Rye Patch Chevron Origins

[Lost Scout]

I downloaded a rock I'd app and was testing it against known rock samples (about 75 percent accurate) and found some of the shale rocks we had picked up at Rye Patch last year. They have what I think is calcite veins and show on one side where it has dissolved leaving shallow grooves for the gold solutions to flow through. One of them has the distinct Chevron pattern. I'm not a geologist so am I right or close? Cool rock in any case. And I could say my wife did find a Chevron at Rye Patch...just not the gold variety..

[WesD]

I believe those are just fracture lines that formed when the shale was being compressed, some of which were filled with the hydrothermal quartz solutions.  Ive seen those out there too, and  they can be pretty cool looking, but it would be a different process in the formation of gold crystals. Now the plumbing system in that shale may have been a definite contributing factor in creating the right conditions for Chevron formation. 

Anyway the "chevron nugget" technical name is a Hopper Crystal, and hopefully theres one out there with your name on it!

"A hopper crystal is a form of crystal, the shape of which resembles that of a pyramidal hopper container.

The edges of hopper crystals are fully developed, but the interior spaces are not filled in. This results in what appears to be a hollowed out step lattice formation, as if someone had removed interior sections of the individual crystals. In fact, the "removed" sections never filled in, because the crystal was growing so rapidly that there was not enough time (or material) to fill in the gaps. The interior edges of a hopper crystal still show the crystal form characteristic to the specific mineral, and so appear to be a series of smaller and smaller stepped down miniature versions of the original crystal."

[Lost Scout]

Huh. I was hoping some one with some knowledge would chime in. That or some conspiracy theories 🤪. So if I understand it right (I looked up hooper crystals) the gold mineral formed first? And then then the shale around it? I had thought the gold solution was following the fractures/ grooves in the shale. Kind of changes how a guy might look deeper into how or look/ understand where to look for gold. 

Thanks for the comments.

[WesD]

The water silica solution under extreme temps and pressure was driven upwards into the shale, and where temps or pressure dropped, the gold was precipitated and grew into crystals. There were probably many little thermal seams out there where the gold formed.  I myself am a biblical flood type theorist, because the official narrative is too boring for me 🙂  but it obviously took a massive amount of water to then rip these mother load veins apart and concentrate them into the large placer deposits we see today.