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Let's start with the basics, because even finding Vancouver Island on the
map can be a mite confusing. There's Vancouver, Oregon, and there's
Vancouver, Washington, and then there's Vancouver, B.C.; but none of
them are on Vancouver Island. They're on the "mainland", or "over there",
as the islanders call it, and pity them for being stuck on a continent.
Vancouver Island, on the other hand, is about 20 miles offshore of the city
of Vancouver, BC, and stretches like a long, flattened football up and
down the coast. Its west coast is cut by deep fjords and steep, forested
peaks, while its east coast (the one facing "over there") is flat and
inhabited by less than half a million people.
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Rhodonite Country
Victoria is the provincial capital and home to half the total island
population. If you go to any tourist store you'll see carved rhodonite
figures -- bears, salmon, eagles.
But where exactly, no one seemed to know. After a lot of digging in the
mineral titles office, I finally tracked down the two best known sites.
"Hollings" was a small rhodonite quarry that Fred Hollings mined in the
50's and 60s. It's located on the southern end of Salt Spring Island, which
means you have to take another ferry from Vancouver Island to get there.
(Either Swartz Bay to Fulford Harbour, or Crofton to Vesuvius). Once on
Salt Spring Island, it took us several weekends of hard hunting to track
down the exact location. The locals had either never heard of it, or weren't
telling. We never figured out which.
The quarry itself has just been sold as part of a new housing project, so is
now on private land, but there is still loose material laying around.
Rhodonite (which is a manganese silicate, H = 6) weathers from brilliant
pink to a black oxide that makes it tough to notice among the host basalts.
A hammer blow can turn an otherwise dull-looking 'leaver' into that
strawberry pink 'keeper' that just makes your heart leap. The Hollings
quarry produced some of the best and hardest rhodonite on Vancouver
Island, but it is by no means the only deposit.
Close to the town of Lake Cowichan (west of Duncan), a high ridge on the
north side shades the town in summer. Known as Hill 60, there are several
rhodonite outcrops, found along the crest. The most famous is the 'Hill 60
Mine' at the east end, where many tons of the material was cut from the
steep hillside and slung down a cableway to a railway in the valley below.
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To reach the Hill 60 Mine, you'll need a 4WD vehicle and a lot of courage.
The last two miles of track up to the ridge are very steep and washed out,
and the short track down the other side has a grade of about 1 in 1! But the
views from the top, and the material to be found at the site, are well worth
the effort, even if you have to walk those miles like we did, before I
convinced rockhounding buddy Simon Deane to bring "Thunderpaw" (his
4x4) to haul us up the hill in comfort.
Developed in 1919, the open face quarry on the steep south slope has a
band of black manganese-rich material set in banded green and red
tuffaceous cherts, with occasional lenses of jasper. A few thousand tons
were taken out in the 20's, and then in the mid-80's prospector Earl
Jacques took out more high grade material, which he had carved in China.
Some of that material was so good, it was gem quality. Today, the mine is
under claim, but inactive. Check with the Gold Commissioner's Office of
the Geological Survey Branch in Victoria (250) 952-0542 for the latest
information.
At the west end of Hill 60 Ridge, another quarry just below the old fire
lookout is worth a visit. Not nearly as steep to get to, the rhodonite content
is lower, with more quartz, brown/yellow rhodonite, and psilomane.
Blood Jasper
Instead, better to head up the Chemainus River valley just north and
parallel to the Cowichan Valley. South east of Reinhart Lake a large jasper
outcrop butts right onto the road, sticking out through the spruce trees with
no other rocks around. We heard about this deposit from Winnie
Espitalier, who is the grande dame of rockhounding on the island.
Canadian-born Winnie and her French aristocrat husband settled in
Nanaimo in the late 40's. He was crazy about ocean sailing. After his
death, Winnie felt she couldn't handle their huge sailboat alone. Instead,
she developed a passion for rocks and minerals at a time when the hobby
was unknown in these parts. Over the following four decades, she
accumulated some incredible specimens. Today she can still point to a
rock, casually placed in a corner of her garden, and tell you instantly when
and where it came from.
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Blood-red jasper dikes, cut with quartz stringers and pyrite are found in the
Chemainus River valley. The material polishes well, and has a wonderful variety
of colours and forms.
The first time we followed the creek upstream, looking for the source of
that beautiful cutting material, we left the vehicle at the trench and walked,
took several wrong turns, waded the stream twice (it was spring, and there
was snow on the surrounding peaks), and generally had a great time
getting nowhere fast. After a lot of bush thrashing, we gave up trying to
keep dry, and just walked up Boulder Creek in our wet boots. At a
particular point, the jasper in the river bed disappeared. After scouting
around, we identified a small side creek just a few feet wide that had to
lead to the source.
Fighting our way up this for about 400 yards, we saw a clearing in the
trees with a rock outcrop that looked interesting. On our arrival, we found
a magnetite-hematite show (on the west slope of Coronation Mountain).
While Simon primed his pipe and settled in for a quiet smoke, I scrambled
around, sure the source of the jasper had to be close by. But after an hour
of prospecting (Simon was back in the hunt by then) we came up empty.
So, back to the little creek again. This time, we walked right in the stream
(waterfalls, pools and deadfall notwithstanding), rather than take the easy
option along the bank. A short distance below the magnetite outcrop we
suddenly picked up fresh red material again, and by backing up, we found
the jasper dyke right in the creek, covered in rich green moss. The red and
green looked beautiful!
Later trips to the site revealed that you can drive in from the north (past
Ladysmith), and get your vehicle within half a mile of the deposit.
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There's plenty of gold, so I've been told ...
The great BC gold rush started in 1858, and took up the slack for the
California 49'ers who hadn't made it there. Most of the newcomers headed
inland to the Fraser River, the Cariboo, and later the Klondike, but what a
lot of people don't know is there was a gold discovery just west of
Victoria, in 1864. Named after a Lieutenant Leech in the British Navy,
Leechtown quickly grew to over 3,000 men, and then just as quickly
disappeared again. But the alluvial gold still washes out of the quartz host
and can be found in the creeks from Sooke River west to the San Juan
River. One of the best rivers is Loss Creek, about 50 miles west of
Victoria. The paved coast road is empty and close to the sea much of the
way, with spectacular views across Juan de Fuca Strait to the Olympic
Mountains in the state of Washington to the south.
Don't pan in the Loss Creek Provincial Park (it's illegal to pan in parks or
on Indian reserves), but there's an unpaved road heading up the Loss
Creek valley. A mile upstream of Highway 14 there's plenty of scope to
try your hand looking for that flash of color in the bottom of the pan.
There are also red/pink garnets and black sand (magnetite).
Another good gold location is on Meade Creek, which flows into Lake
Cowichan just a few miles west of the town of Lake Cowichan. Highway
14 to Youbou (pronounced yoo-boo) cuts the creek, and you can walk
upstream from there. Better access is by driving back to town half a mile
and heading up a dirt track past the town's recycling plant. After a mile,
the road and creek are close, and you can clamber down to the big pools to
work the sands and gravels. Keep a sharp eye out for jasper, banded chert
and rhodonite, which are found in the mountains drained by the creek.
Some miles north of the city, on a small island in the straits between
Vancouver Island and the mainland, spectacular marine fossils were being
discovered. Today, the northern tip of Hornby Island, called Phipps Point,
has an extended horizontally bedded shelf that is exposed during spring
tides. Fossils can be found in large metamorphosed mud nodules. A pair
of wading boots, a hammer, and a sharp eye on the incoming tide are all
you need to spend a pleasant day fossicking for fossils.
Some of the very best specimens can be seen at the Vancouver Island
Paleontological Museum in Qualicum Beach, where you can sometimes
meet Graham Beard, school teacher, founder of the museum, and co-
author of West Coast Fossils - a Guide to Ancient Life on Vancouver
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Island.
There are very few blue semi-precious gemstones in the world - sodalite,
lapis and turquoise are the best known, although Brazil produces some
nice (natural) blue quartz too. To this short list you should add the name of
dumortierite, a mineral not often seen. With a deep blue color and a
hardness of 7-8, this aluminum borosilicate is found at the contact zone
between the volcanics and a quartz feldspar porphyry dyke near the town
of Port Hardy, at the very north end of the island.
Above the western end of the flooded pit are a series of steep terraces, and
pretty much right in the middle, dumortierite and quartz material can be
found in a breccia zone that is made up of massive gray-tan pyrophyllite,
with a coarse, gritty texture.
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Rare Minerals
It's tough to write about rare minerals, because there's always someone out
there who has a whole yard full of whatever it is, and reckons the stuff is
as common as leaverite. Notwithstanding that, here's a list of some of the
less common minerals that have been identified on Vancouver Island:
Cooperite: this extremely rare platinum sulphide has been identified at the
old Mt Washington mine site near Courtney, one of only two locales in the
world.
Volborthite: this vanadium mineral has been found just north of the town
of Campbell River.
Cinnabar: found at two different sites. One is near Wolf Lake, close to
Mt Washington. The other is on the west coast, and can only be
approached by boat from Tofino.
The first thing you'll notice about the rocks on Vancouver Island is that
they are very different from the mainland. No soaring granites like the
Cascades, no cindery volcanoes like Mt Baker or Rainier. The island is
noticeably different. Why? Because it belongs to a separate terrane called
Wrangellia, which includes the Queen Charlotte Islands, and part of SW
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Alaska.
It all started about 380 million years ago in the Devonian Era. And it
started a long way away from where Wrangellia is now. Somewhere out in
the Pacific, possibly close to where Hawaii presently is. Like those
tropical islands, Wrangellia began as a series of undersea volcanic
eruptions. Unlike Hawaii, not many reached the surface. Huge amounts of
ash (green tuff) spread across the sea floor. Geologists estimate this went
on for about 20 million years, after which everything cooled down,
leaving the rocks of the Sicker Group, which today are exposed on Salt
Spring Island, the Cowichan Valley (including Mt Sicker N of Duncan,
which gave its name to the structure), and the Myra Falls/Lynx mine in
Strathcona Provincial Park.
From then until the start of the Triassic Era, 245 million years ago, the
shallow waters of the newly formed sub-sea islands eroded and weathered,
plants and marine animals lived and died, and layers of limestone built up.
Today these are visible near Victoria, at Mt Mark, on Buttle Lake and
elsewhere.
Curiously, there are no rocks on the island around the start of the Triassic
Era (245-235 million years ago). Perhaps they all weathered away. And
then again, perhaps not. However, about 230 million years ago the crust
appears to have split apart, and huge masses of fiery lava oozed out,
cooling quickly into black basalt (pillow lavas) called the Karmutsen
Formation. This is the thickest layer found on Vancouver Island. As more
and more lava rose and spread outward, the entire region was covered in
such thick layers that after 5 million years, when it all slowed down, the
topmost layers were close to the surface. Perhaps the best example of
these lavas is Mt Arrowsmith, a high, domed cluster of peaks between
Parksville and Port Alberni.
As the Triassic came to an end and the Jurassic saw the arrival of the first
dinosaurs, mammals and birds (210 million years ago), more lava flows
pushed Wrangellia above sea level, forming the Bonanza Group. At the
same time, other magma pushed up from below. Although it failed to
reach the surface, the heat cooked (metamorphosed) the deeper rocks (in
the Sicker Group), turning some to gneiss (that's nice). Evidence of this
can be found on Mt Tolmie in Victoria. Limestone also metamorphosed to
marble, as at Port Renfrew.
Up until the late Jurassic, the forces working on what would later come to
be known as Vancouver Island were mostly eruption and erosion. But
something else had been taking place, quietly in the background, for
almost 300 million years ... plate tectonics. While volcanoes were
spreading thick layers of rock across the sea floor, the sea floor itself (and
the volcanoes) were moving slowly and steadily NE, until about 100
million years ago they ran into the North American Plate, which was itself
heading West.
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Cowichan Valley, and up Buttle Lake, and mountains rose along the
island's centre. Newly eroded material washed into the closing gap of
Georgia Strait, forming a series of shallow basins, part of the Nanaimo
Group, where coal would later be discovered.
Since then, most of the changes to the island have been small -- an
eruption here, a magma flow there. Nothing to write a book about. The
final chapter in this continuing saga is the arrival of at least three ice ages,
which dramatically changed the surface of Wrangellia/Crescent, leaving it
much as we know it today. The last ice sheets retreated to Vancouver only
12,000 years ago, which in geological time, is about yesterday.
Suggested Readings
Most of these books can be ordered from Mineral World, in Sidney, near
Victoria. If you have kids, or are a kid at heart, visit this amazing store
with its outdoor garden filled with tons of polished gemstones and gold
panning pools. Call (250) 655-4367 or write 9891 Seaport Place, Sidney,
BC, Canada V8L 4X3.
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z Seattle, WA - Victoria: passenger-only, (250) 382-8100
z Seattle, WA - Victoria: car/passenger, (250) 480-5555
z Port Angeles, WA - Victoria: car/passenger, (250) 386-2202
z Anacortes, WA - Sidney: car/passenger, (250) 381-1551
z Vancouver (south), BC - Sidney: car/passenger, (250) 386-3431
z Vancouver (south), BC - Nanaimo: car/passenger, (250) 386-3431
z Vancouver (north), BC - Nanaimo: car passenger, (250) 386-3431
Generally, ferries starting in BC are cheaper, sail more often, and don't
need advance booking. WA-based ferries are less regular, and more
booked up, especially in the summer.
When to Visit
The island has a mild winter, but that still means 12 feet of snow atop
those 7,000 ft high peaks in January. The snow is off the low areas in
February, the alpine by May. There are no grizzlies or rattlesnakes (some
black bear). Best months to visit are May to September. July and August
are busy at the ferries. If you combine it with watching the salmon runs,
come between September and November.
To contact the author by snail mail, please use the following address:
Rick Hudson,
676 Wain Road, Sidney, British Columbia
Canada V8L 5M5
More on Copyright
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