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!
Kris Rowe, front and center, surrounded by PLS members from L to R, Liz, Sue, Steve and Shirley. Photograph provided by Sue Pang.
The February program meeting will feature Kris Rowe, a lifelong rockhound and 40+ year field geologist, who will present a talk on Rockhounding in the Mojave. Kris has led fieldtrips throughout California for decades, with many outings focused in the Clear Creek area and all over the Mojave Desert. Recent trips have been out to the hills of Hinkley, CA to a private turquoise claim, near where the picture at right was taken. During the Thanksgiving 2022 week, Kris led a 9-day long ‘Odyssey’ to numerous sites including the South Cadys, Lavic Siding, Opal Mountain and Boron. He can be found on Facebook as ‘Roadside Rockhound‘.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, February 21st, 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.
The January 17th, 2023 Pasadena Lapidary Society Program Meeting will feature Dick Weber, who will introduce us to the colorful world of Fluorite. Due to a spectacular range of colors and well-developed crystals, this mineral is highly sought after by collectors. Clear and colorless when pure, fluorite can exhibit every color of the spectrum from the deepest purple to bright oranges and reds. In addition to its aesthetic and scientific value, fluorite is a critical industrial mineral used in the production of thousands of commercial products.
Dick Weber was first introduced to the fluorite deposits of the Mississippi Valley while working on his geology degree. Actively collecting specimens for the last 15 years, he will bring a display showcasing pieces from famous locales.
PLS member Curtis Schurer will present the second part of his Rock of the Month Talk on Jasper.
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.
Join us for an illuminating evening as we begin our 2023 Program Meetings! Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!
For our November Program Meeting, we’re delighted that Renée Newman will be our speaker, providing images and information in her presentation on Diamonds that includes, among other things, the most significant discoveries of rough diamond crystals, five basic diamond crystal types and their relative value from highest priced to lowest priced, where to find diamonds in the U.S., and what American diamonds look like in the rough in order to help you spot them while prospecting and rockhounding.
Renée has a book out entitled Diamonds: Their History, Sources, Qualities and Benefits and much of her presentation is reflected in her book.
Renée Newman developed her interest in gems while conducting tours to Asia, South America and the South Pacific. Her passengers wanted information about the gems that were displayed in hotels and stores so she signed up for a colored stone grading course at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) in order to be able to answer their questions. The teachers there inspired her to complete the GIA colored stones and diamonds program.
After receiving a graduate gemologist diploma from the GIA, Renee was hired as a gemologist at a diamond wholesale firm in downtown Los Angeles. It provided hands-on experience grading diamonds and selecting colored gems and pearls for their jewelry. Armed with trade experience and gemological credentials, Renée decided to create books that showed readers how to visually evaluate the quality of gems. Her first book, the Diamond Ring Buying Guide, was published in 1989. Since that time, she has written thirteen more books on gems and jewelry, including the Diamond Handbook geared to trade professionals and her new large-format book Diamonds: Their History, Sources, Qualities and Benefits. Information about it is available at http://www.reneenewman.com/diamonds.htm
Renée’s books are used as consumer guides, gemology course textbooks, sales training tools and appraisal references and are listed at www.reneenewman.com/books.htm. Renée will be selling her books at a discount and autographing them before and after her presentation. Bring cash or a check if you would like to purchase copies of them.
PLS member Curtis Schurer will discuss Jasper for the Rock of the Month presentation. Jasper is an opaque, impure variety of silica, comes in several colors, and is often found in the Mojave Desert.
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.
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. See you there!
Bring the kids to the Barnhart School Carnival this Saturday, have some fun with the carnival games, enjoy food and drinks, check out the vendors, and stop by the Pasadena Lapidary Society booth while you’re at it.
We’ll be featuring do-it-yourself ‘My Rock Collection’ kits. Youngsters (and adults as well) can choose from an assortment of mineral specimens that we’ll have on hand and compile their own kits. This makes a fun first step toward a future interest in rock collecting as a hobby and/or Earth Sciences as a vocation. These rock collection kits were a huge hit at our August gem and mineral show this year.
The Carnival will take place on the Barnhart School property at 240 West Colorado Boulevard in Arcadia. CA 91007. barnhartschool.org
Join us at our Tuesday, October 18 Program Meeting where award-winning mixed-media artist Linda Queally will discuss the rich history of Pearls in the Americas, and how they’ve been associated with Mermaids since the first Siren’s Song was heard.
Linda works in acrylic and fine art paper on claybord in her vibrant mystical paintings, and with cultured pearls and mixed metals in her simple, elegant jewelry designs. She studied Art and Design at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, is a Certified Pearl Specialist with the Cultured Pearl Association of America, and holds a Certificate of Gemology from Santiago Canyon College in Orange.
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.
Join us for an enchanting evening! Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!
A beautiful pendant of Ethiopian Opal designed by Gabriel Mosesson.
If you’re an Opal or Emerald lover and find yourself purchasing these gorgeous gemstones on their own, as well as set in jewelry pieces, perhaps you’ve met Gabriel Mosesson, a gem cutter and jewelry artist who offers his beautiful treasures for sale at many bead/gem/jewelry shows in Southern California. He was most recently at our annual Tournament of Gems, which ran just two weekends ago (8/20-21).
Wow, what a striking piece! Emerald pendant by Gabriel Mosesson.
Gabriel travels to Ethiopia to hand-select the highest quality rough opals and emeralds directly from the mines, then he brings them back to his Los Angeles studio to cut or hand-carve the gemstones, designing them into one-of-a-kind settings. He just recently returned from one of those trips and will tell us about it and the beautiful emeralds and opals found in Ethiopia for our September meeting presentation.
This program meeting takes place on Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. in the Fellowship Hall of The Santa Anita Church, 226 W. Colorado Blvd., Arcadia, CA 91007.
Join us and prepare to be dazzled! Admission is free; open to the public. Enjoy refreshments while checking out the display table; bring a rock specimen you’d like identified. See you there!
