If you have even the most casual passing interest in collecting rocks in eastern Ontario, you’ve probably heard of if not visited the beryl pit mine. It’s a somewhat legendary place with the local rockhound set. In the early part of the 20th century, they mined for feldspar and beryl there, but now it is exclusively maintained for mineral collectors. Its location in the central metasedimentary belt and the unique geology of the area mean that you can find a wide variety of interesting and collection-worthy minerals.
Or, if you’re me, you go in knowing almost nothing about rocks, geology and minerals, and pick up pretty rocks that have pleasing shapes that you think will make excellent wrapped rocks. Also, it’s a perfect candidate for the summer 2025 microadventure challenge!
The 2 hour drive was an unexpected delight on a mid-May morning that felt a lot like early summer.
I’ve known about the beryl pit mine and its unique geological promise for quite some time, but at about a 2 hour drive it has been just outside of whimsey range for me. Today, with the opportunity for a #summer2025microadventures challenge in mind, I was inspired to join a field trip organized by the Ottawa Valley Mineral Club to explore the beryl pit mine. We met up at the local grocery store in Quadville, where you have to purchase a $20 pass to access and take materials from the pit. From there the beryl pit and adjacent parking lot are about 2 km up a narrow forested road. Then it’s probably another kilometre walk up a wide and obvious path to rock collecting nirvana.
The first spot you come to is a set of tailings piles (see photo above). They do occasional blasting in the pit mine itself and drag the tailings (waste material from a mining operation) into a set of giant piles. Every now and then they turn the tailings over with diggers, so fresh material is always turning up. Everything is jumbled together, and the more sophisticated rock collectors sift carefully through. the piles looking for mineral treasures.
I hadn’t been sure what to expect of the beryl pit mine or the collecting experience. I had been hoping for some sort of guided tour, knowing only barely more than nothing about mineral collecting, but it was mostly a DIY affair. Lucky for me, I glommed on to fellow OVMC field trip member Irene and her family in the parking lot. Irene was generous with her knowledge and as we poked through the first of the tailings piles, she showed me instances of beryl, tourmaline and a few “somethingorother”ites that I nodded sagely about and promptly forgot what she had said.
With my vast months of rock-driven hyperfocus, I was able to identify on my own quartz, smoky quartz, mica, amazonite and feldspar, and was pretty pleased with myself about that. Honestly though, I was vastly undereducated for this experience and pretty much ended up filling my bag with specimens of random rocks and minerals that satisfied my filter of “does it look like a cool rock and could I wrap something around it?” If I could answer yes to either part of that question, it went into the bag. I know for sure there is some beryl in there, because Irene handed it to me. And I know that beryl is dark and hexagonal. But on inspecting my rocks back home, I’d be hard pressed to figure out which rocks they were.
Further up past the sprawling tailings piles is the pit mine itself. According to mindat.org, “the Beryl Pit is made up of an open cut 76 m long, 15 m wide, & 2 to 11 m deep. The western part of the cut exposes microcline-perthite-cleavelandite-quartz pegmatite containing tourmaline. The eastern part of the cut exposes albite-perthitic microcline-quartz-biotite pegmatite.”
I have to admit, I was woefully unprepared to explore the pit mine itself. In fact, the whole microadventure was fraught with rookie rock collection field trip mistakes.
Rookie mistake #1: I had no idea what I was looking at. Oh sure, I was able to pick out the quartz – it’s pretty obvious. And anything vaguely pink I deemed feldspar. But really, I could have been holding a rock with a vein of the most obscure and valuable mineral and I would have been utterly clueless. I was happy enough collecting rocks I deemed “pretty” but that seems a bit of a waste considering the beryl pit is a world class mineral collection zone. Next time, I’ll try to prepare a bit better so I can at least recognize the minerals I am most likely to encounter.
Rookie mistake #2: I underestimated the insects. Okay, I admit, I am a child of urban spaces, and am not used to the insects found in the deep woods. But I swear I have never seen such dense clusters of flying insects. I bathed myself in bug juice and to my surprise, I don’t seem to have any bites. I do believe we hit that magical spot just at the beginning of the season as the leaves unfurl when the black flies are out but not yet biting. But I was inhaling them with every breath and I am really quite bug phobic at the best of times, so did not have much patience to dawdle. Note to self, next trip to the beryl mine will be in October. Late October. Maybe November.
Rookie mistake #3: I underestimated the temperature. I had dressed for biting insects and ticks, with long sleeved hooded jacket, thick pants tucked into work socks and hiking boots. Shortly after 10 am it was already 25C and felt like about 20 degrees hotter than that standing on the tailings piles. and I thought I was going to melt but was not about to loosen my layers by even a crack.
Rookie mistake #4: watch out for poison ivy. I seem to have been blissfully protected by the hand of whatever god looks out for idiots as I don’t seem to have any itching patches 8 hours or so later, but every time I turned around I was standing perilously close to sprigs of poison ivy. Which I promptly forgot to look out for as I moved around, until the next time I realized I was standing nearly on top of some.
Even though I really only passed through the pit area itself long enough to take a few photos and apparently narrowly miss several encounters with poison ivy, after about an hour collecting random rocks I was done. Collecting rocks is hard work that involves a lot of bending over, which becomes increasingly difficult as you add pound after pound of rocks to your bag. The bending over is not so bad, but fighting gravity to stand back up gets harder. I had at least been very pleased to be able to use both the hammer and the loupe, as well as the sturdy collecting bag, that Beloved has given my newly rock-obsessed self for Christmas.
Rookie mistake #5: rocks are heavy. That one kilometre walk in to the mine, happily chatting with Irene and her family, stretched to what felt like five times that long as I trudged back toward my car, willing the parking lot into existence and trying to inhale fewer bugs as I shifted my 20 lbs bag of rocks uncomfortably from one arm to the other to my shoulder and back again. Just remember, whatever rocks you pick up you need to carry out. And rocks get heavier by the minute when the sun is blazing down and the bugs are frenzied around you.
Rookie mistake #6: there is no cellular signal in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get out of the sprawl that is the city of Ottawa very often, and it never occurred to me as I followed Google maps obliviously on the way out to Quadville that I should be paying closer attention to landmarks and turns. When I went to leave, it was a ways back up the road before I finally picked up a strong enough signal to lock on to. Download the map before you leave your wifi zone!
So, lessons were learned! Next time, I’ll hope to have a slightly stronger grasp of what it is that I’m looking for, and try not to eat quite so many bugs. But I have to admit, when I got my treasure home and washed and inspected each rock that had made it in to my collector’s bag, I was pretty pleased with my haul.
And my husband is thrilled that I’ve stashed another 20 lbs of rocks in the house!
This was exactly the sort of adventure I had in mind when I set up my #summer2025microadventures challenge! It meant saying “yes” to the microadventure even though it seemed very far and inconvenient to get to, and a bit intimidating. It was well worth the time and distance, and I can’t wait to go back. After bug season. And maybe with a geologist. 😉