The Kawartha Rock & Fossil Club

Bittersweet report on McDonald Mine, for those of us that enjoyed going into the mine, it will come as a bit of a disappointment to see that it has been totally covered.
On a brighter note, for tourist and novice collectors the site has been turned into a spectacular collecting site that should draw many visitors.

Now the good stuff, for seasoned collectors. There are mineral crystals, you have to look till you find the location of a area where they have been dumped or pushed. Then concentrate in that area. It seemed to work for Ulli and myself, most of our finds came from three areas in a 4 to 6 foot radius.
I thought i would be reporting the usual small stuff, not the case, although most of the finds were made up of small crystals, both unusual and large crystals were found.
One of the hopefuls I have is a 5lb felspar that has a cap of calcite and a filled crevasse, crystals are visible in and on the edge of the calcite.
As always there’s the one that got away, my two best finds are still there, it was late and did not have hammer and chisel, one was a 2.5cm wide x 4cm very well formed may have been a titinite it was in a position that made it difficult to identify. The second was a 3×5 inch cluster of unknown black crystals most of the perfectly formed crystals were 1 to 2cm in length. I can only hope they are there when I return.
It was a better day than expected.
This site may turn out to be productive for all, for how long is anyones guess, we can only hope they turn the piles regularly.
Hope you enjoy the photos, 1 to 10 are Ulrike Kullik’s and the balance 11 to 18 are Robert Montgomery’s
We are going to need some help with identifying.

titanite 1×2.5 inch

Uranpyrochlore (HOT)?

Uranpyrochlore zircon (HOT)?

unknown

Titanite

Zircon (cyrtolite)

Zircon (cyrtolite) group

Smokey quartz ?

unknown

Photographed through microscope, unknown photo #9 at 20x

Unknown, .5 cm crystals in 5 cm felspar, interesting under the glass.

Felspar crystal 2 x 2,5 cm in 6 cm matrix of quartz and felspar.

Unknown, large crystal at top 1 x .5 cm plus smaller ones. When the light hits them they shine silver white or greenish yellow in colour, first thought they were mica, under the glass they are semi transparent to transparent, yellow with a tint of green in places, the thickness is about 3 mm in the largest one.

Unknown, more of the same, as above photo

Unknown, very interesting, 2.5 x 2 cm semi transparent to transparent orange/yellow individual crystals are 1 cm high.

Smokey quartz in felspar, floating crystals are 1 to 1.5 cm.

Unknown, many crystals (most on other sides) 1 to 1.5 cm various colours, transparent to opaque.

OK i know it’s ugly, this 5 lb. felspar holds promise, i wanted to show you the calcite, it better give up some crystals.
Hope you have enjoyed, will post more if i get back to recover the ones i left behind. Please help with the id if you can.

We started out from Peterborough at 5am Saturday the 15th of June. Suzanne our excellent driver,Fred,Gabriel,Alf,Sue and I. The six of us never visited Arkona before. We arrived in good time at Hungry Hollow, where Peter Lee and Andrew with kids joined us later. We entered the south pit and for one hour you did not hear a word. We was overwhelmed with the amount of fossils . After lunch we made our way long the river to the  high bank on the south of the river to collect more.It was very difficult to go there, the river was very high but all went well. The backpacks started to get heavy. In the afternoon we packed in and drove to the Pinery Campground where we stayed overnight .After setting the camp up we had a good dinner and went to bed early. It rained heavy  in the night but all the tents stayed dry. In the morning Gabriel cooked and feed us with delicious eggs with sausage.After clearing out we went back to the north pit and south pit for more collecting

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This are fossils you see all over the place.

Happy camp supper. 

                                                                                           Nice big Brachiopod(Fred)
And the very,very,very best find from Peter Lee a ultra rare pyritized starfish from south pit

In the afternoon we made our way back home and arrived in Peterborough very happy,very tired.