I am just back from the March trip to our “Plan B” outing to Fairmount Park up in Riverside and the Old City Quarry aka North Hill. We had to reschedule the venue due to parking and safety concerns in the last 2 weeks. Caltrans dropped boulders in some of the parking areas and the Old Hope Mine site is covered with 3-foot weeds infested with rattlesnakes brought out by the hot weather. 13 of us from all 3 of the SoCal GPAA Chapters (San Diego, Temecula, and Hemet) showed up to explore a new area that is reputed to have 3 types of Garnets, Malachite, Calcium Carbonate and more. We lucked out on the weather on a weekend when the various other desert outings in the southwest were cancelled due to the unseasonally high temps in the solid triple digits, it was in the 80’s when we climbed the hill to the quarry and did our rockhounding, and never went over 93 during the picnic portion of the outing. Although a small location, there were some interesting features. The base rock was dioritic granite laced with pegmatites containing black mica and amphibole inclusions. Also visible were areas of iron oxide ranging in color from yellowish/orangish to rust, dark chocolate brown, and black. Probably the minerals limonite, siderite, and possibly manganese. We also observed some areas where people have picked out small diggings where they were looking for better concentrations of minerals like malachite and some blue indicators of copper, epidote greenstone, and in one case a small stone of better formed quartz which showed 2 small garnet crystals forming, but that was pretty much it.
All in all, everyone had a good time and Jeanny provided some give away mineral samples to those that wanted them.
A special thanks to Jeanny for helping plan and save the outing.

Jerryk