This is a panoramic view of me walking in the dumps looking for the block that would make my day. My dad took this picture last March of 1999 to show to some friends how many rocks there is to turn before you can find a good one.

The Black Lake mines are owned by the Chrysotile Labs Cie. This mine is located beetwen Abestos city and Thetford mine city so all the mines are concentrated in one area. They give to the Mineralogical club of Montreal and any other clubs in the province of Quebec one day permission per year to collect minerals so when you can get access to the mine there is no time to talk with the friends. This year they did it differently because of the high demands from many collectors they accepted two days of collecting. Good for me i am a member of the Asbestos and Montreal club so it gave me two chance to find minerals because they weren't on the same week-end. The first week-end of that trip at the beginning of April i went there with the Asbestos club but found nothing special or should i say nothing for my collection.



But one guy found a small quantity of specimens with medium green andradite garnets of about 4mm associated with gemmy dark green vesuvianite from a block he found in a pile of blocks probably dumped by the trucks. While going back to our car in the bus he explained to me that the block was very hard to brake and was only able to get those small specimens with him. When i asked him what kind of tool he was working with he showed me those little hammer for the geologist !!! The guy accepted to tell me approximatly where was that block but as you may know this mine is huge so my chances to find that block during another trip was like to find a needle in Central Park, New York. So i left the mine with my dad thinking of that block that would probably be there waiting for me or someone else!





So the week-end after i'm back with the Montreal Club but our guide changed and she doesn't even know about those unique garnets that we could find there. The other guide told her to bring us where the latest blast happened and it was in the upper level of the mine and as soon as we arrived i realised that it was not even in the same pit. Ho my god ! At this level the only thing you'll find will be zeolite or some calcite if you are lucky. We were about 40 collectors so as soon as the bus opened the doors we all rush to the walls. Naturally most of the collectors were new members and they were told to follow the experienced one so what do you think happened...




I was always busy answering questions like "Where do we find xtls" or "Can you show me one so i'll know what i am looking for" things like that. Anyhow i am always please to explain to new members where and how to collect minerals but when you get access once or twice a year you feel like time is flying fast. So i decided to walk real fast to find a.s.a.p. a contact with minerals like appophillite that would satisfy there needs. But even if i was walking fast there was still a couple of guys in my back so every time i stopped they would come to me and asked me "So, anything good here?". The funniest moment of that day was certainly when i stopped searching near some blocks for a little nature's emergency... well, you know what i mean...So when those same guys arrived to me and asked me if i have found something good i just said, "Yes i'm holding it with my hand but i wont show it to you" :-)))




So finally i found many contacts with very nice golden calcite like the one you can see here and a minor appophilite vein with small xtls so every one went to dig for calcite. Those xtls are interesting because some of them show two generations. They are available for purchase in the Asbestos section on my page After that i left with my dad and my friend Sylvain Roy to find garnets in another level or another pit. On our way we met the guide who offer us to bring us to the area where i was last week. Just like i suspected i just couldn't remember exactly the level or even the side of the pit i was because they worked the mine so now all the rocks are the same. We decided to walk from the highest level and we would walk down the mine until we find something interesting.


The second level i see a big pile of blocks with serpentine so i decide to jump from block to block in the center while my two partners took the top and the bottom. Those blocks look all the same hundreads and hundreads of them and not much time left for me to find something. Suddenly i notice a different block with beige and white lines with smaller pieces here and there around it for sure someone digged that block and left some material there. That couldn't be the one i was thinking of !?! I climbed to it and for sure that was it, at the first look i recognise the andradite garnets, the vesuvianite and the matrix. I started to call my partners to come and see that beauty.



This block was about 3x3 feet and one theird of it was made of a contact filled with andradite garnets. With the hammer and good tools it wasn't difficult to open it. The block itself was very hard but the area with the xtls gave me some problem because it was flaky so it was hard to get big plate out of it without braking the specimens. My two partners were looking at me like little puppy without a toy to play so i decided to brake the block in three part so they could find there own specimens. And when i lifted a part of the block i had my biggest surprise of the day, a giant demantoid xtl of 1cm with a bright irish green color fell on the ground beetwen my knees. Then let me know that we searched every inches of that block to find all the family members of that xtls that should be hiding in it. The picture to the left it is me and my dad opening that bloc.





I was able to find 10 xtls of demantoid but all off matrix. The group joined us after the guide saw some specimens but unfortunatly it was a lost block because no one found another one. Other specimens to see and available for purchase in my site. If you want to contact me :

Article from : Daniel Comtois Quebec minerals