Sorensenite collecting trip to the boulders below Kvanefjeld

 


Sorensenite collecting at the base of Kvanefjeld

From the left: Don Yonika, in red jacket: Herb Yeates.

The fluorescent mineral called sorensenite is only found in the Illimaussaq complex of Greenland - it's a single-locality occurrence. The large boulders had tumbled down from Kvanefjeld mountain and among them could be found sorensenite but it required a hard work to find any. We saw one area that had been mined - more sorensenite remained but it was infeasible to collect it. While the others remained lower down I clambered up a risky route through the still-wet boulder field until I began to find previously undiscovered specimens of sorensenite. Encouraged, I went even higher up the boulders. Then I saw it - the Mother lode of sorensenite! I scrambled down onto a convenient flat area and gathered up a dozen or so good-sized pieces, meaning they were nearly an inch in size....not bad for this rare mineral. But my prize of the night was a sorensenite that was a few inches long. They were all terribly fragile pieces but I got them home just fine. I did call some of the others to come see my discovery. When they got there, it turned out that I had rediscovered a "lost location", one they knew about but didn't where it is. So I was happy on several counts. Lee and Herb did attempt to extract more sorensenite from "my" spot but it wasn't very successful. The sorensenite hike was a tricky bit of manuevering but turned out to be one of the high points of my trip.

 

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