The Pow Wow club in action.:

Our Fall dig is September 11th and 12 th this year, and it is by Red Top Mountain, near Cle Elum, Washington. There we get Jade, Jadeitte, Pipe Stone, Jasper, Carnelian, and sometimes Ellensburg Blue. The public is welcome, membership dues are required for all breakfast and field trip participants. The dues are $7.50 per person, $15.00 for family, (includes 17 years and under).

Pauline

Thanks Pauline -

For those of you who are interested in the Pow Wows, Pauline has a few PDF's for us that tell more about the club and club schedules and contact information for the club.

For info about the club -

(this is the big pdf)

For Pow Wow Schedules -

(this pdf is the small one with schedules in the title)

TORNADO WREAKS HAVOC AT QUARTZITE SHOW

Emory Coons reporting:

The annual Quartzite, AZ rock and gem show is always an exciting event. This year it was especially exciting, but not in a good way. The weather wasn't great this year for the show. On the 21st of January tornadoes hit in the Quartzite area, with one tornado touching down in Blythe, just outside quartzite and also two striking in Yuma .

Emory Coons was at the show at got some pictures of the storm aftermath for you and tells his own experience of the storms as well as some info about hunting the local area there. Here's what he had to say.

I didn't see it [tornado]. I was in Don Hildabrant's trailer watching awnings shred and fly off other stands. Bob Beck, from Hood River, caught an awning in the roof of his camper and it took the satellite dish into the neighbor motor home and proceeded to take the front windsheild out of his truck.

There was about two to three inches of water flowing through the show. The neighbor to us jumped up on a milk crate and I hollered over to him "Fema's not coming, Obama said swim for it" and he almost laughed himself off the crate. Then the next morning was a nice sunrise. The tornado outside of Quartzite might have just been a mirco down burst, I have no clue - but there were 3 rows of vendors at Tyson Wells that were left in shambles and everybody's booth stuff was all jumbled together.

These pictures are of where I was at desert gardens. We had no damage like the folks at Tyson Wells.

Image - Emory Coons

Image - Emory Coons

Image - Emory Coons

This picture is of some of the chrisacola turquois/ iron pyrite

I found with a friend out of Avi. Image - Emory Coons

Weather could have been better generally for the show.

Image - Emory Coons

There was a beautiful sunrise the day after the storm.

Image - Emory Coons

One area I dug for fire agate at my friend Don's fire agate fee digs.

Image - Emory Coons

If you are going to be in the Quartzite area of Arizona, you might want to dig fire agate at Don's fee dig. Don's pay to dig is $20.00 a day and you keep what you find. Emory gives some tips about the digging at Don's: mostly digging in riolite and using a rock hammer sledge 10lb and bar don's a great guy to have fun with.

Here's the information about Don's digs and directions to the location.

For reservations: Phone (928) 565-4145

Mailing Address: Cuesta Fire Agate Mine, HC 39 Box 905, Golden Valley, AZ

From Hwy 95 South of Bullhead City, AZ take Boundary Cone Rd. to Oatman From Kingman AZ take old route 66 approximately 30 miles past Ed's Camp to the claims.

Emory's overall experience of the show and hunting, despite the horrid weather? "I had a blast and am still unloading the truck."

Thanks for the pictures and your comments about the show, storm, and info about the fire agate digs. I know some members of RHS1 have been wondering about where to hunt fire agate in Arizona.

RHS1 Members News

It seems there is a rather virulent bug going around the Northern regions right now. It's called Cabin Fever and it's affecting rockhounds all over the Northern hemisphere. The bug isn't contagious but it's dastardly for those who are afflicted with it. One of the earliest signs of the fever is the tendency to sit and browse through last season's cache of specimens while mumbling incoherently about each stone and a continual urge to surf rockhound websites for news of rockhounding in places that have sunshine and mild winter temperatures. There is only one means to get rid of this dreaded fever. You must get to where there is sun, warm weather, and a good load of gemstone material to hunt. Finding such a location is vital to your sanity for the fever will drive you crazy if you do not do so immediately when it strikes! Good luck to all who have been touched with this fever or are at risk.

For those of you stuck inside dealing with fighting off the dreaded cabin fever - there's no better time to check out the assortment of books and maps at Black Cat Mining so you will be ready to hunt when the weather breaks instead of wasting good hunting days searching for where to search:

CLICK HERE to go to Black Cat Mining Co.

Who knows, there might be some great deals in the Scratch & Dent and Clearance Items section when you get there, too.

To avoid the fever next season you might want to take the rest of this year's down time learning how to make jewelry from all those stones just laying around making you long for the hills. Wire-Sculpture has a terrific inventory of new training CD's that will have you producing professional quality jewelry in no time. Get your craft skills up to par while Mother Nature is forcing you to take a break at:

CLICK HERE to go to Wire-Sculpture.com

Don't forget to check out their massive inventory of findings, wires, and tools while you are there. Their prices aren't going to send you digging for gold...um...unless you want to.

ARCHAEOLOGY

Man Traveling By Water Much Longer Than Presumed

Up until a new discovery of very ancient tools on the Island of Crete, the hypothesis was that Acheuleans came to Europe via the Middle East through Turkey. It's seems possible that they crossed via the Strait of Gibralter, jumping across the Greek Islands. Tools recently found on Crete suggest this may be the case.

Previous findings of tools had placed humans on the Greek Islands around 10 - 12,000 years ago. Tools found throughout the last two years, however, date to at least 130,000 years of age and possibly up to 700,000 years old. That extreme age was not based on dating stone axes which were found, but merely from comparison of other stone technology from the Acheuleans that had be in use by pre-human populations. The more than 2,000 artifacts now in collection are undergoing professional investigation into the actual age of the tools and their significance will depend on the actual age of the artifacts.

The geologists studying the site of the artifacts feel certain of the age of the site because of the geology of the area in which they were found, on the Southern shores of Crete. The soil in which the artifacts were found was on the surface 130,000 to 190,000 years ago. The layer had been uplifted by plate tectonics of the African and European plate and those layers have previously studied and dated by geologists, so there is a solid knowledge of the dates that early humans would have been walking on that particular layer of earth and that date can very well ascertain the minimum age of the tools.

Being that the first marine travel of modern Homo Sapiens previously known was their migration to Australia about 60,000 years ago, finding these tools could cause a major change in our understanding of our earliest ancestors and the technological development of our species.

EARTHQUAKE WATCH

Recent news of a 7.0 quake in the Ryukyu Islands off the shores of Japan was buried when an 8.8 magnitude quake, the 7th strongest on record hit, Chili. As always, news of this quake created quite a bit of panic amongst doomsayers. It seems earth is coming to an end once again.

Actually, we are now at the correct yearly average for 8+ magnitude Earthquakes - that average being one per year if any. We are just over average for 7 magnitude quakes by only one. The reason the quakes seem so frequent is due to a combination of global tracking capabilities and the fact that these quakes have hit major metropolis centers. We still very seldom hear of quakes that hit out in regions where there are few, if any, people living. If anything is left to our wonder it should be the fact that metropolises of millions of people would be built right on top of subduction zones, the most volatile and destructive regions on earth. I guess with people not heeding the fact that most populated areas of this planet are now being devastated by over-carrying capacity populations, we can just shrug and say "well, we have to put all of them somewhere."

Now to put all of the mass hysteria going on to rest, I'm going to take some time here to explain a few little details that the soapbox crowds just seem to refuse to understand. The first being that a magnetic pole shift is portent of the end of the world.

Magnetic pole shifts occur with amazing frequency. The last one, in the mid 1800's went completely unnoticed by the population at large. At the present time our magnetic pole is shifting, moving toward Siberia at a rate of 25 miles per year. That might not sound fast, but it is extremely fast for the magnetic North pole. When the actual shift and stabilization at a new point occurs we will temporarily experience multiple poles, then they will snap back to one point. Magnetism will not drop to zero. There will be localized magnetic anomalies, the multiple poles, then suddenly everything will go back to normal with the pole in a new location.

Our geographical pole does tend to follow the magnetic poles because over time matter aligns with the magnetic pole. Movement of the geographic poles is slow and takes place over hundreds of thousands and even millions of years other than in extreme occurrences. Such occurrences are thought to have happened in the past and there are indications that our geographic poles have shifted and possibly even flipped before. One theory of mass extinction contends that the rapidity of the extinction was due to a pole shift. It is not the movement of the magnetic pole that would cause such a cataclysm, however.

At the present time we are experiencing a movement of the earth's lithosphere (the crust and the upper mantle). The mantle, some scientists think, is shifting its rotational pattern a bit. Plate tectonics are also moving the crust a bit. The result is some rather significant sized, shallow earthquakes. In recent weeks there have been many quakes globally at 10 km depths, and another group of 35 km deep quakes. While the number of quakes might be a bit over average, there is not a number that indicate anything abnormal taking place at this point in time. Earthquakes have been more frequent since 1990, but whether this is due to actual earth activity, or just the advanced tracking that is now possible is not clear. Earthquakes that would have gone unreported in earlier decades because the occurred in places where no humans were around to report them, is no longer a reality. We can track all quakes now no matter how remote the area.

Scientists seem to be in agreement that there is some lithospheric shifting going on at the time, however, and a few locations remain under very close scrutiny. There is a consensus that the Cascadia subduction zone is in hazard of eruption in the near future. Such an eruption could be extremely devastating as that area produces some of the earth's strongest quakes and largest tsunamis. A few very large metropolis centers sit on that subduction zone - Vancouver and Seattle. Seattle has a fault line running through it that connects to the subduction zone, and the city sits on sediment rather than solid rock.

While life on earth will not end if the subduction zone snaps, those who live on the zone or in the areas effected by the tsunamis that result from quakes in that area might not see it that way. If you are living on that subduction zone or on any other volatile area such as live volcano, you might consider that you are taking your chances at any time being there. It has nothing to do with the earth ending, it has everything to do with business as normal for planet earth.

INDONESIAN MUD VOLCANO CAUSED BY DRILLING.

Lusi Mud Volcano, Indonesia - 2009-10-20

In May of 2006 a mud volcano erupted in the Porong sub-district of Sidoarjo, Indonesia. The eruption to this day is continuing and has displaced 30,000 people, caused the death of 13 people when a gas pipe ruptured, and has buried four villages to this date.

When the eruption first occurred, the blame was laid on the well's owners, Lipindo Brantus. This company, in turn blamed an earthquake 280 kilometers from the well. The company has continued to maintain the remote quake as reason for the eruption and their senior drilling advisor states that the well is still in tact according to analysis. It looks like they have reached the last of their ability to argue that they are innocent of cause in the matter, though.

Homes buried by the mud flow

A team of independent researchers does not agree with this analysis, however, and claims the company is completely responsible for the eruption. The team consisting of geologists from Durham University, UK and the University of California, Berkley, say that the earthquake was too far away to cause problems in that area. They also point out that drilling reports showed the drilling engineers pumped heavy mud into the well to stem the flow of the mud. It did so. Had the well not been connected to the eruption, the engineers' actions would not have caused any slowing in the rate of flow. The geologists went on to find five drilling errors in the course of their research.

While the proof is now accepted by scientists, it is unclear what actions will be taken, if any can be taken to stop the mud flow, and what repercussions will be for the errant company.

Sally Taylor... RHS1 Earthwatch.

Image and info credits for this edition:

Wikipedia: Emery Coons: Pauline Miller :

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