Rockhounding in NW Romania: around Blue Lake, Maramures county

A beautiful spring day in Maramureş (NW Romania) the Wednesday after Easter. Sunny, warm, smelling of young green forest in the air, all these tempts me to a walk in nature to explore the surroundings. No matter how much you are accustomed with some places, including where you spend your life every day, small and unexpected discoveries and surprise may occur all the time. It depends on how willing you are to notice the unnoticeable things around you. After some brief preparations I jump in the car with the thought of a trip to “Lacul Albastru” - Blue Lake and “Dealul Minei” - Mine's Hill near the town of Baia Sprie with this ideea to collect some minerals (no mushrooms this time of year!).

From Baia Mare to Baia Sprie is about 10 km, on the road towards Sighetu Marmaţiei. There are regular bus routes that link the two cities scheduled every 30 minutes all day. I park the car in downtown near the reformed church and I'm heading towards north on the cobbled streets that climb the hill , ie towards the Blue Lake. There are several marked trails in the city center, red cross trail, yellow cross trail, the red dot trail, all leading toward the lake on different versions through the maze of paths that are crossing the slope. It takes about 20-40 minutes to climb to the lake, depending on one's walking rythm.

Declared Monument of Nature, Blue Lake is formed by the collapse of old mining galleries around 1920. Rainfall and alluvial streams filled the cavity formed, dissolving and altering a number of minerals both on slopes and in the gallery in the proces, especially pyrite consistently present here, giving it a green-blue colour,turquoise-like, hence the name Blue Lake. It has a nearly circular shape about 40 m in diameter and a depth of 3-4 m, covering an area of 0.5 hectares on the southwest side of Mine's Hill.

 

Lacul Albastru - Blue Lake

Mine Hill, as its name suggests, is a conglomerate of complex metallic mineral veins radiating in all directions. Implicitly, the whole place is streaked with signs of mining activities that takes place here for centuries. Stopes, mine galleries, crumbling, prospecting or ventilation shafts, older or newer are seen all over the place. It is highly recommended therefore to look carefully where you step and what paths you choose, if you do not want to fall a few tens of meters into the void or to wake up sliding down with all the debris into a stope. Obviously, the mine openings also can not be explored without the proper equipment.

Now back to the story my trip; so I go into the forest leaving behind the last houses of the town looking around after interesting stones and pebbles when in less than five meters from the forest skirts I bump into a swarm of small moths with iridescent blue - purple wings and antennae about three times longer than the body, franticly flying around on top of sweet blueberry bushes, enjoying the morning sun. A more detailed research on the net tells me that the name of the specie is Adela reaumurella, known as the longhorn moth. I spent about half an hour struggling to take a decent shot with the moths in flight. Difficult job. Dozens of shots, focusing, re-focusing, taking blank (or blind!) shots, hoping something good will come out...

Longhorn moth Adela reamurella on an oak young leaf

Same longhorn moths, in flight

I return to climbing the path and looking for the rocks. I traveled many times this area, but I never gave attention to the surrounding boulders. All around can be seen complex combinations of minerals, differently colored layers of chalcedony, interspersed with quartz crystallizations, then other layers of porous volcanic rock mixed with red or yellow oxides derived from the exogenous weathering of other minerals. Many of them have geode-like cavities bearing many small quartz crystals, or Swiss cheese-looking rocks, pieces of chalcedony with pea beans sized holes, some still filled with various minerals, others with their contents emptied, probably disolved in pluvial water. The layers of chalcedony and other minerals plays an intricate game of colors, shapes and lines, giving a beautiful agate-like look to these stones, which is observable in freshly cracked rocks, uncovered by the relatively even outer oxidic layer. All these, in daylight, on the forest floor, yet I have not reached the mine workings and holes.

Arriving at the lake I take a short break and make a quick plan of visiting several stopes, mine crumbling and holes from around, in short round trips with the lake as reference point. Just above the lake, on a stope with much debris I find beautiful pieces of porous rock covered and infiltrated with, I wonder, malachite? (at least I think so, their appearance and a simple deduction about the presence of the extractable rich chalcopyrite in the area; I'd like confirmation on this from a specialist though). Hmm, could be also intrusive amphibolites, these are also green and moreover are abundant in this area.

On the western side of the lake, near a ruined building belonging to the defunct mining entreprise, another stope and an old mine entrance.

 

Old mine entrance

Because I do not have the necessary equipment with me I limit myself at studying the entrance and about two feet inside the entrance; that was good enough to find small amethyst crystals and amethyst-quartz, among the detached pieces from the mine's walls lying at my feet. I climb to the top of the hill, picking on the the way a piece of red jasper, to reach another stope with very steep slopes. At its base, large boulders detached from the walls, some of them cracked by the fall revealing large geode-like cavities covered inside with small quartz crystals. I took several photos of them, being waaaay too heavy to be brought home into my collection. The one in the photo was somewhere over two feet in height.

Cracked geode, at the surface

I was pleased with smaller pieces located around, some quite beautiful or interesting (one of them having few crystals of baryte). After other short round trips at some smaller stopes, collecting in the process various specimens more or less known to me, one hour or so later I'm already feeling the weight of my backpack, a sign that I have to finish my trip for the day.

I'm returning to the car in downtown with a nice “crop” of of specimens and with the conviction that I'll have to come here to continue my exploration, perhaps on the eastern side of the hill.

Once back at home is time for cleaning and washing the samples, then sort them to pick those that I'll cut and polish (I have this curiosity about what crystals are hiding inside, if any).

Here are some pictures of some of the "harvest":

"The harvest" of the day

"Cheese rock" with chalcedony and agate - rough

Rock crystal quartz on chalcedony

Green mineralization (Malachite?) and iron oxides on volcanic rocks

Red jasper and small Rock crystals - rough

Chalcedonies mixed with unknown pinkish-red minerals - partly polished

Small amethyst crystals and amethyst-quartz - rough

"Mosaic" rock  (left) and "cheese" rock (right) with agate and chalcedony veins - partly polished