Mining and trommeling aquamarine and extracting coveted white boulders | S1:E3

[Music] we're high altitude mining 14,000 feet I've got to get this heavy equipment running up and down the mountain getting material off get all the crews focused in on the pockets they got going to get them extracted every day we're getting a little bit of snow weather's coming in knock on the door you can literally feel the clock ticking they're very important that we put as much blue off of this mountain this year as we can let's not leave nothing on the table here [Music] we've got some pretty good blue but we really got to push these next two to three weeks because you know we're just not quite there the guys were hitting the North Face really hard chris is focused on where Big Boi came from and I think he's on it I think we're probably in the range of about 5,000 carats guys guys killing it so we'll move up the hill a little bit with Jason in the end I put them on the North Face and they are understand pegmatite materials as well and they're starting to pull some blue both of them are getting beautiful blue but it's on so now time is of the essence and the leaves are already starting to change unbelievable and you can just feel the weather changing so every dig that's very crucial we're bringing material off the mountain and down to our warehouse for processing there's a real real urgency to get some pocket material now that we've got a lot of the infrastructure done that allow us to get into some new areas everybody's in place to be successful let's see if these zones can keep producing [Music] it's so beautiful when it comes out and you want that but you really got a you know look at the hill and decide too big of an angle can't go I'm Ron greasy I've been prospecting for over 10 years doing solo trips okay today I'm going to be going to the South Knob a place where I found some aquamarine and really got me excited this stuff is coming from somewhere so I got to go up there and play detective and and get this stuff out of there I know it's there my mode of transportation here is a motorcycle really kind of like it just sitting in the middle of seat and hitting the throttle and going up the trail but it's a mean trail so you got to hang on all the way up and you got to push yourself off of it all the way down [Music] the trail is super tough and relentless there's so many boulders and you have to pick your path as you go you screw up a little bit it screws you up a lot there's a lot of places where it looks like I'm wobbling but I'm I'm getting around boulders and rocks and it's a little 250 it's slight to maneuver around and it pulls you up like a goat [Music] just arrived up top in Tarot it's a little chilly up here probably going to dig out a coat and go over the South knob a little bit and do some screening and some digging try to see what gives [Music] [Applause] [Music] well here we are at our mining facility with a purchase like this there's a financial commitment you know and quite frankly Tracy and I and my father before you passed literally put everything we had into the purchase of the building there is just like any business monthly costs taxes you know local everything here in Colorado is pretty expensive but it's a worthwhile investment and with what we do literally one scoop can pay for an operation like this but make no mistake about it every season hinges on making and paying the bills paying the guys and you know keeping ourselves above water the commitments growing the risk is growing and me and my wife we face it head-on every day we've created a wash plant that's kind of tailored to what we do we're haul down the material from the top of mountain taro we bring it into this shop we start stockpiling on one end of the building we can run our material get some water on it we have found that we'll recover about 30 to 40 percent more on a yearly basis and that's huge for us you know time is money up there it's still a delicate process we don't want to break any crystals if at all possible obviously as you start the cake material through that water is going to break up the material and as it spins and discharged through its classification that a is gonna give us a good peek at the material and get a good wash for the silt to discharge in this proper outlet we'll have three different sizes coming out of the machine so if we don't have the wash side calibrated as much kind of defeating the purpose because we're gonna get a muddy sludge coming out and that's pretty much the same thing we already have the mountain think we've got everything fine-tuned let's get some material tips and blues in here [Music] nice blue coming off even the little pieces this is Jim quality aqua you got to check out all the discharges cuz all the gravel has got a good alluvial in this is why you have to get some water on this material you're getting nice chunks of blue we could be walking all over the place up there and missing this good material so it's not as Jimmy as we'd like he's a great specimen it all starts with the minerals from the mountain this particular bin here is what we call our gym clay bin tracy has a cosmetic line this discharge here we call it the gym clay silt it is the finest of the material that comes through the wash plant once we get to this stage of a wash plant and this is full we start to back it up and that's when it goes off to the next phase for processing for Tracy and a formulation it's not easy you have to find it in pocket material and it has to be the smectite clay that comes out of the pocket material and then all the little gemstones that we can't use in jewelry that all goes into my gym clay once we get it all in different grades so we grade it and then we get it processed at the plant and I get it into a town powder this is when it can absorb into your skin so this goes to the lab and then I formulate it with the lab technicians and I get all my products just perfectly made and it's beautiful as story goes with mining you're always growing you're always finding better ways and techniques obviously we want to find those matrix pockets but when you pull out three or four hundred carrots and debris that's a big big step for us on this North Face cigar size awkward unbelievable so we're back out here on the North Face getting into some more aqua I'm pretty sure this pocket is going to keep going so last weekend found over 2,000 carats of aqua real nice Jimmy stuff had real good clarity terminations stuff that's ready to go right into jewelry and even specimen grade so we're gonna try to get back into this again and see if we can't pull out any more this could be the million dollar pocket [Music] eventually the mountain kicks my butt just cuz the altitude well I might have the strength to dig all day the altitude gets to my head gives me headache if I don't drink enough and eat enough food that also takes its toll so every now and again I got to stop and remember the tiny nutrition to keep going I'm going to keep recycling the water and try to melt these crystals out my intention here is not to break anything so I'm gonna try to real nice and easy nice and slow just let it melt out see what we can't pull out for the rest of the day girls need room to grow they need the right temperatures and you get all the right conditions and that's why it's so rare it's almost like you have to have the perfect baking conditions just like you would baking a cake too hot you're gonna fry it to cool and it's gonna be mush just right and you're gonna have crystals forming sorry they're still in here it's not an awkward barrel but Beryl there's likely to be aqua and you can see it just pocket it out so many different Italians there's a great boulder this one's coming off the mountain today [Music] I'm Mike and I'm a prospector up on entero and today we're gonna be taking the dump trucks up top so we can load the trucks with boulders and we can also load it with material so we can keep mining throughout the winter the mount and Tarot trail system it's not necessarily made for dump trucks so we definitely run across different obstacles large boulders that are in the road and then smaller boulders as well we'll get colton the tires you're also going up on this road this is a shelf road which means that they pretty much just cut a road inside of the mountain so there's times where this truck is just so long its wheelbase is so long that when you come around a switchback it takes a lot of time sometimes it's a seven point turn just to be able to get around to turn now we're towards the end of the season so we're starting to burn daylight and we've got to get as many runs in as we can so we're trying to rush with this and we're trying to balance safety so there is a there's a fine line that you have to ride when you're driving these trucks on this road [Music] [Music] here class what a my name is Ian simple and I'm a miner and prospector on mountain taro and Mount white and today Jason and I are going to go up to the North Face of Mount Antero to check on our dig ready maths to see how well they've been melting the permafrost after that we're just going to see what other kind of aquamarine we can find what kind of holes we can open up we just made it up top weather is looking pretty good and we're about to head over to our job site and now we're gonna check on the dig ready mats to find out how well they've been melting the permafrost the ground looks a lot softer looks pretty thought out right now pocket material is showing it's a really good sign we have a lot of pegmatite in this area so right now I'm just kind of opening it up and seeing where all of the pegmatite veins are running and what I'm looking for is a little bit of iron staining a little bit of blue as we know as barrel and smoky quartz they are kind of Sochi ated with each other so that's what I'm hunting a great thing to do is basically widen out your hole in every direction go left go right go in and go down so you can expose more of the pegmatite or degraded microcline and see how large your productive zone is [Music] it's given me really good sign here this is just random rock laying around on the alluvial float here the alluvial float is all the crushed rock coming down the hill and it's got blue in it so it's happening here somewhere there's stuff here it's different than this I'm into the original hill this is all alluvial I like being into the original stuff here this is in place nice crushable pegmatite material and I'm trying to get that out of that hole with all the big rocks above it I want to keep following that there's a scene here there's blue in some of the rocks and I want to dig the heck out of that but it gets into your safety standard yeah I can't judge those I'm not sure what I'm gonna do here so usually when you find a place it's diggable that means it's crushed so all the crushed stuff around here the boulders are sitting on other boulders with crushed up underneath it you don't know what you're really standing on and dealing with I had an accident in like 2015 and everything rushed out of the hill went right down with it really got a you know look at the hill and decide that's too much that's on an angle that boulder fields too big of an angle god knows what rocks the kingpin rock if I move this dirt and it moves that rock all these slide out and then I'm done maybe the best thing is to keep digging down here take the time and clear all this out and try to get down here where you're not messing with the integrity of the danger zone there that's that's not good this thing pockets out if it turns a little rusty color that changes you start to see um Smokies and you're hoping and all that crushed pack spot somewhere it had a pocket and there was space and it made the goods and I don't see any bits and signs of it yet but right here in cleaning out the hole is blue barrel on the rock so it gives you the sign to keep digging and it teases you so I keep digging [Music] and the course is really starting to bunch up getting more graphic this is a bit of the work that I've came up with over the winter brand new silversmithing I'm just taking it up and doing tiny stuff is pretty neat and this is local material time and weather is the biggest thing weather controls the time you get a short season and it just plays cat-and-mouse with you it never quits and when the day lines up when you get that good weather and you get into a good seam and some really good minerals come out it's worth every bit of a struggle [Music] and I have found a little bit's from before [Music] a really nice floor right super floor right just rolled right out that's really neat it's got the face face face is here some really greenish color inside there cuz these can be green as well as purple but it's got some green inclusion so really neat I don't see any other sign so that probably was floating coming down this mountain for thousands of years it ended up there there's no pocket here so we have our pocket rich material that's down from aside now we finally got the dump truck up here we're gonna be able to take this stuff that we've been putting off to the side and get this stuff on the back of the truck and start hauling account we have to go slow and steady when we're taking this excavator up and down these roads put an extreme amount of pressure on the tracks we pop would break the track repair can cost us thousands of dollars and every time we're shut down we're losing money we just loaded up the dump truck so we got all our pocket material in there so we're good to go with the dump so we're gonna get that out of the way and bring the flatbed in and with the flatbed we load that with boulders so the boulders up here you find boulders with gemstones pegmatite all over it and it's really one of a kind type stuff so we bring this stuff down off the mountain when we sell this for landscape feature water feature they're a big part of our business it's the right shade it's definitely the right shape so it's really hard to find that right Boulder so what I'm looking for in a boulder is I want to find that nice square long rectangle something with a flat edge to it which believe it or not isn't so easy to find up here we want a mountain full of granite but when we find one that has that right shape if it happens to have the gemstones on it if it has smoky and Mike and aquamarine sticking out of it then yeah heck yeah we bring that one down off the mill come in many different colors and ours is so white it almost seems like it's bleached so when that can find just that pure white granite boulder it's definitely a perfect choice for sure so we got here there's an awesome granite boulder it's perfect shape you can see it it just pocketed out so many different times just full of smoky quartz terminated it's definitely going to double the value of this Boulder there's a great boulder this one's coming off the mountain today so now we just got to pick it up and put it on the truck I may have to be a little delicate with it one you don't want to break the Boulder and damage the crystals to you also don't want to hurt the truck [Music] [Music] you ever gonna go into regen mode here soon we got lunchtime left the high elevation affects these machines a lot the way that these new machines are engineered with the exhaust recovery units the unit does not like the altitude the machine will go into what we call regen mode and only gives us about 70 percent power which can be extremely frustrating when were in a zone that's producer yeah well heck the trucks were loaded now plenty of sunlight so the machine's going into regen mode nothing we can do but we can get in there and start hand digging and that's what we're gonna do [Music] overnight we had some torrential downpour and it shifted some boulders that got right above one of the pockets that we were working so we're about to get underneath this Boulder and move it out of the way and see if we could get back into this pocket even though Jason and I are well used to and acclimated to this elevation we can still get pretty winded while we're up here working [Music] yeah baby yeah yeah we got the boulder to slide on top of the bar so it's slid out of our way now we could access a hole the boulder also brought down a bunch of overburden with it that's now filled in the hole but we're just going to go ahead and do the work to take all that out and get back into the good working zone we're down at the gym store montero treasurers we're off the mountain this kind of sets the tone for our motivation for what we do mining this is the ins to the means we've got our wonderful product here that we've mined we're anticipating a busy day today and we've got some clients coming in a new client adult from Zechariah and zap he's coming over to establish relationship with our aquamarines to infuse with his lapis product and hopefully he'll find what he's looking for how you doing all doing great good so we got some pretty blues here to show you just came off the mountain yeah my name is Nolan and I Jura store and Crestview called zachariahs zip and company and why I'm here is to hopefully get some of the aquamarine that Craig has found up on the mountain and have a cut into the faceted stone to put into our juror so we're gonna lay out some aquamarines he's gonna spend some time kind of picking and choosing and and this goes the process he's got his his lapis laid out here next to the aquamarines and that's gonna give him a kind of a color perspective as to what he's looking for this is gonna belt better his business help him be a little more creative the more selection he has the more areas that he can explore on his side of the business a little bit light in color but what I'm doing here is I'm moving the ones that I see having areas windows that have edible areas in them that could be cut into the stones we need these over here don't have the don't really have it and enough cuttable areas to warrant the the amount of expense this one right here is just a beautiful specimen just a lovely lovely color and lovely inclusions not very many clear areas but some yeah obviously you want a good clarity good color he's trying to match with a specific piece to his lapis crystal number one [Music] and this one right here has a lot of little fractures and stuff in it but some very very clear air areas - that would cut quite a few of the three point five millimeters that I was talking about [Music] why so sad you're used to paying five well you say we meet in the middle for 750 that sounds like a great deal yeah so right here we're looking at about 1725 so no from zachariahs app just left that we had a great visit picked up another great client and started to build another relationship with another great business outlet over in Crested Butte this is what Colorado aquamarine is all about [Music] don't let anybody tell you that there's easy aqua and easy fines up here it's one of the hardest jobs I've ever done and it wears down on you I'm just gonna keep working this zone and pulling back the material and exposing it and let the Sun melt it let the water melt it it's it's gonna be a good day Gabe's in and you got more work to do I got to try to get this out in here so I can keep my water pool going so I got to get down pretty deep I've got to go at least four or five feet down before I get to this layer where this pocket is is kind of running okay roll this right out just like that man not a real big piece but it's a gym you can cut a nice little stone out of that grab that water and just like a little waterfall just kind of watch what starts to come out melting out aquas man what better job is there oh whoa that that is a lunker you know aquaman that's what I'm talking about gosh that is beautiful man look at that how there's got to be more here so once you get into it once you see aqua that's when you really want to slow down take your time do it real slow so you don't wash it down no no oh my gosh look at the blue in those suckers whoa [Music] just melt it out Oh these lunker's [Music] go ride into some jewelry make somebody real happy the color is just amazing we're gonna call it a day today I'm gonna bring down a bunch of the material I've got and the bags here I've got probably four of these down in the shop I've got four of them here I'm like in my car and I'm gonna go down to Craig and Tracy and we're gonna sift them up see what else we can add to the total I move from the other place because it got quite a bit dangerous digging in there I didn't like it things over your head like that way too dangerous for me to keep digging there I wasn't looking up I moved up to this spot about 20 feet up 20 feet over and it just has a lot more quartz in the rock and a lot more bigger sign here and a little safer place today this this is looking really good this is pegmatite with big smoky chunks in it and we're hoping that this place which is not as dangerous will turn up some blue and some space and some Smokies oh look at that right there oh man look at that signs back this way right here you want to cracks that run together and then make a bigger space you need space for this stuff to happen I lost the blue [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the biggest frustration is working all week and being so close having it having it Tizi having it make you think that another foot and a half it's going to turn blue and then it just pinches off into nothing it's just it aggravates you maybe tomorrow will be the day but that's the nature of the game you know she gives she takes and I got a big piece of fluorite out of the deal I really like that I can't wait to get home and look at it with the goggles [Music] [Music] so the machines in regen mode that can take up to an hour and a half so we're gonna use our time up here wisely and we're going to get into doing some hand digging and we're gonna find some aqua and get into a pocket so what led us to this spot here is there was a pocket a few feet over and we followed that line of pegmatite when that pocket ran out that line that seemed a pegmatite kept going so we followed it and here we are within this line of PEG we have more aquamarine [Music] this I'm seizing amazing beautiful blue electric blue it's amazing good fine suit I'm gonna slide a peg I'm not kidding missing his gigantic cutting through this North Face here it's beautiful it's like it changes to and you turn it so it's that a little bit of bicolor in it so if this pocket keeps producing like this we're not just getting that one brand-new Gold Wing we're maybe gonna get two so we got into a great pocket and we're gonna keep getting into that pocket that pocket is awesome so we're gonna get the Machine going we got a pocket getting dug out things are looking really good right now for us good crystal shoes you know as much knowledge as we have and as hard as we work sometimes you know you get what the mountain or what the ground gives gives you we just put on our rain gear and the wind chill has just dropped dramatically it's about 45 degrees right now but with the wind chill probably another -10 it's gonna start poppin for us at any time we got the peg here on the lower left not sure where that's exactly running yet but we got one that's going right up through the middle as you know and then this one on the right I think runs up that way and I've been diggin down some and I think they meet right underneath bro so it's like boom boom boom boom yeah I think I see some blue man oh freak yes oh what a good piece too man all these are a little bit bigger or a lot bigger I would say that what we were finding before that's exciting that is really exciting to get some good pieces and I think there's some more pieces in there about to pass out here whoa energy energy right on right on baby [Music] this is what we are going after and these are some great sizes oh yes yeah another great piece yes man yes all day for this stuff [Music] yes oh yeah baby now that is a good one right there it looks like you might have some bicolor to it you can see if it's terminated real quick oh yes has some terminations on it so that's a nice specimen quality crystal right here nice clarity that is what we what we've been working on for all there's another nice one right there this one might even be bigger than the last one the hard work paid off man hard work paid off let's eat up we've got another one here another one oh that's another nice clarity one not as big but I'm just as happy [Music] yeah man yes yes yes man come check out this aquamarine buddy yeah oh yeah check this stuff out that's one of the nicest pieces oh my goodness oh my goodness that is just top oh this is great stuff rather great work man excellent this we've had a long day we worked very hard Jason got into a really excellent pocket of aquamarines just pulled out some real stutters I was able to pull out a couple of stoner aquamarines as well and we we capped the day off by finding a couple little morganite switch are pretty rare and a really cool and beautiful stone we're looking at a base value of about 20 upwards of maybe $60,000 cam Jim Jim Jim Jim what a pocket [Music] Ralph the mountain so we're going to bring down several bags of material that were kind of in the debris field we know it's got some good material we got high hopes for some of this high zone that we've been in so guys are coming off cleanup day and we're gonna see what's going on with these bags we're about to wash everything up and hopefully we can add a whole bunch more aqua to the pile we got going already using the screen table and spraying some water onto the minerals laying on the screen table really helps to separate them effectively and quickly so that we can determine which pieces are Jam aquamarine and which pieces are merely gonna be waste and always pick these pieces of granite out that's what you have to decide oh my gosh yeah that's what we call it good we cant arrow guys consumers portion of it and we'll move to another couple of bags and see if any more fishing all right let's bag it and tag it so we've got you know a total Jimmy crystal structure to these to this problem the north bench up top seems to have a little bit more clear with the prismatic activity we're off and running so this is it this is a good count this is a great job Jason great job in man good great cleanup we're looking at about 110,000 dollars worth of rough of course that value increases as we can separate the Jimmy material move that into facet material and ultimately into wearable functional jewelry that's where the real value is in my business but just as a rough wholesale value about 110 thousand guys are doing phenomenal we're gonna get a little bit more excavator activity pushing in some of these zones and hopefully get some more I think we're just on the edge of it we found such good blue already the color is just amazing we have to give it like a big push because if we don't we're gonna miss so much stuff that we can still get out of our mining season this year keep on prospecting [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mount Antero Treasures Productions

Views: 590,313

Rating: 4.8004489 out of 5

Keywords: Prospecting, mining, aquamarine, gems, minerals, Colorado Rockies, Rocky Mountains, Mt. Antero, Outdoor adventure, Prospectors, Elite outdoors, Fourteeners, miners, birthstone, topaz, aquamarine jewelry, rockhound, collegiate peaks, mt Princeton, hiking, mt white, thrill seeking, high elevation, crystals, colorado state gem, mining claim, Episode 2, rockhounding, mount antero, off road trails, smokey quartz, mineral dealer, how to mine for gemstones, mining techniques, gem hunting

Id: bK-RyK27rGM

Length: 44min 26sec (2666 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/parkercurtis]

Praise the lord thank you