Prospecting camp, Pyke River.1973.

About this image

DescriptionIn the early 1970s the Kennecott corporation had a mining camp in the headwaters of Pyke River, examining ultramafic rocks for asbestos and copper. The area is now in the Mt Aspiring National Park.

Headwaters of Pyke River, Red Mountain Range.
Pyke Forest, all of which are included in the Te Wähipounamu - South West New Zealand World Heritage Area

Simon Nathan Collection, Alexander Turnbull LibraryPhotographerSimon NathanDate of Photo1973Map^[1]External LinkNational Library

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Location (city or town)Mt AspiringPyke RiverEventProspecting camp, Pyke River.1973.

Category Information

Category TagMining

From Facebook

Date Created23rd July 2021CommentsChris Bennett

Ok...ive been informed different...so,not so...lol...The red mountain range is all pounamu,the red colour is weathered out iron...magnesium based rock nothing grows there

Heather Newby

Chris Bennett isnt that down past Haast? I remember Dad telling me something like that.

John Lester
Sorry,but it is not pounamu.The ancient plate boundary that existed through New Zealand between 300 and 100 million years ago is known from belts of distinctive rocks that occur in Southland and west Otago and that reappear in the hills behind Nelson and are again visible in western Waikato. The zone extends more than 1200 km.
One of the belts is the remains of a 275 million year old volcanic arc that eroded into another distinctive sedimentary belt. A third belt is a strip of ocean floor made of low (mafic) and very low silica (ultramafic) volcanic rocks. The ultramafic rocks are distinctive; they are conspicuous as the bare red-brown Dun Mountain-Red Hills near Nelson and Red Mountain-West Dome of west Otago. The ocean floor was scraped off and incorporated into a major collision zone at the plate boundary around 270 million years ago.

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Prospecting camp, Pyke River.1973.

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