Hey everyone
I'm here with a group from Michigan Rockhounds, and we're at the Cliff Mine
and we're going to- what are we going to find?
copper?
-copper yeah, and copper minerals in general -chlorastrolite maybe?
-yeah, there's a good chance for chlorastrolite -yeah, that's the greenstone you hear about
I'm looking for chisel chips is my
my goal, so
we should find some fun stuff
this has just been freshly bulldozed
last week
and so maybe there'll be some new
fun stuff to find
alright, this is Jen
and what did you find, Jen?
(Jen) I found some prehnite here
(Rob) nice (Jen) and there's a little copper fleck
you can see
this side and on that side, and then here's another smaller piece of prehnite
(Rob) love that color
and this is Craig
what do you have, Craig?
(Craig) so I have a little smorgasbord here, so
we've got a little bit of chrysocolla and malachite
copper oxides in here
and there's a lot of prehnite running through here, it doesn't have the nice crystalline
form, but
there's just quite a lot of that light green prehnite, and then
there's your pieces here (Rob) yeah, there's two pieces of copper
I found with a metal detector, and how long have we been here, like
five minutes? (Craig) yeah, five minutes tops
(Rob) there's all kinds of fun stuff to find here
you have anything to show off, Casey?
just picked this guy up
(Craig) oh yeah, you've got all sorts of
malachite (Casey) there's actually a couple of bits of
copper sticking out of it, nice big knob there
(Rob) oh yeah (Craig) what about right here?
you got a little copper in with copper oxides on the outside
also
(Rob) fun fun fun
just like on a beach I'm always looking for the place where nobody else is hunting
so, I figure most people stay up on top
I'm going to go on this, it's kind of steep but I think if I just kind of
be careful, I'm going to try to metal detect the side of the
hill here
(beep)
(higher pitched beep)
(beeps)
(Rob) alright, there's something right there
it
let's get out the pin pointer
(beeping)
right around here
(beeping)
alright, I'm going to turn the camera off, I'll tell you what I find when I dig it
out of here
(beeping)
alright, I found it
it's right there (beeping)
looks like there's more, but that's a piece of copper
see if I can hold this, I've got my ring on too, which is
kind of dumb, but
there you go
there's more still in there
okay, what'd you find?
(Cody) so I found a tiny bit of chlorastrolite
with probably calcite that's at the center there, coated with
chlorite
but you can see the cleavage planes right there
and the tiny speckles of
a brighter green and a darker green, and the chatoyancy
just a little bit of the chatoyancy in there
where the chlorastrolite broke
and that's
that's how you know it's chlorastrolite
(Rob) otherwise known as greenstone, right? (Cody) yup
there might be some more around this (Rob) yeah
it's hard to tell the difference between chlorastrolite and chlorite sometimes
until you get used to it a little more, at least it was for me
(Cody) yeah, definitely
(Rob) well Casey, show us your big find
(Casey) alright, found ourselves some chlorastrolite, or Michigan greenstone
(Rob) that's when I can recognize them, when they're
they're, that's obvious because it's hollow
it's got those little radiating lines coming out
(Casey) yup
(Rob) that's cool
and I just found my first ever chisel chip, which I'm pretty excited about
so that's a
piece when they're chiseling out a great big chunk of copper
and
that's the little piece that came off
kind of got a little ripply effect to them as the chisel hits it
if you can see it there
oh, did you have something else there?
(Casey) yeah, it's just another little piece, it's
none of it's opened up, but I'm pretty sure most of this is also greenstone
(Rob) yeah
(Casey) you can kind of see a little bit of the fiberiness on this broken one
(Rob) right, it seems to be a lot of it's small, but that
that one over there is
is a nice size, yeah
(Casey) hopefully there's more inside (Rob) hopefully
(Rob) alright, what you got now?
(Cody) so I got a tiny bit of prehnite crystals forming in there, the botryoidal
formations you can see the lime, almost like really light lime green
the interesting thing about it in here too is that
(beeping)
there's a little bit of copper right there
(beeping)
right there
that vein goes all the way around here
(Rob) that's fun when you get
you know, several different minerals, which isn't uncommon here at all, but
(Cody) oh yeah (Rob) fun to get more than one in one
specimen
(Cody) definitely, yeah
(Rob) thanks, Cody
(Cody) yeah
(Rob) alright, so I'm giving these guys a tour of the ruins behind here, but
I'm a bad tour guide, because
I don't know my history very well, but I think I looked up and this is like an air
shaft or something
that we're coming up to
got some really nice stone walls here
what is this, the oldest profitable mine in the UP?
(Cody) it was the first, the first most profitable mine in the U.P. that lasted
about 30 to 40 years, began in nin- er 1845
one year before Quincy, it was directly on top of a vein, they started vein
mining was their method of mining copper
(Rob) so anyhow here's this big
(Craig) oh yeah, got a chimney up here
(Rob) big chimney like structure that
is pretty high
just love the stonework in these things
here's another one of these
stone structures, not too far from the other one
(Casey) I don't know if it was just like a for funsies thing or what, but
somebody at some point stacked some logs and put some boughs on top, made
a little lean-to
(Rob) yup
hard to
get it all in on camera here because the trees are growing right up
(Craig) yeah, there's a metal core rising up above it, can you see that from where
you're at? (Rob) yeah, there's a metal chimney on this
one, Craig just pointed it out
I can't really
get a good shot here
(Craig) if you come down to where I'm at
you'll see a- there'll be a gap in the trees where you can see it pretty
plainly, right up there you should be able to see it nicely
(Rob) oh yeah
Cody just found a chisel chip also, just
just saw it with his eyes, here's mine
you can see the
uniform width of them
(Cody) yeah wow
(Rob) but the, the green really stands out so
you don't need a metal detector I guess
so we've really only been up here for
what, a half an hour maybe?
and looked in the woods a little bit, and I found
these and two others I gave to Casey, pieces of copper
so the copper's just kind of all over here if you want small pieces of copper
I'm most excited about that chisel chip though
we're going to head up and see if we can get to the top of the mine, which I
guess is a pretty rough road, so it might be fun
so that's what's up next
(engine revving)
alright, you're going to want to go up this way right here a little bit
good, good
that rock's going to lift you up and you're going to be fine
oh-ho-ho
you're good, you're good
you're good
you got it, you got it
a little left
the game is to kind of keep the tires
the car as level as possible
(Rob) thank you
he was just a little too far to the right and hit that rock
(Casey) do they teach traffic school in geology, now?
(Craig) what's that?
(Casey) they teach traffic school in geology now?
(Craig) yeah, they do a bit on roads like this
(Rob) well, what did you guys think of that ride up here?
I sure was shaken, that's for sure
my clutch enjoyed it very much
(Rob) thanks for
for breaking trail, and thanks for co-piloting
you're welcome
(Rob) so, that was, that was quite an adventure
so we're at the top I guess
alright, we made it to the top
another one of these
chimney things here
and I'm standing, but my knees are shaking a little bit, because that is
super steep and a long ways down
I Just came up
this way
and I think I'm going to back down
wow
quite a view, though
just walked down here, we've been trying to figure out how this was
was
transported up here
and I think this is a railroad tie up here
there's a log sticking out here
there's another one a little farther up
buried a little more, but
I'm guessing that's a railroad tie, maybe?
and it came up here
and dumped it off
what do you have there?
(Casey) some prehnite
in this traps basalt
beautiful
circular nice fibrous stuff here
(Rob) yeah I love the color of that stuff
(Casey) yeah the green is really beautiful, this is a really nice example
(Rob) yeah it is
Casey was just showing me this one, you can see it's little botryoidal
bubbles in there
it's pretty small, but it's kind of cool
Cody was exploring down here and
discovered some more ruins from the mine
I'm coming to check it out
there's the big stack
so
I see
a hole right there, through some metal
I'm not going to go any closer to that, I don't know if there's a shaft down here
or something, but I think I'm just going to stay right here
what you got there, Will?
(Will) well I've got a
rock sandwich here
vanilla and chocolate
I have no idea what it is, Rob, why don't you tell me
(Rob) I don't know, I'm not sure, but it looks like a
maybe prehnite, with some- it looks like there's some little copper specks
in there, but
(Will) kind of goes all the way through it
(Rob) I'm the wrong guy to identify it, but I like it
(Will) maybe I'll ask Craig
(Rob) yeah
Craig will know
(Will) well here you go, you can have it a gift from me to you
(Rob) well thank you
(saw whirring)
(wheel grinding)
well here's the rock Will gave me
and it is just beautiful
I hope it shows up on the camera, there are little specks of copper
all throughout that rock
I don't know if it's better in the glare
or out of the glare
hopefully you can see
all the copper in there, it's not a lot of copper, it's a lot of little specks of
copper
really pretty
that's what it looked like before polishing
and there it is with a nice shine on it
(Craig) so we found a pit over here that somebody else was working
so I started digging through it, figuring there must be some- some reason
somebody was digging through that pit
I didn't really know what to look for, I'm guessing now that they were looking for
greenstones, because
take a look at
this guy right here
and then if you turn it over, you can see just how far back this whole thing goes
(Rob) that's huge for a greenstone
(Craig) it is absolutely enormous, so I'm going to be real gentle with this one
in my bag
(Rob) yeah
nice find
I just picked this one up, and I think it has a little chrysocolla there, there's
some green probably epidote down there
there's quite a few different colors in it, so I think it might look cool if I
cut right along there
(saw whirring)
(wheel grinding)
okay, here's that rock all polished up
it did have
what I believe is chrysocolla back here, you can see some and there was
some on the other side, but it was a little bit of this
kind of turquoise-y blue color in the rock
there's a little better speck over on this side, this is why I cut this side, but I
don't see any of it, so
I cut that little piece off, and
this is what I'm left with, but
there is copper
all throughout there, there's a
kind of a big piece right there
little piece there and there
and it's speckled all throughout, so
hopefully you can see that
sometimes it's hard to pick that stuff up on the camera
pretty rock, but
I think Will's rock is better than my rock
I like it better at least
alright, we just dragged ourselves out of the mine
what'd everybody think?
-it was pretty fun -very fun
-awesome adventure
and to be clear
not in the mine, out of the tailings
we did not go in the mine (Rob) oh, right
yes, tailings
(Craig) big difference
(Rob) I think one of my
the most fun parts was driving up here
that was crazy
(Craig) now that we know there's an easier way in and out, I'm glad you
enjoyed that drive
(Rob) yeah, it was
we're going to take an easier way out now
(Casey) genuine Keweenaw adventure
Hey I hope you liked that, and if you want to see more videos from the
Keweenaw, I've got a couple linked here, so click on one of those
see you over there