Fieldtrip Report:
Fieldtrip Report:
Cunningham
Mine ,
Diamond Hill Mine,
Abbeville Co., South Carolina
Photos by Lee Fleming and Rick Jacquot
Getting towards the end of the day, the girls gave up while Thomas continued to dig.
DinoDude (Matt) decided to dig next to "Chunkfinder" Nancy to try his luck.
Cynthia Hart and Daughter working the pit for beryl.
The far end of the beryl trench.
To sum up the Due West end of the weekend, I personally had a great time meeting and talking with dozens of new club members, some people came home with many nice finds of beryl and smoky quartz, but many more went home empty handed, the area needs to be opened up with a much larger machine than the "terramite" backhoe, some work with a 50-100 thousand pound trackhoe would help clear the land and open new areas to collecting, there were just to many people and not enough land to dig on. Amos is as nice a guy as you will ever meet, and I think he was overwhelmed with the large crowd that showed for the dig, if we do it again, there will most likely be a limit on the number of people who can attend and hopefully as I said, a much larger machine will be used to excavate larger trenches for people to work in.
After the dig was over at Due West, some of us packed it in and headed to Diamond Hill a few miles away and setup camp for the weekend.
