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December 3, 2008

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Lee Creek Pit-C...

Lee Creek Pit-Car Area

10/7/2006 1:19:12 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

Lee Creek Pit-Car Area

My slot into the mine is coming up in a few weeks. I would be really interested to hear from other collectors who have gone already as to what they found. I would also like to hear another explanation of what this material looks like and what condition the fossils/teeth are in. Is this material the exact same stuff that you find at the Cox Crossroads spoil pile? That stuff is all busted and worn. I'm hoping the pit-car material isn't like this.

thanks,
Daryl.

10/7/2006 3:40:42 AM

scubapaul

70 posts

RE: Lee Creek Pit-Car Area

hi daryl,
check out my post on it for more info. The pit car area is *right* on the edge of the pit. you will be within a stones throw from the cranes while they work. The bring up layer from the mine and dump it into a pile, which gets blasted by a giant hose of water. a smaller shovel then comes in and scoops up the big chunks of phosphate nodules (and i apologize if i have not describe the process exactly as it is). anyway... you are getting access to look over the pile after it has been blasted by the hose. what is in that pile is dependant on what came up with the shovel directly from the pit, and what is left behind from the hosing. it should be pungo formation. There are of course no guarantees on *any* hunt and this one will be depenedent on any weather and what happens to come up from the pit in the scoop. Good luck in your hunt and do not give in to the urge to jump into the pit ;)

10/11/2006 2:38:15 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Lee Creek Pit-Car Area

Thanks Scubapaul for the additional info on the pit-car area. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to travel 400 miles to hunt a spoil pile full of worn junk like the stuff at the DPW sites around Aurora. I've got a couple creative hunting ideas that I'll employ during my visit to the mine. I'll be sure to post my finds/results here to this forum when I get back. I'll also post any pics on the MGS website gallery (I manage the club website: www.ecphora.net/mgs).

vr,
Daryl.

10/16/2006 3:32:19 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Lee Creek Pit-Car Area

Daryl, Paul is correct in that some good things are coming out of the pit car area. I would say that about 90% of what i saw was broken but when you find a crap load of stuff that means you have a shot at something complete. I would not set your hopes high for any big chubs or megs because it is just not likely. The area it self is super small you pretty much can see everyone there all the time and the hill got worked over in about an hour. The good thing tho is that there are so many teeth on it that i was still picking teeth up that were laying out right up to the end of the trip. I surface collected and dug and would recommend bringing a sift along with you. I did not have one so i can only imagine the number of smaller teeth that i missed. It was quite a shame that all of the chubs that i found were broke but it was the 2" squalodon incisor tip that bummed me out the most, would have been well over 4" if it had been complete. Despite the small collecting area and the busted teeth i never gave up hope. With about an hour left in the trip i found an awesome 1.75" croc tooth with only a tiny ding to the tip making for a great day. It was in an area that had been worked and worked again but only a small piece of enamel was exposed and i managed to see it with my face plastered against the pile. The largest complete teeth i saw were around 2" but they were in great shape. I did see some larger 3" chubs and 2.5" makos but they had root damage but from what i understand some nice large makos have come out in past trips, just like in the pit you have to get lucky. This is the same sediment that you search through at the DPW sites however it is still mixed with a bunch of clayey sediment and it has not been pumped through the pipes so there is a much better chance of finding nice condition teeth. I would imagine if there is a good rain before you go in you will most likely find something nice because like i said the area is super dense with fossils. I will say that i would rather have been in the pit but would have no problem going back to this area again because the teeth are there you just have to work a little harder for them. I would also recommend bringing in a bucket to carry out sediment because the micro's here are in awesome shape compared to the DPW sites.

10/17/2006 12:15:26 AM

xiphodan

19 posts

RE: Lee Creek Pit-Car Area

Daryl,
I'd have to agree with Mel in that there are certainly nice teeth to be had in the pit-car areas. I went in on Saturday as well (though I inadvertanty
clicked the 21st when I posted the trip-duh) and almost everything I found was by digging/screening. I used a 12" by 16" screen with ½ inch mesh and a hand mattock to do all the work. The first spot I dug was a small vertical face about 3 ft high. I knocked down the material with the mattock picking out as many of the large pieces as I could until I had a good pile to put through the screen. Most of my finds were from this first spot. I dug at two more spots (both also being at small vertical faces)the first of which yielded nothing, the second of which yielded a large broken mako, a partial chubby and an almost complete chubby - I’m sure if I spent more time at the last spot I would have found more but the bus and my back were ready to go. It’s supposed to rain down here for the next day so there should be some good erosion for next weekends’s group. If I were to go in again at the same pit-car area (and I would in a heartbeat), I don’t think I would spend too much time scanning unless there had been copious amounts of rain. Good Luck and I look forward to your post on Echphora!
Dan

10/23/2006 4:26:04 AM

legacyForum

725 posts

RE: Lee Creek Pit-Car Area

Well folks, I'm back from my trip to Lee Creek with a scoop on the trip details! Here we go...

I left my house in Maryland around 5:30 am and arrived in Greenville, NC around 10:30 am Fri morning to try my luck at Greensmill Run. Well, I sifted here and there for about 5 hours and found three Great Whites (only one was in ok condition). I found a couple of squalicorax teeth, and some pieces of other teeth. Nothing too exciting! I think I'll skip this place next time, but it's nice to hunt somewhere different once in a while.

Saturday morning my buddy John and I drove out to the mine with eager anticipation because we came prepared! John built a large box screen with legs and 1/2" mesh. We each brought several buckets expecting to fill them with that nice Pungo material at the Pit-Car area, and later sift them at home. At the parking lot at the mine we met up with the other Friends folks, boarded the bus just after 8 am with Becky at the helm. Boy did things look different along the road to the mine. If you read about the "roa shift" on elasmo.com, you'll know what I mean when you drive down it and suddenly see a big pit and drag lines on your right. Anyhow, Becky drove us in, and then actually back out only to cross the same road and go back in the mine (active digging part) which is now on the same side of the road as the parking lot, just hundreds of yards away. As we drove down the road into the area where the drag lines were working we could all see the large pile of material that in just a few minutes, we would be searching and sifting through. As we approached the pile though we could all clearly see that the pile we were supposed to hunt had a dragline right behind it, like probably 25ft or so. Becky stopped the bus way short of the pile and dagline and called someone on her walky-talky to ask for permission to gain entrance. However, both parties obviously realized that this situation was not safe and we could not collect at the pit-car area. Becky backed up the bus and proceeded to call Clyde (PCS Sup.). Clyde arrived on the scene about 5 minutes later and told us that he had a better place to collect!!!! Then he said something about a new area in the PIT!!! We all clapped, cheared, and thanked him for saving the day. For a few moments, many of us thought we had driven hundreds of miles for nothing. Then came Clyde to the rescue.

Becky drove the bus in close pursuit behind Clyde as we circled back around the active mining area and eventually drove to the other side of the pit. We parked the bus and jumped off to get a quick run down from Clyde on where we could hunt. After a few short details he said follow me and the 18 of us were close behind as we walked across a loing fairly firm "slurry field" - an area which had been filled back in. About 200 yards across the field were several long penninsula like hills each ranging from maybe 50 yards to 150 yards long. As we got closer to the hills/piles, we all kind of broke apart and went our separate ways, kind of claining our own hill/territory. About 10 feet before I hit the first hill I spotted a perfect sand dollar just laying on the side of the hill facing me - my first ever! My buddy John broke off to the hill on the right, and I stuck with the hill in front of me, quickly scanning the material. I immediately recognized it to be James City - full of shell material. After walking about 100 feet and not seeing a single tooth, I to John on the next hill and asked if he found any teeth yet. He replied with one mako. I thought for a moment of abandoning my hill in favor of his, but I decided to stay where I was. The hills are fairly steep and somewhat difficult to collect on the sides. I periodically came across a small patch of Pungo mixed in with the James City, and did manage to start finding a few teeth here and there. As quickly as I would find two or three small teeth (tigers, hemi's, etc.), they would then dissapear for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. I was actually picking up more rare/unusual looking shells that I had never seen before - tons of limpets, small and large conch type shells, even some sort of shell that Pat Young (PCS guide)said that in 17 years of collecting she only had half of this particular type of shell - and I found 4, two which are perfect! I eventually scored my first meg - a 3.5" incher with a few dings, but still nice. I found about 10 makos, several tigers, a dozen hemi's, two porpoise, 4 bull-sharks, verts, some fish, a bird bone, etc. I have to admit that the best stuff I found was invertebrate material - all those shells.

I must say that being a new area in the Pit I was really surprised that we didn't find more, but that's because there was so much James City - at least on the 3 long hills I hunted all day. I never saw any Yorktown, and as I mentioned before the Pungo was very spotty.

My buddy John did better than I - he found a perfect lateral/posterior chub about 2.5", and a wicked cool stingray barb 99% complete.

Back at the bus I saw a coupld large megs, one which was around 4" in good shape, and then a really nice meg about 5" (a lower I believe). I saw a decent assortment of other teeth and things, but I thing the volume was somewhat on the low side.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. We had an awesome opportunity to collect in the Pit (albiet a new one). Thanks go out to Clyde for saving the day!! I wish we could have brought home some material to search through, but the hills were too far away to carry even a half of a bucket.

It will be interesting to see if the this area is collected in the weeks to come instead of the pit-car area.

Oh one last thing, I did take lots of pictures so I could post them on echphora.net/mgs, however minutes before boarding the bus I decided to take a few pictures overlooking the pit. Upon walking back I tripped and stumbled over my own tired feet and sort of fell in the sand holding my camera. Let's just say my camera broke my fall - the operative word being broke. It seems my 200 lb mass falling on top of it as I drove it into the sand, lens face down, jammed some sand into the cmaera housing, preventing the lens from zooming in and out. I'll tryo to get the pics unloaed off the camera, but now I need a new digital camera! Anyone got any recommendations for a nice camera under $300?

Good luck to you folks who are going to the mine in the weeks to come.

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