Treasure Hunting

I found this interesting video where an opal prospector talks about how to track down a major opal source by following the opal trail.  Some parts of the video aren’t that great, but it gets better a couple of minutes in.

I thought the sound was a bit bad in the beginning, too, but then I realized that the narrator was just out of breath.  It must have been some hike to get up to that location.  If you have the time to watch the whole video, you’ll also get the chance to see several nice specimens that the prospector picks up along the way.

Since Sunday, I have been promising to get some of the photos that I took at the Royal Rainbow Opal Mine uploaded here, and I’ve finally gotten them together. This first picture is the view from the mine at the top of the mountain. The scenery here is fantastic, and you can see for miles and miles in any direction.

In my previous post, I neglected to say what the hours of operation for the mine are. There’s a good reason for that - basically, there are no standard hours! If you can get to the mine, it’s open. Well, that is, as long as Richard, the owner of the mine is there. But he is there most all of the time except for a day once every 4-5 weeks or so when he heads into Fernley to pick up supplies. If you do somehow manage to miss him when you travel to the location (and that would be rare!), there are public geode, agate, and crystal collections nearby. You can even wander up and down Soldier Meadows Road picking up some pretty nice rocks.

I’ve had a few people ask me what a tailings pile looked like, so I took a picture of one of these at the Royal Rainbow. If you want to attack the virgin ground at the Royal Rainbow Opal Mine, you’re going to need hard rock mining equipment like a chisel and sledgehammer. However, there are several tailings piles around that you can easily go through with a shovel and screwdriver. It wouldn’t hurt to have a rock hammer here, too, but you can get by without one. On my visit, it was pretty hot and I stuck to the tailings piles. There’s still a LOT to be found here. I only sifted through a very tiny portion and found several specimens that I really liked. I’m hoping that the next time I go there, I’ll have a friend with me and we can hit some of the harder areas of the mine.

Here’s another view from the top of the mine facing the other direction. You can also see a couple more of the tailings piles that line the path that leads over to the fresh mining ground. If you look real close, you can also see the top of the yellow out-building off on the right-hand side.

It’s a little hard to tell from this picture, but the tailings pile on the left-hand side was littered with nice pieces of obsidian. If you’re an obsidian fan, you’d love this place. There’s no work at all to gathering it - just walk around and pick it up from the ground.

To the left is a snapshot of some of the obsidian pieces from the mine. This was taken after I got home while I was sorting through and cleaning some of the stones.

To the right here is a photo of some mahogany obsidian. I didn’t find this myself at the mine. When I came down from the top of the mountain, I sat and talked with Richard for awhile. I told him how excited I was to see all the obsidian at the mine site and he asked if I seen any of the mahogany variety. When I said that I hadn’t, he went and fished through his own samples and gave this one to me to bring home. This is going to look great when it’s polished. It’s a big enough slice that several cabs could be cut out of it, but I’m not sure that I want to do that! It’s too pretty the way it is. I’ll have to think about it some more and make a decision before I polish it.

The picture to the left was a fun little find! Little did I expect to see an opal just laying on the ground. As I was going through some of the tailings looking for more obsidian, I saw something glittering in the sunlight. I picked it up and held it up to get a better view. Sure enough, it was a nice little opal with a small play of fire to it.

Those tailings were just full of surprises. It was kind of like Christmas, except all the pretty presents were wrapped in dirt. By the way, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, you definitely need to wear old clothing when you’re out digging around for rocks - sturdy, old clothing at that. I usually stick to jeans and and men’s work shirts.

The photo to the right is from Richard’s “front yard” at the foot of the mountain. How would you like to step outside to that view everyday? Behind those bushes on the right side of the picture is a small pond and camping area. Visitors to the mine are welcome to bring their tents and trailers and camp out right on location. There’s even an outdoor shower for guests to use. The area is pretty spacious and can accommodate a lot of campers. Richard told me that at one time, he had a group of almost 40 people come to visit the mine together and they all camped around the pond and in the front yard area.

Here are just a couple more pictures of rocks I found at the Royal Rainbow. I photographed them while they were wet so the colors would stand out more.

There are still some more pretty specimens that I want to photograph including some very nice sodalite pieces. Right now, they’re still sitting on the front porch waiting to be cleaned up a bit more. The sodalite would look gorgeous polished, but I’m not sure what I want to do with that either. The problem is that the pieces are so big, they would need to be broken up in order to polish and consider using as jewelry settings. So I’ll need to make a decision on that, too. Even if I do decide to break them up, I’ll make sure to get pictures first and post them so you all can see what nice specimens they are.

Sunday, I spent the day at the Royal Rainbow Opal Mine out in the Black Rock Desert just northeast of Gerlach, Nevada.  It’s a beautiful place to go even if you don’t plan on rock hunting.  It’s well worth the trip just for the scenery.  Out at the Royal Rainbow Opal Mine, there are no telephones or internet connections so most of the information about the site is by word of mouth.  So first, I thought I would give some directions on how to get there for those who would like to make the trip.

The closest town to the Royal Rainbow is Gerlach, Nevada.  I’ll give directions from there since you can find Gerlach pretty easily on maps.  Even though Gerlach only has a population of around 4,000 people, it has gotten quite a reputation because of its proximity to the yearly Burning Man Festival.

Just northwest of Gerlach, there is a junction where Highway 34 splits off Highway 447.  Veer off on Highway 34 heading north.  Stay on Highway 34 for about 12 miles and keep on look out for Soldier Meadows Road off to the right.  The road is well-marked and there is also a sign for the Royal Rainbow Opal Mine there.

Soldier Meadows Road is a dirt road with a lot of gravel covering it so you’ll want to make sure that your vehicle has good clearance to be traveling out this ways.  I also highly recommend 4WD or AWD.  I, personally, wouldn’t take a chance on these roads without at least AWD and a good spare tire.  This area is fairly remote and not much traffic comes out this way.  And, as always when you’re out in the desert, keep a good quantity of water and food in the car.  Your cell phone will not pick up a signal out here.  Don’t let all this make you panic and decide not to make the trip.  The road is actually pretty decent - I just think it’s wise to be prepared.

Continue on Soldier Meadows Road for about 34 miles.  The Royal Rainbow Opal Mine will be on your left.  It will be pretty slow going along this road since all the gravel makes it pretty bumpy.  I don’t mind that, though, because there are lots of nice rocks scattered around on both sides of the road.  I usually end up stopping several times to pick up a few.  The scenery is lovely here, too, so make sure you bring a camera.  In my next post, I’ll share some photos of the mine itself and some of the items I found there.

If you’ve always wanted to go gem hunting for opals, you’ll have lots of places to choose from in Nevada’s Virgin Valley.  In addition to the numerous small privately-owned mines in that area, there are several places that offer fee mining opportunities.  These include digging through tailings piles as well as getting out there and digging in fresh areas.  Take a look at this article for some more details or see our Nevada page for a list of some of these Nevada opal mines.

Not too far away from this area of Nevada is the Juniper Ridge Opal Mine in Oregon.  Juniper Ridge does have a restriction that you can only carry out a gallon bucket full of opals for the initial $200 digging fee.  However, if you do find more that you want to keep, you can do so for an extra charge.  A gallon bucket full of opals is a lot of opals, though!  The mine is located between Klamath Falls and Lakeview in Oregon.  They do have a very limited capacity so reservations are necessary.  Crater Lake isn’t too far away from this locale so this would be a great activity to incorporate into a longer trip to Oregon.

I was digging around on the Internet trying to find some more information about Opal Fee Digs and I came across this site.  There are some great pictures of Virgin Valley, Nevada, and a listing of opal claims for sale in that area.  The first claim listed on the site is priced at $300,000.  That might sound steep at first, but it’s 120 acres of land, and, apparently, there’s some uranium there, too.  Some of the claims listed there are for as little as $3,000.  I’d really like to go to the Virgin Valley area and fee dig at the Royal Peacock soon so maybe I’ll swing by and try to get some more information on these other sites.

Speaking of the Royal Peacock mine, take a look at some of these photos.  Now do you see why I want to go?  Plus, I love how friendly the whole site seems - it even has suggestions for the tools you should bring with you on a dig.

Oh, the beauty of fire opals!  There are actually two different types of opals that are referred to as fire opals - we will refer to them as the true fire opal and the precious fire opal.  The precious fire opal is a sub-classification of the Precious Opal category in which the play of color (the opalescence or iridescence that changes depending upon the viewing angle of the gem) resembles fire.  The true fire opal is transparent or translucent and has a red, orange, or yellow body color.  From here on out, if I just say fire opal without any qualifier, I mean a true fire opal.

Most of the true fire opals are mined in Mexico.  Precious fire opals, on the other hand, can be found in many more locales. In northwest Nevada, there are a few well-known precious opal mines that permit various forms of fee digging.  One of these mines is the Royal Peacock Mine.  Here you can dig in the bank for $180 per day or in the tailings section for $75 per day.