1 8:00 Am sat morning people lining up at the Vulcan Quarry scale house waiting to sign releases.
2 Around 40 people showed up for the dig.
3 Our first collecting area, in Photo; Carl on left, Randy center, and I'm over the hill straight past Carl. Here we found vugs in the dolostone with calcite, dolomite, sphlerite, pyrite, and marcasite.
4 Carl and I talking with the trip leader Cori
5 Just to give you an idea of scale, Carl is the little black dot in the center right of this photo, this photo was taken from half way across the quarry.
6 If you look very close at my right hand, you can see a vug with calcite and marcasite that I will be collecting out of this piece of rock.
7 Just below my gloves( in pic at my feet to the left of blue hard hat) is a vug of what looks like cubic quartz. As I split this rock (all 40 inches of it) the vug fell apart.
8 view of the quarry in a different direction.
9 A view towards the sorting and crushing equipment.
10 another overlook of the quarry.
11 The high walls of this quarry were between 75 and 100 foot tall. We were told to say at least 50 feet away from any high wall.
12 We were told that lots of marcasite and pyrite could be had on the other side of the quarry. The group could not spread out so one of the quarry works brought us a load of the vug bearing material for everybody to pick through.
13 The Quarry worker also helped us out by lifting the large boulders high into the air to break them as he dropped them.
14 The trip out was pretty dusty following the others out.
15 A view of the other end of the pit that we were not able to hunt.
16 panning view of uncollected area.
17 third photo of uncollected side of the quarry.
18 While driving out, I noticed this deer on the cliff face, I also wondered if he was thinking about the end ;-). The quarry worker who was following up the end of the collector's cars said that it is a wildlife preserve around the quarry and that something like 26 deer inhabits this area.
