Exploring a cliff for pegmatites and crystals⛏️

[@normamiller6732]

Great video Liam.😊❤

[@glennhales7302]

As a lifelong self-collector, i enjoy your videos. Keep on looking young man, good luck.

[@NWRockExplorer]

Thanks!! I should be more active on KZbin in the coming months, Lots of areas I need to explore before the snow makes them inaccessible🙂

[@Crystals-of-gaia]

Great video! I always look forward to your new content

[@NWRockExplorer]

Thanks!!😁

[@quantumlab9130]

Great video. What I love about this channel is that it shows the truth with rockhounding in that usually you find nothing or one small little sample… but that’s ok because you either always go back and worst case scenario you get a nice walk in the woods so you can’t lose

[@NWRockExplorer]

Thanks!! yea I try to keep it as real as possible, most trips i don't find much if anything but once in a blue moon I'll find something awesome!! There's not many well known rockhounding sites around here either so I kind of just have to find my own haha. I find the search more fun than just digging in a well known site too, just not knowing what you'll come across and finding places where few people have wandered. I would like to do bigger adventures in the future but I'm still pretty new to mountain exploration so I'm taking it slow. So many places around here i want to explore!!

[@quantumlab9130]

Same here, I’m still new to this hobby and just serious hiking in general so I completely understand taking things at your own pace. The thing is where I live there ain’t many place that have yet to be explored or are not on private property where I obviously can’t go

[@richelle9193]

Found you at the craft fair today! Looking forward to checking out your videos , thanks for sharing

[@NWRockExplorer]

Awesome!! thanks for checking out my channel!! I should be a little more active in the coming months so long as nothing else comes up 🙂

[@4streegrrrl601]

Happy to have discovered your channel last night, as a new rock hounder myself who lives in northern BC! I don't know what I'm looking at 99.5% of the time (I think I finally can identify an agate, sort of, if it is super obvious) so it's great to finally find a YT rockhounder showing familiar rocks in familiar forests and landscapes. I'm going through your back catalogue of videos and learning more than I have from the flashy Lake Superior agate hounds and their videos. ;-) Keep up the good work!

[@NWRockExplorer]

Thanks!! I try to share what I can as I'm learning. I'm by no means an expert but if I can help at least few people out that's great!! I'm still learning a ton and it never ends, there's always something new. Best of luck on your adventures!!🙂

[@PEACErocksandgarden]

Thanks for posting. Was out your way (almost) up past Bell2 but didnt have any luck finding anything.

[@NWRockExplorer]

Awesome!! Yea I'd like to travel that way at some point too!! There's a pretty large area of sedimentary rock up there. Every once in a while some volcanics will poke through but its not really too interesting. Might be good for metallic minerals and coal but that's mostly it. Once you get up around Iskut things are a lot more interesting🙂

[@gwynnfarrell1856]

It's great to see you out in those beautiful forests again! The crystals are really beautiful. They remind me of the Lake County diamonds that Quest for Details finds in California. That clear quartz erodes directly out of basalt. The bear spray and blown tire stories certainly must make the trip you took memorable! Thank you for sharing this prospecting trip. Sure are some big granite cliffs!

[@NWRockExplorer]

Thanks!! yea those Lake County diamonds are super cool!! I've never seen that formation of quartz in person, just a super interesting deposit!! I have a good feeling about this spot i just think i headed the wrong direction and should have stayed more in the granite. still was interesting to see what was in that little area and each trip leads closer to a big find. It's all worth it in the end and it's always nice to spend some time out in the woods!! I should be back out and about again soon!!🙂

[@davesflix]

Some nice pieces found, thanks for taking us with you.

[@TheRogueRockhound]

Man, when you said cliffside you weren't joking. Great vid buddy, hope you're doing well

[@NWRockExplorer]

Thanks!! yea there's some massive cliffs around here, really makes the mountains inaccessible. Hoping to get out again soon to explore this area a little better, maybe camp in the back of my truck for a couple days🙂

[@kimberleykimberley2465]

The crystals cleaned up nice. 🙂 Good thing your bear spray didn't go off when you were in the back of your truck. 😅

[@NWRockExplorer]

Yea that would've sucked haha. There's still a bit stuck in my bag after three washes, every bit of dust that comes out of it makes me have a coughing fit😅

[@kimberleykimberley2465]

@@NWRockExplorer Time for a new bag 😂

[@NorthWetCoast]

Great video! Wish we could have seen the trip you mentioned. It seemed like quite an adventure. 😅Maybe next time!

[@NWRockExplorer]

Thanks!! I'll have to bring my camera if I head out there again🙂

[@MACorrupt]

Beautiful. I am in Massachusetts obviously so quartz is very plentiful here and so now I have figured out the best kind to look for. I carve it so I look for yellow healers, quartz with hematite, red quartz, and beautiful clear quartz I found some really nice points today and some lavender quartz to carve

[@NWRockExplorer]

That's awesome!! I haven't really seen much of the quartz from Massachusetts, that's something I'll have to look up!! Quartz with hematite can be pretty neat!! Close to where I live good clear quartz is quite hard to come by. There's quartz everywhere but not much of it is gem grade. i think this spot does have potential but I should have went the opposite direction, it seems the granite type rock there is where the pegmatites are at🙂

[@MACorrupt]

@@NWRockExplorer even though I watch all your videos I’m still not even sure what a pegmatite is🤣. I make the most of what I have here.🩶

[@NWRockExplorer]

@@MACorrupt Google is a great teacher, it's how i learnt most of what i know!! Pegmatites are basically the leftovers of intrusive igneous rock like granite that just didn't want to mix in. intrusive igneous rocks are really quite organized so any odd minerals or excess minerals are discarded during the formation into pegmatite dykes which makes them really great for finding rare oddball minerals. For example my sunstone material is found in a diorite but sunstone is made of alkali feldspar so it separated out because diorite only likes to have plagioclase. They also take longer to cool and crystalize which is great for forming large crystals as opposed to the finer grained host rock. Still learning tons so take my words with a grain of salt haha, just trying to share what i can😅

[@your_eulogy2688]

What am I looking for when it comes to digging amethyst/quarts crystals? I've got a spot that's full of em but I can only seem to find em in people's tailings never found any digging under the trees like they have been. What do I look for? Just pull rocks around the base of the trees until I find a pocket? There's holes everywhere

[@NWRockExplorer]

It depends what kind of deposit it is, amethyst can form in all different ways. miarolitic cavities (pockets in granite), pegmatite pockets, hydrothermal veins, or in amygdules and Lithophysa in extrusive igneous rocks (Geodes, thundereggs). In a decomposing granite with marialitic cavities like in crystal park Montana you kind of have to just dig and hope for the best, same goes for the crystals in extrusive volcanics. For the other deposits like pegmatites, veins, etc, you kind of just look for indicators and follow the trail of quartz and as you find more and more pieces it'll bring you closer to the source of your crystals. Search up "The Quartz Page", there's so much great information about crystal deposits on there and can tell you anything you may need to know about quartz!!