Ash Canyon January 2016 Field Trip

 Contributed by Anita Williams

The monthly field trip for January was to Red Rock, NM.  We had a beautiful day and a nice turnout, including many new members.  Ansel took us through the Burro Mts to get to our destination.  The dirt roads were in good shape with a little snow and ice on the shady sections of the road.  We popped right out on the road to Red Rock and proceeded to go through “town” and over to Ash Creek.  The countryside was actually lush, on southwest New Mexico standards, thanks to all the snow and rainfall we’ve had. 
 Our target was finding ricolite in the drainage downstream from the actual outcrop of the rock.  We all parked at the gate and then spread out across the small valley.  This area has been picked over by rock hounds for years, but we were still able to find some small specimens showing very nice color and banding.  At the very least there were beautiful colors of rocks and pebbles which were collected for tumbling, cutting and rock garden display.  One piece of fossil wood was found that probably washed out from the overburden above the creek bank.
Ricolite is variety of serpentine also known as “verd-antique.”  It is green and banded with a variety of colors including yellow, blue, black, and white.  The rock polishes beautifully.  In fact it was mined in the late 1800’s and fashioned into items such as ash trays and lamp bases. It was also used as decorative stone is some buildings in Chicago.  Mrs. L.J. Cadwell of Chicago is credited with giving the name ricolite to the stone (Mineral Resources,1892, p.411).  This information was taken from Minerals of New Mexico, revised ed. 1959, by Stuart Northrop.
We gathered back at the vehicles for lunch and since it was still early in the day decided to go to another nearby location to collect psilomelane  It was an abandoned manganese mine called the Commadore.  We followed Dan to the location, parked the cars and did an easy hike to an area which had been trenched.
The psilomelane was easy to spot since it was black and was “intruded” into the bedded conglomerates throughout the area.  There were pieces of the ore lying on the surface, but some of the prettier samples were the psilomelane intruding the conglomerates and producing a breccia of black rock with colorful fragments of rock floating in it.  There were some chalcedony roses found in the area too.  It was a fun spot to collect and explore.
We all collected our buckets and bags and headed back to the parking area.  Smiles all around.  It was a good day rockhounding.