Field Trips and Field Collecting

SGMS Club Field Trips

SGMS field trips are scheduled on an irregular basis depending on member interests and timing of trip opportunities such as mineral shows. Upcoming club events, and trip reports, will be posted here.

Upcoming Field Trips:

Duncan Penman has been making a strong effort to schedule field trips. Members should watch your e-mails.

Past Field Trips:

April 11, 2008: Preston Bingham organized a field trip to the beach in Capitola for collecting fossils. The timing took advantage of a minus tide, which allowed easy access to the collecting location. Numerous large fossils were found, including a porpoise skeleton and a 5-vertebrae segment of a whale's backbone. Although most pieces were too large and/or too difficult to extract from the hard matrix rock to collect, the group had a great time.

July 27-29, 2007: Cathy Phalen invited Sequoia club members and their guests on a camping and rock collecting weekend at the family ranch of her husband (Jim Giacomazzi) in the Arroyo Seco area. Attendees had a great time, and many good pieces were found. For reference see Directions and Other Information.

April 21, 2007: The club took an interpreter-led field trip to the Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum and park on Saturday, April 21. A reporter joined the group and you can read her account of the tour online. Please also check out the great pictures taken on the tour, submitted by Carol Corden.

North Bay Field Trip Consortium

SGMS is a member of the North Bay Field Trip consortium. Members can see a listing of upcoming NBFT excursions, with contact information, in their monthly newsletters.

Other Field Trips

Members of Sequoia Gem and Mineral Society may wish to participate in Field Trip Chairmens Association (Co-op) excursions. Please see the Co-op web site for schedules, contacts, and trip information.

Be sure to note Co-op Conditions of Attending Trips: All non-CFMS members must show proof of personal liability insurance (e.g., copy of homeowner’s or renter’s insurance policy). All participants must sign a Consent and Assumption of Risk Waiver of Liability form upon arriving at the meeting site. Everyone attending the trip must abide by the AFMS Code of Ethics, practice safe rockhounding and follow the directions of the field trip leader.

You may also wish to check the CFMS field trip schedule directly.

Plan Your Own Field Trip

To find additional ideas for museums to visit, or places to go to collect specimens (fee digs, shows with collecting excursions, etc), check the appropriate pages at DriftMine.com. Also watch the SGMS Calendar for shows sponsored by other nearby clubs.

For those who might like to do beach collecting at low tide, you may want to use this tide calculator to find the best times.

At our February 2007 meeting Preston Bingham described and provided directions to a potential local fossil collecting trip in a railroad cut in Sunol (the Niles Canyon Railway). He exhibited some nice fossil clams extracted from the sandstone.

Carol Corden suggests that those interested in planning trips to the Gold Country use this map.