DAY SIX: Return to Taseq

Strengthened by almost a week of steep hiking and heavy hauling, return to Taseq on Day 6 promises different results.

I'm finally able to easily move around the slope and have a better idea for what good specimens actually look like ‘in the rough’. During the previous year I'd studying only nice, freshly broken hand specimens, and so came out here unprepared for the weathered exterior the rocks present in their native habitat or, for that matter, for just hiking their native habitat. So after a zero-success first night at Taseq I now feel I'm in better mental and physical shape for this second attempt (tip: don’t come here morbidly obese).

Today’s target includes a visit to the ‘Taseq tugtupite’ find that Mark and fellow visitors made last summer. This features large (to 50 cm across) masses of non-fluorescent analcime, much in well-formed euhedra several cm across, set in a matrix of pale pink, fine-grained tugtupite.

Many specimens from this find also contain small vugs lined with drusy tugtupite crystals. A few were found last year with crystals 1 cm or more in length, but these are quite dull and of very simple habit; the finest crystals are 1-2 mm or smaller, quite sharp, reflective, and possess a rich form development.

First, however, we'll need lunch provisions. It's my turn, so I visit the local store—a combined market/liquor/gun/clothing store serving most needs perfectly, including ours—to buy lunch for Mark and I. But they're fresh out of the unpronounceable sandwiches bought previously. Instead, only a bunch of white Styrofoam boxes line the display case. I ask what's inside, and the shop clerk quickly realizes I’ve no clue what she's told me, and so opens one to show me: incredibly fresh Greenlandic shrimp topped with caviar and a slice of cucumber on a freshly-baked bun. I buy them all.

I hop back in the truck and we rattle down the road to Taseq. Once again, we pass the lovely iceberg-filled bay, jog right, past the sole farmer’s gate and his yapping dogs, over the fragile bridge, down the middle of the Narsaq valley, along the Narsaq elv, beyond the turnoff to the Kvanefjeld mine, on to the parking spot nearest the footbridge, and stop. And out we spill. Down the wet meadow, over the misty footbridge, across the river’s rocks, and up to the base of the slope.

I follow Mark much of the way up, this time managing to easily keep up the pace, strengthened perhaps by knowledge of the lunch in store for us both. Near the top of the hike, Howie cuts to the right and I follow him, as I spot an outcrop of very white rock—just the kind I’ve found on previous days hosting interesting minerals, over in his direction.

Howie is already chiseling his way through some debris near its base as I reach him, and I climb higher to inspect the white outcrop closely. It's a sugary, fine-grained white albite vein, 10-20 cm thick, several meters on strike, with a vertical attitude and might have once extended at least a meter on dip.

The lower half has broken away. Along the back, transitional to the gray naujaite it cuts, is a bright green border of felt-like aegirine, 3-5 cm thick. On the surface of the white rock are many patches of bright pink tugtupite.

It's lovely to see in-place, and pointless to try and remove, so I take a few photographs and move on. Mark's lunch is still stuck in my backpack and I can hear him yelling from across the slope. I glance over and see he is perhaps thirty meters higher up, and at least a hundred meters farther east.

I follow the surface exposure of the vein upwards as it continues, towards Nakkaalaaq, and thins out. As it tapers I can see it is symmetrical; the other side—missing from the outcrop I’d first seen—has an aegirine layer as well, since removed by man or nature. After another twenty meters or so the vein narrows, to just a solid green aegirine vein. From higher up I can now see there are parallel veins, with similar content and trend, on either side of the one I’ve just followed. Only this big one appears to contain tugtupite, however.

Mark is by now impatient—unusual for him. He is hungry. I soon find he is also standing exactly where the ‘Taseq tugtupite’ find had been made, and the main block from which samples were taken is still in place. It's unlikely to have moved much, being half the size of a Volkswagen beetle.

He gets his lunch, and might enjoy it too but it’s hard to say; not much is heard. I scramble around and soon fill the rest of my pack with choice, vuggy pink tugtupite specimens. On several the glint of sharp tugtupite micro-crystals can easily be seen.

Once again, and all too soon, it is time to head back down. But today the hike is not completely exhausting. For the first time I actually feel good as I step up to the truck at last and take off my pack.

Another excellent collecting day, complete.

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