Pasadena Lapidary Society’s March 19, 2024 Program Meeting will feature Dr. Nicholas Gessler who will present his Meteorite program. In 2002 Dr. Gessler was honored by the designation of Mainbelt Asteroid “113355 Gessler.” 15 years later, at Duke’s Kunshan, China campus, he hosted ‘Meteorites China’, the first international conference and exhibition of meteoritics in that country. That was emulated in 2018 by a similar conference in Jilin, China. He has discovered 13 named meteorites in California and Nevada and recovered over 1,400 fragments. Dr. Gessler continues to build a comprehensive private teaching collection, and has recently been involved in documenting the newly discovered ninth largest meteorite on Earth, named EL ALI, from Somalia. It weighs in at 15.15 tonnes and is characterized as a “IA iron.” Most likely no other meteorite has been so intimately connected with the life and fate of so many people as ‘EL ALI.” Although the meteorite is now for sale in China, with the help of colleagues at Almaas University of Mogadishu, 16 videos of it are being analyzed and there is a plan to do exploratory archaeology of its impact site near the Ethiopian border. https://people..duke.edu/”ng46/EL-Ali
PLS member Chris Kyte will provide this month’s Rock of the Month talk about Elestial, also known as Window Quartz, with a specific pattern of terminations that flow throughout the face and body of the crystal.
PLS member Nancy Robb will continue her talk on PLS’ history, this being our 75th Anniversary year. The program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007, on Tuesday, March 19, 2024. Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Buy a raffle ticket for a few bucks and try your luck at winning a cool rock specimen, slab, or otherwise. We hope to see you there!
Pasadena Lapidary Society (PLS) members provide this month’s program at 7:00 p.m. , Tuesday, February 20, 2024 — FIRESIDE ROOM (not Fellowship Hall) of the Santa Anita Church
Rock tumbling is the process of polishing rocks and minerals in a rock tumbler. This involves adding stones or minerals to the rock tumbler along with some abrasives, such as grit, fillers, and water. Phil Lahr will give a presentation on tumbling, discussing the basics – machines, grits, and processes involved. He will also have samples of rock polishing at various stages so you can see and feel the difference from one stage to the next. This is a great educational program for new rockhounds, and a refresher for older ones.
As part of our observance of PLS’ 75th Anniversary this year, Nancy Robb plans to continue her talk on PLS’ history.
Our Rock of the Month talk for February will be presented by Sue Pang as she discusses this month’s birthstone, Amethyst.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, January 20, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. in the (**DIFFERENT ROOM, SAME ADDRESS**) FIRESIDE ROOM of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007. Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. We hope to see you there!
Pasadena Lapidary Society members will once again be joining the ranks of rockhounds and lapidarists across the nation – and beyond – in an annual sojourn to our ‘mecca’ of rocks – Quartzsite, Arizona. While this isn’t a fieldtrip that requires a rock hammer, shovel or other tools, it’s a great opportunity to see what wonderful gems and minerals exist in our world – all in one place. There are several gem and mineral shows which are held between December and late February in this town, which swells to over a million visitors in the month of January from a paltry 3,714 +/- residents the rest of the year. One of our favorite shows to check out is the QIA Pow Wow, which takes place from January 17 – 21, 2024, with free admission and free parking and way more than a day’s worth of treasures to see. It’s like a giant open air swap meet held under the beautiful blue sky with giant puffy white clouds floating overhead – which sometimes open up with a quick light rain or a heavy shower – then dissipates as quickly as it starts. Quartzsite is just 18 miles east of the California border, along Interstate 10. One can make it a full day trip, or if you’re able to secure lodging in Quartzsite, AZ or Blythe, CA, turn your visit into more than one day so you can visit the other shows taking place as well, such as Tyson Wells or Desert Gardens. If you prefer to take an RV and camp, there’s plenty of open space just on the outskirts of town. How to get there? Take I-10 East until you get to Quartzsite, about a four hour drive from Pasadena when traffic isn’t bad. We often make a quick stop at Chiriaco Summit either on the way to or from AZ, where one can fuel up and stop for a bite or snacks.
And the rockhound fun doesn’t stop with Quartzsite… read further about the big Tucson Show (the 2023 event is the subject of our January 16 Program Meeting) coming February 8-11, 2024.
The Tucson Gem and Mineral Society knows how to put on a great show. This society was the first to bring together the hobby enthusiast, the curator/professionals and the general public for this annual four day event. After 68 years, it is the largest, oldest and most prestigious gem and mineral show in the world. The 2023 show theme was “Silica, Agates & Opal & Quartz, Oh My!”
The 2024 show is slated for February 8-11, 2024. Located at the Tucson Convention Center, attendees will find approximately 250 dealers selling a variety of minerals, fossils, jewelry, and lapidary. Throughout the show there are lectures and symposiums. Jaw-dropping world class exhibits from private collections, major universities and museums are on display. Other exhibit cases, (both competitive and non-competitive) round out this mix.
For Pasadena Lapidary Society’s Tuesday, January 16, 2024 Program Meeting, our friend Mary Pat Weber will provide us with a visual treat of the highlights of the 2023 Tucson show, and why it rocks!
Rose Quartz and Garnet will be the topics of January’s Rock of the Month talk, provided by PLS Vice President Barna Laszlo.
This program meeting is at 7:00 p.m. at Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007. Come to learn and make new friends; open to the public, free admission.
Pasadena Lapidary Society’s Tuesday, November 21, 2023 program meeting will feature member Paolo Sanchez, who will present on the Tourmaline King Mine in the Pala Mining District of San Diego County. New pockets have been uncovered with the first discovered in January 2022, the first major find at the mine in more than 100 years, and the first in Southern California since the “Big Kahuna” pocket at the Oceanview mine in 2010. This is exciting news and we are looking forward to hearing what Paolo has to share with us about one of our favorite areas in Southern California to go gem hunting.
Tourmaline found in San Diego County, cut and set into the pendant and earrings shown here. Photo courtesy of PLS member E. Weston.
November’s Rock of the Month talk will be about our Educational Program for schools and the community. Have you ever wondered how you can help? This month’s talk will illustrate how even the newest members can participate.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, November 21, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. We hope to see you there!
The largest commercial deposits of amethyst in North America occur near the Canadian border in Southern Ontario. Unlike the more common Brazilian amethyst, this material is unique due to inclusions of red hematite in the outermost layers of the crystals. Our guest speaker for October, Dick Weber, first visited these deposits in the 1970s while studying for his graduate degree in Geology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.
Geologists Dick and Mary Pat Weber have returned to these deposits several times over the years and on two recent visits were given special access to the workings of the deposit by the mine owners. As part of this presentation they will display some of this highly prized amethyst from their personal collections.
This program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007, on Tuesday, October 17, 2023.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Buy a raffle ticket for a few bucks and try your luck at winning a cool rock specimen, slab, or otherwise. We hope to see you there!
What do the Cady Mountains and the Marble Mountain Fossil Beds have in common? These are sample sites Pasadena Lapidary Society (PLS) members and other rockhounds visit to collect rocks including but not limited to chalcedony and agates. The aforementioned sites are also an example of places within the boundaries of the Mojave Trails National Monument (MTNM) in San Bernardino County, California. PLS members have visited public lands and collected rocks since our Society’s establishment in 1946, while the MTNM was created in February 2016 under the Obama Administration. Some national monuments have banned rockhounding or removed access to rockhounding areas. Currently, rockhounding at the MTNM is still allowed while the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) develops the monument’s management plan. As rockhounds, we need to continue to have road access to collection sites and be able to collect rocks within the MTNM. Gregor Losson, our gem and mineral collecting representative on the MTNM Subgroup of the Desert Advisory Committee (DAC), will be the guest speaker for our April program meeting. Having recently attended the BLM California Desert District Advisory Council meeting, he will illustrate what’s happening and what we need to do to continue enjoying future access to the MTNM.
The April Rock of the Month presentation will be about a junior member’s rock hunting experience. Daniel Nishimura is a PLS junior member. He is eight years old and has been rock hounding since he learned how to walk.
This important and informative program meeting takes place at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Join us to learn more about the future of rockhounding in one of our favorite locales. Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. Hope to see you there!
Pasadena Lapidary Society member Paolo Sanchez will discuss the elusive Lapis Lazuli from Mount Baldy (aka ‘Old Baldy’ or Mount San Antonio) for our March program meeting. Paolo will cover the science behind lapis, its significance to lapidary, and his adventures in search of one of the only lapis mines in North America. He has been an active member of the Pasadena Lapidary Society since 2011, yet his passions for geology and rockhounding stem from kindergarten. He has written numerous award-winning articles on minerals and has been a guest speaker for various California Federation of Mineralogical Societies (CFMS) programs across California. He has received his bachelors in Geology and Geophysics from UC Berkeley and is now pursuing a PhD in geochemistry studying mineralogy and petrology at Caltech.
The March Rock of the Month presentation will be on Septarian Nodules and provided by PLS member Sue Dekany.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, March 21, 2023, at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Come join us! Doors open at 6:30, admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. We hope to see you there!
Members of Pasadena Lapidary Society, along with most serious rockhounds, wait anxiously all year to make the 3-1/2 hour trek to Quartzsite, AZ in January. Some stay there into February, camping nearby in order to go rockhounding at their leisure, and others check in to the few motels in town or travel the 22 miles back/forth to Blythe, CA for lodging.
Some sizable chunks of beautiful Lapis Lazuli, at vendor booth of a past year’s QIA PowWow in Quartzsite.
One of the biggest draws in Quartzsite is the QIA POWWOW, always held the third week in January. This year the POWWOW runs from January 18-22. If you’ve never been, the POWWOW is like a huge swap meet focused on gems, minerals, rocks and everything related. Admission is free and so is parking.
Self-professed as “The Rock Capital of the World”, Quartzsite is a town in La Paz County of +/- 2,000 inhabitants that swells to a couple of million in January and February each year. Situated 125 miles west of Phoenix at the junction of Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 95, it enjoys a close association with the Colorado River, just 18 miles to the west.
Pictures provided by PLS member Christian Schulze.
Mound formation we drove past on our way to one of the collection sights. It was nearly as tall as a Jeep!
A large rock we stumbled upon during a group hike with some kind of chalcedony/druzy mineral on the surface.
The Caravan led by trip leaders on our way through the desert to some collection spots.
An example of some agate found.
Calcite found both days exhibiting a pink fluorescence under a longwave UV light at night.
Green and Purple fluorite we uncovered on fieldtrip.
Shot of the beautiful landscape we encountered during the field trip.Base Camp on a chilly night.
Baxter Wash: 5AM November 25, 2022
Fieldtrip Report and Pictures by PLS member Rex Nishimura
The nighttime rumble of the slow moving Union Pacific freight train awakened me from my post-Thanksgiving slumber. It was a big concern as we had parked next to some desolate tracks in Afton Canyon, deep in the Mojave Desert. How far away was the train? Where was it going? After a moment of confusion, I zeroed in on its location, several miles away, but the reverberation of 6 diesel tractors and the wail of its horn gave me a sense of urgency. Like the train, it was time for us to get moving on our next adventure, rockhunting in Baxter Wash.
Baxter Wash is only about 2 miles from Afton Canyon, but it has changed significantly since last year. Heavy monsoonal rains washed away roads, replacing them with ravines of rock and sand. The campsite was a mess of boulders and rocks in the wrong places. We would have our work cut out for us to make camp before our old, new, and future rockhound friends would arrive.
Caravan vehicles traversing through a narrow canyon.
There’s little cell service out there, so after we set up the camp, we climbed a nearby hill searching for a signal. Here, 200 feet above camp, we got enough signal to send and receive texts and watch our friend drive into camp from several miles away. It’s a testament to the skill of our drivers, that no one got lost driving 5 miles on dirt roads to the hidden base camp. People came and went during the weekend, but we averaged about 17 campers over the 3 days. A potpourri of vehicles made it to camp too, from full size pickups to a tiny SUV Subaru Outback. Some were trail ready, but less capable vehicles were left behind.
Though there are many trail ready and highly capable vehicles in this world, getting to productive gem fields requires extra effort. Knowledgeable, skilled, and diligent drivers are needed to negotiate the rocky canyons and sandy washes. Our first stop was the crystal agate seams about 10 miles away, in a narrow canyon pitted with sheer walls, boulders, and rocks. One of our awesome junior members volunteered to be the rock spotter. Her job was to keep the vehicles from getting high centered or scraping on sharp rocks.
Crystal agate seam
The crystal agate seam required hiking up a sandy hill for beautiful light blue, 2” seam agate with a clear quartz crystal center. It’s beautiful material, but since it took 40 minutes to drive here, we only had about 30 minutes to collect before heading to our next location, the miner’s cave and the nearby yellow fluorite mine.
Visiting abandoned miner’s cave
Years ago, some poor miner hewed a cave out of volcanic ash, stocking it with everything needed for a prospector’s life. All that’s left now is a rusty bed frame, a Coleman stove, shelves stocked with cans of food, a small library of books (including a Bible), and a few dollars sitting under a rock. I’m not sure I would eat from the old cans of food, but I could find a use for the bed frame, books, and Bible! Money is kind of useless out there too. I thought about adding a few dollars of my own, but I didn’t want the camp to be plundered by offroad pirates. Maybe someday, I’ll camp in the cave and see what prospecting was really like.
Yellow fluorite specimen
The yellow fluorite mine is peculiar only because of the color. White, purple, and green are common colors, but yellow is rare in the Cady Mountains. We picked up some yellow to add to our collections.
Back at camp that night, we had a slight problem with the potluck. Forks. Even though we were short on forks, rockhounds are a resourceful people.
In no time, we had split our mahogany firewood into strips and whittled them into mahogany chopsticks. No splinters either! We enjoyed a wonderful meal of spaghetti and meatballs with lots of pie and whipped cream! After supper, we discovered that one of our members’ car wouldn’t start. We’re not sure what the problem was, but by pooling our resources, we found someone with a battery charger and 3 hours later, his car was working like normal. A family of motorcycle enthusiasts even dropped by our campsite to inquire about purchasing some fuel from us. We sold it to them at cost, even though at that particular moment, the motorcyclist’s needs made the gas worth much more. Scarcity and value is key to any item’s worth.
Agate
People often ask me how I know where to look for the gemstones. Well, I don’t actually search for gemstones as they are too hard to find. I search for adventure which is ubiquitous. The next day we were in for an adventure. A grueling 3 mile hike for red and blue jasper agate. After scrambling up a hillside of loose gravel, we hiked along the ridge for jasper agate, plus red and white calcite crystals, agate nodules, and some pre-sagenite clusters. The sagenite was a bit of a stretch, but we found needle-like crystalline agate in a splayed pattern. I heard one of our new members declare that the hike was an adventure, which describes perfectly how I feel about prospecting for our club.
Sunday’s trip was to the Green Hills. Here the roads were in bad shape and we struggled to find and remain on previously marked paths. No one had visited this area for a long time, and there was plenty of high quality agate almost everywhere. Most of it was banded white or clear, but we also found green moss agate and a hillside of marble sized amygdules. The kids had fun playing knuckles down with the agate balls, but the amygdules were too numerous to bother collecting.
A nice chunk of agate found on fieldtrip
The rock collecting part of the trip was now over; all that remained was to break camp. I must give a shout out to all the drivers who graciously offered seats to rockhounds without vehicles. This was a tough drive and your generosity is much appreciated! I also must thank everyone for working together to make this trip possible. It’s great to be on the same team and, of course, bringing home the gemstones makes it even better.
