Has anyone hunted barite at the Book Cliffs just outside Grand Junction CO? It was one of our stops over the memorial week. No major barite crystals of museum quality but some nice fun samples for the effort. When my buddy gets his pictures to me I'll have to show a real nice one he found high up on the hills. I also found out most if not all are of the blade style growth instead of an actual terminated crystal. Still was a fun dig and the wild life was really interesting. scorpions to colorful lizard although I have a feeling the Lizards were my temporary friends as I was unearthing baby scorpions while digging.
How could any rockhound be bored in CO? too much fun.
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find my lizard buddy
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A Colorado bunny to boot also from the looks of your pic! Looks like it was a great time with some fantastic scenery!
Sweet finds, thanks for sharing pics of your adventure with us. Good to see you had a good time while here visiting.

Nice finds EB!


I have not been to the Book Cliffs yet but have dug similar material in southeastern CO. Looks like it was a good weekend!

Thanks Denise/ Mike S.
It was a good time and met some great folks all throughout the state. The only thing I didn't post from our trip was the mix of gold, garnets, and other heavy minerals I couldn't separate. I will have to refine my newly learned skills and get down to just the gold. But not bad for my first time out trying to pan for gold in a random spot. Our original location was blocked by rocks & bolders that seemed to be pushed up on the entrance to a mapped forest road in the Medicine Bow MTs. Since we heard ATVs all night going thru that entrance I assume it was on purpose by local folks looking to keep people out. Too bad as I believe that was a good area for panning and could only find 2 claims in the whole area on the lr2000 so it seemed wide open for prospecting. So since we were only there for a couple days no use crying over something I can't fix. So we just found a nice camping spot to set up next to a creek (double checked the area for claims) just so I could get my first pan wet. I made a homemade sluice out of a 6" corrugated flexable pipe. After classifying and running thru the sluice, it worked pretty damn good as I had a pan full of hematite & garnets with very little else. Then after studying the pile of heavies for a bit I could see a few flakes. Might be gold might not be. too small to do a streak test or scratch. So I will go with gold ha ha.

my rockhound itch has been scratched
the creek & my homemade snail sluice.
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my heavies.. lots of little garnets with 2 bigger ones I separated. When I turn the bottle or shake it I find little speck of gold like material. I marked one in the pic. One can only hope
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