Behind every crystal found is a story of passion. It is the story of the crystal seekers who sought and found him. Select the stone and read what the finder wrote in the “Schweizer Strahler”…
Peter Amacher has a passion for small, colourful minerals. In 1975, together with fellow crystal seekers, he found a fissure system with brookite crystals at the Chärstellenbach in Uri. In the years that followed, he was drawn there again and again: ’62 days I worked there, searched… and found…’
It sounds like a fairy tale: under the uprooted roots of a fallen tree, Patrick Heule first found small rock crystals in the summer of 2012 in Val Punteglias (Grisons). When he took a closer look at them, he saw: they were covered with beautiful dark anatase.
Yves Donnet-Monay has been searching for minerals in the Upper Valais mountains for years. In August 2011, when he was walking with a colleague on an alpine pasture above Brig, searching the slopes with his eyes, he suddenly had a strange feeling in his stomach: ‘I knew there was something waiting for me up there on that ridge…’. And indeed…
Stefan Bättig is a passionate Jura hiker. These mountains are just closer to where I live and easier to reach. When he heard about celestine finds in the Jura a few years ago, it stuck with him. He searched the quarries in the area and found what he was looking for…
Actually, Heinz Moser was a typical climber. Four thousand metre peaks he wanted to conquer. But years ago, when he found small, shiny black stones on the ground while climbing the Rimpfischhorn near Zermatt, he was captivated. He had found black grenade and has been a passionate crystal seeker ever since….
Even as a boy, Martin Andres was out and about in the mountains with his father, looking for the beautiful stones. He also travelled a lot in books. He wanted to know and understand what he found there. On one of his first solo walks, he made a spectacular first find: Armenite on the Wasenhorn.
An iron about one metre long, bent at right angles on one side and forged as a flat or pointed chisel on the other side, used to loosen lumps of rock (pry bar).
Is a must on the glaciers, but mainly serves as a tool for removing debris from rock sets or digging under the turf.
Is a tool made of metal (often copper, because of its pliability). This tool is used to carefully extract the crystals in the fissure.
Hammer, chisel and point iron are the main tools of the crystal seekers. With this, rocks are split off, crystals are pointed out and crystal steps are formatted to their size.
The magnifying glass is also part of the crystal seeker equipment. This makes it possible to determine already in the field whether valuable small minerals are present and whether it is worthwhile to carry the stones down into the valley.
Crystal seekers often move in sloping and dangerous terrain. Good shoes and crampons are half the life insurance.