June 15, 2019.
On behalf of the Penticton Geology and Lapidary club, I want to thank you for your support in making Rendezvous 2019 a great success.
Over 150 rock hounds from all over BC attended the event held at the Rock Creek Fair grounds. We held field trips on the Saturday and Sunday with members going to the Greenwood museum and smelter site, others to the motherlode area and then the smelter site, some paid to collect minerals at the Rock Candy mine in Grand Forks, while yet others were guests and collecting at the Mighty White Dolomite Quarry. On both days, members had the opportunity to pan for gold on a members claim in the Jolly creek area which others had the opportunity to collect copper and galena samples in the Phoenix pits.
Saturday and Sunday, displays and demonstrations were open to the public at no charge. Guests from Grand Forks, Penticton, Osoyoos, Oliver, OK Falls and many from the Boundary country had the opportunity to interact with rock hounds from many areas and could purchase rock materials.
We had tremendous support from people in the area. Lisa Simms at the fair grounds was oh so helpful making it work for us. John Fair opened up his claim for us to use as one of our sites as did Paul Chaput of Mighty White Dolomite. Doreen at the Greenwood museum coordinated the visit there and members told me how interesting and informative the visit was. Wendy Higashi, CEO for the city of Greenwood went out of her way to open up the smelter site and to present a most informative talk about the smelters history. Barry Noll of Greenwood was a great help taking us to potential sites and in coordinating people to assist us when we were organizing the event. Pat Henley helped with contacts and supported us in our start up stage last year.
George Sookochoff of GGX Gold was out guest speaker Friday night and gave a most informative and interesting history of the mining area and development of Phoenix. McMynns store (thanks Uli) in Midway provided the food for our Sunday wrap up meal. Our coordinator told me how helpful and supportive they were in providing the food, which was excellent.
Although we did not use the sites son Anarchist Mountain and the Kettle Valley, a big thank you to Osoyoos Redimix and Osoyoos Aggregates for allowing us access to these sites and for giving us the OK to use them as reserves should we run into difficulty as happened last year.
Thank you to the people of the Boundary country for you hospitality and friendliness to our members during our visit.
Sincerely Jerome Albo, Chairman, Rendezvous 2019.
Dennis Dean, Donna Carpenter, Katherine MacNeill, Duane Hamm, Sandra Albo, Sandra Smith, Mike Ryan
Coordination Committee