Mining for Sapphires in Sapphire!

We decided to have a go at mining for Sapphires on the Gemfields near Emerald at Pats Gems, in Sapphire. Pat has been mining and cutting gems for 20+ years...

The BIG proposal.....hahahahhaha

wow a lot of gold went into this BIG ring!

So we got a bucket of 'wash' each ($8) which looks an aweful lot like a bucket of dirt! Getting a bucket of wash required you to get a bucket and fill it up yourself with dirt from the dirt pile...

Then you tip some into your pan, shake out the real 'dirt', then wash it

then your left with this....

which you scour for many back breaking hours...we were there for 2+ hours! for nice shiney rocks..which it seems are easier to find on a sunny day as they glint at you...but of course it was raining when we were there!

George finally doing the washing..hahahaha

The lady then sorts out what we thought were sapphires from the 'rocks'

This is the sapphire to rock rate from my dig (- sherii)

This is George and I's final haul - George won the day (not that he is competitive or anything..)

Sherii's on the left and George on the right..

Close up of Georges stash --plus George picked up a nice RED one
not a sapphire but a zircon...

a few little beauties from my stash..pretty green sapphires!

This is our collective haul from Pats Gems!