I HATE being hot, glad I live in Montana! LoL! However, I would suffer the heat just for a little while in order to find stuff like you have been! Great stuff!Thanks everyone, ha ha it does resemble a snow-cone, good one Gary, Maybe I should build a nice snow-cone shaped stand lol, if ya made it cool and not cheesy I think that would be actually awesome. Here's a few more specimens, I apologize for the lighting, I took these pics real early in the morning, its unbelievably hot in Az.
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Gonna try for some sapphires. When work slows down for me, I'm going to take a day and go down to Spencer Idaho to look for opal!The heat is awful, makes you literally sick if you're out in it for to long. Montana has great weather right now, how goes the hunting ZIM, what ya got planned for your next hunt?
Thanks for the tip Steve1236, in fact, there is alot of moss next to the streams here and it does trap small colors. As far as sapphires, they are pretty deep, and I have never found even garnets in the moss. Sapphires were an annoyance to the original miners here in the 1800's, many miners were looking for gold, and would get angry because "heavy glass like rocks" kept plugging up their sluice boxes and they thought they were loosing gold because of it, so these miners would angrily dig out the sapphires and "toss" them away from mining operations. Supposedly, someone here recently found an entire bucket full of sapphires that had been tossed off to the side of an area they were sluicing for gold. So sapphires are pretty heavy, heavier than garnets. Most people around here use a seive to get sapphires, but I like to use a gold pan that has really deep sluice grooves. It's just what I prefer. I will be posting some finds from this week, just fyi!I know I mentioned this before Zim but when you go hunting for sapphires, what ever creek or river try something, look for a large foxtail, one above at least two feet in height with the thick strong grass blades that's close to the waters edge, in a spot where when it flash floods a lot of material would run over the foxtail, here in Az you'll always find small gold in those roots, there's always a lot of garnets and heavies as well, the gold is small always because the heavier gold will keep working it way to bedrock but I've found like 30 colors in some root systems up at Turkey creek by Mayer Az but I'm curious about the weight of sapphires, they might get trapped really well, anyway it can't hurt to try ya know..
Good luck on your hunts and keep us posted, I'm hoping to find some opal myself next winter, some has been found at burro creek by Wickenburg and some nice blue colored opal is found in southern Az, I dont want to mention the exact area my fire agate spot is but on mindat is says precious opal has been found out there and mentions nothing about fire agateslol, it doesn't say how much or when it was found though just mentioning it was a confirmed mineral found at pretty much that location so I'm gonna keep scouring that area next winter.