Gem Mountain in Philipsburg, MT

A couple months ago, I mentioned to Perry that I would like to go to the sapphire mine near Philipsburg to mine for sapphires sometime. A couple days later, Grandma reserved a house for us for Memorial Day weekend.  For the past week, the boys counted down the days. After a crazy week finishing up preschool and soccer, I gladly welcomed a little vacation!

We arrived in Philipsburg around 11a Saturday morning to meet up with my parents so they could join us in the search for sapphires. After getting there, we realized that most of the businesses in the downtown area were closed (due to religious reasons, I believe) so we headed out to Gem Mountain to look for sapphires, since their store in town wasn't fully staffed for it. Highly recommend going out to the mountain instead of doing it in town (mountain > garage)!

We were a little surprised as to how many people were already there when we finally pulled in, but were more surprised at the amount of people when we left!

Gem Mountain is approximately 5 miles from the actual mine. To find your sapphires, you buy one of these white buckets for $20, or 7 for $120, and what you find is yours to keep. Hunter picked mine and Perry's first bucket, and he picked pretty good!

You first dump a bit of your bucket into the screen...

 ...and take it to the water trough in the middle of the area to wash all the sand off. There was a lot of shaking and sifting in the cold water! Grandma was soaking wet by the end of the morning. 

Once your rocks are clean, you flip it over onto the table, and if you washed and sifted correctly, the sapphires would be at the bottom of the screen, so when it's flipped over they are on the top. In this picture, you can see the round clear/green-looking one in the center. When they're wet, the sapphires look like pieces of glass so they are *fairly* easy to find. On Sunday when we were there, we picked a table in the sun, and they were even easier to find. 

 I think it's safe to say everyone walked away from the mountain with a fair amount of stones. 

 My dad came along and enjoyed himself too, especially when he found this beauty! 

 

 We all spent a good two hours digging through our buckets before packing up.

Hunter even helped Barbara search for gems for a little while.

That is, when he and JP weren't up to no good... 

...on this dirt pile! I'm still dreading washing these clothes...

 How many people can look through the same pile at once? Hahaha!

 We went to Gem Mountain on Saturday with my parents, and again on Sunday. This is what Perry and I found on Saturday. Although you can't really tell, two of these are PINK! Unfortunately, they are too small to be cut and treated. :(

On Sunday we picked two awesome buckets and scored quite a few big stones in various colors. Between the two days, we found 13 stones that were able to be heat treated and cut. Having them heat treated gives them a deeper color. After they are treated, they'll be cut (or maybe it's the other way around) and then they'll send them back to us so we can do with them as we please. With that many stones, I'll be able to make some pretty cool jewelry! Unfortunately, it'll take somewhere between 6-9 months to get them back... Now I wait!