Playing With Rocks

Today I went out with Barry and Roger to Azailia Red Quarry to get more rock for the Friends of Enchanted Rock trail project stock pile. We got permission to pick through their 'trash pile' from Tarry, the regional manager of Cold Springs Quarry's, and he even helped out for a few hours with a huge front end loader. We had been trying to make this trip happen for quite some time now... close to two years, I was psyched to finally go. And not surprising, it was awesome!

We met at Barry's at 6:30am and had tacos and doughnuts, we arrived in Oxford at 9:00am and met the guy dropping off our skid steer and Tarry. We signed some waivers and then had a "safety talk", in which we were basically told to wear hard hats (we had brought helmets which are way better). Tarry had a really cool 'pick' that he used to bring large slabs down from the trash pile with, then we would use our skid steer and hook up chain and cable and drag the slabs out and then into our pile.



Here he is dropping the pick down on large slabs (~6ton) and breaking them into 'manageable' pieces (<1 ton). Despite the pictures of large machines doing all the big work this was actually a very physical day; crawling over boulders, digging, prying, hooking up chain (~20lbs.) and cable, and all while having to stay extremely alert to our surroundings and be able to jump out of the way of falling boulders!



Here is our rock pile, it's actually pretty big, I wish there was a person or something in the pic for better reference.



And the best thing I brought back from the trip was this awesome rock!! It's my new favorite! Huge perfectly cleaved chunks of orthoclase feldspar in a matrix of quartz and garnished by a fine specimen of Biotite:



Beyond sore muscles, battered arms, and a sunburn, I have to say that today was a blast! And after that tilapia and risotto diner with Nick, I will be sleeping great tonight!