Driven by
Passion
Behind every crystal found there is a story of passion. It is the story of the crystal seeker, who searched for it and found it. Choose the stone and read what the finder wrote in the “Schweizer Strahler”…
Behind every crystal found there is a story of passion. It is the story of the crystal seeker, who searched for it and found it. Choose the stone and read what the finder wrote in the “Schweizer Strahler”…
Peter Amacher has a passion for small, color-intensive 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: ‘I spent 62 days there, searching… and finding…’.
It sounds like a fairy tale: under the uprooted roots of a fallen tree, Patrick Heule first found small rock crystals in Val Punteglias (Graubünden) in the summer of 2012. When he took a closer look at them, he saw: they were covered with beautiful dark Anatas.
Yves Donnet-Monay has been searching for minerals in the Upper Valais mountains for years. In August 2011, while walking with a colleague on an alpine pasture above Brig and 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 Cölestin finds in the Jura a few years ago, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He searched the quarries in the area and found what he was looking for…
Actually, Heinz Moser was a typical mountain climber. He wanted to conquer four-thousand-meter peaks. But when, years ago, while climbing the Rimpfischhorn near Zermatt, he found small, shiny black stones on the ground purely by chance, he was captivated. He had found black grenades 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 spent a lot of time in books. He wanted to know and understand what he was finding. Already on one of his first solo walks he succeeded in making a spectacular first find: Armenit 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). It is angled on one side and often fitted with a shovel on the other. 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.