. It is altered rhyolite-feldspar-porphyry (RFP) that has sericite or green bleaching that was fractured and filled with calcite veins. These calcite veins were in turn pseudomorphed or changed into quartz veins containing gold, but somewhere in the process the composition of the calcite veins became enriched in pyrite.

Calcite-Quartz-Altered RFP

You can see the pyrite that was probably ground up during earthquakes and faulting into a blackish colored paste that mixed with the watery calcite and formed those parallel dark veins. It is difficult to tell which came first the black or the white veins, but the crystal growth suggest that the black veins were the late stage ones postdating the white.

Lazulite is the gemstone of the Yukon. This gorgeous gem is found in a very secret location, otherwise people would soon deplete this non-renewable resource. These stones are very translucent and blue and are aptly named after the Arabic word, lazaward or heavenward. 

Lazulite

Yukon lazulite is formed in an sedimentary iron-phosphate formation and has a hardness of 5.5-6.

In these specimens you can see the heavy concentration of iron and manganese as a black compound that appears to be the medium for the crystal growth.

The story behind the discovery of this vein is worth telling. I'd been receiving alot of ribbing by the CEO's of our mining companies for assaying so many iron-rich rocks devoid of gold or silver that they started calling me IRONMAN. Believe me it isn't what a geologist wants to be known for in the negative sense of the word. The reason I was sampling so much pyrite was because the conditions seemed favorable to me to find an on-strike extension of the rich Charleston vein in an adjacent cirque.

Well claims management duties and prospecting occupied the bulk of my duties at the time, but I corralled my uncle Terry to join me in prospecting the ridge of this cirque after a tortuous 26km ATV quad ride to 7000 ft in elevation. 

Leebo Cirque Quartz-Sulfide Vein

We get to the top and my uncle reads the geology and likes it alot, so gets a gut feeling to sidestep the extremely steep slopes of the mountain where a wrong step sends you 2000 feet into the gulch below. I protest by he goes for it, so I join him and we fight our way across and bingo he finds an tiny, interesting piece of float and we get excited. Eventually I find a huge 50 lb solid block and we fill our packs and head back.

Well I cut the block with the diamond saw and am stunned to discover that this vein is exactly like our rich Rainbow mine and the assays bear this out. This material contains. galena, pyrite, chalcopyrite, arsenopyrite, stibnite, native silver and gold.

Listwanite is beautiful green, purple, and yellow mica and waxy quartz vein material. It is found in areas of high temperature faulting and bleaching of the host rocks. What is great about this material is that it forms caps over gold reef gold deposits that can be phenomenally rich up to 300 ounces/ton. 

There are belts of listwanites all along the Cordillera from Mariposite County, California which is aptly named after the green colored mica. And Northern British Columbia hosts these deposits as well, most notably the Table Mountain mines.

Listwanite

Listwanites contain alot of iron that forms a dark orange rusty rind on weathered specimens, just like fine nephrite jades.

But this sample came from a secret location in the Yukon and was donated by my friend Peter Hildebrand. Not all listwanites contain gold, but I think that the nature of this material and it's superior hardness, ability to polish and beauty make it an industrial gold in itself, don't you?

Looking like fleece on a lambs back, this specimen is a low temperature form of quartz. The textures show a bubbly plastic nature frozen in time. This vein material is from the Goat Vein system by Pyroclastic Cirque at Mt. Skukum.

'Lumpy' Epithermal Quartz

This material has a very chalcedonic nature and would knap very well into arrowheads, but there just isn't much available to quarry without extensive dynamite blasting and expensive cat work Nice specimens can be had by a grueling hike to the top of the mountain and subsequent sledge hammering of the block of RFP hosting these crystals.

Going on a tip by Bruce and Jan MClellan of Mountain Gems in Burnaby, British Columbia, I found the deposit of heavy pyrite with black carbon clasts near Harrison Lake. This material is 100% vocagenic massive sulfides made by what used to be a black smoker vent sitting on the bottom of the ocean floor. 

Although there are no economic sulfides in this particular sample, a prospector should not dismiss this as dog rock, because many rich metal deposits have black smoker blankets covering the economic minerals.

Massive 'Black Smoker' Pyrite

An interesting phenomena has been discovered associated with black smokers...the presence of new species of life! 

Here in BC we have the Juan de Fuca Strait containing a belt of these smokers and scientists are studying their origin and development. Recently they snipped off a large chunk of a black smoker for study and made many new discoveries.

Talk about good looking stuff, this is prime ore here. It is full of blades of gray-silvery stibnite crystals, translucent reddish realgar, yellow orpiment and granular antimony. 

The origin is from the now collapsed Becker-Cochrane Mine in the Yukon. What makes this material unique is that it comes from Canada's largest deposit of antimony. This is a strategic metal as it is used in making tracer bullets and other forms of military hardware.

Massive Stibnite, Antimony, Realgar, and Orpiment

Some of the assays from this mine run 400+ ounces/ton silver. It is an expression of an epithermal, volcanic deposit that has been only lightly explored during the 1960's. 

Collectors prize the realgar and orpiment crystals as being forms of arsenic disulfide and trisulfide. This is a rare occurrence indeed.

For the student of precious metal geology, this is a prize specimen. It shows the nature of a true mesothermal (middle temperature) vein system in classic terms. The banding of the sulfides along the vein margins contain hefty silver values locked up into the galena and stibnite, but the gold is locked in the brecciated arsenopyrite and pyrite section. 

Definitely a treat for sore eyes, this sample is from the St. George vein system that I plotted parallel to the Rainbow Mine in 1997-98.

Mesothermal Quartz-Sulfide Vein Banded and Brecciated

It was the nature of the rich veins and the length of it's strike that led us to propose drilling it in 1998. 

During an underground mapping traverse with Terry Elliott and Peter Hildebrand, we discovered many of these veins feeding into the main Rainbow vein at Skukum Creek. Anytime you find sulfides that have banding and brecciation together, it is a sign of good strong systems that could potentially make you rich if you play your cards right.

This is the largest nodule of pyrite that I found at Mt. Reid. It must have formed by a small bubble in the andesitic lava that flowed from this early Sloko series cone.

Mt. Skukum Pyrite Nodule

It really isn't nothing fancy, just a big mass of crystals that contain no gold but about 90% iron, but it's neat to hold and look at and has some good sparkles.

Now this is some great looking material donated by Terry Paulin of Vancouver, British Columbia. It is full of silver-gray lead and brownish-red zinc crystals coating the black carbonaceous siltstone and veined by white stringers of calcite.

Massive Galena and Sphalerite

This is a massive sulfide ore that Terry tested alot of when he was working as an assayer. The Northwest Territories is the location of this deposit, so access is remote, but when you see stuff like this you almost want to brave the mosquitoes, black flies and swamps to load up the truck!

Gosh this is beautiful stuff and extremely rich pure silver wires in a granular epithermal quartz vein. It is possible to just crush the vein and shake out the quartz and have a lump of pure silver in your hand. Veins like this are extremely difficult to find and most are mined heavily.

NW Territory Wire Silver

Canada has many rich silver properties, but I'd venture to say this one is one of the richest veins of silver I've ever seen.

What makes this neat is that it looks like some of the premium Mexican ores and the specimens are probably worth more to collectors than the metal values.

How's a little amethyst from British Columbia? That's exactly what this is, even though the colors have faded from purple to white with the oxidation of iron.

Quartz Cluster

Most people have some form of quartz around the house or on their mantel and this is good quality stuff. The coating or crust on these crystals is a sulfur rich kaolinite that helped protect the delicate crystals from damage and caustic fluids during their growth.

Ah now this is cool! The calcite crystals grew in the Yukon, but soon afterwards the quartz came into the picture and replaced them, but adopted their shell so the blades remain, but alot harder.

Quartz Pseudomorphed after Calcite

Anytime a mineral replaces another, yet the crystal shape stays the same, we call this pseudomorphing.

Looking like lumps of ice, these vuggy quartz crystals are spectacular like a field of diamonds.

Quartz with Vuggy Nature

As with all quartz, these are made of the elements silicon and oxygen that combined into hexagonal, spectacular form.

This diamond sawed slab of gold-silver ore is from the Rainbow orebody from Omni Resources' Skukum Creek Mine in the Yukon. 

It contains hefty amounts of pyrite, galena, sphalerite, arsenopyrite, stibnite and gold with silver. This is a true mesothermal breccia vein where the dark bands are the good stuff and the white is quartz gangue.

At last count the Rainbow had a drill indicated resource of 800,000 tons of 0.224 ounce/ton gold and 7.09 ounce/ton silver, making it an extremely rich and high grade mine. 

Rainbow Ore

The material is really neat when cut and polished and would make a great expensive, decorative tile with a glazed coating. One day though, this deposit will be mined out after the price of gold and silver reaches it's true equilibrium and people quit buying into the lies of politicians who say that gold is dead and worthless while they promote their currencies that can be created out of thin air.

Yes, gold is a political metal for sure, any student of economics will undoubtedly learn about it's role in banking. But ultimately the real vaults contain big slugs of gold in the ground like this ore.

Are you a geode collector? Many of us are and this specimen is very unique. The host lava is purple-white-green-pink spherultic rhyolite. It must have have a large gas bubble that eventually held liquids containing calcite and iron minerals.

It came from the upper Sulfide Creek area in the Wheaton River district of the Yukon and is in a brutal, steep area of the mountains.

Rhyolite, Calcite and Millerite in Geodic Form

The calcite occurs as yellowish, brown cornflakes that are cemented by deep brown sparkles of what I believe to be a Millerite iron mineral. Rare tetrahedrons of fluorite are also contained in the geodes which rarely get larger than 6 inches in diameter.

This is basically a side view of the earlier slice of sinter or travertine that is in the hot spring section of this museum. This clearly shows how ropy and flowing the sinter material is. What this indicates are flows of material out of the vents that build up layers of minerals

Ropy Sinter

A current world famous site to visit is Yellowstone Park where you can see these processes occurring. If you can't afford the trip,  go to the Yellowstone website for a visit.

British Columbia has abundant amounts of black tourmaline called shorl as in this example. 

The white mineral is called clevlandite which is a pegmatite matrix rock.

Shorl Tourmaline

A good specimen with have some of the matrix and terminated crystal faces as evident here on the bottom crystal. Also the striations along the length of the crystal are also good and there are no unsightly pock marks.

Quartz, quartz, and more quartz, it comes in all colors of the rainbow and many different shapes and sizes. 

Let's call this q-tip quartz due to it's delicate little puffs resembling q-tips.

Small Botroydial Quartz

This specimen is from an epithermal vein system in the Yukon around the Mt. Skukum caldera and is one of many specimens laying in a gulch downstream from the main vein.