Steward Observatory 4x4 Adventures

Copper Creek (near Mammoth, AZ)

16 February 2014

Here's the trip report from the rock hounding trip to Copper Creek on Sunday February 16, 2014. Participants were John H. in his 2002 Avalanche, Warren and Cythia D. in their Grand Cherokee, and Allen S./Craig R./Geoff and Ian J. in a Ford Escape Hybrid. Yes, Allen's wife let's him take "her" car on trips like this.

After a breakfast of blueberry blintzes and breakfast burritos at Claire's Cafe in Catalina, we headed for Mammoth and Copper Creek. We were headed for "Copper Creek Site 1" as described in Bearce's book "Minerals, Fossils and Fluorescents of Arizona". Warren had a flat tire on the way in. The weather was perfect with high clouds and temperatures in the upper 70's. We turned off Copper Creek Road and headed up past the Reliable Mine where they blew up the entire hillside. There was a drilling crew working on the ridge above us. We missed the correct turn and wound up on some nastier (more fun = rating 3.5+) 4-wheelin about 3/4 mile to the north. (Missing the turn was accidental, I swear. We took the turn labelled "Bluebird Mine Rd" on Google Earth.) We parked the Escape and continued on to a washout that we weren't willing to drive past (you rolled down ~200 vertical feet if you slipped into the washout). We turned around and took a side road that was even rougher and less travelled. We realized this wasn't the site we had set out for, but found an area near another mine claim with alot of green and blue copper-bearing rocks and black moybdenum-bearing rocks. On the way back past Reliable Mine, Allen recognized the correct turn, and we drove in about 15 minutes up to the summit of Site 1 with all three vehicles (trail rating 2.5). We collected all manner of specimens of copper-bearing minerals, and lots of quartz crystals.

Allen says the red black metallic rock with triangular crystals is Tetrahedrite - hence why it crystallizes as tetrahedrons. The good part? It contains silver at that mine - the Child's Adwinkle mine area. So it's worth something - Warren's rock is worth maybe $50. Cynthia found a quartz crystal with green tourmaline crystals inside it. Allen evaluates that crystal at $30 -- they'd all just come from the Gem Show. We see a necklace in Cynthia's future. For more info see mindat.org and type in the locality 'copper creek AZ'. Choose the 'bunker hill district'.

Warren had a second flat tire on the way out. We plugged the little hole in the first flat and gave it some Slime to get going again. Warren seemed at the time like a shoe-in for the bad luck prize (despite his nice tetrahedrite specimen). However, this morning Craig went to the emergency room in Los Angeles with gall bladder issues. We're not sure if it was the Date Shake or the Sonoran Dog or the numerous Green Corn Tamales......... Hope he's feeling better soon.

See another report on the next trip below.......

See this nice web page for info:
http://www.experience-az.com/adventures/4wd/coppercreek/coppercreek.html

Photos by John Hill

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At the summit of Site 1.

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View toward Reliable Mine from Site 1.

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29 March 2014

Here's the trip report from our second rockhounding trip to Copper Creek on Saturday 29-Mar-2014. Participants were John H and Tom H in John's 2002 Avalanche, Joe H and David in Joe's shiny new Jeep Wrangler, Midway Mike made it a family affair with a son and 2 grandsons in his Cherokee.

We had the usual lavish breakfast at Claire's Cafe in Catalina. It was a beautiful sunny day with temps near 80 by mid-afternoon. From Mammoth we drove in on Copper Creek Road, and turned left/north to go past Reliable mine. We made it quickly to the peak that Bearce calls "Site 1" since we knew how to get there from last month. The crew had a good time searching through all the rocks. David had a couple handfuls of thumb-size quartz crystals.

We attempted to drive to Bearce's "Site 2", but the road was blocked with a 5-foot high earth berm and a small weather station (was the berm to stop us from running over the weather station? and why is there a weather station here?).

After a brief stop to look at mining ruins, we continued on Copper Creek road toward "downtown" Copper Creek. The shelf road had a rock slide and some washouts that gave it more pucker factor than usual, but still space for a full-size Chevy to squeeze by. Bearce "Site 3" is a small promontory 0.45 miles uphill on the road to the South from Copper Creek proper. The promontory is substantially covered with REALLY GREEN malachite deposits.

No trucks were damaged in this adventure, although Joe's Wrangler isn't as clean as it was before. We made it back to Tucson in time to see the Wildcats not make it to the Final Four.