The Baxter Mine, Inyo County

Personal website: https://thomasfarleyblog.com

The Baxter Mine, Inyo County

My eyes are good enough to cut and paste links if I wear my sunglasses at the screen:

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Excellent tour of the the Baxter Mine on YouTube. Comes complete with the requisite twangy banjo music that is on every prospecting or Old West adventure video..

Quick Nighttime Fluorescent Mineral Hunt

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Little cooler today so I hiked out to the Nancy Ann Mine with my heavy shortwave field lamp to do a nighttime fluorescent mineral hunt. Saw this rattler just in time to step back. Still close enough to get rattled at. #hiking#mining#inyocounty#flourescent #rocks#geology#mojavedesert

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Further up the trail. #geology #roadtrip #rockhound #inyocounty #hiking#minerals#mining #prospecting#

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Glow sticks mark off important points. They’re not meant to illuminate but these from Home Depot are very bright. I came back with a headlamp, of course. #desert#mojave#mojavedesert#rocks #geology #minerals #inyocounty #hiking#explore

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Unedited bat footage. Fairly recent maps call this the Shaw Mine when in actuality there are a number of entrances and the name has changed from owner to owner. Open ground now that is in Wilderness status and only walking permitted. No bicycles, no handcarts, no machines of any kind. #nopahwilderness #roadtrip #geology#inyocounty #pahrump #mojavedesert #hiking

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A few nice red pieces but nearly everything else is yellow calcite that fluoresces under SW and LW. The red material only fluoresces SW. You can see in the first few seconds that even my Dragonfly won’t light up this side of the rock but then SW gives a nice red. The other side glows the usual calcite yellow. #flourescent #hiking #mojavedesert#geology #geologyrocks #mining #minerals #inyocounty#nopahrange

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I’m always hesitant about leaving my vehicle at night near a major road. I turned off my headlamp a quarter mile before the trailhead and walked with only moonlight in case something was waiting. No one at the vehicle but very loud music from another vehicle a hundred yards away out in the creosote, the first human activity I’ve encountered at this trailhead. I had my keys in hand and motored away in seconds. I’m sure those people were friendly but I wasn’t going to chance it at night and beyond cell phone range. My sat phone would need a few minutes to connect. I might not have had that time. #mohave #desert#hiking#explore#geology#geologyrocks#mining#history #inyocounty#

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Making my way back. #geology #roadtrip #rockhound #hiking ##mining#nopahrange#inyocounty#explore#geology#desert#mojavedesert

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Unedited handheld iPhone video. SW. Properly photographing fluorescent minerals takes a tripod and hours of fiddling to get the colors correctly displaying what they actually show under a lamp. The blue rock shows the infamous blue bleed that every photographer fights against, it is a problem between camera settings and the lamps themselves. Getting every rock in a group to show correctly on your screen is a major project, a great deal done in post. Too much time in post! #ecplore#geology#flourescent #minerals#madness#desert#mojavedesert#inyocounty

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Run Off Twice In Three Days

In three days I was run off land I was taking pictures on. A new record. Once by a public official and one by a private security guard. (Who had a K9 with him.) Some thoughts.

Anyone patrolling and protecting private or public land gets hard from dealing with thieves, vandals, squatters, pot growers, and people off-roading where they shouldn’t.

As such, you are most likely deemed a profiteer no matter what you are doing. If I have a camera, the question is always, “Are you a professional? Are you selling these photographs?” If I am rockhounding, it’s always, “Do you make money off of this?” Sigh.

My attempts at explaining are always seen as arguing. It puts these people immediately on the defensive. You don’t not want to do that. I say what I am doing, I am always friendly, and I always leave an area as asked. It doesn’t matter if I am right or not, I do not want to fail what cops call the attitude test.

Law enforcement can throw you into jail for almost anything. Whether the charges stick, that’s another matter. Right now, you are in jail. A police officer puts you in jail under what are called booking charges. They can be practically anything. It’s the district attorney (or whatever other official is tasked with prosecutions), who decide what the final charges will be. If any.

In questions like trespass, the DA probably doesn’t want to even consider the case. You may be fined with no further jail. The DA may be more mad at the police officer for bringing them another case that isn’t a priority. To that point, a policeman also doesn’t want to develop a history of jailing people on minor charges who get immediately released.

I belong to the Public Lands for the People and have a bumper sticker for them on my truck. They advocate getting all sorts of information from the officer in case you are stopped. I don’t ask for an officer’s full name. If I need to, I’ll get their license plate number. That will be enough to identify them later on. Less confrontation.

Speaking of names, if you mention someone in their agency, be prepared to have that name. “I know someone.” “Okay, Jack, who?” A printout is best, don’t be stuck by the side of the road searching through your e-mails on your phone. I carry printouts of current rockhounding regulations for both the BLM and USFS in my truck, along with the rules for collecting in Wilderness Areas. I have printed out my correspondence with certain state and national level BLM and USFS officials, along with their phone numbers.

Anything on paper is far better than describing it. If you want to try to explain yourself. Which, again, may seem argumentative and confrontational. Your call. Good luck.

Oh, if you are doing something really debateable, get the business card of a criminal defense lawyer and keep it in your wallet. Pay for an hour of their time to introduce yourself and tell them what you are doing. Find someone who practices criminal law, nothing else. They are very different from other lawyers. And get the business card of whatever bail bondsman that attorney recommends. Just saying.


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Desert Pavement

Just finished uploading a file to Wikimedia Commons showing desert pavement. It’s reworked footage from my prospecting desert pavements video.

In this video, I remove all narration and free certain frames along the way. I think this works best, leaving a description of desert pavement up to educators and students.

There are many nice still photos of desert pavement from around the world at Wikimedia Commons but no video.

Many devices can’t play that file format. So, here is the same footage at Vimeo, unfortunately, more compressed. Downloading any video file always and then playing it always produces the best results.


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At Railroad Pass in Clark County, Nevada

Why the link to my other site? I’m posting some of my outings to my writing website to try to introduce people to rockhounding.
https://thomasfarleyblog.com/2020/03/27/railroad-pass-clark-county-nevada/


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