Hot Rock. Green Rock

Above the town of Wrightwood, California, is the large scrap of Heath Canyon. Believe it or not, the slide, which was caused by decades of debris being push downhill by snow melt, rain and a little now-and-then nudge by earthquake movement, became the favorite spot for gutsy skiers (my favorite kind) to shush down. It was the mud slide of May, 1941, that pushed down tons of gray concretelike mud and debris down on top of Wrightwood via the Heath Canyon drainage. Thirty inch diameter trees and boulders as big as a house were pushed by the waves of mud. The mud moved slowly, but like the flow of lava, it uprooted and tore everything it pushed against. The sound in the mountains was not the sound of music. It was the loud snapping and popping of trees and brush being torn from the ground. It was the roar of the grinding of rock and boulders as they tumbled down the mountain. The cold night temperatures froze the flow...but, as the temperatures climbed, the flow thawed. And the wet mud began moving again. Wrightwood realtor and historian G. S. Corpe wrote about the closing of the first day, "The stream would quiet late at night when the snow and water froze; then after a hour or so of warm sunshine in the morning-here it would come again! This natural routine repeated itself from May 8th and into the last week of May. Everyone wondered what was going to happen next...or where the avalanche would go next." To make things worse, off- and- on again rain showers impacted the avalanche's flow. The 1941 mudslide covered much together to prevent widespread stuff. It was large amounts of interesting rock was found now to find it.

of Wrightwood, but the town's residents worked damage. All the flooding revealed some neat looking green crystal rock called Actinolite. Before, the and then...after the mudslide, it didn't take much

For years it was thought that Actinolite was only featured here. Sorry, it's not true. Places like Canada, Finland, Japan, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Hungry, Sweden, the Ukraine, Poland, Russia, India, Portugal and China and Namiba, have the same type of Actinolite that Wrightwood does. In the United States it's also found in parts of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and Utah. Green, green black, gray green and black in color, the stone ranged from translucent to transparent, its crystals are literally made up of flexible fibers. Even half buried in mountain dirt, it is not hard to find. Actinolite is a calcium-magnesium iron amphibole, whose green color easily captures the eyes. A neat little keepsake, actinolite just might cure you if you happen to trip over it before you find it. The actinolite based Indigo Quartz in Brazil is said to carry powerful healing properties. When I was a child, a friend of mine once threw a piece of actinolite at my noggin. It dented my head, but did not heal it. Perhaps it didn't have enough Indigo Quartz in it to make it work. I threw it back, which didn't make my friend happy, either. So, I can't testify to its healing properties. As for unhealthy properties...some forms of asbestos are formed from fibrous actinolite. These fibers are so small that they can enter the lungs and damage the alveoli. The word Actinolite is from the Greek, aktinos, meaning "ray," in allusion to its often radial-fibrous nature. Actinolite is commonly found in metamorphic rocks, such as contact aureoles surrounding cooled intrusive igneous rocks. It is also a product of metamorphism of magnesium-rich limestone. Limestone is prevalent in the area, mostly in Wild Horse Canyon, Lone Pine Canyon and of course Cajon Pass. What are metamorphic rocks? Basically, these rocks were once igneous or sedimentary rock that have, over many decades, been changed by tremendous heat and

pressure. Sediments sunk deep into the earth and met the pressure that was built up by the earth's magma. They then "morphed" into another kind of rock. Metamorphic rocks include quartzite- dense, hard rocks, generally uniform in texture, composed of fused quartz sand grains. a common metamorphic mineral is quartz. It’s the last mineral to crystallize from a magma. It grows to fill the spaces remaining between the other crystals and in rocks typically shows no crystal shape. From metamorphic rock comes the Actinolite, a special metamorphic mineral. No matter if it has powerful healing properties or not, it's pretty to look at. Where can Actinolite be found in our area? An article in a 1965 Trailways was written by Mark Frances Berkholtz, in the publication was printed a reliable map of some of Actinolite's locations. Wrightwood is a small mountain, 6200 feet above sea level, overlooking the famous Mojave desert. Next door is the "doorway to the southwest", the Spanish Trail that runs through Cajon Pass. The small community is easy to find from Hwy 15, westbound Hwy 138 and then onto Cal State Highway 2. Many of the main washes in the area contained the marvelous green rock; A road called Lone Pine Cyn, which travels south from Hwy 2 and dead-ends against a flood control channel, is where this rock, and other rock brought to the surface by earthquake action from the San Andreas Fault, can be found. Traveling six miles further west is Big Pines...a Los Angeles County park that was opened in 1924, it is now the local ski area. At Big Pines, go south on Hwy 2 towards L.A for about four miles and to a dirt road that travels east along the crest of Blue Ridge Mountain. Dropping off the north is the mudslide that nearly covered three quarters of the town over sixty eight years ago. It is here that the Actinolite is in abundance. But, like in this mountainous area of the San Gabriel Mts., and the desert floor of the Mojave far below, true joy is getting out of your car and actually exploring one of the finest piece of landscape that the Almighty put on this earth. Terry Graham Wrightwood, Ca