Past Field Trips

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STAUROLITE FIELD TRIP REPORT

by Dion Stewart

It was a pleasantly warm, crystal clear fall day (October 23) for the 45 field trip participants, including 11 children who came to the North Carolina site to dig for staurolite crystals. There was lots of material available and many great finds on the property.

While we sifted staurolite crystals out of the soils on the hillside of site one, Pat, the owner of the property, went down to the stream with his backhoe and dug out three fresh piles of dirt at a second site for us to work on. The new piles of dirt at the second site produced some very large staurolite crosses about 3 inches across. The cobbles in these new dirt piles included the bedrock of the area, which is a white muscovite schist with nearly black staurolite often covered with little red pinpoint (soccer ball shaped) garnets.

The dirt piles were a nice contrast to the soil piles where the muscovite has completely weathered away leaving the staurolite crosses loose in the soil and easily retrieved by a shovel and screening. At the end of the day participants walked away with as many as 50 or more staurolite crystals from the soil site and a few nice pieces from the new dirt piles.

The owner had put in a new road for us that ended in a nice grassy mead-ow about 50 yards from the soil site. We were the first cars down his new road, and the meadow was a perfect place to park our 18 vehicles. However, when it came time to leave the “grass” in the sloping meadow proved too slippery for several cars, and we owe thanks to Clay and his bright red 4×4 truck for pulling those cars back onto the new dirt road.

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These reports chronicle the details of the fun and adventure of seeking and finding your own rocks, minerals or fossils. Frequently, these trips are repeated. This makes this page a good reference site for future trips. Collecting location specifics won't be included in the report as they generally require special permission to collect. It's important that we protect the privacy of our site owners to avoid unwanted rockhounds searching on their property.